Free Acoustic Shadows by Patrick Kendrick

both loving caregiver and disciplinarian, and he’d wished he had someone to tag team with. He believed, at times, they blamed him for their mother leaving them so young. They were there, in the house, when some of his co-workers, FDLE agents, stopped by, from time to time, to ask him more questions about her disappearance. She had packed a few items – enough for a weekend away – then vanished.
    For a while, Thiery was the primary ‘person of interest’ in her disappearance. Newspapers printed the story of the cop whose wife was missing, and it had created problems for his sons at school. It was no secret to anyone that surviving spouses were the first suspect in missing or murdered partners. He felt people thought he was guilty of something and the burden weighed heavily on him.
    When Adrienne hadn’t returned after a few weeks, Thiery’s initial reaction was to assume the worst: she had left him, but something bad had happened along the way. Following that instinct, he’d gone to New York, where his wife had grown up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Albanian immigrants. Though he hadn’t spoken to Edona Manjola since he and Adrienne were married – Adrienne’s mother had never cared for him, for reasons he didn’t understand – he located her apartment, but it was empty.
    He learned Adrienne’s mother was dead. When he made further inquiries, neighbours told him that, a few weeks earlier, she had killed herself by leaping from the building. The suicide reinforced his notion that something had happened to Adrienne, but a check with every hospital in New York, and even the coroner’s office, turned up nothing. With no other living relatives, Thiery hit a dead end.
    After she’d been gone for over two years, after Thiery had spent every waking moment trying to find her, and then hired several private detectives to continue the search, he was no longer a suspect. He was just alone. Case closed. There was no formal announcement as to his innocence, any more than there had been that he was a suspect. The case, like his wife, just faded away. After seven years, he finally had her declared deceased, allowing him to collect a small life insurance policy she’d carried. He’d placed the funds in an account for his sons’ college savings.
    He often wondered if he should have remarried, but that wasn’t something he was going to do just to have a built-in babysitter. In any case, it was too late, now. His sons were who they were, and, to them, he was who he was. All the regret in the world wouldn’t change that.
    By four o’clock, Thiery was in bed, poring over reports he’d gathered from the Sebring and Lake Wales Police Departments, as well as the Calusa County Sheriff’s Office, whose SWAT had yielded the most reports.
    The reports from the departments who’d arrived first on the scene, Sebring PD and the School Board police, stated in dry, legal terms how and what they did to secure the building, set up a command post, and assist in the evacuation that was underway when they arrived. The Sheriff’s SWAT team recorded the team’s entry at 8:42 a.m., immediately followed by the discovery of both the victims’ and perpetrators’ bodies.
    The Fire Rescue reports comprised brief medical statements that included patient treatment – four treated for wounds and six more for chest pain, shock, or trouble breathing – and recorded which hospitals the patients were transported to. There were reports from each forensic team that entered the building and dealt with each of the bodies, the location, nearby weapons, bullet casing trajectory, and various gun blasts. All in all, the local law enforcement agencies had done an outstanding job, doing what they were supposed to do. The problem was that reports were just that: reports. Facts, times, data. There were no leads in them that would take the investigation to a point of conclusion. It was all paperwork formality, but, as lead investigator, he had to read every one