Free All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming

about later. He was living minute by minute now.
    “Okay. Let’s.”
    Lyle grabbed one of the guys and asked him to unlatch the double doors from the inside. The snow was as bad as Russ had feared, but the challenge of breaking a trail through knee-deep crust and powder distracted him sufficiently so that it wasn’t until he whacked his boot against the first granite step that he realized he was there.
    He stomped up the steps—two, then a rectangular slab, then another two—shedding snow as he went. He pulled open the doors—tug, sweep, a kick of the boots against the jamb—and he was in.
    Inside.
    “You okay?” Lyle was crowding in behind him, forcing him to move forward in order to shut the doors behind them.
    “Yeah.” And, in some way, he was. The awful blankness of the kitchen awaited him, but in the tiny hallway, with the stairs he climbed to bed every night in front of him, he was okay. Not great, but he wasn’t going to get sick all over the oriental carpet.
    “What do you want to do first?”
    He had decided on the way over that he would have to be methodical to get through this task. Take it one step at a time. “The workroom,” he said. “End of the hall at the top of the stairs.” Farthest from the kitchen. Although it was Linda’s space, it was also the most impersonal as far as Russ was concerned. She designed and cut and sewed for her custom drapery business there; a workplace and nothing more. When he flicked on the lights he saw what he expected to see, the worktables clear, the racks and shelves of fabrics and hardware neat and organized.
    Lyle hovered in the doorway while Russ walked around. “Everything look good?” he asked.
    “I gotta be honest with you,” Russ said. “Unless the place was tossed, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Once I finished the renovation, I didn’t come in here except to ask her if she was coming to bed.” Regret squatted like a heavy toad on his breastbone. All the time and energy she had spent on her business, and the extent of his interest had been to find out when she was getting home from her fabric-buying jaunts. Why hadn’t he put more effort into appreciating what she was doing? He turned toward Lyle. “Let’s check the guest rooms,” he said.
    The two extra bedrooms were just as they always were, lavishly decorated and sterile. Once in a while they entertained couples from their army days, but most of the year they were alone. His closest relationships had always been among the people he worked with—relationships that closed Linda out without meaning to. Work had defined him and owned him. No wonder her friends were
hers
, and not
theirs
.
    “Anything?” Lyle asked.
    He shook his head. Stepped across the hall. Paused.
    “This is your bedroom, right?”
    He nodded.
    “You ready to go in?”
    “Hell, no.” That earned him a half-smile from his deputy chief. Christ, Lyle was looking almost as cut up as Russ felt. He had always liked Linda, had been one of the few guys on the force she could talk and laugh with. Russ wasn’t the only one who had suffered a loss. Not by a long shot.
    Their bedroom was heartbreakingly normal. The bed neatly made. Several empty dry cleaner’s bags tossed on Linda’s side—she never used wire hangers. Her closet door open, a pair of high heels tumbled in front of the full-length mirror. He could see her, standing there, scrutinizing herself. Frowning, shaking her head, kicking them off. “Not these,” she would have said.
    “Russ?”
    Lyle’s voice shook him from his reverie. He forced himself to cross the plush carpeting to Linda’s vanity, where she kept her jewelry in a drawer.
    The first thing he noticed was her wedding ring, sitting next to her engagement diamond and the diamond and sapphire eternity band he had gotten her on their twentieth anniversary. When had she taken them off? She had been wearing them at the therapist’s office.
    The rest of the contents of the drawer were intact, a fact he