The Haunting of James Hastings Read Online Free PDF Page A

gurney. Even before I yanked the door open and crossed my lawn to confront the police and Lucy Arnold and the firemen who could do nothing except hold back the rest of the gawkers, I understood Mr Ennis would not be coming home.
     

3
     
    ‘How are you holding up?’ Lucy Arnold said.
     
    ‘Real good.’ The shock was still rippling through my system. ‘You want a beer?’
     
    I counted the cases stacked beside the fridge. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and most of the thirteenth. A God-blessed ocean of beer. I’d tired of having to leave late at night to buy more, so I went to Ralph’s every Sunday and bought five or six cases. Tecaté, Corona, Dos Equis, whatever was on sale and Mexican. Always cans. No limes.
     
    ‘It’s not quite ten, James.’
     
    ‘Don’t mind me, then.’ I loaded twenty warm Tecatés into the produce drawers, removed a cold Modelo. My hands were shaking as I gestured toward the living room. ‘Have a seat.’
     
    Lucy moved like a statue coming to life. For all her fitness activity-patrolling the boardwalk on her LAPD-issue Trek, jogging in Hancock Park, screwing Match.com buddies to the wall - she had an unnerving ability to come off stiff, always prying herself from counters or leaning tiredly against doorways. She hadn’t had her shower this morning (the hair was mousy, a fleck of sleep still clung to the bridge of her nose) and her yoga pants and black t-shirt showed too much of her frame. I was reminded of Stacey, if for no other reason than Lucy was in matters physical her polar opposite. Whereas Stacey had been just over five feet tall, voluptuous in her compact frame, and - until the last year - vibrant with a contained energy that somehow fit her playful manner, perpetually grinning, Lucy was hips and elbows and clavicles, a heron at the arms and neck, always on the verge of frowning.
     
    I sat in my Scandinavian recliner. Lucy glanced around to see what I had done with the place since her last visit, saw the answer was nothing and became a geometry problem on the couch.
     
    ‘So, what’s up?’ she said. ‘You seemed pretty shaken up out there.’
     
    ‘It’s been a bad week. Though obviously not as bad as Mr E’s.’ I poured a little beer on the floor for him.
     
    Lucy looked at the puddle, then at me, as though I were a dog who has just lifted his leg in the house.
     
    ‘It’s a black thing,’ I said. This did not put her at ease.
     
    ‘Did you know him?’ I once confessed to spying on her and she had been flattered. But that was another time, and I never told her my habits extended to the rest of our block.
     
    ‘Not at all.’
     
    ‘Oh.’
     
    ‘That what’s sad. He was just this lonely guy.’
     
    ‘He was old, James. Maybe he wanted to be left alone. Is there something else bothering you?’
     
    I remembered Stacey’s face. First in the porthole window, then in his kitchen. I wondered where she was now, the question itself causing me to shudder. It was the booze.
     
    ‘No more than usual,’ I said. Lucy stared at me.
     
    From the moment the officer in charge greeted me at the dividing line between our properties, I made up my mind that I would not tell anyone what I had witnessed.
     
    ‘Coronary event is the early read,’ the stone-faced cop had said. ‘If you’re not a relative I need you to stand back there, on your property, sir.’
     
    Nothing I could have told the police on the scene, or the one now sitting in my living room, would have helped Mr Ennis or his family, if he had any.
     
    ‘Is it the timing?’ Lucy said. I didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘It will be a year next week, right?’
     
    Oh, that. ‘A week from Sunday,’ I said. ‘You don’t think it’s going to have any significance. It’s just another day on the calendar.’
     
    Lucy frowned. ‘Of course it does. You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t. We’re conditioned to recognize anniversaries,