Read In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel for Free Online

right now in his red
suit and listen to Becca for a couple of minutes and give her a
candy cane, they could leave. Maybe Mom would be finished with the
shopping then, and they could go home.
    Home. Safe. Then she could wait for Daddy and
tell him what happened. He could fix this. She just knew he could.
He had to. Because, if he couldn’t, then she really was going to
Hell—if she wasn’t already there, that is.
    Merrie squeezed her eyes tightly shut and
wished as hard as she could for Santa to appear and get this over
with. Wishing hadn’t worked before, but this one was just a little
wish. It wasn’t big like the others. Maybe it was just small enough
to come true. Besides, she had no choice but to wish because she
was too afraid to pray. If God really was mad at her, she knew he
wouldn’t listen. Still, even if the wish didn’t work, at the very
least she hoped Miss Ruth was right about Santa being here soon
because she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep herself from
throwing up.
    However, as she stood there concentrating she
remembered something Daddy always said. Be careful what you wish
for, because sometimes what you wish for isn’t what you really want
at all . When she heard the door she opened her eyes, and then
she knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t Mister Babbs in the Santa
suit this year, and in that moment Merrie began to wish that she
had never wished for anything, ever.
    “Ho, ho, ho,” the sickeningly familiar laugh
came from the man in the Santa suit. As he started toward them he
said, “Well if it isn’t, my very , very special little
helper… And, ho, ho, ho… You brought a friend to see Santa…”
     
     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    4:15 P.M. – December 22, 1975
    Sheriff’s Department
    Hulis Township – Northern Missouri
     
    CLOVIS Meriweather started to speak
but caught herself before any sound actually made it past her lips.
Instead, she kept her mouth closed and bit down softly on the end
of her tongue—not enough to hurt of course, but just enough to
remind herself to remain quiet for the moment. The almost
unconscious act was one she’d had since she was a little girl. In
fact, it had started right around the time she’d heard her grandma
say, “bite your tongue” in response to someone’s thoughtless
comment. A year or two later, when the nuances of language began
making sense to her, she realized that the instruction was really
just a metaphor. However, by then it had already settled in as a
quirky habit, and it just never went away.
    Clovis furrowed her brow as she took a long
look at the black, velvet-covered cube resting on the desk in front
of her. It had been placed on the dark green blotter with a light
but purposeful thump. However, the deputy who had done the placing
had not yet spoken a single word. He was still standing silently on
the opposite side of her desk. She knew he wouldn’t be expecting a
stereotypical reaction, so she almost gave one just to trip him up;
but that really wasn’t her style at all. No, this definitely called
for one of her customary off-the-wall replies.
    She released her tongue, pursed her lips,
wrinkled her nose, and then looked upward to his face. As she
figured, he was staring back at her with an expectant look in his
eyes. She smiled and said, “Has it started snowing yet?”
    “No,” he answered without hesitation. “Not
yet, but it looks like it’s going to any minute.”
    He continued to stare at her, the anxious
expression intact.
    She couldn’t resist making him wait. “I just
heard on the radio that the weather service has issued a blizzard
warning. Looks like it’s going to be worse than they originally
thought.”
    “Come on, Clovis…” the deputy appealed.
    “Really. I’m not kidding,” she told him,
staring back with an earnest expression as she nodded her head with
enough vigor to tousle her layered shag of blond hair.
    He sighed. “You know what I mean.”
    She glanced down at the box on her desk.