A month into the new year already? As soon as he said it, Edgar Snatch knew he was wrong. The officer, on closer inspection, looked nothing like Danielle.
Her eyes weren’t glazed over. Her mouth didn’t hang open at an odd angle. Her hair didn’t cling to her head, matted with sticky blood.
And the most telling thing of all. Her head didn’t look like a split honeydew melon. It couldn’t be Danielle.
The officer shook her head and smiled. “Laura, actually.”
Snatch looked her up and down and swayed in place like a heavy tree against a summer wind. He braced himself against the porch railing and forced a smile that cracked his dry lips. “Hello, Laura.” His voice croaked as his words dragged out of his rough throat.
“I stopped by to ask a few questions. We haven’t been able to get in touch with the Sheriff for a while and the last we heard, he was coming out here.”
“Oh?” Snatch asked. His gray eyes drilled into Laura. “Why would the Sheriff be coming out this way?” He shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other and adjusted his coveralls.
“He told us at the station he wanted to check on your mother.”
“Mother.”
“Yes,” Laura said, “your mother.”
Snatch swallowed hard and sneered. “Mother. Call her Mother. Have a little respect.”
“Yes, your mother,” Laura repeated.
Snatch lunged forward and shoved Laura against the front door of the farmhouse. He gripped her throat with his calloused hand and stared into her eyes. “Everyone calls her Mother.”
Laura shoved Snatch away and held both hands up in front of her. Her chest heaved. “Don’t touch me. I’m only here to see if you’ve seen the Sheriff.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then we’re done here,” Laura said.
“I’m sorry,” Snatch blurted. He stepped back and to the side to give Laura room to leave the porch.
She turned and looked at him with a mixture of concern and suspicion. “You need to think before you act. Get some help with your anger.” She walked to her patrol car and opened the door. “If you have any information you think may be helpful in locating the Sheriff, call us at the station.”
Snatch turned and walked into the farmhouse. He closed the door behind him and moved into the kitchen, to the sink. He turned the cold water on and listened to the air in the pipes bang and pop until the water made it to the end of the kitchen faucet and rained into the aluminum basin.
“That disrespectful woman. Laura. She wouldn’t say Mother.” He slapped his tongue around in his mouth as his deep voice droned about the officer. “So rude. She expects me to help her when she doesn’t follow the rules?”
He looked up from the sink and out the window facing the driveway. The patrol car sat in the same place, with the female officer sitting in the driver’s seat. He glanced toward the den where Mother likely laid, with her fat lips wrapped around a liquor bottle.
He turned back to the window and watched the woman in her patrol car and he stepped away from the sink. He stepped toward the door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Snatch turned and saw the Reaper at the kitchen table, in his usual guise of the old farmer.
“What are you talking about?” Snatch asked.
“You know,” the old farmer said. “You are angry right now. Exactly like smart Laura said. You need to think before you act. Get some help with that temper of yours. Don’t be stupid anymore, Edgar.”
“She was rude to Mother,” Snatch explained.
“People are rude. You have to let it go.”
Snatch sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the old farmer across from him.
“You are so lucky that I’m here to help you,” the old farmer said. “If I wasn’t here, you’d go out there and kill her.”
