Cry Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

was no red Dodge Viper in the parking lot, as expected.
    The person at the desk was not the person who rented the car to Sean Perrin. The transaction itself was dry and offered no new information, except to corroborate that Perrin had indeed rented the car.
    “Who managed the transaction?” Laura asked.
    The young man looked down at the signature. “That was Colin. Colin Ferry.”
    “We’d like his phone number.”
    “I dunno . . . ”
    “Hey, we’re cops. You want to call the manager and ask?”
    “Nuh-uh. Colin’s the manager. I guess it’s all right.” He wrote down the number.
    “Thanks,” Laura and Anthony said at the same time.
    Looked at each other. Only three months on the job together and they were beginning to click.
    They walked outside under the sodium arc lights and checked the parking lot. No red Viper.
    “You think he ditched it around here?” Anthony said.
    “Probably.”
    “Impound.”
    “They’re closed. We’ll have to call tomorrow.”
    Laura punched in the number for Colin Ferry—no rest for the weary.
    He lived not ten minutes from where they were. They drove to his apartment—a place that tried to look tropical and upscale but came across as a little desperate, and knocked on his door.
    Colin was tall and heavy, kind of like a redwood tree. Or a hippo. Or a redwood tree that had mated with a hippo. His jaw was broad, almost like mandibles. He had just come back from a swim, judging from his wet swim shorts and the towel around his neck. He stood out on the landing, shivering a little in the towel over his shoulders.
    But he didn’t complain about it.
    They stood in a little knot, because his wife had just managed to get their newborn to sleep and he wanted to keep things quiet. Standing under the light above the door, moths flying patterns around them, crowded into the broad leaves of a banana tree from one story down, Colin described the man and woman who had signed for the car.
    “He looked like your average middle class guy on vacation. Shorts, T-shirt. I see them all the time. Tired and kind of crabby. I would have forgot him if it wasn’t for the woman. Jesus, she was a knockout.”
    “Can you describe her?”
    He did, in great detail, down to the top that showed off her midriff and the skinny jeans.
    “Anything about them that bothered you?”
    “Not really . . . ”
    “Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Anything that struck you? Good or bad?”
    “Other than how hot she was? I wasn’t looking at the man .”
    “Anything? Did they mention where they were going?”
    “No. I will say he was in the pain in the ass category.”
    “How so?”
    “We went out to look at the car, you know, for him to look it over and check for scratches, paint, that kind of thing. He was the type who spent, like, an hour going over the car. Must’ve took a hundred photos with his phone. I’m talking like even a speck on the paint. The undercarriage, too. His girlfriend or wife or whatever, she looked annoyed.”
    “Looked annoyed?”
    “Stood there with her arms folded. Sighed a lot. Rolled her eyes.” He had a slight smile on his face, reminiscing. “I think she was flirting with me.”
    Lucky new mother inside to have such a supportive husband, Laura thought.
    “Anything else?”
    “Just that he was full of shit.”
    “Oh?”
    “He went on and on about the Mercedes, like he was some expert. A know-it-all.”
    “Like?”
    “He said he owned a Mercedes just like it, said it was what the big guys in Vegas drove, ‘you know what I mean?’ Wink-wink. Like he was some kind of player. Hinted he was some big Vegas honcho or something.”
    “Big Vegas honcho?”
    “Like, you know, the mafia. That’s what he was hinting at.”
    Laura said to Anthony, “If he felt bad about Aurora Johnson, he didn’t let it stop him from showing off.”
    “You know what?” Anthony said. “He’d make a good character in a movie.”  

    They found a motel that DPS could afford (just