The Dying Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

clipboard. She ran out of gas. She walked off, or someone stopped. Then what?
    He scratched his chin.
    They had zero so far, nothing to point them in any direction. Time was always a factor. Soon he’d start a shoulder-to-shoulder grid. And he would call in divers to check the Nooksack River.
    He looked under Karen Harding’s license and the folded copy of the Seattle Mirror. That kid, Jason Wade, had done all right on the story. Down the road, a satellite news truck from Bellingham was lumbering to the scene. More press were arriving.
    Stralla sighed. During his time on the job he’d seen it all.
    Scams. Cons. Insurance frauds. People who couldn’t make car payments. Pissed-off spouses, adults who had the right to lawfully vanish. Let people think they disappeared into Canada, if they chose.
    He was haunted by the case of a troubled housewife who’d vanished a few years ago under similar circumstances. He had leaned so hard on a paroled convict he believed had killed her that it nearly drove the man to suicide. Then the housewife surfaced in Toronto. Turned out she’d staged her disappearance to cover for an affair. The case shook Stralla to his core. Angry at himself, he vowed never to repeat his mistakes. Until they had something concrete, Karen Harding was a person missing under suspicious circumstances.
    A large group of people had gathered at the perimeter. Karen Harding’s college friends, including some teachers. They’d volunteered to help search the scene. The newspeople were interviewing them, taking pictures. He went back to his clipboard and reviewed his reports.
    He wanted to talk to Luke Terrell, Karen’s boyfriend, and Marlene Clark, her sister. Luke had told Tolba that Karen was on her way to visit her sister in Vancouver, B.C., but her sister said it was news to her.
    Something didn’t sit right on that point.
    Stralla needed to know more about Karen’s state of mind when she left. Was she emotionally or physically impaired? Taking medication? Cal was right. It was strange that she’d left her keys in the car.
    Chilling.
    But Stralla kept that to himself, hoping for a mundane explanation as he scanned the rolling dark forests and the Cascade Mountains. Too much of this vast beautiful region was stained with blood. The Green River Killer, the Spokane Serial Killer, and the grisly cases up in British Columbia all jutted from its history like headstones.
    Monsters loved to hunt here.

10
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    J ason’s bedroom glowed with light dimmed through the tilted slats of the venetian blinds. He was trying to figure out what had awakened him when his phone rang again and he grabbed it.
    “Hey, it’s Astrid Grant. Oops, I woke you, didn’t I?”
    Jason ran a hand through his hair, guessing she was calling on a cell phone from a car. “What is it?”
    “Good story today,” she said. “Have you got anything more on it?”
    “Why?”
    “I’m on my way to the scene where they found her car and I don’t know how to do these police stories. Can you help me out, Jason, please?”
    And help myself out of a job. Right.
    Among the interns, Astrid Grant was the best feature writer. She’d already landed several big stories in the paper. All of them came together with the help of another reporter. Astrid was a user and Jason was not going to be used.
    “Sorry, I put everything I had into my little hit.”
    It was true.
    “Well, whatever,” she said. “This whole Harding thing seems odd to me. No sign of a murder. It’s a story of an abandoned car. For all we know, she climbed into the cab of some trucker stud for a ride to Las Vegas.”
    Wade rolled his eyes. “That’s right, Astrid.”
    In the shower, Jason grappled with the feeling he was being pushed off his story. He couldn’t let that happen. After dressing, he seized two bananas and two apples for breakfast in his Falcon on his way to the Mirror and was near the door when his apartment phone rang.
    “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
    The clang