Lifeguard by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

grinned to let her know he was just kidding. He had a nice smile, actually. “Now if you said Sex Crimes, we’d be humming. Some Palm Beach social whirl. She’s been camped here for a couple of months. People going in and out every day. I’m sure when we find out who’s footing the bill, it’ll be some trust fund or something.”
    He led Ellie down the corridor to the bathroom. “You may want to hold your breath. I’m pretty sure van Gogh never painted anything like this.”
    There was a series of crime-scene photos taped to the tile walls. Horrific ones. The deceased. The poor girl’s eyes wide and her cheeks inflated out like tires. Naked. Ellie tried not to wince.
She was very pretty,
she thought. Exceptional. “She was raped?”
    “Jury’s still out,” the Palm Beach cop said, “but see those sheets over there? Those stains don’t look like applesauce. And the preliminary on the scene indicates she was dilated like she’d had sex minutes before. Call it a guess, but I’m figuring whoever did this was on some terms with her.”
    “Yeah.” Ellie swallowed. Clearly Breen was right. She was probably wasting her time there.
    “The tech on the scene pegged it between five and seven o’clock last night. What time your robbery take place?”
    “Eight-fifteen,” Ellie said.
    “Eight-fifteen, huh?” Breen smiled and elbowed her, friendly, not condescending. “Can’t say I’m much of an art expert, Special Agent, but I’m thinking, this tie-in of yours might just be a bit of a reach. What about you?”

Chapter 21
    SHE FELT A LITTLE BIT like a jerk. Angry at herself, embarrassed. The Palm Beach detective had actually tried to be helpful.
    As Ellie climbed back in her car, her cheeks flushed and grew hot again.
Art detail.
Did it have to be so totally obvious that she was out of her element?
    Next was the run-down house in Lake Worth, just off the Interstate, where four people in their twenties and early thirties had been killed, execution-style. This one was a totally different scene. Much worse. A quadruple homicide always got national attention. Press vans and police vehicles still blocked off a two-block radius around the house. It seemed that every cop and Crime Scene tech in south Florida was buzzing inside.
    As soon as she stepped inside the yellow shingled house, Ellie had trouble breathing. This was really bad. The outlines of three of the victims were chalked out on the floor of the sparsely furnished bedroom and kitchen. Blotches of blood and stuff Ellie knew was even worse were still sprayed all over the floors and thinly painted walls. A wave of nausea rolled in her stomach. She swallowed.
This is one hell of a long way from an MFA.
    Across the room, she spotted Ralph Woodward from the local office. Ellie went over, glad to find a familiar face.
    He seemed surprised to see her. “What’re you thinking, Special Agent,” he asked, rolling his eyes around the stark room, “slap a few pictures on the walls, a plant here and there, and you’d never know the place, right?”
    Ellie was getting tired of hearing this crap. Ralph wasn’t such a bad guy really, but jeez.
    “Thinking drugs, myself.” Ralph Woodward shrugged. “Who else kills like this?”
    A review of their IDs pegged the victims from the Boston area. They all had sheets—petty crimes and B-class felonies. Break-ins, auto thefts. One of them had worked part-time at the bar at Bradley’s, a hangout near the Intracoastal in West Palm. Another parked cars at one of the local country clubs. Another, Ellie winced when she read the report, was female.
    She spotted Palm Beach’s head of detectives, Vern Lawson, coming into the house. He chatted for a second with a few officers, then caught her eye. “A bit out of your field, Special Agent Shurtleff?”
    He sidled up to Woodward as if they were old chums. “Got a minute, Ralphie?”
    Ellie watched as the two men huddled near the kitchen. It occurred to her that maybe they were