Bottomless Breath
By
RD Larson

'Were you in the neighborhood at the time of the crime?"

'Yeah, I was at my house. Over there.'He pointed, and then went on, "We all heard the screaming."

For a kid he looked old. I hardly believed he was only ten. I wrote his house number down.

I glanced at my partner. Leaning against the patrol car, Todd waved a hand at me, still on the phone to the squad commander. The other kid was in the car, crying. "So who all lived there?"

"A guy, his girlfriend and all their kids, including Abby." The kid blinked for a moment. "She came out and hung with me, you know. when she wasn't watching the little kids."

"So she?s the oldest?" I asked.

"Yeah, the guy's her Dad. She moved here with him from Texas." The boy shook his head. "She liked kids, she told me so."

"Maybe just not babies, huh?" I sucked a bottomless breath into my stomach. I wanted to blame somebody, anybody. I pulled my feelings in hard. "She take care of the kids much?"

"All the time, that's why she couldn't go to school or anything." The boy's game face slipped and a scared child looked at me with tears in his eyes.

Through the open door, two rescue people carried a board. A small covered mound lay in the middle.

"She wouldn't shake the baby to make it die. She liked kids; she told me so." He broke down crying and mumbled, "Abby's only thirteen."



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