Tunnel of Night Read Online Free PDF

said gently. “We’ll get the bastard, but I have to do it my way.”
    She nodded and glanced over at me. “I’m just frazzled, Pop.”
    “Lane, the reason I said there was a trip in my future is that I’m convinced this shooter isn’t a local. After my head cleared, I was able to do some thinking. In the nearly six years I’ve lived at the lake, I have gotten to know Buck, Janet, Chuck Logan, a few of the localmerchants. That’s about it. With the exception of Buck and Janet, the most anyone knows about me is that I’m a retired shrink. People here respect each other’s privacy. This guy came with an agenda: kill Lucas Frank. I think that he would want to draw a minimum of attention to himself, get his job done, and get out of town. So …”
    She snapped a quick incredulous glance at me. “So, what? You’re going after him?”
    “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.
    “But, it might?”
    She drove into the yard, stopped the car, and switched off the ignition.
    “It might,” I said. “Now, would you mind opening the place? I want to go down and look at my lake.”
    When I had trouble getting out of the car, Lane came around and gave me a hand.
    “I’ll be right in,” I said.
    I walked down to the dock. A cold wind blew from the north end of Lake Albert. It was October, the skies wide and clear—too early for a frigid Canadian gale. Still, gusts ripped the surface of the lake into a froth of whitecaps.
    I gazed across at Janet Orr’s clapboard house, then north toward the ridge where my shooter had probably begun his trek to my house.
    Who are you
?
    The wind whipped through my hair. Whoever he was, he had almost gotten me.
    Death visits, but has to leave empty-handed
.
    “You can’t have been too happy about that,” I muttered.
    I moved away from my windblown shore and walkedacross the grass and into the house. Lane had turned down my bed, “I want to take a shower first,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been slimed.”
    “Where are the computer disks Ginger sends you?” she asked.
    Ginger, my former secretary in Boston, was an ardent admirer of VICAP who thought that I should have my own directory of deviants. She was still at it, sending periodic updates.
    “The packages are in by the computer. I don’t think I’ve ever opened them.”
    I could hear Lane fussing as I wandered into the bathroom. “Where’s my Ivory?” I shouted. “I don’t want stinky soap.”
    She couldn’t hear me over the Leonard Cohen she had cranked up on the stereo. I checked the wastebasket, found my soap, then trashed the flowery stuff. I couldn’t believe she had gotten to the soap so fast.
    I toweled off, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and curled onto my bed. I must have been asleep within seconds, and I doubt that I shifted position. The next thing I knew, there was a flock of chickadees doing their imitation of an orchestra of flutes and fifes in the morning sun outside my window.

I WALKED INTO POP’S ROOM DURING THE NIGHT . He was still, and peaceful, and sleeping what he had always called “the sleep of a child.”
    I stood in the darkness at the foot of his bed and wondered what my father’s dreams were like. I decided that he was so physically exhausted that he probably was not dreaming at all.
    In the morning, I got up with the birds, put the coffee on, and decided to take a crack at Pop’s computer database that I had installed on my laptop. Leonard Cohen was grumbling about the Chelsea Hotel when Pop wandered into the study.
    “How are you feeling?” I asked.
    “Better. I didn’t expect to sleep all night. Guess I just needed my own bed. Do I smell coffee?”
    “I made a pot. Sit down and I’ll get you some.”
    When I returned with the coffee, I watched as Pop prowled through his books. He yanked out a battered hardcover that looked like an antique. “What’s that?”
    “The Monster of Dusseldorf,
by Margaret Seaton Wagner. It was published in 1932. I don’t know