Awakened Hope: Love in the Carolinas by Maggie Louzella

Author:Maggie Louzella [Louzella, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

17

LUKE

Sundays are always a struggle. They have been for years now, and the winter months certainly don’t make it any easier. Nor do the increasingly intrusive thoughts about a certain green-eyed, big-brained beauty who is stirring up all sorts of strange feelings in me.

Even in the slowest of times, which aren’t that frequent for a DA’s office, I like to spend my Sundays in the office. The irony isn’t lost on me. The one day I’d once protected so rabidly is now the day that I can’t stand to leave as free. Too painful, even after all these years, to try to fill the empty hours.

“That’s okay,” I say to the smiling face in the picture frame on my desk. “We still get to spend the day together.”

And now I’m just talking to myself. I shake it off and focus on the photos spread across my desk. It’s probably wasteful to have asked Ms. Finley to print them out. It’s not like there’s more to see in a physical copy than on the files on my computer. But, much like Sara’s need to see the evidence in person, I’d hoped that something about the touch and feel of the slick glossy paper would inspire me to see what I’m missing.

Because Sara is right—I don’t like this case. And the more I examine it, the less comfortable I feel about prosecuting it. But it’s on the docket, and I owe the people of this city, and Petunia Bloomfield’s family in particular, justice.

But I owe Meribelle Andrews justice too.

I pick up a particularly unpleasant print of Petunia’s final scene, and again I observe the scratches on her chest and arms. Superficial, the autopsy had said. But strange nonetheless. The state of her sultry sweater reminded me of the old battlefield photos with soldiers whose uniforms were in complete disarray. I’d heard a speaker once say that the chaos of their rumpled clothing was caused by the injured soldiers themselves, searching desperately to see if their injury was a mortal hit.

I make a note to ask the medical examiner if they’d taken any skin samples from under Petunia’s fingernails. I didn’t see it in the report, but I know they keep a number of other DNA samples, per protocol, until the trial is settled. There hadn’t been any of Petunia’s DNA under Meribelle’s fingernails. But, as the lead investigator had argued, Meribelle had hours to clean up—if there’d been any to start with.

I shuffle the photos until I’m looking at the scenes from Petunia’s apartment at the facility. A bit of a mess, not that I would expect any kind of neat and tidy organization from her. The kitchen was a disaster of implements and glasses and those spices and oils the examiners thought were interesting enough to collect. Nothing with a brand name, of course. Petunia would have likely thought that far too pedestrian for her tastes.

The only picture I have of Meribelle is her mugshot. Although I know I’ve seen some images from the Whispering Pines Timeless Beauty Showcase somewhere.

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