Read Online Night Work by Steve Hamilton - Free Book Online Page B

call?
    No. It wasn’t Marlene. It took me a moment to place her. It was someone I’d just seen recently.
    It was the woman who lived next door to the Schulers, down by the creek, the woman with the husband who’d been yelling at her. I knew I’d given her my card and asked her to come see me if she everneeded help. I just wasn’t expecting to see her again the very same day.
    “Hello again,” I said to her. She stood at the edge of the light, not moving. I tried hard to remember her name.
    She didn’t say anything. I went to her, and as she held out my card I took it from her. Up close I could see the swelling around her left eye. I knew she’d be wearing several shades of black, blue, green, and purple by tomorrow morning. I’d been there myself, under different circumstances. I didn’t imagine this woman’s husband had been wearing boxing gloves.
    “Did he do this to you?”
    “What do you think?” she said.
    “You can have him arrested,” I said. “I have a friend on the police force. I can call him right now.”
    “Do you know why he did this?”
    “No. Does it matter?”
    “He did this because you gave me your card.”
    I stood there. I didn’t have a word to say to her.
    “You had to come over and act like a hero,” she said.
    “I was trying to help you.”
    “Yeah, that worked out great. Thanks.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to … I mean, this isn’t the first time, is it?”
    “You don’t know anything about me. You had no right.”
    She turned away from me. I stopped myself before I put a hand on her shoulder.
    “Let me call my friend,” I said.
    “Do not call anyone.”
    “I have to.”
    “I said, do not call anyone.”
    “You told me your name this morning.”
    She shook her head.
    “It’s Sandra.” Thank God it came to me. “I remember now. So tell me, Sandra … Why did you come here? It wasn’t just to be mad at me, was it?”
    She didn’t say anything. She didn’t turn around to face me.
    “Will you talk to me, please?”
    I touched her once, lightly, on the arm. She flinched like I was electrified and started walking out the door.
    “If he kills me tonight,” she said, without looking back, “it’ll be your fault.”
    “Sandra! Don’t leave!”
    She opened the door and went out into the night. I chased after her, followed her down the sidewalk.
    “Get away from me!” she said when she saw me.
    “Stop.”
    “Get away!”
    She tried to step around me. I wouldn’t let her. She finally started hitting me with her fists. I was ducking and trying to block her punches without hurting her, right there on the sidewalk while the cars went by. Some of the cars started honking.
    “Let me go!” she said. I wrapped her up and held her. If I had stopped to think for one second, I might have realized how many laws I was breaking. I washolding a woman against her will, with a dozen witnesses slowing down to get a good look. It was all gut instinct at that point, on a day that had already slipped away from me.
    I wasn’t going to let anything else happen to her. That was the only thing in my head. On this day of all days, I would not let her go back to that house.
    “He’ll kill me,” she said in a low voice. She stopped struggling. “He’ll kill me.”
    “No, he won’t.” I let go of her. She didn’t move.
    “Yes, he will.”
    “Do you have any kids, Sandra? Anybody else back at the house we should be thinking about?”
    “If I did, you think I’d leave them with him?”
    “Okay, then. That makes it easier. We’re going to call Protective Services right now.”
    “No. No, we’re not.”
    “Yes,” I said. “We are. Come on.”
    I led her back inside the gym. Anderson, Maurice, and Rolando were all standing now. Over five hundred combined pounds of manhood, enough muscle and experience to take on a small street gang, but they obviously had no idea what to do here.
    “We’re gonna use your office,” I said.
    A minute later she