Desolate Angel

Table of Contents

 

 

The big push . . .

I had to move now. The box sat on the counter. It didn’t weigh more than a couple pounds, but I had never moved a physical object in my present state before. I didn’t even know if I could.

I stationed myself at the counter, reached over, and pushed. The box did not move. I could feel it, the cardboard had substance, but my pushing produced no resistance.

I thought of all I had failed to do in my life, all I had not even tried to do. I thought of Alissa, wandering the earth, appearing to me. I thought of the young girl dumped in the weeds. I was one of them. I was connected still, I told myself, or I would not be here.

The box moved. It slid over the edge of the counter and tumbled to the floor. Bags of evidence spilled onto the tile. And, instantly, I was overcome with a wave of acute pain. Every fiber of my being throbbed with an agony so intense that it brought me to my knees.

I had violated the boundaries of my world. And I would pay the price . . .

Praise for
DESOLATE ANGEL

“I do not want Kevin Fahey to rest in peace. I want him to hang around until he’s solved every one of the cases he bungled when he was a live detective. Happily, there are enough of those to let me look forward to many more hours of reading pleasure.”—Margaret Maron

 

“[A]n utterly captivating story about redemption and second chances. Chaz McGee has an irresistibly rueful, melancholy voice that invites readers to remember that we all make mistakes—and we all deserve a shot a redemption.”

—Laura Lippman

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

DESOLATE ANGEL

 

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Katy Munger.

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-08203-4

 

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Prologue

A man lies dying on the grime-encrusted floor of an abandoned house on the banks of the Delaware. The air is heavy with the stench of human detritus and the whiskey sweat of fear. The man knows that he is dying, but after the first hot shock of bullet burrowing through flesh, he feels no pain. Instead, he feels the world falling away. Every ache he has ever felt, every regret he has ever ignored, every sorrow he has ever mourned—they evaporate into the ether. He does not care. He does not care about the man sprawled dead at his feet or the heavyset man breathing bourbon in his face. He does not even think of the wife and sons he will leave behind, nor of the badge that presses against his chest, inches from the bullet’s entry wound.

Instead, he stares at the ankles of the man bending over him, seeing every thread of a frayed pants hem that has been, improbably, stapled back into place. He memorizes every crease in the worn leather shoe beneath it.

A crack has opened up in the shoe between leather and sole. It fascinates him, that tiny gap of darkness. It beckons him like an invitation. He stares at the sliver of darkness and thinks of one thing only, his death, like his life, defined by the same single, unanswerable question. He thinks,
How did it come to this?

Chapter 1

I never recognized my wife’s beauty when I was alive. Distracted by shining eyes and an all-forgiving smile, I married her and stayed married to her for twenty-three years, never noticing when the shining eyes and forgiving smile faded, casualties of the burdens that came with loving me. But not once, in all the years of sharing the very air we breathed, did I recognize her true beauty.

I had to die before I saw it. I had to die before I realized how her stubborn love for me, and her infinite love for our sons, made her splendid beyond human comprehension.

I can see it now—and so much more. I can see the light that surrounds her when she holds our boys in her arms. I can see how the world surrenders before her when she shares that love with others. I have watched her stop to talk to the old man who lives alone next door and seen him smile to himself as he shuffles away afterward, his day brightened by more than memories. I have watched her eyes linger on strangers in the store where she works, noting their slumped shoulders and grim faces. And I have seen her smile at them from across a room crowded with racks of clothes—her smile instantly easing the weight of their unknown disappointments.

It is astonishing to me now that she stayed with me and loved me all those years. She deserved better. Through no fault of her own, I came to see her love as a burden, rather than a gift, and drank to forget that she loved me. When that did not drive her away, I sought out women willing to drink beside me in hopes of forgetting their own failures. I destroyed everything Connie had ever loved about me—and I don’t why. And yet she loved me still.

I know that now, and so much more, for now that I am dead, I have little to do except ponder what I have lost. What else do you do when you realize, too late, that you once had all you ever needed but refused to see it.
What do you do?
You try to hold on to what you have already lost. You chase the vapors of what you once had.

I sometimes linger behind the kitchen door, unseen by the living, waiting for my sons to burst in after school. Their hair stands up wildly from the cold, dry air and I savor the flash in their eyes as they realize they have a few hours of freedom before homework must begin. I watch as they push, joke, and torment one another. My sons. They are strength, hope, fear, hatred, love, and mayhem. Thanks to Connie, they are all I failed to be.

I spy, unnoticed, as my wife enters the kitchen and enfolds my sons in her arms. I long to feel the life that radiates from them, marked only by me.

All I can do is watch. I can no longer feel the warmth of flesh or caress the powdery silk of a child’s skin or smell the inexpressible sweetness of their bodies. I can see. I can hear. I can bear witness to what I have lost. That is all.

I do not know why I ended up here, no longer of this earth, yet somehow bound to it. I am a solitary wanderer, forced to face a bitter truth: great love abides in the house that once was my home, but I am no longer a part of it.