The Prophet by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online Page B

paycheck?” Adam said. “You don’t need to keep the mortgage paid?”
    Salter’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m not interested in the idea that you wanted work. I’m interested in the idea that she paid cash.”
    Right. Because cash suggested her age, at least to Salter, who expected an adult would have written a check or asked if Adam accepted credit cards.
    “In my business,” Adam said, “cash transactions aren’t unusual.”
    This was true. A lot of people came to him with higher IQs than credit scores, and that wasn’t to say they were bright.
    “I see.” Salter made a notation on his pad, and then said, “Let’s talk about the letters she had. You read them?”
    “Yeah.”
Seventeen. A child. A corpse.
    “Did you make copies?”
    “No. She’d already done that. What she had, they were copies. I never saw the originals. And I saw only one of the letters. But there were others.”
    “What did that letter say?”
    “It was from her dad. He was—he’d been—in prison. Got out and then I guess he didn’t write anymore for a while. She was upset about that. Then he started back up, but he wouldn’t say where he was, wouldn’t give a return address or anything. Soit was just, you know, a one-way street. She wanted to be able to respond. Asked me to find him. An address, I mean.”
    “You’re qualified for this sort of work?”
    “I’m a licensed PI, you know that.”
    Salter didn’t respond.
    “It’s what I do,” Adam said. “Same thing I do every day. People skip out on bond, and I go find them. I bring them back. You know this.”
    “Nobody had skipped out on a bond here.”
    “Skill set,” Adam said. “Same skill set.”
    “I see. So you used that skill set, and you found an address?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Do you remember it?”
    “No.”
    “But you have records?”
    “Yeah. Yes.”
    “She didn’t give you a physical address? Just the phone number?”
    “Just the phone number. She said she was a student at—”
    “Baldwin-Wallace,” Salter said. “Yes. She say how she picked you for the job?”
    “She said she had a referral.” Adam wished he’d stopped for a mint or some gum. He was breathing beer out with every word, and it made them seem flimsy, pathetic.
    “We understand this part,” Salter said. “Her boyfriend told us. The referral, if we can call it that, came from him. He plays football for your brother.”
    “Plays?” Adam said. “Like, right now? On this team?”
    “Like right now,” Salter said, nodding. “Colin Mears? I gather he and his family are pretty close to your brother. There was some conversation about you, and I guess Colin understood you to be a detective.”
    Adam let that glide by.
Understood you to be,
not
understandsthat you are.
Who cared? Who cared what Salter thought? What mattered here was a girl with glitter nail polish. What mattered was finding the sick son of a bitch who’d killed her, finding him and ending him. Because if you didn’t… if he just stayed out there…
    “It’s a shame she lied to you,” Salter said, “and a shame you didn’t ask for any sort of identification. Because if you’d been operating with her real name, you’d have found her father easily. At Mansfield Correctional.”
    Adam stared at him. “He never left?”
    “Never left. He’s been there seven years. We’ve got people interviewing him right now. He says he wrote his last letter in August. So whoever kept writing? Whoever it is you found for her? We need to find
him.
Fast.”
    “Makes no sense,” Adam said.
    “What?”
    “It doesn’t make sense, Salter. I saw the letter, okay? The guy who wrote it was trying
not
to see her.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really. I read the damn—”
    “You’ve told me that. But it seems like he was tossing a lot of breadcrumbs out for someone who didn’t want anyone following the trail. Telling her he was in town, then giving her his landlord’s name? This to a girl who was actively seeking