Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his wife left him and he lost his job and didn’t want to live anymore. But he forgot to leave a note. So he wanted me to deliver a message to his wife.”
    The sheriff down ed some more beer. Giovanni looked at Rosen, who wasn’t even blinking. He seemed much more interested in this than Giovanni thought he would be. Most grizzled federal agents abandoned all superstition, including religion. The things they saw tended to preclude, in their minds, an all-loving, merciful God, or the supernatural.
    “She told me,” the sheriff continued, “that the wife needed to look in a locker he’d rented at the gym for a month. Locker 114. That the locker was in the women’s locker room under her name. I didn’t think anything of it, and I didn’t even deliver the message. I thought it was ridiculous.” He drifted off a moment. “There was a news report a little bit after that, maybe five weeks. The gym had a policy to stick everything from abandoned lockers in the lost and found. When they emptied locker 114, they found a gym bag full of money with a, like, Post-it note. It just said, ‘I’m sorry, Grace.’ Grace was the wife’s name. The name the locker was under.” He shook his head. “Was a hundred grand in there. Grace got it eventually, with a call from me. Damnedest thing I ever seen… Until I took her to see one of Nate’s bodies.”

7
     
     
     
     
    It was evening by the time Sarah exhausted herself on the treadmill. A straight hour and a half of jogging. The muscles in her legs were weak, like Jell-O. Each step was an exercise in concentration so she wouldn’t just collapse on the gym floor.
    When she was done, she got on the exercise bike and cooled off. The cool-off was an important step, like a gateway back into the real world. She needed that time to brace herself.
    The gym showers were strong , and the water bounced off her flesh as it massaged her aching muscles. She closed her eyes and pretended she was sitting under a waterfall as the warm water rushed over her, calming and soothing her. No one else around. Just her and nature.
    When she was through, she changed into jeans and a tight black T-shirt. As she was changing, she heard two women speaking close to her. They were discussing one of their husbands and whether he had a wandering eye. Without asking for it, an image flooded her mind. A man with dark hair and dimples, a tattoo of a sun with rays coming off of it on his left shoulder. He removed his wedding ring before getting into a bed with a woman who was nude.
    Sarah finished quickly and left the locker room, trying to focus on something, anything, else. The woman deserved to know, but everyone deserved to know the secrets all the people in their life kept from them. And Sarah, without wishing it, knew them. She wouldn’t be able to explain them to everyone. That’s what she told herself when that twinge of guilt stung her, reminding her that she could help the woman with a sentence. But then again, no one ever believed her anyway. They just believed what they wanted to believe.
    Sarah stopped just outside the locker room. She stood still for a long time, though she wasn’t sure how long. Turning around, she saw the two women stepping out, talking about something else.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “Your husband has a tattoo of a sun on his shoulder, doesn’t he?”
    The woman looked at her friend and then back to Sarah. “Yeah? How did you know that?”
    “He’s cheating on you with a blond woman. Blond and dark eyes. It’s happening in hotel rooms, so you can probably see it on his credit card statements.”
    Without waiting for a response, Sarah immediately turned and marched away. The woman said something behind her , but Sarah didn’t hear it. She just quickened her pace and was out of the gym before the women could catch up to her.
    Sarah jumped into her car and sped out of the parking lot. Her work wasn’t too far from here , and she thought she would get there early and