Shakespeare's Christmas by Charlaine Harris Page A

was absolutely clean. He had not had a chance to fight back. The first blow had been a devastating one. The room was full of paper, files and claim forms and team physicals . . . most of it now spotted with blood.
    “He’s gone,” Varena whispered, not that there had been any doubt.
    “We need to get out of here,” I said, my voice loud and sharp in the little room with its awful sights and smells.
    And we stared at each other, our eyes widening with a sudden shared terror.
    I jerked my head toward the front door, and Varena scooted past me. She ran out while I waited to see if anything moved.
    I was the only live person in the office.
    I followed Varena out.
    She was already across the street at the State Farm Insurance office, pulling open the glass door and lifting the receiver off the phone on the receptionist’s desk. That stout and permed lady, wearing a bright red blouse and a Christmas corsage, was looking up at Varena as if she were speaking Navaho into the telephone. Within two minutes a police car pulled up in front of Dr. LeMay’s office, and a tall, thin black man got out.
    “You the one called in?” he asked.
    “My sister, in the office over there.” I nodded toward the plate-glass window, through which Varena could be seen sitting in the client’s chair, sobbing. The woman with the corsage was bending over her, offering Varena some tissues.
    “I’m Detective Brainerd,” the man said reassuringly, as though I’d indicated I’d thought he might be an imposter. “Did you go in the building here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you see Dr. LeMay and his nurse?”
    “Yes.”
    “And they’re dead.”
    “Yes.”
    “Is there anyone else in the building?”
    “No.”
    “So, is there a gas leak, or was there a fire smoldering, maybe smoke inhalation . . . ?”
    “They were both beaten.” My gaze skimmed the top of the old, old gum trees lining the street. “To death.”
    “Okay, now. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do here.”
    He was extremely nervous, and I didn’t blame him one bit.
    “You’re gonna stay right here, ma’am, while I go in there and take a look. Don’t go anywhere, now.”
    “No.”
    I waited by the police car, the cold gray day pinching my face and hands.
    This is a world of carnage and cruelty: I had momentarily put that aside in the false security of my hometown, in the optimistic atmosphere of my sister’s marriage.
    I began to detach from the scene, to float away, escaping this town, this building, these dead. It had been a long time since I’d retreated like this, gone to the remote place where I was not responsible for feeling.
    A young woman was standing in front of me in a paramedic’s uniform.
    “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you all right?” Her dark, anxious face peered into mine, her black hair stiff, smooth, and shoulder length under a cap with a caduceus patch on it.
    “Yes.”
    “Officer Brainerd said you had seen the bodies.”
    I nodded.
    “Are you . . . maybe you better come sit down over here, ma’am.”
    My eyes followed her pointing finger to the rear of the ambulance.
    “No, thanks,” I said politely. “My sister is over there in the State Farm office, though. She might need help.”
    “I think you may need a little help yourself, ma’am,” the woman said earnestly, loudly, as though I was retarded, as though I couldn’t tell the difference between clinical shock and just being numb.
    “No.” I said it as finally and definitely as I knew how. I waited. I heard her muttering to someone else, but she did leave me alone after that. Varena came to stand beside me. Her eyes were red, and her makeup was streaked.
    “Let’s go home,” she said.
    “The policeman told me to wait.”
    “Oh.”
    Just then the same policeman, Brainerd, came striding out of the doctor’s office. He’d gotten over his fit of nerves, and he’d seen the worst. He was focused, ready to go to work. He asked us a lot of questions, keeping us out in the cold for half