The Nicholas Linnear Novels Read Online Free PDF Page A

beyond a courtyard parking lot, the Village Police.
    Halfway there, he ran into Nicholas, who was just coming out of the automated doors to the supermarket loaded down with groceries.
    “Hello, Nick.”
    “Hey, Doc. How are you?”
    “Fine. Fine. Just on my way to see Ray Florum.” They had met, as most residents of West Bay Bridge did eventually, along this same Main Street, introduced by mutual acquaintances. It was difficult here, even for the most devoutly reclusive, not to make friends even if they were only of the “Howdy” variety. “Just got back from Hauppauge.”
    “That body they found yesterday?”
    “Yeah.” Doc Deerforth turned his head quickly, spat out a bit of food that had lodged itself between his teeth. He was glad of this diversion. He felt a genuine fear of confronting Florum with what he had. Besides, he liked Nicholas. “Hey, you might’ve known him. Didn’t live too far from you along Dune Road.”
    Nicholas smiled thinly. “Not very likely—”
    “Braughm’s his name. Barry Braughm.”
    Nicholas felt a queer sense of vertigo for just a moment and he thought of Justine’s words on the beach the day she had run into him. You know how incestuous this place is. She couldn’t know how right she was.
    “Yes,” Nicholas said slowly. “I knew him. When I was in advertising, we worked together at the same agency.”
    “Say, I’m sorry, Nick. Did you know him well?”
    Nicholas thought about that for a time. Braughm had had a brilliantly analytical mind. He knew the public perhaps better than anyone at the agency. What a shock to find him suddenly gone. “Well enough,” he said, thoughtfully.
    Swinging her around. Slow-dancing into the night, the screen door bang open, the record player sending the music rolling in languorous ribbons, drowning the tide. Moving in stereo.
    Her arms had trembled when he had first taken them, guiding her out onto the porch. But it was the right thing to do. The perfect thing. She loved to dance, first off. And it was perfectly acceptable for him to hold her this way, even though, quite clearly, rock was sex and dancing was, subliminally, the same thing. What matter? She would dance.
She shadows on the floor, shadows on the wall
    Moving in a room with no light
    In giving herself up to the rhythms she was sensual, a kind of glossy exoskeleton dissolving at her feet, unearthing an ardor rich with substantive and elemental fury.
I speak to her in tongues, I speak to her in runes
    As if with second sight
    It was as if the music had freed her somehow of her chains, of her wounds— inhibitions was a word with far too few ramifications to serve the situation—of her fear, not of him, not of any man, but of herself.
She says: Go, don’t go. She says: Go, don’t go…
    With her shoulder touching his and the music filling another room, she said, “I grew up reading. At first it was anything I could get my hands on. While my sister, always so good with people, was out on dates, I would be gulping down one book or another. Curiously, that didn’t last long. I mean, I kept on reading but I quickly became quite discriminating in what I read.” She laughed, a rich happy sound that surprised him in its wholeheartedness. “Oh, I had my phases, yes indeed! The Terhune dog books and then Howard Pyle—I adored his Robin Hood. One day, when I was about sixteen, I discovered de Sade. It was rather forbidden reading then and therefore exciting. But beyond that, I was struck by much of his writing. And then I had this fantasy that that was the reason my parents had named me Justine. However, when I was older and asked my mother about it, she said, ‘Well, you know, it was just a name that your father and I liked.’ It must have appealed to her Continental leanings, I imagine; she was French, you see. But then, oh how I wished that I had never asked her! My fantasy was so much better than the reality of it. Well, what can you expect? They were both banal.”
    “Was