Something Wicked Read Free Page B

jumped into his hand.
    â€œWait, wait,” Savannah warned.
    â€œDown on the ground!”
    â€œNo, no! It’s okay. It’s okay. Fred!” she yelled as Clausen threw the guy onto the porch face-first. “He didn’t do anything. Really. I’m okay. He didn’t do anything!”
    Clausen quickly zip-tied his hands behind his back, and when the man didn’t resist, he helped him to his feet.
    There was a red scrape on his cheek, but the man murmured, “Unto us a child is born,” smiling beatifically, his eyes closed as he rocked from side to side. “The baby Jesus come to save us all.”
    â€œAre you all right?” Clausen demanded of Savannah, never taking his gaze from the man.
    â€œI’m fine. He didn’t hurt me. I think he was . . . congratulating me.”
    Clausen’s eyes narrowed on the bedraggled man as he continued to mutter and chant. “He for real?”
    â€œMaybe. I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat’s your name?” Clausen asked him loudly. The man kept swaying and murmured something that sounded like a song. “You’re trespassing. Broke a window in the back. That’s breaking and entering, you understand? Sir? What’s he saying?” Clausen demanded, throwing a quick glare at Savannah.
    â€œI think it’s ‘Jesus loves me! This I know.’”
    The man suddenly opened his eyes and gasped, his gaze turning to Savannah. “You’re having a boy! Is he the savior? Are you Mary?”
    â€œShe’s not even the mother,” Clausen growled, snapping a pair of cuffs on the nut job’s thin wrists. “C’mon, pal. Let’s get you outta here. Lucky you didn’t burn the place down.” To Savannah, he said, “He had the fireplace crammed with trash and driftwood. It was spilling over the hearth and onto the carpet.”
    Clausen marched him to his Jeep, but the guy kept twisting around, trying to see Savannah.
    â€œYou are his mother,” he said over his shoulder. “You are!”
    There was no way she could explain to him that technically, no, she wasn’t. She walked back to her Ford Escape, the vehicle she’d traded in her Jeep for earlier in her pregnancy. There were only so many black and yellow department vehicles available, thank God; it was the only good thing about the budget cuts plaguing the state and counties. As she climbed inside, she felt Kristina and Hale’s boy kick one insistent foot under her right ribs. He had gone head down early and had been bicycling merrily away for the past few weeks. She laid her hand on the spot and smiled. A moment later she reminded herself that he wasn’t hers. Her smile dropped, and she put both hands on the wheel and drove away from Bancroft Bluff.
    She arrived at the station a couple of minutes behind Clausen and the vagrant. They both pulled into the back lot and headed toward the rear door.
    â€œHis name’s Mickey,” Clausen told her as she let him lead the suspect in ahead of her.
    â€œLast name?” Savannah asked.
    â€œHaven’t got that far yet.”
    She watched them head down the department’s back hall, and as they turned the corner that led to the holding cells beyond, Mickey was in full voice, singing, “Cuz the Bible tells me so!”
    There was something eerie about his obsession, and Savannah tried to shake off the feeling as she glanced straight ahead across the wide room, which ran north/ south and offered a full-line view from rear door to front. To her left was the back hall where Clausen had just taken Mickey, a deceptively short walk to the warren of offices and holding cells that took up the western side of the building.
    â€œWho was that?” May Johnson, the dour officer who manned the department’s front desk, asked from across the room. It was damn near impossible to scare a smile out of the woman, though she liked Savannah well