Angel Interrupted

Table of Contents

 

 

Crime scene crowds are a strange lot. Since my death, I had learned just how strange they truly were. For one thing, I always spotted familiar faces among the crowd—the very same faces, in fact—at virtually every crime scene since my days tracking Maggie had begun. I called them The Watchers. There was a blank-faced black man with tattoo stripes on his cheeks, a pale, blonde lady wearing a light cotton dress and no shoes, two teenagers with greasy hair and even greasier skin, and a rigid dark-haired man with military posture. They were always here, scattered among the crowd, waiting, though I was not sure what they were waiting for. I’d see them when I first searched the faces of the crowd, but when I looked again—they’d always be gone.

If these were my colleagues in the afterlife, I was in sad shape indeed.

“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, author of
Sand Sharks

 

DESOLATE ANGEL
ANGEL INTERRUPTED

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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.

 

ANGEL INTERRUPTED

 

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

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Katy Munger.

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-18911-5

 

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A man with no past and no hope for the future walks through a playground. It is spring. He is cataloging all the things he does not have in his life: family, happiness, love, innocence. If he ever had any of these things, he no longer remembers. His life has been one of fear and shame for as long as he can recall.

This knowledge fuels a rage in him so profound he is convinced that if he were to open his mouth wide enough, he could spew flames like a dragon, scorching the laughing children before him in a single, awe-inspiring fireball.

There are days when he longs for the power to annihilate the world, and this is one of them.

Who is he kidding? He cannot annihilate the world. He doesn’t even have the power to leave. But he could annihilate a family. Perhaps that would satisfy the anger that burns inside him, searing his heart with each peal of laughter he hears.

Besides, if he says no, he will be left with no one. He will be utterly alone in this world. He will have nowhere to go and no one to care for him.

He cannot bear the thought.

The playground air smells like green. The sounds of songbirds surround him. The sunshine is warm on his cheeks and the air tastes of rain. A small boy squeals with delight as he swings from one monkey bar to the next.

Yes,
the man thinks.
The boy is perfect. He will be the one.

Love is squandered by the human race. I have seen people kill in the name of love. I have watched others torture themselves with it, bleeding every drop of joy from their hearts because they always hunger for more, no matter how much love they may have.

Love is different when you are dead.

It becomes less self-serving and less specific. It transcends the whims of the chemical for a simple desire to be near. My love for a stranger can be as profound as my love for the woman and children I left behind when I died. Love has become both more tangible and more important. Could it transform my fate? Love is, I tell myself, the answer.

I have come to know all these things and more in the months since my death. I try hard to remember these lessons, since I failed so miserably to learn any when I was alive. I was too busy drinking my way through my days and running from the love I was given. Death is my second chance to understand life. So far, I have learned that no one is as important or as alone as they think, that kindness is the reason why people survive—and that evil is as real as love when it comes to the human race.

I have learned these things while wandering the streets of my town, unseen and unmourned, contemplating the failures of my life and the mysteries of my death.

I could dwell on the mysteries of my death—god knows I still don’t understand it—but on a fine spring morning I prefer instead to dwell on the mysteries of love. For example, why do we give physical love such importance when it is, truly, the most fleeting love of all? Love comes in as many forms as there are people walking the earth. Just this week I have loved, among others, three children playing school in the park, especially the small boy wearing glasses who took his pretend role as a student very seriously indeed; the waitress at the corner coffee shop who smiles at her solitary customers out of happiness, not because she feels sorry for them; the pimple-faced grocery boy who stopped to pet a stray dog outside his store and fed it hamburger when no one was looking; and, of course, my Maggie, my replacement on the squad.

All of my infatuations, with the exception of Maggie, tend to come and go. They are as different as each day is new. Today I was in love with an old woman. It amused me to no end. I would never have noticed her when I was alive. I would have looked right through her, walked right past her, relegated her to the ranks of all the other white-haired ladies that crowded the edges of my life. But now that I am dead, I find I cannot take my eyes from her. She is exquisite.

She doesn’t look like you would expect. If she had looked the part, she would have been tall and elegant with slender hands and silver hair and a finely carved face of angular perfection. Instead, she is a plump dove of a woman, round faced and rosy cheeked, her eyes bright pools of blue among crinkles of pink skin. Her hair is cropped short, often tucked behind her ears, as if she does not want anything to get in the way when she looks life in the eye.

And that, I think, is where my love for her is born. I have never met anyone quite like her, not in life and not in death. She is content to be exactly where she is. She feels every moment of her day with a willingness that takes my breath away. Life glints off her in bright flecks; she is sunlight sparkling from a spinning pinwheel. She sprinkles diamonds in her wake as she moves through her house and sits in her garden. She is always alone, and yet she is always content.