Cold Fear Read Online Free PDF

hidden in Golden
Gate Park. For over a year, he went nuts trying to clear it. Then two other
kids were abducted, creating hysteria for the Bay Area, pressure from the
brass. The fear that all three files were connected when another child was
grabbed--the son of Tom Reed, a reporter for the San Francisco Star , who
was covering the story. The kidnapper, a psycho twitcher named Keller, had
planned to kill the kids.
    “Yes, they were hard cases. You could be on the right
track there, Pop.”
    After Keller, it took a few weeks for Sydowski to wind
down. In all his years with the SFPD, in handling nearly six hundred homicides,
he’d never seen anything like it. He hoped to hell he would never see anything
like it again. During the darkest moments of the investigation, he would sit in
the aviary with his birds and miss his wife deeply. That was his problem. The
last big cases were not his career enders. He did not want to hang up his
shield because of them. On the up side, they brought him together with his new
young partner, Inspector Linda Turgeon.
    Working with her was like having a third daughter. They
got along well. Even when they argued. No, he was not ready to hang it up. He
loved the job. It kept his brain functioning. He was a homicide cop. But when
files got rough, they underscored the void of Basha’s absence. He would never stop
loving her, yet he did not want to be handcuffed to her death. This was his
dilemma. Now Louise had come into his life, maybe not to fill a void, but to
help him live past it. And she wanted to see him again. So what should he do?
    “I think I am going to ask Louise out. What do you
think, Pop?”
    “You keep asking me . She is not my girlfriend.”
John inched his hand into a cage and let a Fife perch on his forefinger.
    “You think it is appropriate after six years?”
    “You’re the cop. Is it against the law?”
    The phone in the aviary rang. Sydowski got it on the
second ring. It was his boss, Lieutenant Leo Gonzales.
    “Walt, I’m sending Linda over to take you to the
airport.”
    Sydowski was taken aback. It was his day off. Was this a
joke?
    “No, Leo. You say, ‘Hello, Walt, how are you?’ Then I
say, ‘I’m fine, Leo, and how are you?’”
    Sydowski could hear Leo placing his hand over his
mouthpiece, talking to people at the Homicide Detail. Tension leaking through.
    “…you tell them”-- Leo was talking to someone else at
his end--“that we are cooperating fully and quickly. Tell them that. Walt? You
still there?”
    “What is it?”
    “I got to send you to Montana right now.”
    “Montana? What the --”
    “You’ve been requested to assist the FBI on a breaking
case.”
    “Requested by whom?”
    “The feebees. Asked for our best guy and you got to be
there now.”
    “Now?” Sydowski looked at his dad.
    “Linda will take you to the airport and give you a file.
Someone with the Bureau will pick you up in Kalispell.”
    “What the hell is going on in Montana, Leo?”
    “Missing girl. Ten years old. From San Francisco. In a
national park.”
    Sydowski’s stomach clenched and his heartburn from the
potato soup flared. The price for not holding the onions.
    A missing kid.
    “Why do they need me in Montana? This is unusual. It’s
an FBI case in Montana. They just don’t do this. What’s going on?”
    “Kid’s hiking in Glacier National Park, with Mommy and
Daddy. Wanders off. Lost. Dad hikes back to report her missing.”
    “Find a body? Any evidence of a crime?”
    “No, but Dad’s got a hurt hand.”
    “Pretty weak, Leo. Come on. What’s the family history?”
    “The feebs asked us to run the old man through our
system and we got a hit. A few days before they left for their trip, we were
called to their house by a neighbor.”
    “Charges?”
    “None.”
    “What are the details of the call?”
    “Domestic assault complaint. Neighbor says the dad was
shouting, threatening violence. Linda’s going through the old report, making
calls,