Family Law by Gin Phillips (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

She’d had a passing thought that she might. In the old days, she’d spent plenty of time with policemen. These two looked to be in their early thirties, soft-faced and unfamiliar.

Everything picked up speed.

The patrolmen came inside and looked through the sunroom, picking their way through the glass, and they called out a question every now and then but not many. They ran their fingers over the bullet holes in the wall and doorframe. They nodded and said they’d take a look outside the house and then come back. When Evan asked if he and Lucia could come as well, the men waved them forward. Lucia asked Rachel to stay inside with Moxie and, shockingly, the girl agreed with hardly a word. She curled up on the den sofa before Lucia had even closed the kitchen door.

Six bullets, the policemen counted. Lucia hadn’t remembered that many shots. One lodged in the fence around the backyard. One stuck in a wooden column of the carport. Three in the wall of the sunroom, and the one wedged in the doorframe.

Did you see the car?

No.

Do you have any reason to believe someone would be targeting you, Mrs. Gilbert?

No.

Do you have any guess about who might have done it?

No.

Because it feels personal.

Well, yes, it did.

Lucia felt a burst of interest when they said they would go question the neighbors: she should have thought of it herself. She watched the officers cut across her yard, and then she went inside, washed her hands, and poured three glasses of ice water. Evan and Rachel took their glasses and went to check on Moxie, and Lucia wandered through the den, finishing off her water.

When the policemen came back, they stood in the driveway and told her that Mrs. Jackson across the street had looked out her window and seen a large, dark car, probably navy blue or black. It was a four-door, she said, but she wasn’t good with car names. She’d seen it driving away, only from the back, and she had no idea who was driving. One person? More? She couldn’t say.

No one else had seen anything, although several people had heard the shots, including Marlon, who came by with the beagles. At that point, the policemen were talking through the science of bullets.

“Was it the Buick?” Marlon yelled from a good twenty feet away.

“That’s Marlon Reynolds,” Lucia said quickly, taking in Marlon’s less-than-pristine beard and ragged shorts. She did not want anyone to shoot him accidentally. “He lives down the street.”

Both policemen signaled for him to come closer. One of them reached down and patted a beagle. Inside, Moxie went nuclear.

Marlon told them exactly what he’d told Lucia a few weeks earlier. One of the officers took notes, and the other one—the beagle petter—flexed and unflexed his right hand, like maybe he had some arthritis, even though he was surely too young for it. Lucia watched his hand curl and straighten, and something about the movement pulled at her. His face was familiar after all. A hallway started to coalesce, and she tried to bring the setting into focus.

There.

She’d been passing a defendant in the corridor before his arraignment; he’d gotten hold of a box of Junior Mints, shaking them into his mouth straight from the box. His aim had not been good, and chocolates had bounced from his chest onto the floor. A policeman had yanked the candy away from him, and that policeman had been doing this same thing with his hand. He’d caught her eye and they’d shared a moment of silent disbelief over the candy, and she’d seen him a few other times after that in the hallways. She thought he’d mentioned saving up vacation time for a honeymoon in Mexico.

She looked at the policeman in her driveway, curling and straightening his fingers. He wore a wedding ring.

“I know you, don’t I?” she said.

“I was wondering if you’d remember me, Mrs. Gilbert,” he said. “Matt Atkinson. It’s been a long time.”

“We met back—” she started.

“Honestly,” he said, stretching out his fingers. “I don’t remember the details. I do remember you, of course.”

She hadn’t remembered him, though, and that shook her. These men had asked questions and she had answered them, but she had little faith that their questions were the right ones, and now she wondered if she could even trust her answers.

Evan’s hand at her back, between her shoulder blades. A solid touch.

Marlon touched her shoulder, too, as he left. The beagles’ claws clicked on the concrete.

“What happens next?” Evan asked.

“There’s a chance that the bullets will tell us something,” said the policeman Lucia didn’t know. He had mentioned his name and she had already forgotten it. “We’ll see if they lead us to someone who’s been in trouble before.”

“You’ll leave some sort of guard here, right?” Evan said. “In case whoever did this comes back?”

Both policemen shook their heads.

“There’s no reason to believe they’d come back,” said Matt Atkinson. “That’s not how this sort of thing usually works.”

“You said it felt personal,” said Evan, and he was furious. Lucia doubted the policemen could tell from his tone, but his overpronounced words were as good as screaming. “If it’s personal, there’s a very good chance he’ll come back, whoever he is. I don’t understand why you’re acting like this happens every day.”

The officers said a patrol car would be circling the neighborhood. They said the presence of the car would certainly be a deterrent. They said Lucia and Evan should call if they saw anything out of the ordinary.

By the time the men climbed back into their cruiser, Evan was nearly shaking with anger. Lucia, too, was ready for them to leave. They had nothing else to offer. What she most wanted, at this moment, was for the details of the shooting not to appear in the newspaper the next morning. As the patrol car veered around a pothole, brake lights flashing, Evan kicked at the splinters flecking the carport. She thought of Chris Sanderson with his Tom Selleck