Free Broken Angels by Richard Montanari

to her. Byrne stepped onto the edge of the dock, the very spot where they had discovered Kristina’s body. He felt a dark exhilaration knowing he was in the same place where the killer had stood just a few days earlier. He felt the images seep into his consciousness, saw the man—
—cutting through skin and muscle and flesh and bone . . . taking a blowtorch to the wounds ...dressing Kristina Jakos in that strange dress... slipping one arm into a sleeve, then the other, like you would dress a sleeping child, her cold flesh unresponsive to his touch... carrying Kristina Jakos down to the riverbank under cover of night... getting his twisted scenario just right as he—
—heard something.
Footsteps?
Byrne’s peripheral vision caught a shape, just a few feet away, a hulking black silhouette stepping from the deep shadows—
He turned toward the figure, his pulse thrumming in his ears, his hand on his weapon.
There was no one there.
He needed sleep.
Byrne drove home to his two-room apartment in South Philly.
She wanted to be a dancer.
Byrne thought of his daughter, Colleen. She had been deaf since birth, but it had never stopped her, never even slowed her down. She was a straight-A student, a terrific athlete. Byrne wondered what her dreams were. When she was small she had wanted to be a cop like him. He had talked her out of that one pronto. Then there was the obligatory ballerina stage, launched when he took her to see a hearing-impaired staging of The Nutcracker . Over the last few years she had talked quite a bit about becoming a teacher. Had that changed? Had he asked her lately? He made a mental note to do so. She would, of course, roll her eyes, flash a sign telling him he was so queer. He’d do it anyway.
He wondered if Kristina’s father had ever asked his little girl about her dreams.
    byrne found a spot on the street and parked. He locked the car, entered his building, pulled himself up the steps. Either he was getting older, or the steps were getting steeper.
Had to be the latter, he thought. He was still in his prime.
    from the darkness of the vacant lot across the street, a man watched Byrne. He saw the light come on in the detective’s second-floor window, watched his big shadow ripple across the blinds. From his perspective he witnessed a man coming home to a life that was in all ways the same as it had been the day before, and the day before that. A man who found reason and meaning and purpose in his life.
    He envied Byrne as much as hated him.
The man was slight of build, with small hands and feet, thinning brown hair. He wore a dark coat, was ordinary in every manner, except for his facility for mourning, an unexpected and unwanted aptitude he never would have believed possible at this point in his life.
For Matthew Clarke the substance of grief had settled into the pit of his stomach like a dead weight. His nightmare had started the moment Anton Krotz took his wife from that booth. He would never forget his wife’s hand on the back of the booth, her pale skin and painted nails. The terrifying glimmer of the knife at her throat. The hellish roar of the SWAT officer’s rifle. The blood.
Matthew Clarke’s world was in a tailspin. He did not know what the next day would bring, or how he would be able to go on. He did not know how he would bring himself to do the simplest of things: order breakfast, make a phone call, pay a bill, pick up the dry cleaning.
Laura had a dress at the cleaners.
Nice to see you, they would say. How is Laura?
Dead.
Murdered.
He didn’t know how he would react in these inevitable situations. Who could possibly know? What was the training for this? Would he find a face brave enough to respond? It wasn’t as if she had died from breast cancer, or leukemia, or a brain tumor. It wasn’t as if he’d had a moment to prepare. She’d had her throat cut in a diner, the most degrading, public death possible. All under the watchful eye of the evervigilant Philadelphia Police