A Kiss in Winter by Susan Crandall

Author:Susan Crandall [CRANDALL, SUSAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC027020
ISBN: 9780446540049
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Dawn was breaking by the time Caleb’s parents had collected him and Caroline had finished lecturing Macie. As the first rays of sun streamed through the kitchen window and touched the table, both Macie and Caroline had run out of steam. They sat staring at one another, hollow-eyed and angry.

Caroline finally asked, “Can I trust you while I’m working today?”

Macie threw her head back and growled. “Good God! What do you want, blood? We didn’t do anything! You’re treating me like I’m a sixth grader. I’m grounded. Caleb’s grounded—and probably headed to military school, from the sound of things. You’ve forbidden me to see him without ‘supervision.’ Can you screw things up any worse?”

“Hey! I’m not the one who screwed up.”

Macie huffed a breath. “Let’s not start with that again.”

“Go to bed.” Caroline set her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. “I’ll call and check on you later.”

Macie stomped out of the room.

Caroline put on a pot of coffee, rubbed her sleep-deprived eyes, took three Tylenol, then headed to her studio to gather the prints for the newspaper.

By eight o’clock she’d delivered the photos and was at the Redbud Mill police department sitting across from the police chief.

She laid the enlarged photo that included the suspicious man in the hoodie on the desk in front of the chief. “I cropped the one for the newspaper, just in case you don’t want this guy to know he was caught on film.”

The chief picked up the print with his thick fingers. “So you think this guy in the background had something to do with the bomb? He looks too old for a high school student.”

“He isn’t a student. He’s maybe thirty, thirty-five. I saw him up close after the bomb exploded. I didn’t realize I’d photographed him until I developed the film.”

“Tell me again why you think he was involved.”

“See how everyone in the photograph is reacting to the explosion? But this guy is just standing there, not even looking toward the source of the blast—which is nearly over his own head. He’s looking at everyone else’s reaction. And here”—she pointed—“his hands are hidden in his sweatshirt pocket; maybe he had a remote detonator in there.”

The chief didn’t look particularly convinced.

She tried again. “What made me most suspicious was the way he smiled at me. I mean, kids were screaming and crying, running everywhere, and he was… calm. It was really creepy.”

“Ms. Rogers, we can hardly arrest someone because he’s creepy.”

Her head was throbbing and her patience thin. It was all she could do to keep from reaching across the desk and snatching his shirtfront. Not that she could have gotten a handful—the shirt was stretched so tight across his middle that the buttons strained against their holes.

She said, “All I’m saying is that this might give you a clue. He seemed off to me when I saw him, but then when I saw this…” She tapped the photo.

“You can’t really tell anything about him from this photo.

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