Read Now That She's Gone for Free Online

flair for the dramatic, and was all but certainly paying Kendall a visit to indulge in a little attention-seeking too.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said, a little unconvincingly. “Not exactly. During a visit last year she told me about Connors and Reed. She said she’d managed to get correspondence out whenever someone was released.”
    Jerry Connors had murdered fourteen women—mostly street girls and weekend prostitutes—in the Seattle area in the early ’90s. He wasn’t a particularly brilliant serial killer, but one who managed to elude detection for a decade because his killings were so random. The ages and races of his women were across the board.
    Cecil Reed was another matter altogether. He was devious, smart, good-looking. In another time and place he might have made the shortlist for TV’s The Bachelor. While some serial killers, like Washington’s Jerry Connors, were unintelligent and unattractive (the media called him a “dolt with a dark side”), Provo, Utah, ski lodge owner Cecil Reed was handsome and cunning. He also very specific. His targets were somewhat risky: lonely-hearted widows and divorcées who were looking for love on a ski weekend that his brochure promised “would be the trip of a lifetime where everything is taken care of . . . and romance is free of charge.” Over the course of a five-year period, the handsome and evil man met six women looking for love and adventure with a penchant for torture. They were drugged, violated, and kept alive in a chamber he’d created underneath the Alpine Glow restaurant that he had managed before creating his own scheme for money and grisly satisfaction.
    Sissy Crowley, a wealthy woman from Stonybrook, Connecticut, would have been the seventh victim, but she managed to extricate herself from the dungeon by creating a small fire and sending smoke into the restaurant. Fire investigators found her, weak, nearly dead from smoke inhalation. After a lengthy trial, Sissy became a kind of spokesperson for victims. Cecil Reed emerged as one of the most evil killers of modern times. The lead investigator for the Provo police said they suspected he had killed more than the six who’d hit the slopes and landed in an underground dungeon.
    â€œThey were getting the messages out with the paroled inmates,” Kendall said. “How?”
    Deirdre offered a grim smile. “She called it ‘where the sun don’t shine’ and I took that to mean a couple of places.”
    Kendall didn’t need a picture sketched out, the sordid mental image came readily.
    â€œI see,” she said.
    â€œYeah, she said that no one ever does a cavity search when someone goes out of the institution. Why would they? My daughter was always smart. Smart and devious.”
    â€œWhat was she saying to Reed and Connors?”
    â€œThat I don’t know. Not really. The FBI didn’t tell me anything. I don’t really care. That’s not why I came here.”
    â€œWhy did you come?” Kendall asked.
    Those familiar eyes stared hard at the detective.
    â€œBecause of what she said about you,” Deirdre said.
    For the second time, Kendall kept her feelings in check. Inside, she felt a chill, but she didn’t disclose it.
    â€œAnd what was that? What did she say?” she asked.
    â€œWords of anger,” Deirdre said.
    â€œWhat was she mad about? I barely spent any time with her.”
    â€œLike I said, you don’t know my daughter. She was angry because your interview came at the worst possible time. She blamed you for killing her TV special.”
    The words gave Kendall another reason to hate TV even more.
    â€œWhat TV special? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Ms. Holloway.”
    â€œI don’t know. All I know is that she blamed you and she blamed your partner, Dr. Waterman.”
    â€œWhat did Birdy Waterman have to do with