Mania Read Online Free Page A

laptop. The screen had long since gone black. “No. I’m glad for the break.”
    She looked at him critically, trying to gauge his age as he had judged hers. “You’re not a student. A graduate student, maybe. Or a teacher?”
    “I’m a reporter,” Nick said. “With the Seattle Telegraph .”
    “That sounds glamorous.”
    Nick shrugged. “Not really. It’s a lot of hours, and it doesn’t pay much. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this.”
    “What are you working on now? Are you writing an article?”
    Nick shook his head. Sara’s question had brought the image of Claire Scott’s corpse back into his mind. The contrast with the woman sitting in front of him was unsettling. He closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, running his fingers through his hair, becoming aware at the same time how disheveled he was. He had left his apartment a few hours before without showering or shaving.
    “Are you all right?”
    Nick noted the concern in Sara’s eyes. “Is it that obvious?”
    “You look upset, that’s all.”
    “I have to admit,” Nick said, “I am a bit. I’m sorry. I’ve been with the paper for a couple of years now. I should be used to it.” He was surprised by his own candor. “I’ve been working as a photographer. I see things sometimes. It still gets to me.”
    Sara was peering at him.
    “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
    Sara dismissed his apology. “No—don’t be sorry.” She hesitated. “It was a body. A murder. Wasn’t it?”
    “Yes.” Nick was taken aback. “How did you know?”
    “I have a confession to make, too.”
    Nick waited.
    “I didn’t sit down here because of the fire. I was standing behind you for about two minutes before I approached the table. You were pretty absorbed in your computer.”
    “You saw the pictures.”
    Sara nodded. “I have to tell you,” she said, smiling wryly. “I was pretty relieved just now when you told me you were a reporter.”
    Nick took a fresh look at the beautiful woman in front of him, intrigued that she would sit down with him after seeing the images on the screen of his laptop.
    “You took those pictures today?”
    Nick lowered his eyes.
    “So you were there. Standing right there, I mean. Almost on top of her.”
    “Yes.” Close enough to smell her .
    “No wonder you’re freaked out.”
    From the corner of his eye, Nick noticed Sara’s gaze traveling down his legs, taking in the mud drying on his shoes.
    “It scares me ”—Sara said, shivering slightly—“and I wasn’t even there. To see a body like that, it must be pretty frightening—no matter how many times you’ve been around crimes like that before.”
    “It is,” Nick admitted.
    “I didn’t really get a good look at the pictures. But I could see how violent the crime was. The guy who did it must have been crazy.”
    “That’s not what scares me.”
    Sara was silent, waiting for Nick to meet her stare, waiting for him to continue.
    “It scares me more how sane he was.”
    Again, Sara shivered. “What do you mean?”
    Nick regretted that he had let them dwell so long on the murder.
    “Tell me,” Sara said, prodding him.
    “How the same person can be one thing at night,” Nick said at last, “and then something else during the day.”
    Nick read Sara’s confusion.
    “The guy stabbed this woman so many times—so brutally—she was nearly unrecognizable,” he explained. “This same guy, though, takes the time to gather her up and sneak her out to the bank of this river to dispose of the body. That’s what scares me. That the same person can somehow reconcile the two realities.”
    “Because you think maybe we’re all capable of doing the same thing.” Sara’s eyes hadn’t left his face. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
    “To some degree—yeah, maybe.”
    “Sane during the day. Killers at night.”
    Once again, Nick looked down at the table.
    “You think