14 Christmas Spirit Read Online Free PDF

Again.
    Darcy still felt bad about that, but it wasn't like she had intentionally set the Hall on fire.
    The front entry doors to the police station were tall panes of glass framed by metal.  They were only locked at night, when anyone needing police assistance would have to call 911 or push the button on the call box next to the doors and hope someone was in the station and not out on a call.  They definitely weren't very secure, being made of glass, but they only allowed a person to get to the front lobby, where another door kept anyone from getting inside. 
    This early in the morning the doors were already open.  Seven-thirty seemed a lot earlier to Darcy than it used to when she was a high school student sneaking out of her Aunt Millie's house to go hang out with friends.
    She smiled at the memory.  Millie had always pretended not to know, but Darcy had come to realize later in life that her aunt knew exactly what she was doing and who she was doing it with.  Millie had kept tabs on her niece without smothering her.  Darcy was grateful, looking back, for the opportunities to make her own mistakes.
    Now, she and Jon stepped through the tall glass doors to the department lobby.  The freshly mopped white tile floor made her sneakers squeak.  At the front desk, behind the courtesy window, Sergeant Sean Fitzwallis sat reading the morning newspaper.  A cup of coffee steamed on the desk next to his elbow.  Sean had been an officer here in town for as long as Darcy could remember.  His gray hair was still thick and wavy, even though his body had begun to look thinner with age.  He was long past the point of being able to retire, but now that his wife was deceased and his kids had all moved away, he seemed to spend a lot of time here at the station.
    His pale blue eyes looked up from the paper.  When he saw it was them, he smiled and waved.  "Morning, you two.  You know it's the weekend, right?"
    "Crime doesn't punch a clock," Jon said, returning Sean's smile.  Darcy had heard him use that phrase any number of times before.
    "Yup," Fitzwallis agreed.  "I've heard the same thing, too.  Don't work too hard, Jon."
    He buzzed them through into the back area of the department where the officers had their desks.  Past that, down another short hallway, the interview rooms and holding cells stood empty and waiting for the next big case.
    The officer's room was an open area with individual desks for the detectives to work at and then shared desks for the uniformed officers to use when they were on duty.  There were two officers here now, just getting ready for their shifts at a desk at the far side of the room, huddled over a computer screen to read a report.  Their dark uniforms had the Misty Hollow town emblem on the left shoulder patch, and the American flag on the right.  Darcy knew them, sort of.  They were younger officers fresh faced and quite new to the department. Blake and Shane, she remembered, although their last names escaped her.  They both nodded a quick greeting then went back to the incident report.
    Jon went right to his desk and sat down.  Darcy checked her little gold wristwatch with the painted hearts at the twelve and the six.  "When was Joe supposed to meet you?"  Chief Joe Daleson was an early riser, but it was the weekend, after all. 
    "He said to be here at eight," Jon said.  "Another twenty minutes or so.  Gives us plenty of time to look through the case file which should be…here."
    He found the manila folder at the corner of his desk on top of a short stack of others that all looked exactly the same, with names and case numbers written or typed in the tab.  Darcy sat down on the opposite side of the desk, and together they started looking into the disappearance of Megan Bortchowski.
    Megan's girlfriend was the one who had reported her missing.  Blair Clinton.  She called the Misty Hollow Police Department yesterday, when she hadn't heard from Megan in a week.  They lived at an