Free Witness To Kill (Change Of Life Book 1) by Kent Keefer

clicking on the roof soothed her in the sudden quiet; Sherry strummed
    square pink fingers on the steering wheel, but the action was gentle and seemed
    more patient than insistent. The gold band on one of the tapping fingers
    glinted through a stream of detached impressions.
    “Hon, this is prob’ly gonna be a little hard on you.” His
    voice’s bayou lilt danced on the rhythm of the fingers and the rain. “Let’s
    just get on in there . . . pick up the things ya’ll need, then we’ll get right
    back on out.” He patted his door with the knuckles of the ring hand and looked
    at her with an understanding single eye. “‘Spect it’ll be easier next time.”
    She stared at the house for another moment, then nodded
    resolutely, tossed the glasses on the dash and opened the curbside door and
    skipped over the sidewalk, ducking under the vinyl barriers stretched across
    the bottom of the steps: Crime Scene! Do Not Cross!
    Outside the car the air hung over the city like a wet
    hangover.
    The tall cop pushed open the front door, then stepped back
    and touched his plastic-covered bill with the tips of his fingers like an
    admonishing hotel doorman. “Not wearin’ your jacket, nasty afternoon like
    this?”
    She smiled up at him and pointed into the house.
    She waited on the porch for Sherry to catch up and greet the
    other cop before entering the house. Sherry handed him a sack with a cup of
    coffee in it and seemed genuinely friendly to the younger man. She watched
    Sherry from the corner of her eye and wondered: Did ‘nigger’ come from
    racism, or just old cop or bayou bad habit like he said? It crossed her
    mind again: What did she really know about him?
    She stepped through the door of her erstwhile home and her
    heart began to pound. The lights were on. It went through Mary’s mind to wonder
    if she was still responsible for the utilities . Mail was heaped on the
    dark square of hardwood at the foot of the steps; bills, she knew, and little
    else lurked in that pile. Next to her in the entryway, her sword from the other
    night was now just a closed umbrella hanging without malice from a floor lamp.
    As she nervously walked around, the objects and rooms felt detached now, no
    longer theirs.
    She leaned in the kitchen doorway and laconically observed
    that her erstwhile roommate had mopped the floor and washed and stacked the
    dishes before his out of town guests first beat him senseless while he begged,
    then shot him to death. Brian’s Harry Potter lunch box and matching
    purple book bag sat next to each other in their usual spot on the counter; the
    coffee ready to be turned on. Beside the coffee-maker, like something out of a
    dream or escaped from another dimension, a ceramic mug sat as innocently as a
    child, dedicated in uneven script to the World’s Best Mom.
    Why Luis?
    Her eyes were looking at an orderly, empty kitchen, but her
    mind pictured all the strangers she’d seen that night tromping through the
    rooms, through their home, and she imagined the many more since. It smelled
    wrong, people had been smoking; things were moved.
    The detective took the stairs first, wheezing and knees
    creaking with the climbing, his square black shoes clumped a little faster
    across the middle landing, crossing it without turning his head toward the door
    sealing off the death room, more yellow strands stretched in an “X” across its
    frame.
    He stood aside at the top landing and she brushed past him
    to step straight over to Brian’s room and pushed open the door. She leaned
    against the frame with her arms bound up tightly and studied the room. His
    things were spread around the floor as usual, pennants and sports posters he’d
    picked out and they’d put up together hung unmolested where they belonged. She
    stood reassured by the room’s ordinariness , savoring the view, inhaling
    its Brian smell, seizing moments of before. Their pleasance lasted for
    the seconds until her eyes fell on Mutt and Jeff ,