An Emmett Hardy Crime Novel Where the Hurt Is

It is a Friday night in Burr, Oklahoma, and Chief of Police Emmett Hardy has big plans. A bowl of beef stroganoff, the Tonight Show, and enough bourbon to make both enjoyable.Then his deputy shows up at the door, and everything goes sideways.A young woman is found on the railroad tracks, naked and discarded like she never mattered. The state investigators arrive, take one look, and declare the case practically solved before it has even started. Emmett is not so sure.But when nobody else is willing to dig, a tired, bourbon-soaked cop with no business being a hero decides to do it anyway. Because someone has to. As the investigation pulls him deeper into the town's rotting underbelly, what begins as a routine call unravels into something far uglier. Small-town politics, buried secrets, and the kind of cruelty that only thrives where nobody is watching.In a town that has already decided who counts and who doesn't, one imperfect man refuses to let a girl no one was supposed to miss stay forgotten. He plays saxophone in a town that only wants country music, drinks bourbon like it owes him something, and carries a conscience heavier than his badge. That conscience might just get him killed. Or fired. In Burr, Oklahoma, it is hard to say which would be worse. Will justice find its way into a place that has spent decades making sure it doesn't?