Read Online The Beginning by Catherine Coulter - Free Book Online Page A

woman. “I knew it,” she said. “I was right, but nobody would listen to me.”
    â€œWe’ve got to get her out before there’s nothing left of her,” he said. He sat down, took off his running shoes and socks, and rolled up his jeans. “Stay here, Sally. I mean it. I don’t want to have to worry about you falling into the water and washing out to sea.”
    Quinlan finally managed to haul her in. He wrapped the woman, what was left of her, in his jacket. His stomach was churning. He waved to Sally to start climbing back up the path. He didn’t allow himself to think that what he was carrying had once been a living, laughing person. It made him sick. “We’ll take her to Doc Spiver,” Sally called over her shoulder. “He’ll take care of her.”
    â€œYeah,” he said to himself, “I just bet he will.” An old man in this one-horse town would probably say that she’d been killed accidentally by a hunter shooting curlews.
    Doc Spiver’s living room smelled musty. James wanted to open the windows and air the place out, but he figured the old man must want it this way. He pulled out his cell phone and called Sam North, a homicide detective with the Portland police department. Sam wasn’t in, so James left Doc Spiver’s number. “Tell him it’s urgent,” he said to Sam’s partner, Martin Amick. “It’s really urgent.”
    He watched Sally St. John Brainerd pace back and forth over a rich wine-red Bokhara carpet. It was fairly new, that beautiful carpet. “What did you mean when you said you knew it?”
    â€œWhat? Oh, I heard her scream last night. There were three screams, and at the last one I knew someone had killed her. It was cut off so quickly, like someone hit her hard and that was it.
    â€œAmabel thought it was the wind because it was howling—no doubt about that, but I knew it was a woman’s scream, just like the one the first night I was here. I told you about that. Do you think it was the same woman?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œAmabel called Reverend Vorhees and he came with three other men and they went on a search. When they came back they said they hadn’t found anything. It was the wind, they said. Reverend Vorhees patted me again, like I was a child, an idiot.”
    â€œOr worse, a hysterical woman.”
    â€œExactly. Someone killed her, James. It couldn’t have been an accident. I heard her scream the night I arrived and then last night. Last night, they killed her.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘they’?”
    She shrugged, looking a bit confused. “I don’t know. It just seems right.”
    James’s cell phone played the first bar of “Fly Me to the Moon.” He answered it. It was Sam North calling him back. Sally listened to his end of the conversation.
    â€œYes, a woman anywhere from young to middle-aged, I guess. The tide washed her in, and she’d been battered against the rocks for a good number of hours. I don’t know how long. What do you want to do, Sam?”
    He listened, then said, “A little town called The Cove about an hour or so southwest of you. You know it? Good. The local doctor is looking her over now, but they have no law enforcement, nothing like that. Yes? All right. Done. His name is Doc Spiver, on the end of Main Street. You’ve got my number. Right. Thanks, Sam.”
    He said as he punched off, “Sam’s calling the county sheriff. He says they’ll send someone over to handle things.”
    â€œSoon, I hope,” Doc Spiver said, walking into the small living room, wiping his hands—an obscene thing to be doing, Sally thought, staring at those old liver-spotted hands, knowing what those hands had been touching. There was a knock on the front door and Doc Spiver called out, “Come along in!”
    It was Reverend Hal Vorhees. On his heels were the four old