The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 Read Online Free

be regathering after school, work, errands, fighting for the remote, doing homework, arguing about dinner.
    My disability check didn’t cover entertainment, so the library was my second most frequented haunt. I was sitting by the picture window reading the latest
Popular Science
when Sandy called.
    â€œYou see the news?” she said.
    â€œThe girl? Nancilee?”
    â€œYeah.” I knew she was leaning against the door frame in the hallway between her kitchen and dining room, probably twisting her index finger through the phone cord. She never sat down when she talked on the phone. I once asked her why. She told me her father used to sneak up behind her, take up some slack from the cord, and pull it around her neck like a garrote. All in fun, he’d said.
    â€œWe should’ve called.”
    â€œWe couldn’t have known,” I said. An old man across the table, holding a copy of
Home and Garden
an inch from his face, pulled it down to glare at me.
    I ignored him. “She went with that guy like she wasn’t worried.”
    â€œI’m going to call on that girl’s grandma. It’s the least I can do.”
    â€œDon’t. You don’t have anything to tell her that would be a comfort to her.”
    â€œShe’d want to know,” Sandy said, her voice rushed, breathy. “I wanted to know.”
    â€œTalking to the EMTs only made it worse for you.” One EMT had told Sandy he thought I had alcohol on my breath. That one off-the-cuff remark had driven a stake through our marriage. I never realized when I was a kid that every day of your life is a high-wire act. Twenty years you can say the right thing, and then
pow
—one casual comment, one inattentive moment, and you’re in freefall. Ask Karl Wallenda.
    â€œWould you go with me?” Sandy said. “In an hour or so?”
    I saw Tex walk out of our apartment building toward his Civic. He was dressed to kill, clothes tight and shiny, the silver on his belt buckle sparkling under the streetlights.
    I agreed to go with Sandy. Not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I was also perversely drawn to pain, and I assumed there would be plenty there.
    I looked through my closet for something more formal than blue jeans. I considered my black suit but decided it might suggest I was claiming grief I didn’t deserve, as I’d only met the victim that one time. I settled on gray slacks, a dark green checked shirt, and a black sport coat, no tie.
    Sandy picked me up twenty minutes later. The temperature had dropped back into the twenties, and the heater in her car was broken, but she wore only a thin overcoat. Her teeth were chattering.
    â€œWhere are your gloves?” I asked as I pulled the door shut and belted myself in. I had given her a nice pair of kid leather gloves for Christmas a couple of months before.
    She pulled away from the curb right into the path of an old Volvo wagon. I could read the lips of the woman behind the wheel as she screeched to a stop to avoid hitting us.
    â€œThey’re at work,” Sandy said, oblivious to the close call. Her tone of voice was part of a package I recognized. It went with her head held high, and a way she has of drawing her upper lip down over her teeth, then curling it up, as though trying to dislodge something in her nose without touching it. That package says,
Don’t talk, don’t touch
. I regretted agreeing to accompany her.
    We rode in silence for a few blocks. The address she had was on the other end of town. I waited until we were on the freeway before I said, “This is a mistake.”
    Another nose twitch. “You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding. She needs us.”
    â€œThe last thing she needs is us. She’s probably suffering enough as it is.”
    That was enough chitchat for our car ride. A short while later, she turned onto Bryden Road. We cruised slowly down the row of