Death Falls by Todd Ritter Read Free Book Online Page A

a good idea.” Nick grabbed his cane and used it to help pull himself to his feet. “Let’s have a look.”
    When Kat also stood, Eric reluctantly followed suit. He had no desire to visit Sunset Falls. Even as a boy, he never wanted anything to do with the spot that had shattered his family. But that morning it was unavoidable. Nick Donnelly wanted to see the falls and Eric was obliged to show him. It was where his brother’s existence ended. Hopefully, it would also be the place where the answers to what happened to him began.

FOUR
    The cul-de-sac was quiet. Forbiddingly quiet, like a graveyard at night. Part of that could be attributed to its status as a glorified dead end, an afterthought by town planners, which jutted into the woods toward the water. But there were other streets in Perry Hollow just like it, and none of them were this silent, this still, this—
    Haunted.
    That was probably too dramatic a word to describe the cul-de-sac, but it perfectly summed up the vibe Kat got from it. There was no sidewalk, only high sycamores that towered next to the road, blocking out the bulk of the sun. In their leafy shadows, the street’s four houses looked dark and empty. Their lawns were vacant. Their front porches bare. It seemed to Kat like a ghost town.
    She was sure Nick and even Eric Olmstead, who grew up there, felt the same way. The three of them walked down the middle of the street slowly and quietly, as if they were afraid of disturbing whatever spirits might lurk there.
    Nick was the first to speak, pointing to a large brick home set far back on the opposite side of the street. It reeked of ostentation, from the curving driveway to the giant brass knockers on the front door.
    “Who lives there?”
    “That’s the Santangelo residence,” Kat said. “Lee and Becky.”
    “Lee Santangelo. Where have I heard that name before?”
    “He was a politician. State representative for, like, twenty years.”
    Until Eric Olmstead hit the bestseller list, Lee Santangelo had been Perry Hollow’s most famous resident. The highlight of his tenure in Harrisburg was never taking a stand on anything and voting in whatever direction the popular wind was blowing. But people loved him. He was a former fighter pilot handpicked by NASA to train for the space program. His wife was a stylish beauty queen turned homemaker. They were Perry Hollow’s own JFK and Jackie.
    Kat remembered how Lee would visit the elementary school each year, giving rambling speeches that encompassed everything from the importance of space exploration to state government. Even as a girl, she had thought him a bit too full of himself, a little heavy on the preening. Other girls disagreed. Even as Lee entered his forties, Kat still heard classmates talk about his sheer dreaminess.
    “When was the last time you talked to Lee Santangelo?” she asked Eric.
    “We’ve barely said ten words to each other our entire lives. The most we talked was when he’d put campaign signs in our yard every election, despite the fact that my mother always pulled them up and threw them in the street. They didn’t get along.”
    “Why not?”
    “My mother never talked about it. Which makes me think it had something to do with Charlie.”
    Kat shot Nick a glance. Whether he meant to or not, Eric just gave them their first suspect.
    They came to a stop again at the next house on that side of the street. About half the size of the Santangelo residence, it was a two-story clapboard. And although the lawn was mowed and curtains were hung in the windows, Kat didn’t need the FOR SALE sign at the end of the driveway to tell her it was vacant. It had that air of emptiness homes on the market often possessed.
    According to the sign, the Realtor was Ginger Schultz, a former high school classmate. She and Kat had taken algebra together, and they’d spend the class sitting in the back row giggling and slipping notes. Now that Kat thought about it, a lot of those notes had to do with