Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller Page B

threading blackly through it. “No way in hell I ever thought we’d have two homicides in a row like this. Not again. Not after last fall. You just don’t expect it.” He ruminated for a quick run of seconds. “Don’t imagine Freddie Arnett or Charlie Frank were expecting it, either, until events proved otherwise.” He started to go, then turned his head in her direction one more time. “Deputy Harrison did a good job while I was away,” he said. It was both a question and a statement. “Considering.”
    â€œShe did her best. Baptism of fire, I’d say.”
    â€œCoffee later at JP’s?”
    â€œSure.” Even in the midst of the slow-motion crisis of two murder investigations, they needed to keep their rituals. They’d agreed on that five years ago, when they first began working together. “Bet you missed that bottomless cup at JP’s,” she added. “Coffee’s kind of hit-and-miss in big cities, as I recall.”
    Bell saw something come into Fogelsong’s eyes before he answered. She and the sheriff had a fierce and steady mutual affection. They rarely alluded to it, even in passing. And that, she believed, was a large part of what had enabled its survival all these years: They didn’t wear it out or distort it by analyzing it or even naming it.
    â€œYeah,” he said. “That’s the main thing I missed, all right. The coffee.”

 
    Chapter Twelve

    Lindy could not bring herself to lock her father in the basement when she left at night for her shift at the station. She could have done just that; there was a dead bolt on the kitchen side of the basement door, and she kept the key. It would be easy. But if anything happened—a fire, say—she would be trapping him, dooming him, and she couldn’t do that. The basement had no outside entrance. No windows, either.
    So she took her chances. She repeatedly questioned herself about it, going back and forth with the pros and cons, over and over again, but she wouldn’t lock him in. Nor could she afford to hire someone to watch him in her absence—even if she could have persuaded her father to put up with a stranger in the house. Which he didn’t want. And neither, come to that, did she.
    Sometimes her apprehension seemed misplaced, her worry unwarranted. There were mornings when she arrived here and it was clear that he hadn’t come out of the basement at all, not once, much less left the house. But something was changing. He was getting angrier, more restless. Unpredictable. These days, when she got home and waited a minute or so in the kitchen, letting the house settle in around her, listening, then climbed down the rickety basement stairs, moving slowly, keeping a cautious hand on the rough-feeling rail, and called his name, doing it softly so as not to startle him— Daddy, hey, Daddy, it’s Lindy, it’s just me —she would hear him scuttling away from her like a frightened animal, thrashing, kicking, banging, tripping over boxes and tables, snarling at her. If she tried to approach him, he would lurch away to another corner, cringing at the doorway-sized punch of daylight at the top of the stairs, flinging up a meaty hand in front of his face to block it, then dipping his grizzled gray head. Damned double shift, he would sometimes mutter. Gotta work a double shift. Ray, you got your end? Ray-boy. You hold on there, Ray . I’m coming on through. Ray Purcell was her father’s best friend. They’d started out in the mines together in the 1960s. Lindy had heard a lot of stories about Ray, although she never met him; he died of lung cancer in 1973.
    Her father’s agitation was definitely escalating. She didn’t know why. She knew only that he was suffering even more these days, tormented by some frantic inner vision that chased him around the basement and—to her growing concern—sometimes out of the