Angel Among Us Read Free Page B

wanted to keep their job ever voiced this theory out loud. But when I was alive, everyone on the force had understood that if certain cases involved certain men, you didn’t look into them with the kind of obsessiveness that had gotten you your detective badge. Of course, doing a half-assed job had come naturally to me and my partner. We had been given more than our share of the hands-off cases simply because assigning them to us was extra insurance that they would never be solved.
    How had a loud, aggressive man like Mayor Gallagher fathered the lanky, quiet farmer I had seen a few nights before tenderly serving his pregnant wife dinner in bed?
    â€˜This is above my pay grade,’ the older cop decided. He shut his notebook and stored it in his breast pocket. ‘You should have called this in sooner.’
    The principal looked ashamed. Mrs Trafton looked grim. ‘We didn’t want to think the worst. There isn’t a teacher more loved by her students,’ she said. ‘They are all so excited about the baby.’
    The cops looked startled. ‘She’s pregnant?’ the younger one stammered.
    The principal and his secretary nodded in unison.
    â€˜Don’t move,’ the older one warned them. ‘We’re going to call this in and I can guarantee you they are going to send someone with a gold shield down to question you. And don’t warn the husband.’
    Neither the principal nor his secretary admitted that they had already tried to contact her husband – and that he could not be found.
    There are at least eight senior detectives in my town, men who have served for decades and would understand the minefield this case represented. But I knew that our commander, a natural-born politician named Gonzales, would not send any of them. A missing pregnant schoolteacher married to the mayor’s son? Gonzales would be intent on presenting a façade of professional independence while simultaneously doing god-knows-what maneuverings behind the scenes. There was only one person he would trust with a case this tricky – Maggie, my replacement on the force. Sure, she came with a partner Gonzales absolutely loathed, but Maggie Gunn had turned Adrian Calvano into a pretty decent detective. At least if she kept a close eye on him.
    Sure enough, they arrived within the hour: Maggie, with her square muscled body and plain face made beautiful by her insanely good health, and Adrian Calvano, with his lanky frame, expensive suits and maddeningly thick black hair. He drove me nuts, but apparently Maggie saw something genuinely worthwhile in him and I trusted her judgment.
    Maggie and Calvano questioned the principal and his secretary about the missing teacher’s reliability, her past record of absences, any rumors they had heard about her marriage and what they knew about her husband. Eventually they came to the same conclusion I had come to – that Arcelia Gallagher was a very private woman, who had not disclosed a single personal detail about herself to any of her co-workers. All anyone really knew was that she was married to Danny Gallagher, the mayor’s only son, and that she lived on a farm outside of town, where her husband worked long hours to grow organic produce that he sold to local restaurants. Arcelia had helped him in the fields after school until she had grown too pregnant to be much use. Other than that, no one knew where Arcelia had been born, how she had met and married her husband, if she had any other family, where she went on her vacations or, indeed, where she went during the summer when school was out for three months. All anyone really knew about her was that she was very sweet-natured and the children loved her.
    Maggie and Calvano looked grim – they had learned little of use.
    â€˜She goes to St Raphael’s,’ the secretary offered meekly. ‘I noticed her saying the rosary last Wednesday and I asked her if she was Catholic. She told me