Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

"I'll do it," Neil said to his brother. "You better stay with Kathy so's she don't freak out."

The chief waited next to Donald while Neil went inside. He returned in a moment, leading four German shepherds straining at their leashes. The shepherds looked like they'd been crossbred with ponies. Mean-tempered ponies. Kevin's exhilaration at escaping the dogs at the gate turned to a queasy awareness of what they could have done if they had caught him.

"Officer Flynn?" The chief's voice snapped him out of it. He thudded up the stairs and followed Donald Christie and the chief into the house.

They were in what must have once been a fine front hall: plaster moldings and mahogany woodwork and an elegant twelve-over-twelve window. Now it was dusty and bare, except for a coatrack and a pile of boots. Broad carpeted stairs curved to the second floor. A door ahead of them listed open to what looked like a dining room. Through the closed double door to the left he could hear the sounds of an overloud television and the babble of high-pitched conversation. Donald Christie thumbed in that direction. "Kathy and mosta the kids are watching a movie. I better go tell her what's goin' on. She gets some touchy at times."

"Why don't I come with you," the chief said, smooth and easy, like he was Donald Christie's best bud. "I know how women can get." He tapped Kevin and, without looking, pointed at the open door.

Kevin got moving. The next room was indeed a dining room-dark, depressing, anchored with a table large enough to perform surgery. He heard a woman's voice say, "What?" and turned back toward the front hall. There was another closed door behind him. He could hear Christie, sounding apologetic, and the low rumble of the chief's voice.

He reversed himself slowly, looking for anything that might be a lead. On the other wall, a coffin-sized sideboard surmounted by a depressing painting of dead animals separated two more doorways. One appeared to contain a closet-sized hall. The other opened onto linoleum. He picked the lino.

The kitchen was a mix of old wooden cabinets, knocked-together shelving, and 1970s appliances. There were two more doors, one ahead of him and one to the left. He shook his head. Old houses. Three doors to every room but no closets. He crossed the kitchen to the far door, wedged between shelving and a skinny laminate cupboard. It led to a narrow roofed porch; washer and dryer on one end, clothesline looping off a wheel into the darkness in front of him. He frowned at the steps leading down to the backyard. He backed into the kitchen and headed for the other door, between the sink and a harvest-gold chest freezer. From the other side of the house, he could hear a woman complaining at top volume. Must be Kathy, getting touchy. Kevin was grinning to himself as he opened the next door.

A woman looked up from where she was reading on a fluffed-up marshmallow of a bed.

"Oh! Geez." Kevin could feel the blush starting. "I'm sorry! I didn't know anyone was in here. I would've knocked."

The woman shut a skinny paperback and slid off the bed. "It's okay," she said. "I heard the first part of tonight's show. You guys didn't kill the dogs, did you?"

"No!"

"Too bad." She didn't sound sarcastic, just sad.

"I, um…" He glanced around the room. It was decked out like a French boudoir for a six-year-old, although the woman standing in front of him had to be his age or a few years older. Blond, brown-eyed, built like a former Dairy Princess. "Are you the sister?"

"That's me," she said. If Bruce Christie got the brains in the family, this one got the looks.

"I have to, um… do you mind if I look around?"

She swept her arm wide. "Help yourself. What are you after?"

"Um." What if the brother was wrong, and she wasn't over her Latino boyfriend? He didn't want to deal with another Kathy, who was now so high-pitched, he could hear her from where he stood. "The janitor from the Episcopal church is missing."

She looked at him as if he were cracked. "And you're looking for him here?" Then her mouth opened. "Oh. Is this the guy my brothers went after?" Her mouth quirked in an odd sort of smile. "The Mexican guy at the church?"

"Yeah. Have you seen him recently?"

She shook her head. "I never saw him." She put air quotes around the word 'saw.' "They just… Neil gets…" She smiled that smile again. "They got nothing to worry about."

"Did you tell them that? That he wasn't your boyfriend?"

She snorted. "No. Why? They'd just go after-" She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "It's done with. I don't wanna bring it up again." The angle of her arm slid her short sleeve back, and Kevin could see the edge of a purple and green bruise that must have gone to her shoulder.

"Um," he said. "But your brothers. If they're still under the impression you had a relationship, maybe they wanted to bring it up again."

She frowned. "No, they wouldn't…" She trailed off. "I don't think they would." She was talking to herself now. "Would they?"

"You mind if I go ahead?"

She waved him on. He made short work of the place-no closet, one bed, no trap door leading to the cellar. It'd be hard to hide a guy in here, since, he noted, there were nothing but screw holes in the doorjamb where locks or a hook-and-eye would have gone. There was another door at the far end of the room, but when he tried it, he was on the washer and dryer end of the porch. Convenient. He had a feeling the male Christies didn't do much housework.

He fished in his breast pocket and took out a card. "Here," he said. She took it. Read it. Her face closed. She handed it back.

"I don't need this," she said.

"Then pass it on to another woman who might," he said. "It's a toll-free line, twenty-four hours a day, no questions asked. They can keep you safe."

She snorted. "You don't know much, do you?"

Nothing he could say to that. He apologized again and left her, still standing, still frowning. At least she kept the card. He met up with the chief at the entrance to the narrow hall in the dining room.

The chief looked like a man who'd been verbally blowtorched. "Next time," he said, "we bring a trank gun."

"For the dogs?"

"For the fiancée." He raked a hand through his hair, skewing it in odd directions. "There's a baby and two little ones asleep upstairs. Two more kids and Donald's teenager live here, as well as the teen's baby daddy, sometimes, and the Christies. Bruce is out in the fifth-wheel trailer. We're looking for anything anomalous."

"Geez, Chief," Kevin said. "I didn't know you knew the phrase baby daddy ."

The chief gave him a look. "I used to say bounder and cad , but I updated."

The upstairs was a bust, as was the trailer. No sign of Amado, no sign that any of the Christies had been vandalizing the rectory.

"Now what?" he asked the chief. They had closed the rickety trailer door and were walking across the grass.

"Now we send out an APB and hope somebody spots the guy." The chief blinked as another motion-detector light came on from the side of the house. "Unless Eric and Knox turn up something at the workers' bunkhouse, we've just blown through our only lead."

"I spoke to the sister," Kevin said.

"Yeah?" The chief paused. "What'd she have to say?"

"That she never went out with the guy. Said her brothers misunderstood the situation."

"Huh. Lot of misunderstandings around that relationship." The chief crossed to their cruiser. "You believe her?"

"Dunno. She seemed more concerned that her brothers might have gotten themselves into trouble again than she did about the church janitor." He paused. "I think somebody's been beating up on her."

The chief frowned. "Did she say anything?"

He shook his head. The chief sighed. "Doesn't mean she's not protecting her brothers, if one of them's doing it."