Bleeding Out by Baxter Clare Read Free Book Online

you owe us one.”
    Sproul clearly wasn’t happy about owing the LAPD a favor, but he was eager to get home.
    “So I’m free to go?”
    Frank nodded dispassionately. She was hungry and tired, and it seemed like all the cases lately were diggers, but knowing that the interviewee was always watching the interviewer, Frank betrayed no emotion. She opened the door, and Daniel Sproul scuttled out to find his next fix.
    His worst fears erupted into life when his father put the car in park and quietly told him, “Get up to your room.” With a certainty that made his sphincter spasm, he recognized the flat expression reflected in the rearview mirror. Not only had the boy’s terror come to life, it had grown and taken wing and was flopping about in the evening’s growing shadows.
    At the front door he cast his mother a soundless plea. She deftly fielded her son’s glance and shot back one of her own. It too was sickeningly familiar, silently reproaching. You’ve disappointed your father and now we’ll both have to pay.
    The boy used the banister to drag himself upstairs. The terror flapped all around him. He heard his mother ask with a practiced tone carefully blended of equal parts concern and empathy, “When would you like dinner, dear?”
    In a gritty voice, his father answered, “When I’m through with the boy.”
    Perched heavily on the boy’s thin shoulders, the terror settled into its nest.

5
    On October 19th, when Melissa Agoura failed to meet her friends at Kenneth Hahn, they called her house to find out where she was. By 9:00 p.m., three hours after dark, Mrs. Agoura called the police. LAPD was swamped with missing person complaints. A perfunctory investigation was conducted two days later, but the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old girl in L.A. didn’t generate much investigative work.
    Two weeks into the case, Noah and Frank interviewed and reinterviewed people in and around the vicinity of the park. Joggers, picnickers, old men and kids fishing in the small ponds— none recognized Agoura or recalled anything odd around the time she disappeared.
    Heading back to the station late one afternoon, Noah sighed, “You know what gets me more than anything?”
    Frank felt the question was rhetorical and just glanced at her partner.
    “Not the stupidity, not the senselessness, not the blood or gray matter, I mean that’s just biology and death, they’re inevitable. What gets me is the goddamned apathy. How many people have we shown her picture to?”
    Frank shrugged.
    “And how many have cared?”
    “This is L.A., No. People see dead faces every day.”
    “I don’t care if it’s Buchenwald! This is their neighborhood, one of their own. She died in their own backyard and no one gives a shit. No one wants to get involved.”
    With half an ear Frank listened to Noah’s tirade. Of all the cops she’d worked with, and after fourteen years on the force, Noah was still the most passionate. Peace officers, especially in a huge metropolis, had to develop some kind of emotional armor against the daily traumas they dealt with. Noah’s armor was forged of dark humor and constant complaints that belied an unyielding optimism. Tirades were his way of blowing off steam. After seeing the worst people could do to each other, he still believed in and expected the best. He’d explained once that it was the only way he could continue to do his job and raise three kids. He had to keep believing, but it was an effort in the face of what he dealt with every day. When it got too much, he blew.
    On the other hand, Frank was always prepared for the worst. Noah was frustrated they weren’t getting anywhere on the case; Frank accepted it easily and just kept chipping away. They’d talked to three of Agoura’s girlfriends again, the ones she was really tight with. One of the girls had been a little hinky, and when Frank pressed her she’d burst into tears. Seems she had a wicked crush on the boyfriend and had been trying to