Free SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) by Edward A. Stabler

sunlight, and her legs swung a slender arc
as her biking shoes struck the planks underfoot. Animal grace, he
thought, following her now, closing toward her through a mist of
alienation. He didn’t really know Nicky; they were both just
animals hunting. For what, he wasn’t sure.
    She slowed to look back as he approached.
“You OK?”
    He nodded. Nicky’s eyes were warm and
inquiring and he remembered visiting her during her residency at
Tufts and watching her reassure an elderly man that his cat should
recover completely from an eye infection. The man had said nothing,
just exhaled in relief, but Vin saw his eyes water and the tension
in his gnarled hand relax as Nicky spoke. Vin caught her hand with
his own and they fell in step together. “I thought I saw
something.”
    ***
    As the path reached the top of the hillside
and emerged from the trees, Kelsey paused to assess the backyard of
the house in front of her. Seeing no humans or canines, she stepped
forward onto the lawn. She was pretty sure the dog was home
somewhere, and she reached into her jacket pocket for reassurance
that the rawhide bone she’d brought was still there. She found it
underneath her camera and pulled it out. With luck, she thought,
the dog will be out on the deck like he was last weekend.
    She’d only seen it from the front and the
foyer, but the split-level house looked familiar. The second-story
deck ran almost the length of the house and was connected by glass
doors to a living room. Another set of glass doors below the deck
opened into the first floor. She walked toward these doors. When
her boots crunched the gravel under the deck, she heard a bump
overhead, followed by a clattering of toenails and a rolling chorus
of barks. She backed onto the lawn as Randy lunged to the railing
and continued his guttural assault.
    “Hey, buddy,” she said. “You’re a good
watchdog. How about a reward?” She lobbed the bone up to the deck
and it landed with a rattle that drew the dog’s attention. She
proceeded to the sliding door and pulled the handle; it slid open.
Cyclists are so predictable, she thought.
    Her eyes adjusted to the unlit room. A
mobile of smooth sticks hung from the ceiling in front of her. To
the right, she opened and closed a door to an unfinished storage
and laundry area. A door to her left opened into a dark garage.
Along the wall near the stairs was a slab desk propped on
sawhorses. The desk was anchored by a monitor and keyboard, and a
skewed arc of printed pages and programming books radiated out from
its center. She glanced at the books and leafed through the papers,
finding nothing of interest, then continued toward the stairs.
    In the foyer at the top, she recognized the
table she’d seen last weekend, which now held only the morning’s
unopened mail. Up another half-flight to the living room, and then
a hallway to her left, leading to bedrooms, she assumed. Bone in
mouth, the dog stared at her through the glass door to the deck.
She heard him growl intermittently, but he didn’t seem to think her
presence merited a serious protest. She turned her back and
reviewed the bookshelves on the inner wall.
    Books on software and computer networks.
Books on biology, medicine, physiology. Travel books and well-known
novels. Nothing worthy of examination right now. She circled around
to the kitchen. Again nothing. She glanced out the window to
confirm that no one was watching the house, then advanced to the
breakfast nook. On the table she found what she’d come for: the old
photo of Great Falls.
    Touching only the edges, she picked it up
and studied it closely. When she turned it over, she saw the
attribution in pencil on its back:
    R. L. Fisher and K. Elgin at Great Falls
    March, 1924
    The names meant nothing to her. Her eyes
fell on the torn ledger page on the table, which she leaned over to
read:
    March 29, 1924
    Charlie,
    If it is April and I am missing, I fear I have been
killed because of what happened today at Swains