Animosity Read Online Free PDF Page A

know.”
    “Can we get you a glass of water? Maybe even something stronger, if you’d like to show us where you keep it?”
    “N-no. Water. Please. Water sounds good. Thank you.”
    I sat on my sofa, chewing on my bottom lip, my right knee bouncing up and down nervously. The two men who had been talking to me for the past hour or so were Detectives Erik Norton and Paul Hembry. Detective Norton was tall, thin, a couple years younger than myself. His ebony hair was unkempt; it belied his otherwise professional appearance, as if he had been too busy fighting crime all morning to worry about something so trivial as running a comb through his hair. He wore a navy blue blazer over a light gray shirt and black jeans. Shiny gold badge clipped to his belt, the bulge of a gun under one arm. His partner, Paul Hembry, was an overweight, balding gentleman who barely stood as tall as my chest. Hembry sported multiple chins and dark bags under his eyes that gave him the appearance of a tired old bulldog. He wore a rumpled blue Polo shirt, khaki slacks, and enough cologne to drown a small army. Every few minutes he dabbed at his sweaty forehead with a yellow handkerchief plucked from his back pocket.
    Also on the premises lurked a fellow by the name of Officer Keith Whitmire. Whitmire stood watch on the other side of my front door while his superiors handled their business inside with me. Every few minutes I heard his footsteps on the porch, saw his wide shoulders pass by the window as he paced back and forth out there. Not only had he been the first officer on the scene, Whitmire was a neighbor of mine. He lived in the Spanish-style bungalow at the end of the cul-de-sac. Though I'd never gotten to know him very well, I had heard he worked in law enforcement simply because he enjoyed it, to maintain familial tradition as a fourth-generation police officer, and not out of necessity. Supposedly he had won a hefty chunk of change in the Georgia State Lottery several years ago, and now he was set for life. I always thought Whitmire looked just like Pete Rose, the shamed baseball player.
    Someone coughed gently, startling me from my reverie. It might have been me. I wasn’t sure.
    “Can I, uh, get that glass of water now?” I asked the two men before me.
    “Sure,” said Detective Norton. Without taking his eyes off of me, he told his partner, “Get him a glass of water.”
    Detective Hembry nodded my way before waddling down the hall and into my kitchen. He returned a minute or two later with one of my daughter’s favorite drinking glasses, a pink one with Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck on the side.
    Ice cubes chattered against the sides of the glass as he handed it to me. I took a sip, winced. The water tasted thick and nasty in my mouth. Like something gone bad.
    Norton crossed his arms, cleared his throat. Watched my every move. The look on his face suggested I was making him late for an important appointment.
    I set the glass on a shelf beside the sofa, gazed up at him.
    “Her name was Rebecca Faye Lanning,” Norton announced. As if he’d been waiting for the perfect moment to fill me in, and this was it. I wondered what kind of reaction he was searching for, and if mine satisfied him. “She was nine years old.”
    “God,” I said.
    Hembry added, “We figure you scared the perp off. You and your dog.”
    For the next minute or so, the only sound between us was the tingle and ping of the wind chimes swaying back and forth on my front porch. Their high yet mournful song came to us through my open living room window like memories of better times borne on a warm summer breeze.
    “I assume you haven’t found him yet,” I said.
    “We haven’t,” Norton replied. “Yet.”
    “Our K-9 units plan to comb the park all evening,” said Hembry. “You had him cornered. Nowhere else he could have gone, except through the woods.”
    “Right,” I said.
    “Did you know the child?” Norton asked me.
    “No.”
    The detectives glanced