Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 57

I WOULDN’T HAVE DONE this a month ago. I would’ve been too busy thinking about the job I had to do. I stood and I opened my arms to Agnes Daltry.

She put her head against my shoulder and cried as though she would never stop. I understood now. Agnes wasn’t getting the comfort she needed from her husband. Her shoulders shook so hard, I could feel her pain as if I knew her, as if I had loved her family as much as she did.

Agnes’s grief moved me so much that I was thrown back into the loneliness of losing people I had loved: my mom, Chris, Jill.

I heard the distant sound of the doorbell. I was still holding Agnes when her husband came back into the kitchen.

“Someone’s here to see you,” he said, his anger coming off his body like a sour smell.

“To see me?”

The man waiting in the living room was a study in dung brown: brown sport jacket and pants, brown-striped tie. He had brown hair, a thick brown mustache, and hard brown eyes.

But his face was red. He looked furious.

“Lieutenant Boxer? I’m Peter Stark, chief of police, Half Moon Bay. You need to come with me.”