Angel Interrupted by Chaz McGee Read Free Book Online Page A

at the same time?”
    “That’s about it,” Gonzales agreed.
    “Do I at least get overtime?” Maggie asked, joking.
    “I know you can do this,” Gonzales told her solemnly. “You can do it and more, if you need to.” For once, I agreed with Gonzales.

Chapter 7

    If ever I am sent back to the world of the living, I want a friend like Noni Bates to be with me. She beat the cops to Robert Michael Martin’s house, having correctly surmised that Calvano would set his sights on him. But it was more than that, I realized, when I found her on his front porch. A vein of anxiety ran through her, a fear he might turn out to be the most evil of beings her schoolteacher’s heart could imagine. I realized it took courage for her to be there at his house in pursuit of the truth. She was sturdy, but she was small, and she was no match for a man Martin’s size.
    I wanted to search his house before anyone else arrived and polluted it with their own agendas. I didn’t think Martin was connected to the boy’s disappearance, not after feeling the residual emotions the kidnapper had left behind. But I’d racked up a lifetime of being wrong. So I felt it was prudent to check, just in case.
    I lingered in the front hallway, soaking in the loneliness of the dusty old house, while Noni rang the bell outside. Martin appeared promptly, shambling along like a bear awoken from hibernation. I get to see the things people do when they think no one is looking, and sometimes it’s not pretty. Martin was sleepily scratching his belly and blinking as if surprised to find it was still daylight outside.
    “Mrs. Bates?” he said when he opened the door—without checking to see who it was first, I might add. He was lucky he’d not been swept off his feet by a sea of cops and flattened against the hallway walls. “What are you doing here?”
    “Get dressed,” she said firmly. “And call a lawyer now. I am certain that detective is on his way to arrest you.”
    “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He sounded so dumbfounded, I almost felt sorry for the poor slob. He actually thought being innocent might protect him. That only told me he’d never run into cops like Calvano before.
    “May I come in?” Noni asked. He stepped aside and she entered his front hall as if it were Buckingham Palace. If she noticed the musty air, the dust on the furniture, or the lingering smell of fried meat, she gave no sign that she found it in the least important.
    But she did eye his attire. He’d ditched the flour-dusted jeans and was wearing a dingy T-shirt and boxer shorts. “Really, dear. I taught men like that detective when they were still boys and pushing other children around on the playground. He will be here soon. You get dressed and call a lawyer.”
    “I don’t need a lawyer,” Martin said again, affronted at the implication that he might.
    “Then at least get dressed.” The steel was back in her voice, and he blinked once, then obeyed, climbing the stairs to the upper chaos of his second floor. I followed.
    It was as uncared for as the rest of the house. I moved from room to room, picking up on the vague fear that had driven his mother’s existence. It permeated every room, including the one where she had died: a hospital bed still dominated the interior and pill bottles still littered the bureau surface. Only the bed, stripped clean of its linens, had been touched since the body had been removed—what had he said? A year ago? The dude seriously needed to move on.
    I felt sorry for the guy. He was just some schlep who’d never been loved enough as a kid because his mother had been too overwhelmed and afraid of sliding into poverty to spare the time. He didn’t have friends because he didn’t know how to make them.
    I searched the rooms, all the while expecting to hear Calvano and his men entering below. There was no trace of a small boy anywhere, not in any of the two empty bedrooms or the chaotic one Robert Michael Martin clearly