Free A Haunting of the Bones by Julia Keller

secured her thin wrists with handcuffs.
    â€œBell,” Fogelsong said. She’d hurried down the porch steps to join him.
    She knew what he was asking her to do. She quickly recited her constitutional rights to Shirlene McAboy. The young woman with stringy blond hair and a ferret-like face stammered her consent and then began crying again. She alternated her sobs and yowls with a hiccough-ridden explanation. “The bitch fired me,” Shirlene sputtered. “I needed that job. You hear? Needed it more than those other two bitches did. Said she couldn’t afford to keep me on, but I know the
real
reason—it’s because she don’t like me. So I had to show her. Show her she can’t push me around. Anyway, I didn’t fire at her or nothin.’ Ain’t even loaded. Just wanted to scare the piss outta her.”
    The sheriff had finished checking the rifle by now. He secured it in the back of the Blazer. Then he took control of Shirlene; with one hand on the top of her greasy head, the other clamped on the upper part of her arm, he made sure that she was securely stowed in the backseat of the Blazer. He nodded to Bell. Time to go. His next stop, Bell knew, would be the jail in the courthouse annex.
    From the top step, where she’d been watching the arrest, Jackie yelled, “You were a lousy waitress, anyway, Shirlene McAboy!”
    Bell returned to the porch. Deputy Harrison would be arriving shortly to take witness statements. In the meantime, Bell needed to keep an eye on Larry Pratt. He’d be facing charges himself for reckless endangerment and for the unlawful discharge of a weapon in the city limits.
    Larry and Jackie eyeballed each other across the porch floor. They were three or four feet apart, but to Bell, the distance seemed even greater. She had gotten her first good look at the man who had once been married to Jackie. He was short and broad, with flat brown hair and a pointy nose. An unfortunate smell rose from him, a combination of sweat and desperation and too many hours on the road. He blinked fiercely and repeatedly.
    â€œDammit, Larry, I told you to leave me alone,” Jackie muttered.
    These two people, Bell thought, had once loved each other. Planned a life together. What happened? No telling. But the point was, she reminded herself, you were allowed to change your mind. Everybody had the right to choose what kind of life they wanted, and with whom they wanted to share it. And nobody else had a say in that—not your family, not your friends, not your preacher, not your boss. Not even the person whom you’d once loved. If Jackie LeFevre didn’t want to reconcile with her ex-husband, if she wanted to be with somebody else—or to be with nobody else, to be alone—then that was how it would be. Her business.
    â€œYou’re making a big mistake,” Larry said. His voice was hoarse, but still retained its hectoring bravado. “You hear me? Big, big mistake. You gotta listen, Jackie. Okay? You belong to me. Look, I saved your life. That counts for something, right?”
    â€œIt counts for shit,” she said. “You know what, Larry? You’re lucky I didn’t blow your fool head off. When you came up those steps just now, I wanted to do it. I did. Just to get rid of you, once and for all.”
    Her words had clearly rattled him.
    â€œJackie, I—”
    â€œGo away,” she said. She didn’t say it with rancor this time; she said it with weariness. With finality. “Go away and don’t come back. Ever. Nobody wants you here.”
    It was a raw, wrenching, deeply personal moment for the two of them, perhaps the most intense one they’d ever had or ever would, and Bell fervently wished she were elsewhere. But she couldn’t give them their privacy; she had to make sure Larry Pratt didn’t flee. And truth be told, both of them seemed oblivious to her presence, anyway.
    Something seemed to change