Chosen Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online

other one lives in Wyoming and barely seemed to remember her," Swanson said.
    "She have a phone book?" Sherrill asked.
    Black shook his head. "Just a bunch of scraps of paper with numbers on them. We checked them and came up dry. Woman in the next apartment said she heard a male voice over there a couple of times in the month before she disappeared. Never any kind of disturbance or anything."
    "Look at the numbers stored in her cell phone?" Lucas asked. "Anything in her computer? She got a Palm Pilot or anything like that?"
    "She had a cell phone, but there weren't any numbers stored at all. The e-mail in her computer was mostly with her parents and her brother. No Palm. We got her local phone records: She had lots of calls out to ad agencies and to friends--we talked to them, they're all women, and we don't see a woman for this--and then some random calls out, pizza, stuff like that. We never tried to reconstruct the pizza-delivery guys, and now . . . hell, I don't know if we could. It's been too long."
    "What you're saying is, you ain't got shit," Del said.
    "That's the way it is," Black said. "That's one of the reasons we always thought there was a possibility that she was still alive--we came up so empty. She didn't drag around bars. Wasn't a party girl. No drugs, didn't drink much. No alcohol at all in her apartment. She worked at a restaurant called the Cheese-It down by St. Pat's. I suppose she could have run into somebody there, but it's not a meat rack or anything, it's a soup-and-sandwich place for students. She freelanced ad work, designing advertisements, and did some Web design, but we couldn't get hold of anything."
    Swanson was embarrassed. "We're not looking too swift on this thing."
    LUCAS PARCELED OUT assignments.
    "Swanson and Lane: Take all those ad agencies and the restaurant. Find out who she was talking to. Make lists of every name you run."
    He turned to Black, who had once been partnered with Marcy. "Marcy can't do a lot of running around yet, so I want you and her to work out of the office, get these three women in here, the ones who got drawings, and list every person they knew or remember having talked to before they got the drawings. No matter how slight the connection. When they can't remember a name, but remember a guy, get them to call people who would know him. I want a big-mother list."
    To Rie: "I want you and Del to get copies of the drawings and start running them around to the sex freaks. This guy has a screw loose, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's shown a few of these things around. He's an artist, so maybe he's been out looking for a little appreciation. We want more names: all the possibilities that your friends can think of." He snapped his fingers. "Do you remember Morris Ware?"
    "No."
    "I do," Del said. He looked at Rie. "Might've been before your time. He takes pictures of children."
    "He may be back in business," Lucas said. To Del: "Why don't you hang with me tomorrow. If we have time, we'll go look him up."
    "All right."
    "I see a couple of big possibilities for an early break," Lucas said. "The first one is, somebody knows him and turns him in. The second one is, we've got to figure he's had some contact with these women. If we get big enough lists, we should get some cross-references."
    "But we need those big-mother lists," Black said.
    "That's right. The more names we get, the better the chances of a cross. And the more people we can find who have gotten these drawings, the bigger the lists will be."
    "What're you gonna do?" Marcy asked.
    "Go talk to the movie people about some publicity," Lucas said. "We're gonna put the pictures on the street."

    Chapter 4.
    CHANNEL THREE WAS located in a low, rambling stone structure, a fashionable architect's attempt to put a silk purse on a corner that cried out for a pig's ear; Lucas had never liked the place. The building was a brisk crosstown walk from City Hall, and during the walk, Lucas thought for a moment that he'd seen a slice