Page 20 of Soulless Saint

Chief Andrews was like family, but he wasn’t blood.

I was angry someone might’ve tried to take him from us. That the pain of his loss would affect Ma, Dad, and Kaleb. But anger was where it ended. It was where it always ended.

“Pull in over there.” I pointed to the lot of the convenience store where Dad had no doubt gotten the footage, just down the street from the Andrews’ place.

“Why?”

“Just pull in, park around the side there.”

Not a minute after Kaleb pulled up alongside the back of the store by the dumpsters, Dad’s truck rolled down the Andrews’ street. He slowed in front of their house but didn’t stop then sped off down the road.

Kaleb turned in his seat, a brow lifting.

“You really thought Dad wouldn’t check to make sure we didn’t come straight here?”

I shook my head when he didn’t reply, stepping out of the Bronco.

Kaleb took something out of the dumpster, and when I turned around to see what it was, I grimaced. He plucked a few browning flowers out of an otherwise still mostly-alive bouquet, wiping some debris off the patterned cellophane wrap.

“Really?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah. Go inside and buy a fresh one, dumbass.”

He twisted the bouquet this way and that. “There’s nothing wrong with this one.”

I rolled my eyes, jamming my fists into my pockets before I throttled him just for breathing. There was no mistaking that I was on edge. I felt sorry for the next bastard who pissed me off.

We took the stairs up to Maggie’s front porch two at a time, stepping through the little sunroom to her front door where there was already a wide array of glass casserole dishes and bouquets sweltering in the sun. As Kaleb knocked on the door, I bent to peel back the foil on one of the dishes, finding a watery lasagna beneath.

It’d been there for a while.

It looked like it’d all been there a while actually.

I peered out the screened-in porch, craning my neck to double check that I did see Maggie’s silver sedan in the driveway. I did.

Kaleb knocked again, but Maggie didn’t come.

“Move.”

Kaleb barely had time to jump out of the way before I booted the door down, the sound of splitting wood and metal rattling against drywall echoing through the otherwise silent house.

I drew my weapon and Kaleb followed suit, trailing me into the house. I jerked my head to the living room off to the left for Kaleb to clear as I made my way down the hall, my skin itching as I tightened my grip on my Taurus 1911.

“Maggie,” I bellowed into the quiet and stopped dead at the sound of a soft sob coming from the other side of her bedroom door at the very end of the hall.

We hadn’t been for a family dinner at the Andrews’ place in years and my wide frame filled the narrow channel of space as I stormed down the hall and shouldered through the door, my gun arm raised.

I jerked right, then left, searching for a threat to obliviate, but I found only Maggie. The older woman with graying brown hair knelt near the end of the bed, clutching a picture frame between her small hands. Fat tears dropped onto the glass, and she sniffed as she tried to use the heel of her palm to wipe them off the glass, managing only to smear them around, obscuring the wedding photo trapped beneath.

“Maggie?” Kaleb hedged, shouldering past me and into the room. He went to Maggie, kneeling beside her. He tried to take the frame, a soft hand on her upper arm, but Maggie jerked it back from him.

“No,” she hissed through the tears. “Leave, the both of you.”

“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Kaleb said softly, releasing the frame, his apology only spurring her to cry harder. Not the cry of a woman who tragically lost her husband to a heart attack. Anger etched dark lines into the tan skin of her forehead, creased the edges around her eyes and mouth.

“You need to leave now, boys.”

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