Free The Debt Collector by Lynn S. Hightower Page A

with a twinge of guilt, carrying her plate of pork roast and rice, hot from the microwave, a thick white napkin not quite protecting her fingers from the heat. She sat down, Clampett at her side, looked at the newspaper, took a sip of ice water, ate one bite of pork roast.
    Her appetite deserted her with a suddenness that made her spit the bite she was eating into a napkin. She put her fork down and set the plate on the floor for Clampett, who did not need the snack but was ever so grateful.
    She took her gun out of her purse, made sure the safety was on. Headed down the hallway toward her bedroom, turning off lights as she went. She had touched the dark things before, walked through the wreckage, shoes sticky from those rivers of blood.
    Speaking of which. Blood traces on her new Reeboks. Elf Reeboks, Tim called them, because her feet were small.
    Sonora washed her face and brushed her teeth and put on a big white Oxford shirt that almost reached her knees. Her favorite shirt to sleep in. She deserved it tonight.
    She thought she might be pathetic, having a favorite shirt to sleep in. There had to be more to life than that. Like maybe a favorite person to sleep with.
    She opened the window, and Clampett came in and rested his wet black nose on the sill. He would not want to share the bed if the window was open. She could have it all to herself.
    She curled up on her right side, lights off, one leg under the covers, one leg out. The room was growing chill and damp, dark and mysterious with the wind.
    And on the night air came the resonant saxophone howl of a train, horn blowing, and the background presence of the engine and those massive boxcars, streaking down the rusting iron tracks.
    The noise took her back, back to a night like this one, with the smell of rain in the air, a paddock full of horses, the bay of a bloodhound on the scent, and the hunt for a missing child.
    She pushed the memory away. The horn wailed again. Train music—it always made her want something, she just did not know what.
    Sonora closed her eyes, willing sleep. Instead, she heard whispers. The voice of Joy Stinnet. Hail Mary, full of grace .
    Some noise, like a window opening, startled her out of a doze. Sonora shoved the covers back, jumped out of bed, headed down the hallway, snatching her loaded Beretta off the lingerie dresser as she went.
    That Clampett stayed relaxed in front of the window should have tipped her off. She checked every door, every window.
    Stood outside the children’s rooms in the middle of the hallway, knees like jelly. She did not venture into the bedrooms, did not breach the closed doors. Instead, she stood with her back to the wall, thinking what a wonderful thing it was that the children were alive, asleep, unaware.
    Her legs, suddenly, did not hold her. She slid down the wall and landed on her knees, slowly, softly, like a woman unwinding.
    After all this time. After all she had seen and done. All the times she had touched those stiff, lifeless wrists, walked through blood and broken glass, tearstains and spent cartridges. Was she losing her way? Why now?
    Clampett padded out into the hallway and settled beside her with a groan, panting lightly, the tip of his tongue pink and wet. Kind brown eyes. The world was a weird place. On the one hand, dogs. On the other, the death of everyday America in the blood-soaked home of Carl and Joy Stinnet.

15
    Sonora woke thinking of the old man, Franklin Ward. She was curled tightly in the fetal position, the room like ice beneath that open window. What, she wondered, stretching, was the attraction of the fetal position?
    She looked at the bedside clock. Five forty-seven. The alarm hadn’t even gone off. She was supposed to meet Sam back at the Stinnets’ house at eight. She could take a quick shower, and she’d still have time, if she drank her coffee on the way, to talk to Ward again before she went back to the home of Joy and Carl Stinnet.
    In the light of day,