Jacob's Ladder Read Online Free Page A

Although she couldn’t see the entire interior space of the old Coachmen, what she could make out were household items—pots and pans, linens and clothes—all tossed around.
    The small kitchen table was overturned, as was the back bed. Sheets and pillows were thrown about. Cabinets were standing open and cookware and canned goods were strewn across the camper floor. It was a mess, and Rose, concerned that someone was inside and had been hurt, began rapping on the window.
    â€œHello! Is there anybody in there?” she yelled. Then she pressed her face against the glass again. This time, she tried to see as much of the inside of the trailer as she could. And when her eyes panned around the second time, she noticed something sticking out from beneath the narrow table.
    It was an arm, thin and brown, the palm facing up. It extended from underneath the broken piece of furniture.
    â€œOh Lord,” Rose screamed as she hurried away from the camper, falling against the rear of the truck. The dog had been standing at her feet, and in her gruesome discovery, she’d tripped over the three-legged mutt. She leaned against the truck to regain her balance.
    She ran around to the front steps and tried opening the door. It was locked. She pushed against it, without much luck of forcing it open. So she jumped down, ran back to the truck, and picked up one of the rocks at the rear tire. She hurried again to the front door and, using the stone, broke the window. She dropped the rock and quickly reached inside, turning the lock. Then she pushed the door and moved inside.
    It was worse than what she had thought. The place was destroyed inside. It was more than just clutter or things becoming unsettled from a bumpy ride. It was evident that this mess had been created, that someone had deliberately set about to cause damage.
    Once inside, walking about and making her way through the mess, she immediately knew that she was compromising the scene, something her father, a police captain, had constantly drilled into her head when he was preaching to her about good police work.
    Rose, however, a nurse by profession, knew the most important thing at that moment was trying to find the person who belonged to the arm she had seen sticking out from underneath the table.
    She made her way through the pile of boxes and personal belongings to the small dining table and yanked it up, throwing it toward the rear of the camper. There was a bedsheet beneath it. She pulled that away, and there lay a man, older, maybe seventy or seventy-five, dead, she thought, for more than a few hours.
    Having worked in health care for all of her adult life, Rose quickly checked for a pulse, found none, and then tried to determine the nature of the camper’s injuries. She felt both his left wrist and then the carotid artery in his neck. There was nothing. And she could tell by the slight stiffness in his limbs and the blue tinge across his lips that he had arrived late at Shady Grove Park the previous evening and had died soon after. There was no way he could be revived.
    While she was trying to find a pulse at his neck, she noticed the marks circling just below his chin. Large welts, shaped like the tips of big fingers or thumbs, were raised and red; and there had been enough pressure placed on the old man’s windpipe that she was sure it was crushed. She assumed that a murderer had used his own hands as the weapons.
    Rose assessed the situation and surmised that the old man who had arrived at Shady Grove had been strangled to death by somebody he’d brought with him, or by somebody who was already there, or by somebody who had followed him to his campsite. She was alarmed, sad, and bewildered, and without hope of changing what had happened there in the empty, narrow landing at Shady Grove, she sat down beside the man while the dog that had probably come with him stood at his feet.
    She knew that there was nothing to do but return to the office