Page 3 of Things We Hide from the Light
The full force of northern Virginia fall hit me when I shoved my way through the glass doors of the Knox Morgan Municipal Center. The sun was shining in a sky so blue it hurt the eyes. The trees lining the street were putting on a show as their leaves gave up the green for russets, yellows, and oranges. Pumpkins and hay bales dominated the downtown window displays.
I glanced up at the roar of a bike and watched Harvey Lithgow cruise by. He had devil horns on his helmet and a plastic skeleton lashed upright to the seat behind him.
He raised a hand in greeting before rumbling off down the road doing at least fifteen over the posted speed limit. Always pushing the bounds of the law.
Fall had always been my favorite season. New beginnings. Pretty girls in soft sweaters. Football season. Homecoming. Cold nights made warmer with bourbon and bonfires.
But everything was different now.Iwas different now.
Since I’d lied about physical therapy, I couldn’t very well be seen grabbing lunch downtown, so I headed for home.
I’d make a sandwich I didn’t want to eat, sit in solitude, and try to find a way to make it through the rest of the day without being too much of a dick.
I needed to get my shit together. It wasn’t that fucking hard to push papers and make a few appearances like the useless figurehead I now was.
“Mornin’, chief,” Tallulah St. John, our resident mechanic and co-owner of Café Rev, greeted me as she jaywalked right in front of me. Her long, black braids were gathered over the shoulder of her coveralls. She had a grocery tote in one hand and a coffee, most likely made by her husband, in the other.
“Mornin’, Tallulah.”
Knockemout’s favorite pastime was ignoring the law. Where I stuck to the black and white, sometimes it felt like the rest of the people around me lived entirely in the gray. Founded by lawless rebels, my town had little use for rules and regulations. The previous police chief had been happy to leave citizens to fend for themselves while he shined up his badge as a status symbol and used his position for personal gain for more than twenty years.
I’d been chief now for nearly five years. This town was my home, the citizens, my family. Clearly I’d failed to teach them to respect the law. And now it was only a matter of time before they all realized I was no longer capable of protecting them.
My phone pinged in my pocket, and I reached for it with my left hand before remembering I no longer carried it on that side. On a muttered oath, I pulled it free with my right.
Knox: Tell the feds they can kiss your ass, my ass, and the whole damn town’s ass while they’re at it.
Of course my brother knew about the feds. An alert probably went out the second their sedan rolled onto Main Street. But I wasn’t up for a discussion about it. I wasn’t up for anything really.
The phone rang in my hand.
Naomi.
It wasn’t that long ago that I would have been eager as hell to answer that call. I’d had a thing for the new-in-town waitress riding a streak of bad luck. But she’d fallen, inexplicably, for my grumpy-ass brother instead. I’d given up the crush—easier thanI’d thought—but had enjoyed Knox’s annoyance every time his soon-to-be wife checked in on me.
Now, though, it felt like one more responsibility that I just couldn’t handle.
I sent the call to voicemail as I rounded the corner onto my street.
“Mornin’, chief,” Neecey called as she hauled the pizza shop’s easel sign out the front door. Dino’s opened at 11:00 a.m. on the dot seven days a week. Which meant I’d only made it four hours into my workday before I’d had to bail. A new record.
“Morning, Neece,” I said without enthusiasm.
I wanted to go home and close the door. To shut out the world and sink into that darkness. I didn’t want to stop every six feet to have a conversation.
“Heard that fed with the mustache is stickin’ around. Think he’ll enjoy his stay at the motel?” she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
The woman was a glasses-wearing, gum-chewing gossip who chatted up half the town every shift. But she had a point. Knockemout’s motel was a health inspector’s wet dream. Violations on every page of the handbook. Someone needed to buy the damn thing and tear it down.
“Sorry, Neece. Gotta take this,” I lied, bringing the phone to my ear, pretending like I had a call.
The second she ducked back inside, I stowed the phone and hurried the rest of the way to my apartment entrance.
My relief was short-lived. The door to the stairwell, all carved wood and thick glass, was propped open with a banker box markedFilesin sharp scrawl.
Still eying the box, I stepped inside.
“Son of a damn bitch!” A woman’s voice that did not belong to my elderly neighbor echoed from above.
