Free In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel by M. R. Sellars Page A

either side of his mouth and shouting against the weather.
“MERRIE CALLAHAN!”
    He held his breath and waited. There was
still no answer.
    Deputy Carmichael sighed and started turning
to go back into the store. As he shifted, his own shadow moved, and
in the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something
protruding from the snow as light glinted from it in a quick flash.
Twisting back around, he scanned the area. It was probably just a
random snowflake catching the beam from the flood lamps at just the
right moment, but in his peripheral vision it had seemed far more
metallic. Slowly, keeping his eyes focused ahead, he stepped
sideways, allowing the light to fall in the general direction of
the phantom once again.
    Panning his gaze back and forth he suddenly
caught another glimpse of the flash right at the edge of the
dumpster’s long shadow and even farther out at the edge of his
vision. He knew it could still have been a rogue flake, so he
carefully and ever so slightly moved his head back and forth,
staring through the curtain of falling snow.
    The flash hit the edge of his sight once
again.
    Locking his eyes on the spot, he took a step
forward and stopped. Then another, and waited again. Squinting
against the wind he finally noticed an almost insignificant lump of
crystalline white. He stepped toward it, and a more detailed
outline began to emerge. Another step and he saw a small swath of
black and the suggestion of a glint of silver. As the wind blew
around it, a miniature drift was forming on the opposite side,
leaving a concave void facing him.
    He advanced the last few steps forward and
again knelt down. Reaching out, he brushed away the rapidly
accumulating flakes to reveal the object beneath. When he saw it,
the pit of his stomach did more than just sink. This time it
twisted into a hard knot as his heart thudded painfully in his
chest.
    A nauseating thought flickered through his
head, and he remembered that less than a half-hour ago he had been
glad to have a distraction. Now he was cursing himself for it.
    He reached out and picked up the lone,
abandoned shoe—a little girl’s black leather Mary Jane. Light once
again glinted from the silver metal buckle as he lifted it from the
snow, and his breath caught in his chest, lodging itself in that
agonizing somewhere between an inhale and an exhale.
    He didn’t need anyone to tell him that the
shoe belonged to Merrie Frances Callahan. Nor did he need someone
to explain that she was nowhere around to claim it.
    He just knew.
     
     
     

 
     
     
     

     
     
     

 
     
     
     
    “These are but shadows of the things that
have been,” said the Ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.”
     
    —The Ghost of Christmas Past
    A Christmas Carol
    Charles Dickens, 1843
     
     
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    6:23 A.M. – December 22, 2010
    Huck’s Diner
    US 61 North – Hannibal, Missouri
     
    “… NEWS out of
Jefferson City this morning, the license of a Kansas
City funeral home has been revoked by state regulators after
multiple probation violations…”
    The talking head on the dim screen continued,
his voice droning outward from the speaker of the small television
on the opposite side of the near empty diner. However, any further
words he had on the story were all but drowned out by a far more
cheerful voice that was issuing from a woman clad in a retro pink
uniform, complete with an apron and a nametag that had MABEL
stenciled across its face.
    “How are you this morning?” the waitress
asked.
    “I’m fine, thanks,” Constance replied as she
closed the vinyl-covered, tri-fold menu and looked up.
    The woman in pink smiled. “Coffee, hon?”
    “Definitely.”
    “Regular or unleaded?”
    “Regular.”
    The waitress had come prepared. She placed a
thick-walled mug upright on the table, and then with a practiced
juggle of the two well-worn Pyrex globes in her other hand, plucked
the brown handled one free. Tilting it carefully, she poured a
stream of java