Read Along Came a Demon for Free Online

I unzipped my jacket.
    I didn’t question Lindy about Lawrence, but she needed only a modicum of interest from me to start rattling on about him. I sat back and absorbed it.
    Lindy and Lawrence celebrated his sixth birthday on November 9th. He attended the Saint Mary Frances Catholic School down on Monmouth Avenue. Considering she devoted her life to helping the sick and aged, I don’t understand how Mary Frances’ name ended up on a kid’s school. In summer, Lawrence attended the summer program there while Lindy worked. He was smart, and she never had a problem getting him to finish his homework. He liked hamburgers and ice cream and all the other child-popular foods, but his favorite was Cobb salad, which I thought unusual for a little kid. He often played with the other apartment kids in the play park behind their building in the evenings and at weekends, while Lindy sat on the bench. They went to the movies and the skating rink, and went bowling a couple of times, but bowling was new to Lawrence and he didn’t know yet if he liked it.
    He was hospitalized with severe bronchitis when ten-months-old and spent two weeks in Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Their family physician was William Haskey at Clarion’s Fourth Street Clinic.
    Well, there should be plenty of records on this boy and hopefully I’d find some of them in Lindy’s apartment. Although, according to Mike, there was nothing to indicate a child lived in the apartment, the police don’t thoroughly investigate the home of a person who dies of natural causes. I meant to make a careful search and find what they missed. I needed something to get Mike off his rear end and on the trail of young Lawrence.
    When she wound down I said, “I’d like a picture of him. Do you have an extra key to your place, under a mat, or a planter, or on the lintel maybe?”
    She shook her head, but her wet hair didn’t move; it clung to her head as if glued on.
    I got to my feet. “It’s okay. I can probably get in.”
    She rose up with me. “I’ll come with you.”
    Damn! If Mike was right and no trace of Lawrence remained in the apartment, she would see his stuff was gone. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’ll just get upset.”
    “ I don’t think I will.” She looked past the trees to the apartment block. “In fact, I have a strange feeling I should be there. And I want to be surrounded by Lawrence’s things.”
    Uh oh! I would not be able to concentrate with a hysterical spirit bugging me. I tried to stop her. “Lindy, I don’t want to have to tromp over to your apartment if we need to talk.”
    But no, she walked away from me. She got ten paces before she stopped.
    “ Funny. I can’t go any further.”
    I got ahead of her. She stared at the ground. “My feet won’t move.”
    Oh great ! I didn’t want her to leave my yard right then, but I definitely didn’t want her stuck here. “Let’s experiment, huh? Try going in another direction.”
    So we walked around together. Lindy could walk along the side of my house to where she stood when I first saw her, she could walk through the orchard among the trees, but she couldn’t go more than twenty feet away from the house. She couldn’t get near the wall.
    Defeated, she folded her body to sit beneath the cherry tree.
    Well, nothing I could do about it. I headed for the house.
    I had no idea how to go about breaking into a building, so I called Mike, ignoring Jack and Mel for the moment.
    “ I won’t believe nothing of Lawrence is in their apartment till I see for myself.”
    “ Well, it’s not a crime scene, so I suppose there’s no harm letting you take a look. But the manager may have already cleared out the place.”
    “ Damn! I hope not.”
    “ I’ll give him a call. Give me a few minutes.”
    Mike called me back five minutes later. “He hasn’t got to it yet, so I let him know you’ll be by.”
    I was relieved. If Mike had said no and I tried to barge in anyway,