Read Online JJ09 - Blood Moon by Michael Lister - Free Book Online

for mercy from the warden.
    But he had none, not for me.
    I could make a deal with the warden. Agree to resign at the end of the week if he’d just let me come back and finish out the week.
    That might work. It would certainly appeal to him. But . . . would he go for it?
    Probably not. Especially when he thinks the investigation into Hahn’s death will get me out anyway.
    What if an inmate’s wife with an emergency demanded to speak to me? Or a volunteer?
    I doubted even that would work.
    What I had told the kidnapper was partially true. I had yet to select an image and quote for Mom’s headstone. Today was not the deadline, though. That had been the lie.
    But when I became aware of where I was, I realized I was coming up on Whispering Pines Lane, the road that led to the cemetery. I slowed, tapped the blinker on, and turned down the road we all travel alone.
    Had my subconscious brought me here? Before or after what I had said to the caller?
    I parked as close to her graveside as I could, got out, and walked over the fall-browning grass toward her empty headstone, wondering if winter’s first green is gold, what is fall’s first brown.
    Most of the flower arrangements left from the funeral were dead or nearly dead, many of the white plastic baskets tipped over.
    I bent down and straightened them.
    Close to the earth, touching the dead and dying flowers, my mom’s decaying body just six feet beyond. Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
    “I’m sorry I haven’t been by to see you sooner,” I said.
    The shade from a nearby tree fell just short of her new grave, the midday sun causing the granite of the gravestone and the sandy soil of the fill dirt to gleam brightly.
    The bareness of her headstone looked bad, unfinished, as if she were uncared for, which was not the case.
    “I’m sorry about your headstone too. I’ll get to it soon. I swear. ”
    I swear is not something I normally say, and I wondered if it was me reverting back to a more juvenile state while talking to my dead mother or my conversation with the kidnapper.
    “I miss you far more than I ever thought I would,” I said. “Didn’t realize how much good the visits I thought I was doing for you were actually doing for me.”
    In the far corner of the cemetery, a large, old car rattled up to a stop, and a short, stocky elderly man with a felt hat and overcoat stumbled out and lumbered over to a cement bench next to a double headstone.
    “I’ve got to go, Mom,” I said, “but I’ll be back soon. And I’ll get your marker done. I promise. I love you. Miss you.”
    I lingered for a moment more then made my way back to Anna’s car, walking not unlike the elderly man on the backside of the cemetery had.

Chapter Twenty
    I drove home with an overwhelming sense of dread.
    Whether from my visit to my Mom’s grave or being locked out of the prison, I felt a futility like I hadn’t in a very long time, and I wondered if I’d ever see Anna alive again.
    Can’t think like that. Push it down. Put it away. Focus on figuring out how to do what you need to do. Nothing else.
    Nothing else.
    At home the first thing I did was go to the small bedroom Anna and I had been sharing for such a short time.
    Sitting on her side of the bed, I picked up the book she had been reading for the few minutes she could stay wake each night after coming to bed. She had always had difficulty staying up late––something her pregnancy had kicked into overdrive.
    Lifting the top book, Ultimate Crime Ultimate Punishment , a law text on the death penalty, it revealed a smaller book beneath it–– A Good Divorce, A Good Marriage.
    I knew she had been reading the law book. Though she wasn’t practicing and wasn’t sure she would, Anna had recently graduated from FSU Law School and was fascinated with all things criminal justice. With the upheaval in her life, and being with child, I knew it was too much for her to think about just now, but I hoped one day she would