Twilight Is Not Good for Maidens Read Online Free PDF Page A

back to the scene now, Paul. The others should be arriving shortly.” Where were those reinforcements? The girl needed to return to normal life as soon as possible.
    “Bucky will keep you company. You got no worries with him around. Likes his belly scratched,” he continued without emerging. Clinks and clanks sounded. A spoon perhaps.
    Maddie glanced at the oversized hound drooling on his dog bed. “I’ll … be okay.”
    “They’ll take you to the General for precautions. Then to West Shore to sign a statement. That’s the closest branch for Major Crimes.”
    “ Major Crimes, but I’m fine. Why do I —”
    Holly levelled eyes at her, softening the effect as much as she could. “That’s just terminology to distinguish it from traffic offences and other minor charges. On the outside chance that this guy is going to try this again, we want to make sure we have all the information to stop him. Besides, it’s one of our most important jobs to be sure that you’re checked out by experts. We are responsible, even though you may feel okay. And it should be considered a sexual assault.”
    Paul finally returned to present Holly with the coffee, hardly warm, but she had appreciated his leaving them alone. She took a few grateful gulps, raising her mug to him. “That was perfect.” She put it onto the table for later. Cold coffee was a way of life for an officer. Had he been listening to their conversation? What had taken him so long?
    “It was lucky you heard her,” Holly said as they made their way back down the path. She still had an unbidden image of him skulking around the campground. He seemed almost too friendly. But he’d been around for years, hadn’t he? Her colleague Ann might know. She’d worked at the detachment before Holly arrived.
    Paul yawned, revealing a few gaps in his front teeth. The breath that emerged was no pansy patch. “Couldn’t sleep myself last night. My old mom’s not well, and she lives in Edmonton. Ninety this year. I’ve taken to calling her nearly every night just to make sure. Then I take a walk to calm down. I like routines. When I was a lad, I was in the navy for a stretch.”
    “Sorry to hear about your mom,” Holly said. Aging parents were a heavy responsibility. Still, she wished her mother had seen her three score and ten. Bonnie Martin would be forever in her late-forties, frozen in her prime.
    “Sound carries in weird ways,” he said. “I go around the inner loop road. Sort of make the rounds. That’s when I heard the struggle.”
    “The timing was a miracle,” Holly said. “You just might have stopped a rape. Or worse.”
    A few minutes later they reached the campsites as a dim light began breaking at the Victoria end of the strait. The east was beyond several hills and blocked by trees. She wanted to talk to him alone to get his impressions.
    “Officer, ma’am,” he said. “I have a funny question.”
    “What is it, Paul?” She had no idea what was coming.
    “Do you think the person who did this is still here now? Thinking on it hard as I can, I didn’t hear any car or truck leave the campground. And we’re miles from anything.” He covered his nose with his palm and then gave an earth-shaking sneeze. “Sorry. Can’t figure it at all.”
    “They are only a few choices. By foot, car, bike, motorcycle. Let’s just say that this is not the usual venue for an assault in the dark.”
    “Venue?” He puzzled. “Oh, cop talk.”
    Securing the scene with one person or even five was a joke. Anyone could beat it through the surrounding woods. What were they supposed to do, put up roadblocks and stop traffic? People in the boonies “knew” the road and drove like the proverbial bat. Erecting something unexpected was asking for an accident, especially with all the curves and hills. She could imagine one of the hundred timber trucks that passed weekly losing its load and crushing cars.
    Maddie had said that she had arrived alone and seen very few