The Death of Life by Pamela Crane

Author:Pamela Crane [Crane, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781940662169
Publisher: Tabella House
Published: 2018-05-10T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22 Ari

Learning the fine art of interrogation techniques was on next semester’s course load. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t practice now.

Besides Kat’s mother Helen, and the murdered stepfather Scott, who obviously would be of no use, the next best person to talk to was Kat’s father, Cody Brannigan. If anyone had his own anger-fueled suspect list—or in my theory should be on it—it was the bio-dad. Tristan had mentioned his domestic violence history. All with the same woman, his then-wife Helen. I hadn’t expected his arrest record to be two pages long, a grade A wife-beating douche bag. Certainly he’d been one of Tristan’s prime suspects, but after several uneventful interrogations and surveillance that led nowhere, he became a dead end as far as the captain was concerned. After checking the database at work for his last known address and poring over the case file notes, I clocked out for the day and headed straight to Cody Brannigan’s house on the outskirts of Raleigh.

The townhouse he lived in sat in the middle of a line of average homes on an average street. All matching gray aluminum siding; the only difference from one to another was the color of the front door or faux shutters, all dismally bland shades of blue, black, and brown, with the occasional burgundy. Clearly the Home Owner’s Association ruled with an iron fist in this neighborhood.

I had to parallel park half a mile down the street, which took me over ten minutes as I inched my way back and forth between two huge SUVs that parked so crookedly that they deserved to get dented. I never had the luxury of a father teaching me the nuances of parallel parking as a teen, but coaxing my tiny car between these two would have challenged even the most expert parking valet.

Walking along the tree-lined sidewalk, I passed a young mother—she looked close to my age, in her mid-twenties—pushing a baby in a stroller, and I wondered what it would be like to be her. To have a family. To spend time with my kids. To watch them grow. To come home to a husband and a noisy house.

Maybe that last part was the problem—I’d always want to be the one coming home, not the one someone else was coming home to. Sitting at home all day, entertaining little kids? Fuhgettaboutit. How did mothers do it without losing their sanity? It sounded boring as hell. But then again, what man would want to marry a woman who felt the way I did about domestic life?

Watching the house numbers roll downward, I found the address I was looking for, shiny gold numerals emblazoned against a black door. I pressed a dimly lit doorbell button and heard the chime inside, a standard melody used by millions of other doorbells. A man answered the door, his head so shiny and bald I wanted to rub it for good luck. I noticed the twin eagle claw tattoos on either side of his thick neck, like talons clutching his collar.

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