Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,111
someone in Forensics. Perry wasn’t expected to respond, so he didn’t.
“Perry, there you are. Come here.” Carl gestured with his head and then brought his Styrofoam cup to his lips and downed a fair bit of coffee.
Coffee. That’s what Perry needed. Several cups at least.
“In a minute,” he said, and turned toward the industrialsize coffeemaker that sat on a table in the corner of the “pit.”
Perry helped himself to a cup and blew on the steaming brew as he turned and followed his partner.
“What’s up?” Perry asked, enduring how hot the coffee was and practically gulping it down, willing the caffeine to kick in quickly.
“Rad’s not in yet.”
Perry reached his desk and slumped against it. “Okay, and?”
“Man, you look like shit. Like you’ve been up all night or something.” Carl downed more of his coffee and turned toward his own desk, which was next to Perry’s facing it. Grabbing the morning paper off it, Carl flapped it open and slapped it down on Perry’s desk. “We’re front-page news, man, and not in a good way.”
Perry hated having to concentrate so he could focus on the print that glared up at him. The large headline and subtitles underneath were enough to kick-start his brain into high gear—and create a dull headache, which started throbbing as his blood pressure soared.
“Fuck me, bitch,” he grumbled, downing the rest of his coffee. The burn down his esophagus did nothing to distract the headache that grew in intensity by the moment. “This is this morning’s paper?”
Carl must have viewed the question as rhetorical, since the date was right on the top of the page. “Not only does the fucking reporter dog the hell out of us—the prick—but look,” he growled, speaking faster as his temper became more apparent. He stabbed the newspaper with his index finger. “It says here they’re turning the case over to the FBI. We’re on this case, Flynn. I’ll be a goddamn monkey’s uncle if we’re pulled off this one, man. This is a doozy. We just need a few really good leads. Fucking reporter, what’s her name?” He started muttering in Spanish as he dragged his finger down the paper. “Hannah Oswald here announces to all of Kansas City and surrounding suburbs that the online predator could possibly be one of our own.”
Perry pushed himself away from his desk and refilled his cup. Carl followed him, ranting and raving, while Perry drank half of the cup, refilled it again, and then turned to meet his partner’s heated gaze.
“Let’s head downstairs and talk to Pinky. I don’t know who the hell leaked the news to the press, but if Peter is using one of our computers to stalk these girls, I want to know right now which computer he’s using in our station.” Suddenly a few things made sense, Rad’s behavior for one. But if the Chief believed Peter was a cop on the force, why didn’t he fill Perry in on that piece of info when he gave him the case?
If the motherfucker believed Perry was a suspect, he would hand the man’s head to him on a goddamn platter.
Pete Goddard and Franco joined Barker and Richey. Perry wasn’t sure which one of them spotted the newspaper on his desk, but the four of them started commenting on it and he watched each of them closely, focusing on Franco and Goddard. He didn’t see any reaction out of either one of them that could qualify as odd or suspicious. But then if a cop was abducting teenage girls and using the station to instigate his crime, the asshole would have balls of steel. He’d be cocky—arrogant enough to believe he could pull off horrendous crimes under everyone’s noses and not get caught. And so far, he’d been right.
Joseph Pinkman might have possibly invented computers and just stayed on the low about it. Fitting the profile of the classic geek to a T, Pinky glanced up from behind his monitor and pushed his wire-frame glasses up his nose when Perry rapped on the open door to Pinky’s office.
“I need you to solve a case for us, Pinky,” Perry said, entering the small room lined with filing cabinets and three desks, all smothered with mounds of paperwork. To the best of his memory, no one had worked in this office other than Pinky, but the extra desks had never been removed. Perry pulled the CD that he’d saved all the information he had so far on Peter out of the file folder