Mr. Kiss and Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

hadn’t been easy. The department picked its victims deliberately; many of them had priors and none could afford long legal battles. A few were people Keith had busted back in his old days as sheriff—petty criminals and bottom-echelon dealers. He’d haunted dive bars, dingy tenements, crusty punk camps, trying to earn the trust of people who had no good reason to trust anyone. Some had been eager to tell their stories and had heard that Keith Mars was one of the few people interested in helping people like them. But more than a few had been scared to talk—scared of what would happen to them or their families if they did. Keith couldn’t exactly blame them. He still had a dull ache in his back from the accident that’d almost killed him. And every time he got in his car there was a moment—just a split second—when he felt his heart fall out of rhythm and flutter against his chest.
    For the past few weeks, Keith had been feeling edgy and burned out, unfocused in a way he hadn’t experienced since right after the accident. He’d been busting his hump in the ultimately wasted effort to gather evidence against Lamb. What he’d just said to Cliff wasn’t just spin. He truly was ready to disengage from the madness and catch his breath.
    So, fine. Veronica’s star was rising. No surprise there; she’d gotten a lot of media coverage in the wake of the Dewalt-Scott case. Before that she’d solved the murder of one of the biggest pop stars in the country, resulting in a short profile about her in
Vanity Fair
. In his twelve years as a PI, he’d ridden similar waves a few times. No
VF
profiles though. He definitely was not an adorable twenty-nine-year-old blonde.
    Veronica’s door opened again. The suit emerged first, his mouth and eyebrows set in parallel lines across his face. Veronica followed, notepad in hand.
    Hickman headed straight for the office’s side exit, pausing in the doorway. “There are several boxes of evidence. We’ll send them tomorrow morning,” he said.
    “Sounds good,” Veronica said. “Thanks for coming by.”
    He gave her a brusque nod and closed the door.
    Veronica latched the deadbolt, then turned and scanned the room, a wry smile on her lips. Keith couldn’t help but notice she didn’t meet his eyes.
    “Wow, it’s sure quiet out here. I hope all that eavesdropping didn’t interrupt the party too much,” she said.
    “No one was
eavesdropping
,” Mac said.
    “Yeah,” said Weevil. “We gave up when we realized the door was too thick.”
    Keith watched as Veronica made her way to the reception desk and perched on the edge. He had a killer poker face, affectless as an Area 51 alien’s. It came in handy whenever he wanted to observe, to learn without overtly prying. His daughter knew better than to trust it, but at the moment she still wasn’t looking at him.
    “So are you going to tell us what that was about?” Mac asked, opening her hands wide in a shrug.
    “It’s no big deal. Petra Landros referred him to me because of the work I did on the Dewalt case,” Veronica said. “Okay, so do you guys remember anything about a sexual assault back in March? A girl left for dead in a field on the edge of town? I don’t remember it hitting the local news.”
    And there it was: The reason Keith didn’t want her here, in spite of everything. Because imagining her anywhere near a case like that gave him a knee-jerk spasm of terror. He focused on breathing slowly and carefully, his fingers curling around the glass of Scotch.
    It was Cliff who answered. “I remember that. It was in the blotter. That was the week before Hayley Dewalt went missing, so the story probably got lost in the circus.” He leaned back into the sofa and looked up at Veronica. “I remember there being some question whether the cases were linked. The victim was the same age as Hayley and Aurora, but the cops ruled out any connection pretty fast. And then I didn’t hear anything else about it.”
    “Well, the