J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

trophies.
    So much for Rawles as a great read of human character.
    The whole display, added to the ordered symmetry among the keepsake shrines, bespoke a deeply sentimental athletic girl with a tightly-organized mind. She might be slow with language, and not exactly tidy, but she knew her priorities, and she wasn’t dim.
    A harness and some climbing rope under her bed pointed either to a love of extreme sports or of bondage play—maybe both.
    Behind the climbing gear was a long low Rubbermaid tub. I just about lost my lunch when I opened it up. The smell of an unwashed locker room, minus the urine, hit me full in both nostrils. The thing was filled to bursting with maybe forty men’s shirts—most of them t-shirts, most of them rolled up with little bands, labeled with a name. A female version of Don Juan’s panty collection?
    This girl didn’t just get around, she kept trophies. All of these were relatively fresh—a deeper glance under the bed revealed two more tubs stacked crossways a little further toward the head. Nothing else of interest under there.
    Time was wasting.
    I stowed the tub and climbing gear, then looked at the bed itself. Sheets fresh—could still smell the lavender dryer pouch. No stale sweat smells. Top sheet and bedspread in disarray, but the bottom sheet was still drum-tight. Only a few days old at most.
    A half-empty glass of water and a plate with what looked like Triscuit crumbs on it on the bedside table. I shifted right to the bed again and rifled through the pillows.
    Beneath them, staring back at me like a village idiot, was a touch-screen smartphone.
    Nya hadn’t run away. She’d either gotten lost, gotten injured, gotten killed, or someone had kidnapped her.
    I slipped it in my left hip pocket. I’d have time to check it later for anything that might be useful.
    Maybe a minute and a half before Dora came back up the stairs to check on my progress if I was lucky, and I still had the bathroom and the walk-in closet to check.
    I ducked into the bathroom—fortunately only a small vanity and cabinet required any deep searching. The shower revealed a little lavender-scented city of styling products. The cabinet was filled mostly with toilet paper and tampons—the tampons were in a basket, nothing hidden underneath them.
    The drawer held brushes, barrettes, toothpaste, the usual stuff. I pulled some hair out of one of the brushes and stuffed it into an empty dime bag I carried with me. If she didn’t have a wallet on her when they found the body, I’d want to be able to identify her. An extra thousand bucks for a gene sequence wouldn’t break the Thales bank.
    When I returned the brush to the drawer the back of my hand bumped into something strapped to the underside of the counter. I turned my hand around and found a little leather package, no wider than six inches. I pulled it free from its Velcro mount.
    Oh yeah, I’d seen one of these before.
    I stowed the injection kit in my waistband, far enough back that my jacket would conceal it.
    Whenever possible, always wear a jacket. A light one in warm weather won’t get you looked at half as much as the telltale bulge of a back holster under a tight shirt.
    I could hear Dora’s high heels clopping on the entryway tile. Twenty seconds until she summitted the stairs, unless she got distracted.
    Three heartbeats and one bedroom later, I clicked on the light in the walk-in closet just as Dora’s weight creaked on the staircase.
    Dresses on the right, shirts and pants hanging up on the left. Fetish tops hidden behind them, in the corner between the jackets and the chest of drawers.
    The little dresser held her underwear, lingerie, a vibrator, some PVC cuffs and accessories, and a sizable stash of…
    “Mr. Lantham? What are you doing?”
    I closed my fist around the product—a good couple ounces of top shelf bud—and concealed it behind my body. “Trying to find out a little more about her.”
    “By looking through her