A Wrongful Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

computer on that table when I got her inside. I tossed my slicker and my jacket down on that table. No computer. No printer."
    Connors had a lot more questions after that, until finally she said, "I've told you everything I can. I didn't see a car. I didn't look for one. I wouldn't have driven out for help anyway because I had no idea where that road would take me. I didn't see a purse, and again, I wasn't looking for one. I was gone at least an hour, more likely an hour and a half, and what she did in that time, I have no idea. I intend to leave now."
    Norris stood up. "I'll take her back to the cabin. Be at the house, you have anything else to ask." He was not asking permission to leave any more than she was. He pulled on his poncho, and she put on her jacket and slung the ruined rain slicker over her shoulders, and they left the two deputies in the cabin.
    They were both as silent driving back as they had been coming in, until they neared his house. "Cougar!" he said in disgust. "You get in your car and drive on down and I'll follow along and have a look around. Won't nobody get in here tonight without I know it, Ms. Holloway, and won't nobody be coming in by the beach, not on a night like this. Tomorrow, you want to move in closer to the house, number two's empty and ready."
    "Thanks," she said. "I'll think about it." But she knew what she would be doing the next day: moving on. Not quite ready to go home yet, no longer wanting the kind of solitude her isolated cabin here offered, it was time to move on.
    Chapter 4
    The first time Barbara had come to Astoria, she had been ten, and thought this was the end of the world. With the broad Columbia River its northern boundary, and the limit-less Pacific Ocean its western, the town had seemed caught in a time warp — quiet, with picture-book Victorian houses with widows' walks on bluffs, a fishing fleet at old piers or docks, no one in a rush. It might have been unchanged for a hundred years. That week when she got there after an unhurried drive up the coast, she had run out of state. End of the line. Also, she had forgotten that the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebration was taking place and would be ongoing for months.
    Everywhere there were new boutiques, new restaurants, fast-food chains and the town was almost garish with Christmas decorations ablaze with lights. There was even a new long pier. Everyone in town evidently anticipated a rush of tourists to rival the fur rush of the distant past.
    Even the wide smooth beach was overrun, she thought with irritation as she walked. A dozen other people were out walking, most of them probably looking for a sunken boat that appeared only at the lowest neap tides, perhaps twice a year.
    It wasn't raining, as it had been all along the coast until the day before, but a sharp, steady wind was blowing in and more rain was predicted for the weekend. She paid little attention to the other walkers, and less to the wind, and instead thought of her immediate problem. She had realized that morning, watching the news on television, that she had been gone for six weeks, and that she couldn't keep endlessly wandering, or she would go broke. She might have to get a real job, she had added mockingly. She even had a job offer. In San Francisco she had received an e-mail from an old acquaintance at Reed College. He had called the office, had written her a real letter and e-mail was a last resort, he had said. They wanted her to teach a class for the spring term starting in January, a class in criminal law. The idea was ludicrous, she had thought then. For her to teach idealistic students, soon-to-be attorneys, anything to do with the law had to be a joke.
    She had not even decided yet if she would resume her law practice, she thought, scowling. She fingered the note in her pocket. It was getting frayed. Dr. Sanger's question kept repeating in her head — What are you afraid of? She walked faster.
    As she approached the parking lot and her car,