Little Girls Lost by J. A. Kerley Read Free Book Online

him, big guy, kept to himself. He left the force a little after I made detective. Odd guy, from what little I recall. No one seemed to talk about Sandhill after that. You never have.”
    Nautilus grunted.
    “What?” Ryder asked.
    “Nothing. Keep going.”
    “I remember Sandhill working sex crimes andcold cases. Then he just disappeared. When Zemain floated Sandhill’s name, Squill sank it with cannon fire. I hear he runs that restaurant on Parlor Street. The one you never want to go to, right?”
    Nautilus looked away to refill his drinking glass. “I got other places I like better.”
    “What happened with Sandhill, Harry?”
    “I don’t like talking from rumors. Things get scrambled.”
    “What kind of ru—”
    Sophie stampeded through the door, tapping her watch crystal with a fingernail. “That’s it. Time’s up, Ryder. You take your ten o’clock meds, Harry?”
    “Uh…”
    “I knew it. Get them pills in your mouth before I do. You keep forgetting and I’ll have the pharmacist mix ‘em in suppository form. Then I’m gonna buy me a hammer. Get my drift, Harry Nautilus?”
    Ryder winced and tiptoed from the room.
    Heading back across the bay, Ryder was troubled that his partner didn’t want to discuss when he’d return to work, immediately changing the subject. The avoidance was puzzling. He was on the causeway when a thought hit him so hard it kicked the breath from his lungs and he had to pull off the road .
    Heart pounding in his chest, Ryder did the math…
    Harry was forty-six years old. He joined the force when he was twenty-two. Twenty-four years in, and the sick time kicked it right up to a fullpension twenty-five.
    Harry Nautilus didn’t need to come back. He could retire with full benefits if he wished.
    Ryder closed his eyes and listened to breaking waves until his lost breath returned. He drove home slowly, crossing the bridge to Dauphin Island near midnight. Entering his stilt-standing beachfront home, he noted a single call on his answering machine, the screen blinking the number of Harry’s cellphone.
    Ryder stood in the dark and punched play. The voice of Harry Nautilus filled the room.
    “Carson, no one would be better for taking a look at the abduction cases than Sandhill…”
    A long empty hiss followed, like his partner had something he needed to add. Ryder pictured Harry Nautilus in his bed, phone in hand, frowning, trying to give Ryder some form of explanation, or enlightenment. Anything beyond sixteen words.
    Nothing seemed to come. Nautilus hung up.

10
    At ten a.m. Sandhill finished wiping the last letter of his neon sign, the G in king. He tucked the rag in the back pocket of his jeans and debated turning the sign on. Though the restaurant was an hour from opening, Sandhill loved the sizzle and crackle as his sign flickered into life.
    After Hurricane Katrina destroyed the New Orleans restaurant where he’d been the head chef, Sandhill tried a couple other places as an assistant, didn’t like perverting his craft— powdered garlic? Factory-made andouille? Blasphemy! —and a year back had returned to Mobile, toying with the thought of opening his own restaurant. Ninetynine per cent of him dismissed the idea as pure lunacy. One morning, however, while the rational ninety-nine per cent was still in bed, a subversive one per cent smuggled him to the sign shop to put a hefty down payment on the creation of a neonred THE GUMBO KING , a bright yellow crown flashing at a rakish angle above the cursive letters.
    Thus invested in a magnificent work of signage, he’d felt logically compelled to follow through, and eleven weeks later the doors of the restaurant opened.
    Sandhill heard a knock at the locked door. He opened it, ready to recite the hours, when Nike Charlane walked wordlessly past, swung a crocheted purse the size of a grocery bag on to the nearest table, and sat. She wore impenetrably dark sunglasses, a blue ball cap, and a white tee with the logo of the Mobile Art