Saint Homicide (Single Shot) Read Free Page B

Behind the house the pale limbs of the sycamores creaked in the breeze, and their dead leaves blew across the yard. An icy wisp of wind licked at my neck as I unlocked my car. Inside, I turned up the heater, waiting there until Karen pulled up to our house and parked on the street.
    She got out of the car fully dressed, wearing lipstick, eye shadow, and jewelry.
    I got out and she hugged me even though I’d long since established that I don’t enjoy being hugged.
    “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
    “Pray,” I told her.
    Karen stared at me, blinking. “I will pray,” she said. She reached over and patted my forearm. “I’ll pray for you, too.”
    She smiled and opened the front door. I said nothing else to her. I went to my car and pulled out of the driveway.
     
     
     

Chapter 3
    The night of Jennifer’s accident, I had searched the hospital corridors looking for Lynn. I found her upstairs in the dimmed waiting area outside of the obstetrics ward. Somewhere, I could hear a baby crying. Standing at a floor length window, still wearing her band jacket, Lynn looked down on the orange pools of light in the hospital parking lot.
    “Lynn,” I said.
    I expected her to be crying like her mother downstairs. She wasn’t. Even at the age of sixteen, she seemed sapped and old, as if this latest tragedy had simply exhausted whatever was left of her feelings. In her jeans and tennis shoes she looked like an adult dressed as a child. 
    “You okay, kid?” I said. My voice shook more than I wanted it to. My wife was downstairs, broken and mangled, unrecognizable. I tried to focus on the girl in front of me instead.
    She stood so close to the glass her breaths fogged it and then disappeared like glimpses of a ghost. She shook her head as if someone was trying to convince her of something absurd. “What the fuck is minimal brain damage?”
    I hung my head. “Please don’t swear,” I said.
    “Really?” she snapped. “That’s everything you have?”
    “No, but the Lord called us to a higher conduct. Your father wouldn’t want you using that word because of something that happened to him. Neither would Jennifer.”
    Lynn’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a butterfly clip. She moved toward me as deliberately as someone coming down the aisle to accept Christ. “Did you see her?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “What did you see?”
    I steadied my hands by squeezing them together. “I saw my wife, one of God’s children.”
    She stared into my eyes. “I saw a hole.”
     
    I took the first downtown exit and stopped at a red light. I always hated going downtown. Growing up in the suburbs outside of town, I’d been raised to think of Little Rock as a sprawling nightmare.
    Sitting in my car at that lonely concrete corner reminded me of why. The rest of the buildings on the block appeared abandoned, their broken windows vacant and dark. Storefronts were boarded up, and the sidewalks were littered with bits of Styrofoam and the clustered remains of cigarette butts and pink breast cancer ribbons. The light turned green, and I cruised slowly down the one-way street. Over a row of store fronts I could see the gleaming dome and cupola of the capitol building. Beyond it, in relative darkness, the city stretched down to the river. I had only a vague idea of where Curtis Street was and it took me several minutes of wandering until I finally found it. Once I did, it took me even longer to find a video store.
    It was not what I expected.
    Jay and Pat’s All Adult Store was a small, plain building hidden behind a large U-Haul rental center. Illuminated by one naked light bulb, a plain wooden sign with the store name also announced: Movies, Toys, Magazines, Videos.
    I sat in the parking lot, my car still running, and stared at the front door. I wanted to go in. It was possible that this is where Randall worked. That’s why you’re out here at midnight. You’ve got to find Lynn. I nodded. Yes. But that was not the