Peter Decker 3-Book Thriller Collection

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Faye Kellerman

Год написания книги

2019

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The boy stared at him.

“Lindsey? … This is about Lindsey?”

“Yep. Your bad-ass attitude lost you your stash for nothing.”

“Aw, shit.”

“But look at it this way. I’m not gonna bust you.” Decker took out his notepad. “You wanna talk in here or you wanna go out there?”

“All my friends out there—they were friends of Lindsey’s.”

Decker grinned. He had just saved himself a mess of legwork.

“Let’s go.”

The gang was waiting, stiff and grim. When they saw Brian smile, their posture loosened.

Brian cocked a thumb at Decker.

“He wants to talk about Lindsey.”

“Why should we talk to you?” said a sulking brunette in torn clothing. He knew from Cindy what those rags cost.

“You’re a friend of Lindsey’s?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then maybe you give enough of a fuck about her to help me find her murderer.”

She lowered her eyes.

“What’s your name?” Decker asked the girl.

“Heather.”

Decker consulted his list.

“Heather Hanson.”

Her head jerked up.

“That’s right.”

The detective checked her name off.

“I’m going to read some names,” he said. “Answer me if it’s you.”

They were all there. Decker marveled at his good fortune.

“So what do you want to know about Lindsey?” asked a big blonde with purple lips. She was Lisa O’Donnell.

“She left home at eleven A.M. Saturday morning, September tenth. Did she call any of you earlier that day?”

“She called me,” Heather answered. “I was her best friend.”

“And?”

“And she asked me to meet her at the Galleria at 12:30. She didn’t show up.”

So she had run away or had been abducted somewhere between eleven and 12:30. Amazing that no one had picked up on something so simple.

Heather went on: “I didn’t think anything about it. We change our plans lots of times.” She twirled her curly hair. “I mean, I didn’t tell the police about her phone call the first time around.”

“You’re not going to get into any trouble. I’m only interested in Lindsey now. Were the two of you supposed to meet anyone else?”

“No,” she said quickly.

Decker stared at her.

“Like maybe she was supposed to meet her boyfriend that her parents didn’t know about and you were supposed to meet your boyfriend that your parents don’t know about,” Decker pushed.

The girl studied her fingernails.

“Who was her boyfriend, Heather?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said weakly. “Is she really dead?”

Decker nodded.

Heather swallowed hard and looked away.

“It matters, Heather,” Decker said, “if it was her boyfriend who ripped her off.”

“Hey,” Brian butted in. “He wouldn’t do something like that. Man, he was torn to shreds when Lindsey took off. He thought she dumped him.”

“How long had they been sneaking around together?”

“They were in love!” Heather protested. “It wasn’t anything raunchy.”

Decker backed off.

“Okay, they were in love. Nobody’s saying they weren’t. How long were they going together?”

“Over a year,” Lisa volunteered. “He was a nice guy, but sort of a dropout. You know, free-lance photographer, a one-day-at-a-time person.”

“What’s his name?”

The room was silent. Decker waited.