Angel Among Us

Table of Contents

A Selection of Titles by Katy Munger

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

(formerly under the pseudonym Chaz McGee)

DESOLATE ANGEL

ANGEL INTERRUPTED

(writing as Katy Munger)

ANGEL OF DARKNESS *

ANGEL AMONG US *

LEGWORK

OUT OF TIME

MONEY TO BURN

BAD TO THE BONE

BETTER OFF DEAD

BAD MOON ON THE RISE

 

 

* available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in Great Britain and the USA 2012 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2012 by Katy Munger.

The right of Katy Munger to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Munger, Katy.

Angel among us. – (The dead detective mysteries)

1. Fahey, Kevin (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Delaware–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

813.6-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-310-5 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8201-1 (cased)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

For Zuzu, my angel on earth – may your life always
be filled with love and joy.

S
he had known unimaginable pain before and survived it. She had known day after day of deprivation and survived that, too. She had known fear so deep that it infiltrated her dreams at night like a vulture seeking flesh. She had endured all of it and come out of those terrible months with an unshakeable confidence in her own strength. She had survived.

This time was different. All she endured in the past – the beatings, rape, torture, the threats to her family – had all been directed at her. She had proved she could take anything and live. But things were different now. A life so precious it made her own seem irrelevant hung in the balance, depending on her for its survival.

She must not panic. The walls around her were damp and caked with clay. The floor was tamped down to rock. The air was thick with her own exhalation and so devoid of life that she felt as if she were spiraling down, down, down into a deep black hole. She splayed a palm wide against the dirt walls of her prison. It comforted her to feel the coolness of the earth and to know that, however far she was beneath its surface, she was still alive. She still breathed and the child inside her remained oblivious to their captivity.

The child. She forced herself to shut out everything but the life that stirred within her. The baby had been restless for the past two days, as if it, too, wanted to escape confinement. It would not be long now, she thought. And with that realization, fear overtook her. That was what he was waiting for. He had not yet said so, but she knew it to be true. As soon as the baby was born, he would take it from her and she would be left, forgotten beneath the earth. No one would ever know she was there.

Panic welled in her. The room was no bigger than half a boxcar and she was chained to one wall of it. She shifted the hand bound by metal and flexed her fingers, seeking relief from the pain. Her fingers brushed against something sharp in the dirt and she froze. She could use anything for a weapon. Anything at all. She began to brush the dirt away from the protrusion with her fingertips, moving carefully to avoid cutting herself on the object's sharp edges. She worked mechanically and did not know for how long, but at last she had smoothed away the earth enough to slide her fingers along a slender object buried just below the floor's surface. She willed herself to memorize its contours and tell her what it was. It took less than a minute to understand and, when she did, her panic was absolute.

It was a finger bone and it led to a hand. Just beneath the surface of the dirt floor, she had discovered a human hand now reduced to nothing more than bone, bone that was part of a skeleton. She knew it. She could feel it.

Others had died in this dark hole before her.

She wrapped her free arm around her belly and began to pray.

A
s time ticks onward, taking me further and further away from my death, I have started to lose even the memory of what it was like to have a body. Flesh. Bone. Blood. Pain and arousal. They are nothing but words to me now. Like a man examining a car he is thinking of buying, I have taken to studying the bodies of the living with no motivation other than nostalgia. There is no more excitement in watching a young girl as there is in watching an old man in the park feeding the pigeons. Yes, I see beauty in the human form – but it is an unpredictable call as to what I find beautiful these days. Appreciation comes upon me unexpectedly, in places I never expected to find it.

For example, babies (once sticky, squalling messes best left to others) seem like miracles to me now, with their faces open to all the world and their spirits radiating joy at being alive. Young people are beautiful to me, too, even as they struggle to understand who they are inside the bodies they wear. There are times when I stop by the high school to watch the young men training on the baseball field, marveling at how effortlessly strong their bodies are as they dart across the field. They accept their physical perfection with the careless grace of those who do not yet understand that youth does not last forever.

Perhaps because of my own, all too tortured life, I often find myself turning away from the perfection of youth. I am drawn to those who have suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune long enough for it to show in their splotchy faces and sagging skin. They have lived life to the fullest, however unwillingly, and it shows.

There are two old men I sometimes watch as they soak in the baths of a downtown Russian men's club. They carry the scars of a long-ago war on fireplug bodies covered with skin so tough they look upholstered in hide. They do not seem to notice the gouges of shiny flesh from old bullet wounds that mar their torsos like miniature mouths. Their spirits fill their war-torn bodies with a resigned acceptance, as if they have signed a treaty with their limbs not to complain so long as they draw breath.

But now that I am dead and I know what awaits them, it can be painful for me to view those whose blood and bones and tissue have betrayed them. Their strength sometimes seems to ebb before my very eyes. I can spot the sickly cast to their skin from across a room and feel how their blood falters in their veins. There is a weariness emanating from them that is unmistakable, for it is tinged with the fear of what lies ahead. I find I cannot stay long in the company of the ill, not just because, if they are too close to my world, there is a chance that they will see me, but also because I sometimes think that I feed on the life force of others in some way and I do not think that they have any to spare.

In truth, though, my very favorite place to watch the glory that is the human body is the playground of an elementary school on the outskirts of town. It is located in a neighborhood where the Irish and Italian meet, and where, in recent years, housefuls of Mexican immigrants have taken up residence, each home seemingly holding a dozen or more of them. The neighborhood school reflects their hopes for the future, regardless of where their pasts have taken them. Sturdy children shriek and chase one another across the playground, hugging just to feel the newness of their bodies together. They hold hands and form friendships blind to both color and physical beauty. If you catch them soon enough, that is. By second grade, I can see that their capacity for unbridled affection is gone, replaced by a sometimes cruel judgment of others. But if they are younger, they do not care whether the object of their affection is fat or poor or ugly. They bestow their love abundantly and it is a joy to watch.

I was doing just that one morning when I first caught a glimpse of a beautiful Mexican woman with skin the color of honey, whose flawless face was made even more exquisite by a hint of sadness that showed in her eyes. I could feel a deep love for the children on the playground emanating from her like the rays of a sun, yet I could feel her sorrow, too, as if something treasured had been taken from her and she knew that she would never get it back. The children called her ‘Seely' and clustered around her, clutching her legs, stroking her hair, kissing her cheeks when she lingered long enough. They adored her as she herded them to and fro, soothing their scrapes and intervening with gentle admonishments during the rare fights. She was possessed of such patience it astonished me. No matter how chaotic the playground became, she sailed through it, calm and reassuring to all.

For a while, I watched her with the children morning after morning until, at last, I felt all there was to feel from their unfettered exuberance. I left to learn more elsewhere. But I took the memory of Seely's face with me when I left. It was, I thought, the face of an angel.

I did not see her again for half a year, not until the day I felt compelled to follow a visibly sick woman home from the market to make sure that she would be OK. Watching her struggle up the steps that led to her front door had wearied me. I left her and sought out the bustle of her neighborhood's main street, needing to feel the energy of the thriving around me. I found myself near the elementary school where I had stood for over a month watching the children play. School had let out for the day. The streets around me were filled with people from a dozen different countries. My little town was changing. Everyone seemed in a generous mood, as if they were glad to be sharing the streets with others.