Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) by Victor Methos Read Free Book Online Page B

victims he took from the world.
    Rosen stood up , and Giovanni followed. They said goodbyes and thanked Ms. Archer for her time. As they walked to their car, Giovanni glanced back at the old house and saw her watching them through the shutters of a window.
    “We done for the day?” Giovanni said. “I got some paperwork back at the office.”
    “Almost. One more stop.”
    “Where?”
    Rosen took out his cell phone. He dialed a number he had saved in his contacts and said, “Yeah, Steve, this is Arnold. I need a skip-trace done on a Sarah King. I don’t have a middle name or birthday, but she’d be twenty-one or twenty-two now. From Lancaster County… Yup. Thanks.”
    “Seriously?” Giovanni said.
    Rosen sat on the hood of the car and looked down the street to where a few children were playing. His eyes fixed on them a moment, and he began to grin.
    “You have any kids?” he asked.
    “No, not married,” Giovanni said.
    “Best and worst thing in life. I have a son. I don’t know where he is. Last I heard he was bartending in Las Vegas.”
    Giovanni joined him on the hood. “You don’t talk?”
    “No. He… forgot to call me on Father’s Day last year. He said it was ’cause he just forgot, but that’s not why. He’s got a drug addiction. Heroin. Me and his mother saw it early. We tried everything—every program, every method, tough love, no love, over-loving… nothing did it. The drug won in the end.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    He nodded. “Yeah.” He exhaled through his nose. “Try and explain drug addiction logically to me, Giovanni. People willingly destroy themselves and everyone around them. It’s inexplicable. There are just some things you can’t explain.”
    “I don’t believe that. Everything has a cause. An explanation.”
    “When I was ten years old, and this dates me, but when I was ten, my brother and I shared a bunk bed. On July third of 1971—and I remember that date because it was the day before Independence Day and we were supposed to drive to Lake Mead for that. But I woke up on July third, and I saw my brother asleep in his bed. I went and peed in the bathroom we shared, and I came back out, and he was sitting straight up in bed, as white as a ghost. And all he said to me was, ‘Jim Morrison’s dead.’ We were huge fans of The Doors back then. There wasn’t a radio or TV in our room. There’s no way he could have known that. It didn’t even hit the States until later that day. News didn’t travel as fast as it does now.”
    “How’d he know?”
    “He said he saw it in a dream. Jim Morrison lying in a cold bath, his heart not beating. That memory has stuck with him his entire life. It changed his life, actually. There were things he could never believe in that he started believing in because of that.” He looked Giovanni in the eyes. “You may not have had a moment like that yet, but I think the universe has a lot of mysteries we don’t know about. And if there’s a chance this girl can help us save some lives, why wouldn’t we do it?”
    Giovanni didn’t really have anything to say to that. Instead, he kept his eyes forward, on the children playing. After a few moments, Rosen hopped off the hood and got into the driver’s seat. Before Giovanni got in, he looked over the Archer’s home one last time. She wasn’t at the window anymore, and the shutters were closed again.

10
     
     
     
     
    The tires screeched as Sarah slammed on her brakes. The hospital parking lot was full, so she just stopped at the curb and hopped out. A valet there gave her a ticket, and she handed him the keys and rushed inside.
    The hospital was like all hospitals and made her uncomfortable. Lots of people died in hospitals , and if she didn’t control it, they would flood inside her mind. Images of people gasping their last breaths, screams of pain, the quiet sobbing of those left behind.
    “Excuse me,” she said to the help desk volunteer. “I’m looking for a Jeannie Kehr. She’s