The Woman Read Online Free PDF

that the two men found dead in the alley had been the men who had accosted her. Together they would decide whether or not Linda should confess it all to Police Chief Ben McIlhenny.
    The number three bus stopped in front of Cynthia’s condo building. And Linda could catch the number three at the park two blocks from her own home. There was a light rain, but no real wind. She would walk the two blocks.
    Her decisiveness excited her. She felt alive. She began to dress, and then realized she had inadvertently gone to the closet in the spare bedroom in which she kept the clothes she wore when going bar hopping.
    She had stopped dressing to attract the attention of men seven years ago, following her crushing divorce which had been final on her thirty-second birthday. A divorce she had gradually come to think of as her finest birthday present ever. She still wore a size eight, but she had purposefully begun wearing plain pants or dresses and skirts below the knee, and discontinued low-cut tops and enhancing undergarments. Since the change she got no more whistles. No grunts. No lusty comments. She missed the bawdy attention, but continued to resist her urges to bait the boys.
    As Linda approached the bus stop, she saw the man from yesterday. His chin cleft appeared darker than when she had seen him across from O’Malley’s. Perhaps he had not shaven this morning. He stood in the light rain far enough away that the other person waiting for the bus paid him no mind, but she knew he was the same man.
    Today, he wore a dark turtleneck sweater, black she thought, inside a dark peacoat. The collar turned up. His hands jammed into the pockets. The image made Linda think of Captain Ahab, stoic and vigilant on the foredeck, impervious to the crashing waves and salt spray. His eyes fixed on the horizon, searching for any sign which might point the direction in his relentless pursuit of the great white whale. She had read Moby Dick , and many other seafaring adventure stories, old classics such as Mutiny on the Bounty and newer classics including The Hunt for Red October . Read them sitting on her deck looking out toward the ocean, imagining the stories playing out before her.
    Captain Ahab’s presence near her bus stop was completely illogical. Yet there he stood without provocation or intimidation. He was watching Linda. She had no doubt she was his reason for being there. Why? Why would she attract the interest of such a man?
    Linda knew almost nothing about Cynthia’s place of employment. With some prodding, Cynthia had once shared that she was the manager and had a staff of three, and that they analyzed things, stuff too boring to discuss. Her tone had said, “Let’s not talk about my work.” After that they never did.
    This did nothing to lessen Linda’s wild suspicions about SMITH & CO., suspicions she had repeatedly dismissed as the over active imagination of an avid reader. But the last twenty-four hours or so had not been the product of her imagination. She really had been attacked. A mysterious man had really saved her. The two men in the alley were really dead. Cynthia had really disappeared. A mysterious stranger had really watched Cynthia’s place of employment, possibly the same man who had saved her. That mysterious stranger had really reappeared at her bus stop. Common sense told Linda these events could not be related, but her built-in warning system screamed the hell with common sense. All of this is somehow connected to me.
    The two women met every Friday evening, usually at Cynthia’s home to play cribbage. Linda knew that Cynthia had begun to think of her as a daughter, and she liked that feeling. The regular Friday routine included taking an overnight bag, staying the night at Cynthia’s, and going home on the Saturday bus, then taking a long run on the beach. Before her divorce Linda had run suburban streets with her husband, their dream being to one day live where they could run on the beach. Now she ran on