Immoral Read Free Page A

cameraman.
    “Do we have a serial killer on the loose here, Stride?” Bird Finch rumbled in a voice as smooth and deep as a foghorn. His real name was Jay Finch, but everyone in Minnesota knew him as Bird, a Gopher basketball star who was now the host of a shock-TV talk show in Minneapolis.
    Stride, who was slightly more than six feet tall himself, craned his neck to stare up at Bird’s scowling face. The man was a giant, at least six-foot-seven, dressed impeccably in a navy double-breasted suit, with cufflinks glinting on the half inch of white shirt cuffs that jutted below his sleeve. Stride saw a university ring on the forefinger of the huge paw in which he clutched his microphone.
    “Nice suit, Bird,” Stride said. “You come here straight from the opera?”
    He heard several of the reporters snicker. Bird stared at Stride with coal eyes. The floodlights glinted off his bald black head.
    “We’ve got some sick pervert snatching our girls off the streets of this city, Lieutenant. You promised the people of this city justice last year. We’re still waiting for it. The families of this city are waiting for it.”
    “If you’re running for office, do it on someone else’s time.” Stride unhooked his shield from his jeans and held it in front of Bird’s face, jamming his other hand in front of the camera. “Now get the hell out of my way.”
    Bird grudgingly inched away. Stride bumped his shoulder heavily against the reporter as he passed. The shouting continued behind him. The crowd of reporters dogged his heels, up onto the sidewalk and to the edge of the makeshift fence of yellow police tape. Stride bent down, squeezed under the tape, and straightened up. He gestured to the nearest cop, a slight twenty-two-year-old with buzzed red hair. The officer hurried eagerly up to Stride.
    “Yes, Lieutenant?”
    Stride leaned down and whispered in his ear. “Keep these assholes as far away as you can.”
    The cop grinned. “You got it, sir.”
    Stride wandered into the middle of Graeme Stoner’s manicured lawn. He waved at Maggie Bei, the senior sergeant in the Detective Bureau he supervised, who was doling out orders in clipped tones to a crowd of uniformed officers. Maggie was barely five feet tall even in black leather boots with two-inch heels. The other cops dwarfed her, but they snapped to it when she jabbed a finger in their direction.
    The Stoner house was at the end of a narrow lane, shadowed by oak trees that had recently spilled most of their leaves into messy piles. The house itself was a three-story relic of the 1920s, solidly constructed for the Minnesota winters with bricks and pine. A curving walkway led from the street to a mammoth front door. On the east side of the house, overlooking a wooded gully, was a two-car detached garage, with a driveway leading to a rear alley. Stride noted a bright red Volkswagen Bug parked in the driveway, not quite blocking one of the garage stalls.
    Rachel’s car. The Blood Bug.
    “Welcome to the party, boss.”
    Stride glanced at Maggie Bei, who had joined him on the lawn.
    Maggie’s jet black hair was cut like a bowl, with bangs hanging straight down to her eyebrows. She was tiny, like a Chinese doll. Her face was pretty and expressive, with twinkling almond-shaped eyes and a mellow golden cast to her skin. She wore a burgundy leather jacket over a white Gap shirt and black jeans plucked from the teen racks. That was Maggie—stylish, hip. Stride didn’t spend much money on clothes himself. He kept resoling the cowboy boots he had worn since he traded in his uniform to join the Detective Bureau, and that was a long time ago. He still wore the same frayed jeans that he had worn through nine winters, even though coins now sprinkled the ground through a tear in his pocket. His leather jacket was similarly weather-worn. It still bore a bullet hole in the sleeve, which aligned with the scar on Stride’s muscular upper arm.
    Stride shifted his gaze to the windows