Centralia by Mike Dellosso Page A

here to talk about the funeral.” Peter scanned the foyer area. Not much had changed since the last time he’d been there. Amy had a distinct style of interior decorating, kind of a mash-up of early-nineteenth-century Victorian with its intricate woodwork and colorful fabrics and twenty-first-century modern with its smooth surfaces, sharp angles, and brushed steel. Normally the two would go together like bow ties and tattoos, but she had a way of pulling it off. “Place still looks the same,” he said.
    “I like it. It works for me.”
    “Me too. I always did.” He glanced at her. “Can I use your computer?”
    “My computer? Is yours broken?”
    “No. Can I use yours?”
    He took a step toward the living room, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Hey, are you okay? What does my computer have to do with Karen and Lilly?”
    “Karen and Lilly are alive.”
    Her hand dropped to her side. Confusion contorted her face. “Come again? I saw the obituary. It was the talk of everyone at the school. A lot of them were at the funeral. They told me about it. Peter, are you all right? I mean, you’ve gone through an awful lot. If you’re having a hard time dealing with all of this, you can always talk   —”
    “Don’t analyze me, Amy,” he said. He pushed past her and entered the living room, a softly lit area furnished with a claw-foot sofa, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, and two ornately carved end tables each topped with a brass lamp. Amy kept her laptop on an antique secretary’s desk in the corner. “I already have a shrink and do enough talking. I need a computer. Is your laptop still in here?”How was he able to recall details of Amy Cantori’s house when he couldn’t even remember what happened yesterday?
    Leaving her in the foyer, he found the computer on the desk, opened it, and sat in the chair.
    But Amy was right there, shutting the laptop before he could get his hands on the keyboard. “Not till you tell me what’s going on.”
    Peter sighed and sat back. “Okay, I don’t think Karen and Lilly died in a car accident.”

    Lawrence Habit pulled his Lincoln into the driveway behind Peter Ryan’s Volkswagen, blocking any getaway. He cut the engine, removed his sunglasses, and examined his face in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t been particularly attractive even before the scar; he could admit that. He traced his finger along the length of the scar. It was smooth and numb and at various points sent electric zingers to remote locations on his face. It ached at the moment. It always did right before a kill.
    Lawrence smiled at himself, checked his teeth, then tossed the glasses on the passenger seat and exited the vehicle. He made no attempt at being covert. For one thing, he was too big to be sneaking around, with his broad shoulders, deep chest, and thick arms. And second, that just wasn’t the way he operated. He wasn’t arrogant about it; on the contrary, he never boasted about his success rate. His foster dad had taught him that a humble man was a respected man. And an arrogant man would eventually wind up a prematurely dead man. Lawrence considered that the fear of death caused some in his profession to sneak and slink around, hiding in shadows and using the element of surprise. But to him, death wasa nonnegotiable part of life, something everyone had to deal with regardless of location or situation or occupation, so he dealt with it. He dealt with the fear head-on, not out of arrogance but out of practicality.
    At the front door he didn’t bother to knock. He looked side to side and across the street, checking to make sure no neighbors were nosing around outside. The last thing he needed was for some little old lady out for a walk with her dog to witness him forcibly entering the home. She’d call the cops for sure, and those local schmucks were idiots. Fortunately the large maple and other assorted shrubs on the property provided seclusion and privacy the woman must have