A Wrongful Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

bother looking for a car, but turned to go back down the trail to a place where she could cross the small creek, go up the other side to her cabin, take her own car to the Norris house. He would know what to do.
    Sam Norris was in his early seventies, wiry and so weathered that his face looked like bark. The day she had met him he had been wearing a wide-brimmed gaucho hat, complete with a chin strap, and he was wearing it when she found him hammering in one of the cabins near his house. When she told him a woman from a cabin across the creek had been injured and needed a doctor, he glanced at the forest between his cabins and the isolated one across the way. He nodded, and in what seemed slow motion, he walked across the narrow road to his own house, entered and returned with a metal box.
    "First aid, "he said, motioning toward a truck. "Get in, we'll go see to her. Cora will call the sheriff."
    Neither spoke as he drove to the highway, about half a mile up a narrow winding road, then headed south. Barbara had spotted his cabins for rent by the week or month just six days earlier, after leaving San Francisco. Just what she needed, she had decided, and without further thought had turned in and rented a cabin for a week. And it would have been perfect if that other woman and her child had not appeared on the scene.
    "Old man Diedricks' place," Norris said, breaking the silence. "Only cabin up this way."
    He turned onto a road even narrower and twistier than the one to his house, unpaved, more like a forest service road than a real one. The trees crowded closer than they did on his road. The rain was coming down harder and his headlights were dim, his windshield fogged. He wiped it from time to time with his gloved hand, making it worse, leaving streaks. They came upon the cabin without warning, after a sharp turn in the road there it was.
    There were no lights in the windows, no sign of life. Barbara was nearly holding her breath, fearful that the woman had died waiting for help. She jumped from the truck and ran to the front stoop, pushed the door open and entered. The room was empty, a soggy blanket on the floor by the sofa. Norris came right behind her and flicked on a light; he pushed past Barbara and went to the bedroom.
    They were gone. The cabin felt empty, without a sound except for her boots and those of Sam Norris on the wood floor. He looked in the kitchen and she glanced inside the bathroom, then the one other room, but they were gone.
    "Guess she wasn't hurt all that much," Norris said. He pulled out a cell phone and called his wife. "Tell Curtis we don't need a doc after all, "he said and listened a minute, then said, "Right," and broke the connection without further conversation. "Deputy sheriff's on his way. I'll have a look outside." He nodded to Barbara and walked out.
    Without touching a thing, she went through the rooms. The bedroom had a double bed, bedding in disarray, an open drawer on a chest of drawers, two miniature cars on the floor. The bloody washcloth was in the sink in the bathroom, a soiled towel on the edge of the bathtub. In the kitchen there were signs of a hasty exit, the refrigerator door not closed all the way, a half-empty carton of milk and a yogurt container inside, a skillet on the stove with a bit of egg sticking to it. The remaining room had a long table with several straight chairs and a floor lamp. Back in the living room she saw that the low couch was a futon, stained with blood and discolored where it was still wet. There was a wood-burning stove, overheating the cabin now, a wrought-iron wood holder with several split logs, two upholstered chairs and a television, a couple of end tables and another small table, with another straight chair. A wastebasket close to it held a used printer cartridge, and there was a computer cable on the floor, still plugged into an outlet.
    Norris returned and leaned a split log against the wall near the door. He did not take off his hat, but he