Calling All Angels (The Shadow Council Case Files Book 1) by John G. Hartness

Author:John G. Hartness [Hartness, John G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2017-02-23T18:30:00+00:00

8

Jo burst through her front door, then drew up short as the burly police officer took hold of her arms and steered her to the kitchen table. “You don’t need to go in there,” he said, motioning with his head to the hallway. “Just come here and sit down. Let’s talk for a minute, and we’ll tell you what we know.”

“Who’s hurt? Where’s Ginny? Where’s Mama? What about Marla? Who was here? What happened?” The words tumbled from her pell-mell, almost on top of each other in her panic. She looked up, noticed that she knew the cop, and her shoulders released a fraction of the tension there.

Randall Currence was a beat cop who patrolled the neighborhood. His partner this year was another rookie; Jo thought she remembered his name was Freddy or something like that. Randall got a lot of rookies to be their first partner out of the Academy. He’d been on the Phoenix PD for almost twenty years, and he was a calming influence in a tense situation. Freddy was nowhere to be seen tonight. Maybe got sent home for puking at a crime scene. Again. Jo thought.

His good looks and easy smile made the women trust him, and his broad shoulders and strong jaw made the men respect him. Randall was a big man, over six foot and a bit over two hundred pounds, but his uniform shirt had no bulge in the middle, and he moved like a man much younger than the thirty-nine years he’d only admit to if pushed.

Jo looked in his face. His normally sparkling blue eyes were somber. She took a deep breath. “Randall, I need you to tell me what happened here.”

Her eyes scanned the living room from the seat where she’s eaten just a few hours earlier. One of Ginny’s socks peeked out from under the sofa, the pink one with blue trolls that she couldn’t find when she did laundry on Saturday. Cassandra had left her sewing needles sticking in the arm of the rocker/recliner again, just waiting for Jo to put her hand down there all unsuspecting.

Those little Norman Rockwell snapshots felt so incongruous with the red and blue flashing lights strobing across the wall, the coppery scent of blood laying over a deeper, harsher smell of pain and death coming from somewhere. The smiling snapshots hanging on the refrigerator door with magnets cast in sharp relief by the snap of crime scene photographer flashes.

Joanna turned her attention back to Randall, to the policeman sitting in front of her. She tuned in halfway through his sentence. “...we don’t know everything yet, Jo. It seems there was a home invasion. There was a young woman here...”

Jo shook off her shock and stupor enough to reply. “That’s Marla, we met at work.”

“Work?” Randall knew Jo usually made her living as a freelance editor, working from home.

“I’ve been picking up some side gigs here and there. I met Marla at one of those. She was having boyfriend problems, so I let her crash here.

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