Avenging Angel by Rex Burns Read Free Book Online

led him to Loma Vista: placed between the first and second fingers of the victim’s left hand was a folded slip of paper bearing the sketch of an angel holding a sword.
    The paper itself would be in the sheriff’s evidence locker; after he finished studying the file, Wager copied down Mueller’s case number and wandered back into the busy main office, where he stood waiting. The women hesitated before the pretty brunette smiled and said, “Can I get you something?”
    Like the others, she wore no name tag. “I need an item from your evidence locker.”
    “The what? Oh—the safe! Sure.” She led him to the large Mosler that blocked one corner of the room. The heavy door hung open and, without glancing at the file number Wager held, she rummaged through the middle shelf to pull out a flat brown envelope. “Here you go—the Mueller case, right?”
    “Yeah, right. You want me to sign for it?”
    She shook her head, brown eyes wide with curiosity. “What for?”
    “You don’t require people to sign evidence in and out?”
    “No. We’re always here. And when we’re not, the safe’s locked.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Cynthia.”
    “Thanks, Cynthia.”
    “And your name’s Gabriel. Or do you want to be called Officer Wager?”
    Her eyes teased and he smiled back. “Gabe. Only angels are called Gabriel.”
    “And you’re no angel?”
    “I just work for them,” he joked.
    The laughter went out of her eyes, blown by a sudden gust of fright that she quickly hid behind a taut smile. “We’re all on the side of the angels,” she said, and turned away with the smile carefully held in place, leaving Wager puzzled. He stared a long moment before he went back to his small table.
    There he matched the sheriff’s evidence with his own copy of the sketch. Under the magnifying glass they looked identical, which wasn’t surprising since both were Xerox copies. Turning to the photographs of the victim and the supporting documents of the case, he set aside Cynthia’s unexplained fright and gradually lost himself in the awkwardly precise language of reports. After a while, as he neared the bottom of the stack of papers, the silence behind him became noticeable: the clatter and ding of typing had ceased, the telephone noises quieted, and only the occasional snap and chatter of the radio filled the sheriff’s offices. Wager gave a long sigh, put Tice’s evidence back in its plastic Baggie, and tucked his own copy of the angel away in his small green notebook.
    “Is the sheriff in?”
    Apparently Communications took her lunch break after the others; the older woman looked up from her log of radio messages and nodded at the sheriff’s door. “Just go right in.”
    Tice was poking with a ball-point pen at a small stack of papers. “You got it solved yet?”
    If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny; if it was sarcasm, Wager could do without it. He set the plastic Baggie on the sheriff’s desk. “This should go back in your evidence locker.” Pointing to the sketch, Wager asked, “Does the drawing mean anything to you?”
    “First, we don’t have an evidence locker, Detective Wager. All’s we got is a safe. And second, no, that angel don’t mean a thing to me. But it does to some damn fools. Or so they claim.”
    Such as his own clerk, Cynthia. “What do they claim?”
    “There’s some around the county that believe in the avenging angels. I don’t happen to.”
    “What’s the avenging angels?”
    The man heaved back in his protesting chair and eyed Wager. “You’re not Mormon I guess. I thought DPD sent you over because you were supposed to know all about this shooting.”
    “They sent me over to learn about it, Tice. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
    “I see—learn.” He grunted. “You a Catholic? You raised a Catholic?”
    Wager nodded shortly; he preferred to ask the questions.
    “Got any Mormons over on the Eastern Slope?” Tice asked.
    “Latter-Day Saints? Sure.”
    Tice grunted again.