The Blood On Our Hands Read Free Page B

afterward parting company with her companion on the street, declining the reluctant offer of a lift home, knowing that for both it would be awkward and needlessly indiscreet.
    Sara walked. Beneath her, the river swirled under the bridge, at this time of year the level high and rising. Sara hoped parents would be mindful of their children; last spring, they’d lost two.
    On this side of the village, south of the river, nature had withstood both progress and the indiscriminate influence of the property development occurring to the north. Surviving stands of century-old oak trees and elm trees lined the streets, refusing resolutely to yield. After one hundred years the topography if not the social character of South Church Falls remained relatively intact, an uneasy though accommodating mix of commercial and low-end residential, its weary complexion patient though not hopeful of the prospect for urban renewal.
    South from the river, the lights from the church twinkled like a beacon, though the rectory was now dark.
    Home once to the Roman Catholic parish, the building had been sold off to the Church of England after the Second World War. Whether that conflict had claimed its larger than fair share of papists or whether the simple migration of uneducated farmers south to the industrial jobs of Albany and points beyond was the inevitable cause, by the year nineteen forty-seven the number of Catholics attending Sunday morning and Saturday evening Mass had dwindled to an untenable level. Shortly thereafter, the County Diocese ceded the church to the competition.
    Looming over the river like a troll, the building is a gothic monstrosity, its pale brick smudged charcoal gray by the elements. The architecture consists of late eighteenth century cinder block rectangles and squares, piled high atop one another. The spire dominates the horizon on the south side of the river, undistinguished save for an elaborate stained glass panel set forty feet from ground level, donated in the fifties by a nearby diocese to honor the building’s religious cessation to The Church of England from that of Rome.
    Had she bothered, Sara might have wondered: does the lapse in repentance-based faith have anything to do with the killing of the girl ? Only nominally spiritual herself, Sara preferred, instead, to ascribe such inhumanity to the nature of the beast: Men . Not “ Man ” as defined generally in the Biblical sense, but by Sara’s own more narrow interpretation of the roughly one half of human beings who pee standing up.
    Sara shivered, considering the implications of a killing that in a small town would necessarily extend in its impact well beyond the immediate family. Questions would be asked, answers, half-truths, perhaps even outright lies reluctantly, possibly enthusiastically, given. Knowledge would shine into corners best left hidden by the dark. Transgressions would be exposed, both hurtful and humiliating, no matter how relevant, or otherwise, to the case. Hereafter, she decided, the citizens of Church Falls would see each other—and perhaps even themselves?—much differently. The investigation, if not the murder, would ensure it.
    Drawing the string on her nylon windbreaker more tightly to her cheeks, Sara crossed Main Street on the opposite side of the bridge, moving with the current along the river. She passed the vacant street level office into which the local police detachment was soon scheduled to move. At five-years-old, the building wasn’t new exactly, only relatively so against the age of the original Town Square, the weathered block of limestone from which she currently worked.
    Turning left, Sara entered the foyer to a low-rise apartment house constructed to accommodate twenty modest residential suites. Sara occupied an apartment overlooking the river, a one-bedroom with kitchenette and living–dining room combination. It was small but convenient, rather expensive when measured against her annual income and allowed her