Angels Burning Read Free

around whoever goes. I’ve got two troopers with me, but they’re big guys.”
    He sizes up Blonski, who has a stocky, no-neck weight lifter’s build, then Singer, who’s tall and lanky, then me.
    â€œDo you weigh more than him?” he asks me.
    â€œNo,” I reply sharply.
    â€œYou sure? He’s skinny as a stick.”
    â€œHe’s six-two and a man. I weigh the least. I’ll do it.”
    â€œYou’re wearing a skirt, Chief,” Singer ventures hesitantly. “And you don’t have any shoes.”
    â€œYeah,” Blonski chimes in. “Shouldn’t we wait for someone with the proper clothes and equipment who knows what they’re doing?”
    â€œWho knows what they’re doing?” I repeat in a tone that puts an end to any further argument.
    I take off my jacket and slip a rope under my arms while the men hold the other end. I’m not worried for my safety, but I am worried about my blouse. I hate the fact that I’ve been caught off guard unprepared to do my job, but in all fairness to me, this is not my job anymore. I have an office now with a comfortable chair and a Keurig: I’m a coordinator, a schedule maker, a form filer, a public relations maven, a handshaking figurehead. I’m the first female police chief in the county. I cling to this knowledge in an effort to maintain some dignity as I descend into a muddy hole to retrieve a corpse.
    I try not to think about the girl or to look at her until I absolutely have to. The hole is hot and steamy, and I also try not to think about the earth around me falling away, exposing the leaping flames of hell a mile beneath my dangling feet.
    I wedge myself against one side and reach out to grab the body around its midsection. It looks as if the fire didn’t spread below her hips.
    The sight of her young bare legs sticking out from a pair of cutoff shorts makes my throat tighten. Miraculously one of her flip-flops is still on one of her feet. Her toenails are painted neon pink, and an anklet made of sparkly hearts glimmers in the black dirt.
    I gently pull her toward me, ignoring the sound, smell, and feel of seared flesh and bones, and try to imagine the girl she once was before her heart stopped beating and her soul fled. Did she like school? Did she have a lot of friends? What did she want to be when she grew up? Did she ever get to do it in a pickup truck?
    None of us speak once we have her laid out on the ground. We stand around her in a protective circle and silently share our individual grief. Tears are acceptable in even the most hardened police officers in situations like this. They’re all thinking of sisters or daughters. I’m the only one who sees myself.
    I’m the first to look up and away from the dead girl and this dead town to the lush green waves of rolling hills on the blue horizon, and I feel the familiar ache that always comes over me whenever I’m faced with ruined beauty.
    One by one, the men turn away, too, consumed for a final momentby their private tortured thoughts before returning to the practiced numbness that enables them to do their job but unfortunately can’t shield them from their dreams.
    Our sleep will be haunted tonight by those legs that even in death look like they could get up and run away from here.

chapter two
    SINGER AND BLONSKI arrive back at the tan brick municipal building that houses our department well before me. I had to stay and talk to the coroner and strategize with Nolan. Campbell’s Run is a no-man’s-land when it comes to police jurisdiction since it doesn’t exist as a town anymore according to the state of Pennsylvania. The road going through it doesn’t exist either. Buchanan is the nearest community with its own police force, and I’ve been the chief here for the past ten years.
    Nolan has all the resources of the state police at his disposal, including their forensic lab. I have six officers (two