Free Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) by Robert Gregory Browne, Edward Fallon Page A

Carolina drawl. “Well now, that was mighty quick. You get our boy to confess?”
    Kate huffed. “Getting him to do much of anything is a minor miracle.”
    “Don’t I know it. Weston’s got a mind of his own. So what can I do for you this time?”
    “I need to know something about the condition of the Weston family bodies. Something that wasn’t mentioned in the news accounts.”
    “Something Weston told you?”
    “No, but the coincidences are piling up and I don’t like it.”
    “Well don’t keep me in suspense.”
    “The victims tongues,” she said. “Did Anna Weston and her daughters have their tongues cut out?”
    There was a long silence. Too long.
    “Mr. Dillman?”
    “Are you saying that your victims had their tongues cut out?”
    “No. They were brutalized but not like that. I don’t think there’s any connection between the two cases at all, other than Weston’s presence at my crime scene.”
    “Then I don’t understand. If there’s no connection and Weston didn’t say anything, where are you getting this from?”
    “You haven’t answered my question.”
    He was silent again. Then he said, “The answer is yes. They all had their tongues cut out with what our forensics people believe was a three-quarter-inch bimetal bandsaw blade—the kind you find in saw mills the world over.” He paused. “Weston owned a saw mill. One of the biggest in Stokes County.”
    Kate felt a chill run through her. “Did you find the blade?”
    “Not a sign of it anywhere. But we withheld all these details from the press, redacted it from the forensic files. And since Weston claimed to have found the bodies, it seemed reasonable that he might know about the tongue cutting, but we made a point of never mentioning the specific weapon involved, in hopes he’d slip up in one of the interviews. He never did.”
    “He doesn’t strike me as a guy who slips up very often.”
    “All it takes is once,” Dillman said. “Are you sure there’s no connection between these two crimes?”
    “I’m sure. We already have a person of interest. It may be a dead end, but my gut tells me it isn’t.”
    “Then I still don’t understand. How do you know about the tongues?”
    Kate crossed to her desk. “Because of a case up in Tacoma three months ago you might not have heard about if you weren’t watching the bulletins. I don’t know if it involves bandsaw blades, but it’s my understanding from an inside source that the victims also had their tongues removed.”
    She opened Weston’s file, took out the sketch book, and began flipping through the pages, studying the drawings.
    Damn, they were good.
    “Now that is interesting,” Dillman said. “But I’m still a little confused. If your case isn’t connected, what on earth compelled you to ask about our victims’ tongues?”
    Kate spotted a drawing that grabbed her attention and stopped on the page. “You remember the boy I mentioned? The blind one, who’s traveling with him?”
    “Oh, yes I do. Weston never struck me as a kiddie diddler, but I suppose a man who’s capable of murdering his entire family is capable of just about anything.”
    “Well, my guy from CPS tells me the boy’s also had his tongue cut out.”
    Kate was greeted with the longest silence yet, and she had a feeling the cool, unflappable man she’d been dealing with up until now had just had his foundation rocked. She looked down at the drawing in front of her and saw a detailed sketch of a wooden post with a sign that read WELCOME TO TACOMA .
    “What’s strange,” she went on, “is that it looks as if the boy was hurt several years before the Weston murders. So I can’t quite figure out how he fits in.”
    When Dillman found his voice, he said, “I can see why you’re concerned about coincidences. It’s obvious I’ve got a bit of work ahead of me.”
    She studied the sketch. “We both do.”
    “I take it you haven’t identified this boy?”
    “Not yet. But I’m having him