Chasing Ghosts Read Online Free PDF

walked
over to Padre. He handed her what looked like an enlarged drivers
license photo.
    “ Seems to me, if he had a rental car he
would have driven himself here,” Padre pointed out. “And, number
two, how can a dead man appear on your doorstep?”
    “ That’s not the man I saw on the
monitor at the gate,” Sara said. “Doesn’t look anything like
him.”
    Dagger looked at the photo of Lee Connors. He
was hefty, a middleweight contender with a broad face and flattened
nose. “I’ve never seen him before.” And he hadn’t. It de?nitely
wasn’t the guy who had died on their living room floor.
    Padre tucked the photo back inside his jacket
pocket. “I’d appreciate it, Sara, if you could stop by the precinct
sometime today and give our sketch artist a description of the
guy.”
    “ Is it necessary to involve Sara?” Last
thing Dagger wanted was to have a sketch of Demko plastered on the
evening news so whoever had sent him would know he hadn’t completed
his assignment. That could bring all kinds of people into
town.
    “ Got a problem with that?” Padre looked
from Dagger to Sara. “Or do you have something to hide?”
    Dagger smiled. “Sure, Padre. The guy
threatened me, I killed him and had Skizzy dump the body in the
limestone quarry, but not before some bomb planted in the guy’s
neck blew his head off.”
    Padre threw back his head and roared, a loud,
boisterous bellow. “Oh, Dagger. Always the comic.” He slowly ran
his hand from his forehead down to his chin, the smile quickly
fading as if his hand were doing the facial transformation. “I’m
not amused.”

    CHAPTER 5

    “ The forehead was a little higher,”
Sara instructed the artist. Jimmy Cho pounded the keyboard, a lock
of hair falling across his forehead. Sara glanced over her shoulder
at Dagger. “You don’t have to hover. You didn’t even need to
come.”
    Jimmy chuckled at that comment. “If you were
my girl, do you think I would let you walk in here alone?” He
jutted his chin toward the sea of desks surrounding them. All work
had stopped. Men were seated at the desks or perched with one cheek
on their desktops, all eyes on Sara. The yellow floral dress she
wore brought out the bronze color of her skin. Her dark hair shined
with a multitude of sun-streaked highlights.
    “ How sweet.” Sara smiled at her
admirers.
    Dagger let out a loud huff. “Can we get on
with it?”
    “ I can handle myself,
Dagger.”
    “ That’s why I came.” He nodded toward
the hungry males. “To protect them from you.”
    Jimmy laughed but when he saw that neither
Sara nor Dagger was laughing, his laughter faded.
    “ HEY!” Padre bellowed from his doorway.
“Isn’t anyone working? Have all crimes been solved? All case files
worked?”
    The detectives scurried back to their chairs
and started making calls or banging on their keyboards.
    “ Yes, that looks just like him,” Sara
announced. The computer monitor showed a man with thinning hair, a
nose slightly bent, eyes a soft brown.
    Padre stared at the screen, then folded his
arms. “Sara, that’s me.”
    Sara checked the screen. “You think so?” She
looked at Dagger. “Does that look like Padre?”
    “ Nah. Padre has less hair.”
    “ He was wearing sunglasses so I’m not
sure of his eye color,” Sara clarified. “Jimmy put in whatever
color he wanted. And I only saw the face briefly on the monitor so
I’m sorry I don’t remember more distinct features.”
    Padre was seething. Dagger could tell by the
way his jaws were clenched.
    “ I want to see your surveillance tapes.
And don’t tell me, Dagger, that you didn’t save them.”
    “ I didn’t save them.” Dagger gave a
hapless shrug. “Sorry.”
    Padre pointed toward a doorway. “In my
office. Both of you.”
    “ Did you want me to print this out?”
Jimmy asked. His question was met with an icy glare. “Okay. Maybe
I’ll just save it.”
    “ Sit,” Padre ordered. He closed the
office door saying, “Let me get this