Free Dead Giveaway by Brenda Novak

consider it. The cops on her father's force had never come up against the kind of heinous criminals she'd dealt with.
    "It's worth checking," she said slowly.

    "Sure. Makes sense." Hendricks's head bobbed like the bobble-headed puppy Allie's grandmother used to display in the rear window of her giant Oldsmobile. "If Clay's father was alive, he would've come around at some point. The Montgomerys have lived in Stillwater for...what, twenty-three years? But no one's seen hide nor hair of him. Curious, ain't it?"

    If Clay's father was dead, and the circumstances surrounding his death were at all suspicious, Allie needed to examine that coincidence. But Hendricks was getting more excited than such a slim possibility warranted. "Not necessarily. There could be lots of reasons we've never seen him. So don't get carried away," she cautioned. "Chances are, Mr. Montgomery's alive and well and living in some other state."

    "Right," he said, but she could tell he wasn't really listening. He was too busy jumping ahead. "If we got Irene for one murder, we'd get her for the other. It's brilliant."

    "Hendricks." She stood and grabbed hold of his arm to make sure he understood that she was serious. "It's a real long shot, so don't go spreading it around."

    "Who me?" He waved a dismissive hand. "I won't breathe a word," he said. But it wasn't a day later that someone approached her at the Piggly Wiggly to ask if Irene Montgomery was a serial killer.

    Reverend Portenski's hand shook as he removed the floorboard in the far corner of the old church and reached into the dark hole beneath. He had stumbled upon this small recess quite by accident a decade ago, when he was moving furniture and doing some repairs to the building--and had rued the day ever since.

    If only God would let him know what he should do with what he'd found. While trying to decide, he'd replaced the heavy table that had hidden the loose floorboard and tried to forget its existence, to forget what was beneath. But during the dark quiet hours of the night, when the pressures of the day began to dissipate, he remembered the contents of this hiding place, which conjured up images he wished he'd never seen.

    After ten years, he was tired of the guilt, the nagging worry, the indecision. It was time to put the matter to rest. He pulled the paper sack from the hole and walked as quickly as his arthritic joints would allow to the small study at the back of the church.

    A fire burned in the sparsely furnished room. He wasn't as poverty-stricken as such a study might indicate. He could've afforded more elegant appointments. But he had no wife or children to make comfortable and eschewed all but the most necessary physical possessions. He craved knowledge and enlightenment, and believed that intelligence was the true glory of God. So he spent every dime he possessed, above what he devoted to the church and his flock, on books. They lined the room on three sides, residing on makeshift shelves he'd built himself, using unfinished wooden planks and cinder blocks.

    It was a sacrilege to bring what he carried into this room. The words of some of the greatest men who'd ever lived--renowned philosophers and theologians--resided here. But the devouring heat and glimmering flames of the fire beckoned.

    Portenski pressed closer. He felt as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels as he drew his hand back to toss the sack into the fire.

    Do it! Throw it! his mind screamed. And never think of it again.
    36

    Brenda Novak

    But he couldn't. As much as he wanted to protect the church and the faith of his parishioners, he couldn't in all conscience destroy what he'd found. Neither could he take it to the police. He'd waited too long. Besides, doing that wouldn't change anything; it was too late.

    Which brought him right back where he'd been for the past ten years: he was the guardian of a secret he could neither tell nor keep.

    Slumping into his seat, he slowly opened the sack and