The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

count.”
     
     
    Milo dropped him off at the Central Division parking lot, watched him get into his Ford Fairlane and drive off to Simi Valley, to the wife who liked books.
    Alone, at last.
    For the first time since the Beaudry call, he was breathing normally.
    He entered the station, climbed the stairs, hurried to the scarred metal desk they’d shoved into a corner of the Homicide room for him. The next three hours were spent phoning Missing Persons bureaus at every station and when that didn’t pay off, he extended the search to various sheriff’s substations and departments of neighboring cities. Every office kept its own files, no one coordinated, each folder had to be pulled by hand, and MP skeleton crews were reluctant to extend themselves, even on a 187. Even when he pressed, emphasized the whodunit aspect, the ugliness, he got resistance. Finally, he hit upon something that pried cooperation and curses on the other end: the likelihood of news coverage. Cops were afraid of bad press. By 3 A.M. , he’d come up with seven white girls in the right age range.
    So what did he do, now? Get on the horn and wake up worried parents?
    Pardon me, Mrs. Jones, but did your daughter Amy ever show up? Because we’ve still got her listing as missing and are wondering if a sackful of tissue and viscera cooling off in a coroner’s drawer just might be her?
    The only way to do it was preliminary phone contact followed by face-to-face interviews. Tomorrow, at a decent hour. Unless Schwinn had other ideas. Something else to correct him about.
    He transcribed all the data from his pad onto report sheets, filled out the right forms, redrew the outline of the girl’s body, summarized the MP calls, created a neat little pile of effort. Striding across the room to a bank of file cabinets, he opened a top drawer and pulled out one of several blue binders stored in a loose heap. Recycled binders: When cases were closed, the pages were removed and stapled, placed in a manila folder, and shipped over to the evidence room at Parker Center.
    This particular blue book had seen better times: frayed around the edges with a brown stain on the front cover vaguely reminiscent of a wilting rose — some D’s greasy lunch. Milo affixed a stickummed label to the cover.
    Wrote nothing. Nothing to write.
    He sat there thinking about the mutilated girl. Wondered what her name was and couldn’t bring himself to substitute
Jane Doe
.
    First thing tomorrow, he’d check out those seven girls, maybe get lucky and end up with a name.
    A title for a brand-new murder book.
     
     
    Bad dreams kept him up all night, and he was back at his desk by 6:45 A.M. , the only detective in the room, which was just fine; he didn’t even mind getting the coffee going.
    By 7:20, he was calling families. MP number one was Sarah Jane Causlett, female cauc, eighteen, five-six, 121, last seen in Hollywood, buying dinner at the Oki-burger at Hollywood and Selma.
    Ring, ring ring. “Mrs. Causlett? Good morning, hope I’m not calling too early…”
    By 9 A.M. , he was finished. Three of the seven girls had returned home, and two others weren’t missing at all, just players in divorce dramas who’d escaped to be with noncustodial parents. That left two sets of distraught parents, Mr. and Mrs. Estes in Mar Vista, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs in Mid-City. Lots of anxiety, Milo withheld facts, steeled himself for the face-to-face.
    By 9:30 a few detectives had arrived, but not Schwinn, so Milo placed a scrawled note on Schwinn’s desk, left the station.
    By 1 P.M. , he was back where he started. A recent picture of Misty Estes showed her to be substantially obese with short curly hair. West L.A. Missing Persons had misrecorded her stats: 107 pounds instead of 187. Oops, sorry. Milo left the tearful mother and hypertensive father standing in the doorway of their GI Bill bungalow.
    Jessica Jacobs was approximately the right size, but definitely not the girl on Beaudry: She had the