Free Vengeance to the Max by Jasmine Haynes Page A

beat faster. “And you do have it?” She realized now she hadn’t believed they would, not that far back.
    The woman beamed behind the lenses, her snub nose lifting. “Certainly. Lines has everything, things a big library would never think to carry. Let me show you.”
    Moving at the speed of light, she dashed around the end of the counter. Max, despite her longer legs, had a time keeping up. The woman led her to the far end of the library, past Witt at his computer station, past the tables and the stacks, the children’s reading room on one side, the soft-spoken readers’ groups on the other, the periodicals, and finally back to three work stations, each equipped with old-fashioned fiche viewers.
    Wooden card files of old created sound-dampening walls around the stations. Max’s escort dropped her voice as she opened a neat drawer packed to capacity with envelopes of microfiche.
    “They’re filed by year and day within year, my dear.” The woman lowered her chin once more and looked at Max over the rims of her glasses. “Please don’t get them out of order.”
    “I won’t, I promise.”
    “It’s five cents a copy if you do a print screen. You can pay up front.” Then her guide scurried back to the help desk, leaving Max amid filing cabinets fragrant with lemon polish.
    The task was indeed daunting. She had over twenty-five years to go through.
    “Why obituaries?” she asked, her voice a murmur in the quiet library. “Why not marriages and births?”
    Being suspiciously quiet today, Cameron didn’t answer.
    Then she thought of the three days she had to accomplish the chore and was damn glad Cameron only asked for the obituaries.
    She set her purse and coat down on the chair next to the viewer she’d chosen, then turned to the drawers. Running her finger down the card files, she found the year she wanted two up from the bottom. She started with June, before graduation. Luckily, the editor believed in good indexing. She went right to the obituary section. Above, beside, and below barked advertisements for funeral homes and cemetery plots. Well, really, where else would they advertise? Max began reading.
    “Alice Goodhew, aged eighty-five, died Friday, May thirtieth in Lines, Michigan. Mrs. Goodhew is survived by her loving sons, George and Elliot, and her four grandchildren, Lisa, Cindy, Peter, and Rusty.” Rusty sounded like a dog’s name. The bit went on to say a memorial service would be held the following Monday at two o’clock in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
    A busy weekend for the Angel of Death, three more announcements rounded out the number for that edition, an eighty-year-old man, a fifty-year-old woman, and a twelve-year-old boy.
    Her heart twisted. Twelve years old. It didn’t say how Jimmy Howell had died, only that his grieving parents and two younger sisters survived him. No parent should outlive his or her children. Max yanked out the fiche and slid in another, the little boy’s death leaving a pall over the assignment.
    He wasn’t the only child. Somehow, she hadn’t counted on that. She figured on the names being impersonal, until she got to the one she was looking for. How the hell could so many people die in a town as small as Lines, population ten thousand? Though the truth was the obits covered Lines and the four or five surrounding towns, and after wading through six months, it merely seemed like a lot.
    By late afternoon, Max’s eyes ached from staring at the sometimes indistinguishable fiche type, and she’d managed to get herself sidetracked by stories like the one on Dr. G.W. Crouch, the dentist who’d been caught drilling for cavities that weren’t there, and Gunther Abercrombie, who’d walked down to his basement one evening after work and hung himself while his kids fought over eating brussels sprouts for dinner. It happened as readily in small towns as it did in big cities. Max had been sidetracked, but she’d still learned something important.
    Even in a