Free F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 by Sibs (v2.1) Page A

along.
     
                "As well as can be
expected."
     
                "The funeral…?"
     
                "Bad. But it could have been
worse. Thank you for the flowers."
     
                "I'd have come—"
     
                "The flowers were enough."
Kara paused, almost afraid to ask the question because she already knew the
answer. "Have you caught them yet?"
     
                "No." She could hear the
frustration in his sigh. "No, we haven't."
     
                "I didn't think so."
     
                "Don't start that again, Kara.
It's not fair."
     
                "It isn't?" She felt her
own frustration ballooning within her. "If she'd been Ivana Trump you'd
sure as hell have somebody in custody by now!"
     
                "I don't know about that,
Kara."
     
                "You said you had a description
of the two men and a set of fingerprints! That was five days ago!"
     
                "Right. But the two men
described were not regulars at the bar, and they haven't been back since. And
the fingerprints were no help at all."
     
                "Why not?"
     
                "They don't match anywhere.
Which is not surprising."
     
                "Why isn't it?"
     
                "Well, it goes along with the
pick-up theory. I mean, if Kelly picked these two guys at random from the Oak
Room Bar crowd, it's very possible that they don't have criminal records. And
if they don't have criminal records—or haven't applied for a gun permit or a
security-sensitive job—then their prints are probably not on record here or
with the Feds."
     
                "And so you won't be able to
match them anywhere."
     
                "Right."
     
                She felt the anger rising again. She
wanted to scream but kept her voice level, for Jill's sake.
     
                "So you're no closer to finding
Kelly's murderers now than you were on Thursday."
     
                "I'm afraid that's right,
Kara." Rob paused, then said, "I'm afraid we can't even say for sure
it was murder."
     
                " What ?" Kara didn't want to believe what she was hearing.
     
                "Just hear me out," he
said quickly. "Forensics says there's, no sign of a struggle in the room.
And they can't say for sure whether the two guys she picked up downstairs were
even in the room at the time she went
out the window."
     
                Kara felt as if she were turning to
ice.
     
                "Are they saying Kelly jumped ?"
     
                "No. Not in so many words.
They're saying there's nothing to support the idea that she was pushed. And the
M.E. backs them up. He says she wasn't beaten, and that if she was thrown out
the window, she didn't struggle—no broken fingernails, no skin under the nails,
no bruises on her palms. And witnesses there say she screamed on the way down,
so we know she was conscious."
     
                "Kelly wouldn't kill
herself," said Kara, although she knew her voice didn't exactly ring with
conviction.
     
                After what she'd found this morning,
she was no longer completely sure about anything concerning her twin. However,
there was most of a bottle of sleeping pills in the bedroom. If she had wanted
to kill herself, why hadn't she taken them?
     
                "We've talked to a lot of her
co-workers at St.
Vincent 's. The
ones who knew her best seem to think she was very troubled lately. Even a
little depressed."
     
                Kara thought about that. In
retrospect, she could see that there had indeed been a change in Kelly over the
past year. Nothing terribly obvious. She hadn't called anywhere near as often,
and she had seemed a bit withdrawn on the few occasions they had seen each
other. But