Free The Shadow of Your Smile by Susan May Warren Page A

he had gray eyes that seemed, if not old, at least seasoned. The deputy nodded. “I’m sorry about your mother. Your father and I had a couple cases we worked on a few years ago. How is she?”
    Kyle followed him to the door. “She’s . . . still recovering.”
    “I’ll be glad when we can get a statement from her, sort out what happened.” He unlocked the door. Despite the chill and the embedded smells of coffee and woodsmoke, the tinny, rancid odor of blood tinged the room.
    “What do you know?”
    “Not much. After your mother alerted the truck driver, he stopped, called 911. We didn’t know about the burglary until later, when our deputies were doing a sweep of the area to find out what happened.” He moved around the counter. “We’ve already checked the room for prints, but there’s just too many. A cold day like yesterday . . . before the storm hit, this place saw a lot of traffic.” He pointed to the back room, where an office door lay open.
    The room had already been cleaned, the scent of chemicals rising from it making his eyes water. Kyle put a hand over his nose.
    “Forensics has taken samples. They found skin under the victim’s fingernails and a welt across her face as if she’d been hit with more than a fist. There seemed to have been a struggle, and from the blood spatter and her wounds, it appeared she’d been shot from close range.” He indicated where the blood had hit the walls, the papers on the desk, the window.
    “Who was the victim?”
    “Cassie Mitchell. Senior over at Harbor City High.”
    Kyle couldn’t speak. Today, a family grieved over their lost futures.
    “We did find something odd.” Marc backed out of the room, pointed to a painted outline on the floor. “A fishing knife. Could be the perp’s—we found it on the floor next to the cash register. Maybe he dropped it when your mom took off.”
    “You know for certain she was here?”
    “She left her purse, and her coffee, in the bathroom.”
    “She saw it.”
    “Could be. We’d sure like to talk to her.”
    Kyle stood behind the counter, running the scenario through his mind. His mother had left coffee in the bathroom. So she had already ordered, already waited for her drink. Had the man come in after her? Or before? Was it a spontaneous or a planned robbery?
    “Does the coroner have a report back on the kind of weapon used?”
    Marc shook his head. “We’re going door-to-door today, doing some interviews. We’ll call you if anything turns up.”
    “What about the log? Did anyone call in anything . . . suspicious? Out of the ordinary?”
    “I went through the calls this morning. A couple cars in the ditch in the storm, a dog on the loose, but nothing that might shed some light on what happened.”
    Kyle moved to the bathroom. The door stood ajar and he flipped on the lights. He turned, tried to see the crime through his mother’s eyes.
    She had stood here, watched someone holding up the clerk. A high school student, no older than Kelsey.
    No wonder she tried to save her.
    He reached up, held on to the doorframe. Let the tremor that went through him pass.
    “What if she opened this door, saw them—maybe ran for help?”
    Marc nodded. “But why didn’t he go after her or even shoot her?”
    “We’re right next to the highway. Maybe he didn’t have time.”
    “There was about ten feet of visibility. No one would have seen him, or even heard, the shot over the wind.”
    Kyle came out to stand by the counter. Surveyed the scene. “Why didn’t she go for her car? There were hardly any vehicles on the road.”
    “We found her keys outside by her vehicle. It’s possible she tried, and he dragged her back inside.”
    Kyle stared out the window, the thought of some man’s hands on his mother, dragging her inside, nearly killing her . . . He took a few long breaths—in, out.
    Randomness. He hated every bit of it, how in a second, a person’s life could be dismantled. How plans and hopes and