Little Girls Lost Read Free Page A

kitchen with the skillet? The callabout the gone girl came over the computer. We ran silent, didn’t park directly out front.”
    Ryder leaned forward. “No one was nearby on the sidewalk, Chief, nobody in the hall. If the mother told the neighbors, you couldn’t tell. I was under the impression she came home from a night of partying, found the empty bed, and called 911.”
    Squill rubbed the short salt-and-pepper hair at his temples and glared.
    “So the hell what?”
    Ryder said, “How’d Turnbull find out? The mother seemed too disoriented to think about calling a preacher; it doesn’t fit.”
    Squill’s cold voice sank to sub-zero. “What does it matter? It happened. I’ll tell you what matters—a half-hour ago I had to report to the goddamn mayor. You ever have to stand in front of that sanctimonious bitch and explain not only why three girls are missing without a trace, but why our own detectives are creating—what’s the word she used?—‘discord’ in the black community?”
    “No, sir,” Ryder said, thinking, How come all the assholes fall up?
    “Of course not; that’s my job. Your job is creating confrontations.”
    “It wasn’t a confrontation, Chief,” Zemain said. “It was a difference of opinion with a couple rough edges.”
    Squill speared Zemain with a glance. “Guess what, Sergeant? It’s my ass that gets used to sand them down.”
    Ryder said, “I’m still trying to figure how Turnbull got there so fast.”
    “Christ, Ryder,” Squill said, shaking his head, “are you a detective or a parrot? Give it a rest.”
    The room fell silent. Squill said, “OK. Let’s move on to some real police work. Anybody have anything new? Somebody tell me yes.”
    Deputy Chief Bidwell, head of the uniformed division, sighed. “We’ve got guys rousting peds and working snitches, but nothing so far.”
    “Anything from Forensics? ME’s office?”
    Grady from Investigative cleared his throat and leaned forward. “The perp entered though the alley-side kitchen window, no easy job.”
    “Why?” Squill said.
    “The window was grated but the grate was popped off. The bars were stuck in concrete. Forensics says it probably took a heavy prybar and a lot of strength.”
    “A mechanical device? Hydraulic jack?” Squill asked.
    “There weren’t any scratch marks where it would have been anchored, but that doesn’t rule it out.”
    “Wouldn’t it have made a racket coming off?”
    Zemain said, “The apartment’s next to the Zanzibar Lounge. Jukebox always cranked to the max. You could fire a cannon in the alley and no one’d hear it.”
    Squill rolled his eyes. “I’ve got what…a hundred years’ experience in this room? And what’sthis team of giants brought me? A prybar theory.”
    Grady said, “Something’s got to break soon, Chief. We’re going to—”
    Squill cut him off with an upraised palm. “Here’s the way it is, Captain. The blacks are pissing on the mayor’s shoes, the mayor’s pissing on my shoes. Guess whose shoes I’m getting ready to piss on?”
    When no one volunteered an answer, Squill stood, making no attempt to conceal his disgust. “That’s it, gentlemen; dismissed. How about you get out there and try some police work?”
    Pure Squill , Ryder thought as he watched the cops file out , police work as urination. In the two months Squill had been acting chief, Ryder had yet to hear him utter a single encouragement, a solitary well done. He led through intimidation and innuendo, put-downs and politics. “I don’t walk past Squill,” the generally fearless Zemain once confessed, “without some Kevlar over my back.”
    Will I be able to survive? Ryder wondered.

5
    Truman Desmond fought to keep from smacking the kid upside the head. The boy was crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue as Truman tried to focus his camera.
    “That’s funny,” Truman said. “I can’t wait until your mama sees your school picture.”
    That did the trick, Truman noted in