Phantoms Read Online Free PDF Page B

challenge. But right now, her first responsibility was to Lisa and to herself. Perhaps the wisest thing to do was to get the deputy, Paul Henderson, return here with him, and then search the rest of the house.
    Although she wanted to believe it was only her imagination, she still sensed inquisitive eyes; someone watching . . . waiting.
    “Let’s go,” she said to Lisa. “Come on.”
    Clearly relieved, the girl hurried ahead, leading the way through the dining room and living room to the front door.
    Outside, night had fallen. The air was cooler than it had been at dusk, and soon it would get downright cold—forty-five or forty degrees, maybe even a bit colder—a reminder that autumn’s tenancy in the Sierras was always brief and that winter was eager to move in and take up residency.
    Along Skyline Road, the streetlamps had come on automatically with the night’s descent. In several store windows, after-hours lights also had come on, activated by light-sensing diodes that had responded to the darkening world outside.
    On the sidewalk in front of the Santinis’ house, Jenny and Lisa stopped, struck by the sight below them.
    Shelving down the mountainside, its peaked and gabled roofs thrusting into the night sky, the town was even more beautiful now than it had been at twilight. A few chimneys issued ghostly plumes of wood smoke. Some windows glowed with light from within, but most, like dark mirrors, cast back the beams of the streetlamps. The mild wind made the trees sway gently, in a lullaby rhythm, and the resultant susurration was like the soft sighs and dreamy murmurs of a thousand peacefully slumbering children.
    However, it wasn’t just the beauty that was arresting. The perfect stillness, the silence— that was what made Jenny pause. On their arrival, she had found it strange. Now she found it ominous.
    “The sheriff’s substation is on the main street,” she told Lisa. “Just two and a half blocks from here.”
    They hurried into the unbeating heart of the town.

5
    Three Bullets
    A single fluorescent lamp shone in the gloom of the town jail, but the flexible neck of it was bent sharply, focusing the light on the top of a desk, revealing little else of the big main room. An open magazine lay on the desk blotter, directly in the bar of hard, white light. Otherwise, the place was dark except for the pale luminescence that filtered through the mullioned windows from the streetlights.
    Jenny opened the door and stepped inside, and Lisa followed close behind her.
    “Hello? Paul? Are you here?”
    She located a wall switch, snapped on the overhead lights—and physically recoiled when she saw what was on the floor in front of her.
    Paul Henderson. Dark, bruised flesh. Swollen. Dead.
    “Oh, Jesus!” Lisa said, quickly turning away. She stumbled to the open door, leaned against the jamb, and sucked in great shuddering breaths of the cool night air.
    With considerable effort, Jenny quelled the primal fear that began to rise within her, and she went to Lisa. Putting a hand on the girl’s slender shoulder, she said, “Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?”
    Lisa seemed to be trying hard not to gag. Finally she shook her head. “No. I w-won’t be sick. I’ll be all right. L-let’s get out of here.”
    “In a minute,” Jenny said. “First I want to take a look at the body.”
    “You can’t want to look at that.”
    “You’re right. I don’t want to, but maybe I can get some idea what we’re up against. You can wait here in the doorway.”
    The girl sighed with resignation.
    Jenny went to the corpse that was sprawled on the floor, knelt beside it.
    Paul Henderson was in the same condition as Hilda Beck. Every visible inch of the deputy’s flesh was bruised. The body was swollen: a puffy, distorted face; the neck almost as large as the head; fingers that resembled knotted links of sausage; a distended abdomen. Yet Jenny couldn’t detect even the vaguest odor of decomposition.
    Unseeing eyes