Rigged Read Online Free PDF Page A

especially one his age, early thirties, unshaven with a scruffy, lazy look to him. Perez wondered if the stripper’s companion was just there to buy her a hard-earned lunch after a roll or two in the hay or if it was his version of dinner before hauling her off to some shitty trailer for a little flesh-for-cash exchange.
    The waitress walked over to their booth. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, handing the menus to them and acting breathless, as if she were overwhelmed by the three or four diners in the place.
    The man tipped his hat to her. What a funny thing to do.
    A second later, Perez turned his attention back to the remaining half of his burger, but he set it down with dismay, no longer feeling as hungry as he had when he’d ordered it. “I suppose we could always take a swing by Shirley’s on the way to the medical examiner and see if there was anything more to the scuffle. Maybe something went down that nobody wants to talk about.”
    Nikki smiled and finished the rest of her mug in what must have been a borderline painful gulp of still-steaming coffee.
    Perez pulled his wallet out and was in the middle of looking through it when the waitress came up from behind where he was seated and set a picture on the counter.
    “Hey, Sergeant, that guy over there just asked me if I’ve ever seen this girl,” she said tapping a fake red fingernail on the photo. “I was gonna go ask our grill man, but it dawned on me that she kinda looks like that girl they found around the corner. An officer came around a few days back showing people a picture of the poor girl and asking the same thing. You think it’s her?”
    Perez looked down at the picture then back over his shoulder at the couple in the booth. He passed the picture over to Hamill. “It’s her, right?”
    Nikki didn’t need to say anything; she just looked and followed Perez’s stare toward the window: at the stripper, and the guy in the porkpie hat.
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    Charlie had never been one for percentages and odds, but he had friends who were, so when the police officer came over to the table where he and Dee Dee were about to enjoy a nice breakfast, showed his badge, and asked how he knew the girl, he had to wonder: what were the odds that of the other two people in the diner, both would be cops and recognize the girl in the picture?
    “Well? Plan on answering him?” the female officer asked. She introduced herself as Sergeant Nikki Hamill.
    Charlie would have pegged her more for a cheerleader than a cop; either that, or she’d had too much caffeine, based on that little shift she kept doing from foot to foot, waiting for answer. “A friend,” Charlie said, which wasn’t really a lie.
    “A friend, huh?” said Perez, the male officer, raising his eyebrow as if he thought Charlie’s lackluster response was vague bullshit.
    Charlie thought Perez looked out of place, as if an inept casting director had given him a role in a movie. He was a bit too Hollywood, too big city to be the acting law and order in such a small community. He was confident when he talked, but not in the bully kind of way that Charlie usually saw in small-town or small village law enforcement. “That’s right, a friend,” Charlie told him. “I haven’t seen her in years and heard she was living in the area. Thought I might stop and say hi.”
    “And you just so happen to be passing through Bluff Falls?” Sergeant Hamill asked.
    “Not really,” Charlie said, “but sometimes it’s good to go a few extra miles for a friend. Why the twenty questions? It’s not illegal to be friends with somebody, right, Officers?” he said more snidely than he would have liked.
    There was a moment of silence as Perez looked like he contemplating how much he could or would tell Charlie.
    Charlie, meanwhile, wasn’t really all that curious; he knew he’d get his answers sooner or later. The only thing that really bothered him was the cop’s hesitation to spit it