Read Online Witness To Kill (Change Of Life Book 1) by Kent Keefer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kent Keefer
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to receive it, waits certainly beyond even that last visible
moment when the earth rises to join the sky.
CHAPTER 4
“Crime Scene”
Mary tuned out the radios and stared through the drizzle that
had begun on the drive over. The house’s exterior was gloomier than she
remembered, even allowing for the bank of clouds rolling up from the Gulf, and
for the sunglasses she’d absentmindedly put on to start the day—but things
still looked the same.
The afternoon’s iron-gray light threw weak, misshapen
shadows across its front in a way she’d never noticed before; but she knew, really ,
nothing about the building’s appearance was changed at all. Beaming over a
tailored white suit, Magic Johnson’s mahogany face thrust itself irrationally
into her mind’s eye. She blinked and shook her head as they pulled to a stop
with her eyes glued to Luis’s window, her heart swelling like a wound under her
ribs. The window began to pulse as she stared; threatening to swallow the
house, it seemed to be breathing and growing in a malevolent, knowing sync with
the rising pounding in her chest and ears.
She sucked air through her nostrils and tightened her jaw,
forced her mind to regain control and reduce the window to its normal innocuous
dimensions. Normal . She sucked bitterly again and squinted behind the
dark lenses, twisting her knuckles in her lap. Normal! After what
happened behind there , she asked herself silently, her eyes locked on
the window to keep it the same, could anything ever be normal again? The
invisible difference changed it all, she considered ruefully, changed it all
forever.
The identical-appearing frame structure she was looking at
that had so recently provided warmth and shelter—a place in this world
for her and for Brian—now, like the death looming behind Magic’s healthy face
on Leno last night, forecast only a future as forbidding as the low-slung sky.
Now it was only a place she wanted to be away from.
As she sat trying to gather her courage, she remembered a
line from her father: One of the most remarkable things about being human, he’d
postulated in one of his rambling discourses, was the undeniable capacity for feelings ,
for intuition and imagination to plumb deeper depths and reach greater heights
of understanding than mere logic, science or observance could achieve. It was something
like that , her lips curled into a tight smile under her sunglasses. And
here, looking up at the unaltered façade, the normal façade of what had
so recently been her home, she was overwhelmed with the oppressive truth that
while nothing was different in a logical, scientific or observant sense, everything
was changed .
The comfort of the simple building she was looking at was
reduced to a warm memory, and even that meager consolation was fading like a
photograph left out in the sun as she gazed through the rain.
On the porch a uniformed cop was talking on a cell phone
while pulling a slicker over his head, bouncing from one foot to the other, bold
yellow letters spelled out NOPD against the wrinkled blue plastic. He
was tall and black with a bored posture, but he smiled broadly and flicked the
hat in his hand toward them when his head popped through the poncho’s hole and
he recognized the car.
The brass bulbs that topped the iron posts of the fence
seemed to glow in the grudging light, the wet curly leafs of the hedge a richer
shade of green than she remembered. The last words she had heard from Luis came
to her, a promise that he and Brian would trim the bushes on his next day off.
She looked at the ragged hedge, trying to imagine it was the same thing Luis
had talked about— How could it continue to sprout, how could it not know?
Sherry parked the unmarked Dodge in front of the house,
right next to a sign forbidding it.He turned the key, halting the
country-western music and police-band static, the wipers died in mid-cycle. The
drops
moment when the earth rises to join the sky.
CHAPTER 4
“Crime Scene”
Mary tuned out the radios and stared through the drizzle that
had begun on the drive over. The house’s exterior was gloomier than she
remembered, even allowing for the bank of clouds rolling up from the Gulf, and
for the sunglasses she’d absentmindedly put on to start the day—but things
still looked the same.
The afternoon’s iron-gray light threw weak, misshapen
shadows across its front in a way she’d never noticed before; but she knew, really ,
nothing about the building’s appearance was changed at all. Beaming over a
tailored white suit, Magic Johnson’s mahogany face thrust itself irrationally
into her mind’s eye. She blinked and shook her head as they pulled to a stop
with her eyes glued to Luis’s window, her heart swelling like a wound under her
ribs. The window began to pulse as she stared; threatening to swallow the
house, it seemed to be breathing and growing in a malevolent, knowing sync with
the rising pounding in her chest and ears.
She sucked air through her nostrils and tightened her jaw,
forced her mind to regain control and reduce the window to its normal innocuous
dimensions. Normal . She sucked bitterly again and squinted behind the
dark lenses, twisting her knuckles in her lap. Normal! After what
happened behind there , she asked herself silently, her eyes locked on
the window to keep it the same, could anything ever be normal again? The
invisible difference changed it all, she considered ruefully, changed it all
forever.
The identical-appearing frame structure she was looking at
that had so recently provided warmth and shelter—a place in this world
for her and for Brian—now, like the death looming behind Magic’s healthy face
on Leno last night, forecast only a future as forbidding as the low-slung sky.
Now it was only a place she wanted to be away from.
As she sat trying to gather her courage, she remembered a
line from her father: One of the most remarkable things about being human, he’d
postulated in one of his rambling discourses, was the undeniable capacity for feelings ,
for intuition and imagination to plumb deeper depths and reach greater heights
of understanding than mere logic, science or observance could achieve. It was something
like that , her lips curled into a tight smile under her sunglasses. And
here, looking up at the unaltered façade, the normal façade of what had
so recently been her home, she was overwhelmed with the oppressive truth that
while nothing was different in a logical, scientific or observant sense, everything
was changed .
The comfort of the simple building she was looking at was
reduced to a warm memory, and even that meager consolation was fading like a
photograph left out in the sun as she gazed through the rain.
On the porch a uniformed cop was talking on a cell phone
while pulling a slicker over his head, bouncing from one foot to the other, bold
yellow letters spelled out NOPD against the wrinkled blue plastic. He
was tall and black with a bored posture, but he smiled broadly and flicked the
hat in his hand toward them when his head popped through the poncho’s hole and
he recognized the car.
The brass bulbs that topped the iron posts of the fence
seemed to glow in the grudging light, the wet curly leafs of the hedge a richer
shade of green than she remembered. The last words she had heard from Luis came
to her, a promise that he and Brian would trim the bushes on his next day off.
She looked at the ragged hedge, trying to imagine it was the same thing Luis
had talked about— How could it continue to sprout, how could it not know?
Sherry parked the unmarked Dodge in front of the house,
right next to a sign forbidding it.He turned the key, halting the
country-western music and police-band static, the wipers died in mid-cycle. The
drops
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