Angel of Darkness by Katy Munger Read Free Book Online Page A

was teased high in a style considered all the rage back in the 1960s. Her tight black pants ended just above her ankles, and a pair of stiletto heels went nicely with the plunging neckline on her purple top, which didn’t quite hide the matching push-up bra. She looked equally hoochie mama in a holiday portrait displayed on the mantle, a photo that made it plain that this was a family where high school girls had children who, in turn, grew up to be high school girls who had children of their own. Barely fifteen years separated the generations. The neighborhood was full of families just like them. I couldn’t decide if it was sad or a relief that Darcy Swan had not been able to carry on the family tradition.
    Maggie and Calvano could not get a word in and, after a while, stopped trying. They accepted the old lady’s ceaseless complaining as a gift and Calvano began taking notes. They learned that Darcy attended the same high school my son Michael was assigned to and I wondered uneasily if my son and Darcy had been friends. Soon, the old dame launched into a well-practiced and unflattering description of both Darcy Swan and her mother. Despite the fact that they were her flesh and blood, both of them were proclaimed to be selfish, deluded, upstarts who didn’t work hard enough to support the old lady and would learn in the end that there was nothing more to life than the fact that it was hard, and maybe then they’d understand why she couldn’t work at the beauty parlor any more and would take better care of her.
    I started to feel sorry for the woman. I knew that once she found out her granddaughter was dead, she would remember her bitter words and they would likely haunt her for a long time. There are some things that even the most selfish of people can’t escape.
    Maggie and Calvano finally gleaned that Darcy’s mother worked at the new Walmart. Convinced her granddaughter had been up to no good, the old lady gave them meticulous directions to the deli section and asked that they convey a ‘told you so’ on her behalf. Maggie and Calvano left to break the news to Darcy’s mother that her daughter was dead, but I’d had enough of Darcy’s family for one day. Instead, I decided to take a look at the block where Darcy Swan had lived. Darcy had to have met her killer close to home, in school or at the diner. Her life had ended at those meager borders.
    I took off on my own for a tour of Helltown. It had been a while since I’d walked its streets. I was startled to see a familiar face half a block down from Darcy’s house. The young man who had visited my son Michael at Holloway was sitting in the dark on the open gate of a red truck parked in the driveway of another cheap mill house. His hands were trapped between his knees for warmth as he stared up at the sky. The stars were exceptionally bright and sprinkled like diamonds across the night horizon, a reminder that there was a whole universe out there beyond. I wondered if that realization helped the boy or only made him feel more trapped. He did not seem happy at all. He seemed as lost and depressed as my son, and for just a moment I had a vision of all the lost sons wandering in the darkness together, wondering when their turn might come.
    A door slammed behind the boy and a deep voice bellowed for him to get his ass inside. The boy barely twitched as a stocky man in a wife-beater tee shirt and plaid boxer shorts appeared in the doorway, holding a beer can in one hand and a cigarette in the other. ‘Your grandmother needs to be changed,’ the man shouted, knowing his son was somewhere near in the darkness. ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it.’
    The door slammed shut behind him as he ducked back into a brightly lit living room, where the sounds of the television blared almost loudly enough to disguise the bleating of an old lady crying for help. The boy hopped down from the back of the