Seventh Heaven by Alice; Hoffman Read Free Book Online

behind him, a little too close for Hennessy’s taste. When Hennessy finished, the wife said, “I’ve got nothing to say,” in such a flat tone Hennessy almost believed her. He was tempted to get the hell out of there right then; his throat was dry and he’d have given anything for a beer. But he began to feel something along the base of his neck. He looked down and saw that the wife’s legs were purple with bruises.
    Oh, shit, he thought. Goddamn it.
    She had put another hamburger down into the pan and the meat sizzled and gave off a rancid odor.
    â€œDo you mind turning around while we talk?” Hennessy said.
    Hennessy had been right; she wasn’t more than twenty-five, maybe younger. Her lip was split and there was a circle that would soon turn purple around her eye. But what got to Hennessy, what made him take a step backward, was the way she looked at him, with such hatred you would have thought he’d been the one who’d struck her.
    â€œWhat happened to you?” Hennessy asked. He could feel her husband behind him. He half expected the woman to laugh in his face.
    â€œNothing,” she said.
    â€œWhat I’d like to know,” the guy said from behind him, “is what gives you the right to waltz in here whenever you want?”
    Hennessy faced the husband and pulled back his sport coat to reveal his holster. “This,” he said.
    The husband quickly moved back. Hennessy had known a gun would matter to a guy like this. He knew he was lucky to be six two, because in this house, force was what mattered.
    â€œSo, what happened?” Hennessy asked the wife again.
    â€œI fell,” she said. “Against the stove.”
    â€œYeah,” Hennessy said. “The stove is right at eye level.”
    The wife stared right through him.
    â€œI have to look through the rest of the house,” Hennessy told the husband.
    â€œJesus fucking Christ,” the guy said. “My own goddamned house!”
    Hennessy went back through the dining room and living room to the rear hallway. He knew the floor plan by heart, the house was the exact same model as his own, so no one had to tell him where the children’s rooms were. He opened the door to the first bedroom and took the flashlight from his belt. A toddler was asleep, holding on to a stuffed animal. The floor was littered with toys and trash and there was a pile of dirty diapers in one corner. Hennessy quickly closed the door. He hated the idea of getting involved in a domestic; this was personal, this was between a husband and a wife.
    In the living room, the guy had switched on the TV. It was a Saturday night, and in his own house Hennessy’s boy, Stevie, was probably watching the same channel. Bonanza . Hennessy stopped in the bathroom doorway. He saw some blood on a towel draped over the shower curtain; the wife had probably washed her face when Sorenson and Brewer first arrived, and cleaned off her split lip. Hennessy told himself all he had to see was the blood, it was none of his business if the tub and toilet were filthy, he didn’t need to ask himself what kind of woman would keep her house like this. But it was his job to look in their bedroom, to see the rumpled sheets on their bed and the piles of dirty laundry on the floor, in the same corner where he and Ellen had their pine bureau. Hennessy went on to the last bedroom, the one where his three-year-old, Suzanne, slept at home. It took a while before what was so different about this room registered. This room was neat, that was it. The toys were stacked in boxes, and pictures of animals, horses and golden retrievers, had been carefully cut out of magazines and thumb-tacked to the walls. Hennessy moved the beam of his flashlight around the room and found a small girl of seven or eight beneath a frayed blanket.
    â€œJesus H. Christ,” he could hear the guy in the living room say to his wife, “this jerk’s going to take all