Free The Drowner by John D. MacDonald

secret was?”
    “Maybe it will be a case of finding out what it wasn’t. Like a crossword puzzle. Once you get one or two letters of the key word, the number of possibilities are reduced.”
    “She was killed, Paul,” Barbara said in a strange tone. “She came down here and they killed her.” The tears came with no warning. She buried her face in her hands. She went to the rest room. She was gone ten minutes. She came back and slid into the booth opposite him and said, “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “Can you give me something to do tomorrow? I’ll be better if I have something to do.”
    “I’ll find something.”
    “Please don’t patronize me.”
    “I’ll find something. I haven’t gone far enough yet myself.”
    After he was in bed he read the selected letters of Lucille to her sister. One was exceptionally long:
    “In writing this way about Sam to you, Barb, I guess I’m sort of explaining things to myself. From your last letter I know you have been doing a lot of reading between the lines, and I guess it is time to tell you. It is funny, but I would not want to tell you all this if it had not been—excuse me, dear—for you and Roger. And you did have the guts to get out of it. It had no future and maybe this doesn’t have any either, but I am living too intensely in the present to have much thought of the future. I guess it was that way with Roger for a time. Maybe everybody thinks their own infatuation is unique, and maybe in some funny way it is always alike for everyone. But how can one admit that?
    “I have an awful time keeping myself from getting too elfin in this letter. I keep wanting to capitalize things and underline things and write Ha Ha here and there like some schoolgirl. I will put capitals on one thing. I am a Fallen Woman, I guess. Shameless. It is easy to say I was lonely. And I was vulnerable. But it does not to any extent explain why it should have been Sam—and continues to be Sam.
    “I told you his age and his background and so on in other letters, but I didn’t describe him for you. He is almost six inches over six feet tall, and he has a long sallow homely face and eyes so pale they have hardly any color at all. He has dark stringy hair. He is a great long gnarled gristly slab of a man, all knuckles and angles, but he has a curious kind of style. Something in the way he moves, the way he walks and dresses and gets in and out of chairs. He looks cruel and forceful, and no one has ever made me feel so incredibly girlish.
    “He did not make any passes, Barb. He just is not that sort of man. He was kind to me, and we had fun. And I really don’t think anyone… that is to say either one of us, thought it would become anything else. But he was so terribly depressed about a tax thing, and he called me up long distance and he sounded weary and depressed and sick at heart and he asked me to come to him. Just like that! It was absurd. I hung up on him. What did he think I was? Where did he get all that confidence? And twelve hours later while I was packing my smallest suitcase and driving out to catch the little airplane to Jacksonville, I was still telling myself it was ridiculous. I certainly didn’t owe him anything like that. How could he expect me to come on the run?
    “I was absolutely terrified, believe me. He is such a powerful animal, and there is such an aura of force and cruelty, I felt as if I had been hypnotized into becoming some sort of sacrificial creature. But he was so gentle! And really not confident at all. And we were funny and shy. Like honeymoon kids somehow, which was the last thing I expected. But now I can hardly remember what it was like then, dear. Because it has become so much. If I had any lingering doubts about leaving Kelsey, they are gone now. I do not want to be vulgar in this letter, but Kelsey made love as if he were trying to get a berth on the Olympic team. I was an obedient bit of athletic equipment, alert to all the clues and