Tell No One Read Online Free PDF

him to say more. He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Dr. Beck, you’re blood type B positive, isn’t that right?”
    I opened my mouth, but Linda put a protective hand on my knee. “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.
    “We found other things,” he said. “At the grave site.”
    “What other things?”
    “I’m sorry. That’s confidential.”
    “Then get the hell out,” I said.
    Lowell did not seem particularly surprised by my outburst. “I’m just trying to conduct—”
    “I said, get out.”
    Sheriff Lowell didn’t move. “I know that your wife’s murderer has already been brought to justice,” he said. “And I know it must hurt like hell to bring this all up again.”
    “Don’t patronize me,” I said.
    “That’s not my intent.”
    “Eight years ago you thought I killed her.”
    “That’s not true. You were her husband. In such cases, the odds of a family member’s involvement—”
    “Maybe if you didn’t waste time with that crap, you would have found her before—” I jerked back, feeling myself choking up. I turned away. Damn. Damn him. Linda reached for me, but I moved away.
    “My job was to explore every possibility,” he droned on. “We had the federal authorities helping us. Even your father-in-law and his brother were kept informed of all developments. We did everything we could.”
    I couldn’t bear to hear another word. “What the hell do you want here, Lowell?”
    He rose and hoisted his pants onto his gut. I think he wanted the height advantage. To intimidate or something. “A blood sample,” he said. “From you.”
    “Why?”
    “When your wife was abducted, you were assaulted.”
    “So?”
    “You were hit with a blunt instrument.”
    “You know all this.”
    “Yes,” Lowell said. He gave his nose another wipe,tucked the hanky away, and started pacing. “When we found the bodies, we also found a baseball bat.”
    The pain in my head started throbbing again. “A bat?”
    Lowell nodded. “Buried in the ground with the bodies. There was a wooden bat.”
    Linda said, “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with my brother?”
    “We found dried blood on it. We’ve typed it as B positive.” He tilted his head toward me. “Your blood type, Dr. Beck.”
    We went over it again. The tree-carving anniversary, the swim in the lake, the sound of the car door, my pitifully frantic swim to shore.
    “You remember falling back in the lake?” Lowell asked me.
    “Yes.”
    “And you heard your wife scream?”
    “Yes.”
    “And then you passed out? In the water?”
    I nodded.
    “How deep would you say the water was? Where you fell in, I mean?”
    “Didn’t you check this eight years ago?” I asked.
    “Bear with me, Dr. Beck.”
    “I don’t know. Deep.”
    “Over-your-head deep?”
    “Yes.”
    “Right, okay. Then what do you remember?”
    “The hospital,” I said.
    “Nothing between the time you hit the water and the time you woke up at the hospital?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You don’t remember getting out of the water? You don’t remember making your way to the cabin or calling for an ambulance? You did all that, you know. We found you on the floor of the cabin. The phone was still off the hook.”
    “I know, but I don’t remember.”
    Linda spoke up. “Do you think these two men are more victims of”—she hesitated—“KillRoy?”
    She said it in a hush. KillRoy. Just uttering his name chilled the room.
    Lowell coughed into his fist. “We’re not sure, ma’am. KillRoy’s only known victims are women. He never hid a body before—at least, none that we know about. And the two men’s skin had rotted so we can’t tell if they’d been branded.”
    Branded.
I felt my head spin. I closed my eyes and tried not to hear any more.

3
    I rushed to my office early the next morning, arriving two hours before my first scheduled patient. I flipped on the computer, found the strange email, clicked the hyperlink.