Six, Seven
The call came in at 5:52 in the morning, which Dale Ramirez would remember later as one of those small, insignificant facts that lodge themselves in the mind and refuse to leave, the way a splinter works itself deeper the more you try to ignore it. Dispatch had labeled it a welfare check. Neighbor said Agnes Whitfield hadn't brought her paper in for two days, and her porch light had burned all night, both mornings, which anyone in Millbrook Falls could tell you wasn't like her at all. Agnes was a woman of habits. Rigid, comforting habits. She collected her newspaper at six-fifteen sharp, in her green cardigan, rain or shine, and she would wave to whoever happened to be out on Maple Street, whether she recognized them or not.
Dale pulled his cruiser up to the curb outside her little Victorian with its peeling gingerbread trim, cut the engine, and sat for a moment listening to the tick of cooling metal and the birds starting their racket in the maples that gave the street its name. The sky had that thin, milky quality it got before the sun fully committed to the day, gray shading into rose at the edges. Ordinary. Everything about the morning was ordinary, and that was precisely…
