Free Cold Truth by Mariah Stewart Page B

is following you, report it.”
    “So, in other words, stick to the basic safety precautions . . .”
    Regan tapped a finger on the tabletop, then rose and left the room as the interview concluded. She went down the hall to her father’s office and turned on the overhead light. Something that had just been said had caused a little bell to go off in her head.
    Hey, Denver, did you find her yet?
    Hey, Denver, remember me?
    Where had she seen it . . . ?
    She pulled several files from a drawer and leafed through them.
Not this one . . . not this one.
    Then maybe here . . . Nope.
    She returned the files to their places and opened the next drawer.
    Here. Here it is.
    Hey, Landry, remember me?
    The note, on plain white paper, spelled out the message in letters of different sizes and colors—letters cut from magazines—giving a jumbled, schizophrenic appearance to the sheet of paper.
    At the top of the page was a small circle with the number seven inside. Regan’s father had written that, she was positive. That was the way he numbered pages when he was setting up the earliest drafts of his work. He might take notes from several files and integrate them for a single chapter or project. The fact that this note was numbered—and the message indicated that there had been previous contact—made Regan think there were more notes from the same author. She pulled several files from the next drawer, and in the fourth one she went through, she found a manila file holding one more message, along with several pages of notes written in her father’s hand.
    Hey, Landry, did you miss me?
was numbered eleven.
    Regan sat at her father’s desk and began to read through the pages he had written. She paused to flip the file over to read the notation he’d made across the top.
    The Bayside Strangler.
    She read the rest of the file, then picked up the phone and called information for the listing of the Bowers Inlet Police Department.
    “I’d like to speak with Chief Denver,” Regan told the person who answered the phone.
    “He’s not in. I can take a message.”
    “My name is Regan Landry. I’m a writer—I write true crime . . . I have some information he might be interested in, in connection with the current homicides there.”
    “You have information about the homicides?”
    “I have information about some old cases . . . some notes that were written to my father . . .”
    “I’m not following you.”
    “Look, please leave my name and number for Chief Denver and ask him to give me a call. It could be important.” Regan hung up after reciting both the number at the farmhouse and her mobile number.
    She went into the kitchen and made herself a pot of coffee, poured a cup, and took it back to the office. She sat and stared at the file she’d left open on her desk.
    What did she really have here?
    A couple of notes that someone had sent to her father some years ago. A few pages of preliminary investigation Josh had started. Was there more?
    She sighed. Damn his lousy record keeping. If, in fact, he’d started numbering the notes as he received them, where were the others? Perhaps he’d handed them over to the police. To the FBI.
    Maybe there was another file—or two, or eight, or a dozen. Knowing her father, there could be many more, or none. He could have passed them on. Or not. He could have lost them, thrown them out, or put them in a box and simply forgotten about them as another more interesting project presented itself.
    She looked across the room to the long row of wooden file cabinets that she knew were stuffed with files and boxes of notes. In the basement, there were boxes of files she’d helped him move several years ago when he’d run out of room up here for his current works and asked her to empty several drawers and pack them up for storage.
    Regan ran a hand through her hair and told herself to slow down. Just because the notes received by her father and the Bowers Inlet chief of police were similar—okay, they