Sendoff for a Snitch by KM Rockwood Read Free Book Online

month-to-month lease for proof of residency. For that, I was eternally grateful to her.
    Taking the steps up to the front door two at a time, I stopped in the entry to take off my jacket and hat. They were soaked. I shivered. Both of them were wool, and while wet wool did retain heat, it wasn’t exactly cozy or comfortable.
    Mandy was at the front desk, sorting through a stack of books. She and I had struck up a strange kind of casual friendship. When she’d realized that her marriage had turned sour—actually, it had not been a good idea from the get-go since her husband liked her inherited money, not her—she’d started off the deep end, but I’d been able to get her to see her lawyer for a divorce instead of taking more drastic measures. Like asking me to kill her husband.
    I stopped by the front desk to say hello.
    “Looking for something to read, in case the power goes out and you can’t watch TV or anything?” she asked.
    I just shook my head. “Here to read newspapers.”
    She probably couldn’t get her mind around somebody who couldn’t afford a TV, and I wasn’t about to tell her that. She’d feel sorry for me. She might even offer me an old cast-off TV. I didn’t want that.
    She lived in a big old house in the old part of town. A mansion, really. Her parents had died in an accident when she was in college, and as an only child, everything they’d owned was left to her.
    I was pretty sure she worked at the library for many of the same reasons I’d worked at the prison laundry all those years. It gave structure to her life and got her out on a regular basis. Although I was sure it paid a hell of a lot more than a dollar a day, I knew she didn’t need the money.
    Someone came up to check out some books, so I headed for the reading room. Careful to put my wet jacket over the back of a non-upholstered chair, I slid into a seat and grabbed the latest edition of the Rothsburg Register , the local paper.
    The front page had a big weather map and a few articles about the storm. I found it hard to sort out the hype from the factual reporting, but it did emphasize that we were in for a lot of weather in the next few days.
    As if we didn’t usually have weather of some sort.
    I didn’t know how much rain we’d be getting, but I kept reading. If it was bad enough that the staff at the parole office was concerned, it had to be a lot.
    A late winter storm was swirling in from the Atlantic, carrying a lot of moisture. It was poised to meet a cold weather pattern, also carrying moisture, that was surging over the mountains. They should be encountering each other any time now, and whether we got socked with rain or snow or a mix would be dependent upon the temperature. People should be prepared for whatever came, from several feet of ice and snow, to heavy rains and flooding.
    The reports didn’t really tell me anything I couldn’t have figured on my own. We had bad weather and more was coming. So what else was new? With a sigh, I folded the newspaper, put it back on the table, and got to my feet.
    Mandy smiled at me as I went past the desk. I smiled back and stopped.
    She was the first person after I was released who’d treated me with normal social courtesies. As a prison inmate, most of my interaction with other people over the last twenty years had been me obeying barked orders given by correctional officers, or trying to keep to myself to avoid trouble from other inmates. I think we were both a little socially awkward. And lonesome. I had a pretty good idea about why I was like that, but except for being shy and uncertain of herself, I saw no reason why she would feel that way.
    She frowned as she looked at the wet jacket in my hands. “If you’re going to be out walking in that—” she nodded to the streams of water cascading down the window “—shouldn’t you be wearing a raincoat?”
    It would be nice, I thought, but I said, “All I got’s the jacket. No raincoat.”
    Raising her eyebrows, she