Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,39
would love to have it just for the publicity. The case wasn’t about publicity. It was about putting one of the lowest forms of life behind bars, or killing him. Perry would love to be the one to pull the trigger.
“No one is assigned to those cases. And you would think someone should be, yes?” Goddard didn’t wait for Perry’s response but leaned forward, playing with his mouse again and then typing. “Seems to me if someone was assigned to play around online a bit, they could find the guy.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Perry booted his computer up and waited for the icons to appear on his desktop. He wanted to read over the reports of all the cases they had on file so far. And to hell with anyone if they questioned him researching a case not assigned to him. Data needed to be gathered. The sooner he learned as much as there was to know about each teenage girl, the faster he could create an MO on the perp who was stalking them. If he was going to be written up for doing that, then someone had too much damn time on their hands.
Olivia Brown had disappeared the other day, not showing up at her car at the mall and leaving her friends stranded and in need of rides home. The police report didn’t offer anything he didn’t already know. Olivia’s parents were panicking, calling the police department hourly. The notes after the report stated that the parents had hired a private investigator. All of Olivia’s friends were interviewed. Two of her friends knew she had been chatting online with a guy she had the hots for. Neither interview offered anything conclusive that could be followed up on.
Perry pulled up Maura Reynolds’ file next. She had disappeared over three months ago and there were no new leads. Interviews conducted right after she disappeared confirmed she had talked with her friends about meeting a boy who went to school in Independence, a town over thirty minutes away and across the state line into Missouri. The police had her hard drive from her computer as evidence, and chats were documented showing she’d arranged to meet a boy named Peter. They were going to see a movie together. Maura never came home, and interviews with theater employees that night stated that no one remembered seeing her pay for a movie. A current picture was shown to all theater employees. No one recognized her.
Then there was Sally Wright, whose dad had saved her life. Perry reread the interview that he’d gone over several times already, along with the other files he’d just browsed through. Sally confirmed the boy she was supposed to meet was Peter. He was a junior attending a high school in Overland Park, a town ten minutes away from Mission Hills. Although there were three Peters living in Overland Park who were juniors, the officer who’d interviewed each boy stated in the report that none of the boys knew Sally and they hadn’t been chatting online with any girl who lived in Mission Hills.
Perry scrubbed his head with his fingers, reading the interviews with the Peters in Overland Park again. One of them was one hell of a good liar. Either that or whoever Peter was, he wasn’t a junior in Overland Park.
The doors outside the “pit” opened and loud voices echoed off the walls. Barker and her partner, Richey, headed down the hallway toward the holding stall with several unique-looking characters, probably prostitutes, judging by the skimpy clothing on the two teenage girls who teetered on their incredibly high heels. The boy with them ranted the usual mantra about how they had picked him up by mistake.
Barker glanced his way and winked, holding the arm of one of the teenage girls, who also looked his way.
“Why couldn’t we get picked up by a cop who looks like him?” the teenager asked Barker.
Lt. Ann Richey brought up the rear, rolling her eyes at him and grinning. He didn’t return the smile. Instead he turned his attention to the screen. There were people in the world who lived with others continually dropping comments, either crude or meant as sincere praise, that let that person know they were sexually appealing, good-looking, eye candy. Perry had lived with comments like that most of his life, and as he sat there thinking about it, he realized he didn’t usually bat an eye.
Nor did he give much thought to getting a date—if he wanted one. Maybe