Scream for Me Read Online Free PDF

had a kind heart, but Mama Papa’s food did not agree with Riley, and Daniel did
not
have a cousin with his own carpet-cleaning business.
    “He’s a damn basset hound. They all look that way. Riley’s not sad, so stop feeding him.” Daniel sat in his recliner and whistled. Riley trotted over and plopped at his feet with a huge sigh, as if the four-foot trek had tired him out. “I know how you feel, boy.”
    Luke was quiet a moment. “I hear you pulled a tough one tonight.”
    Daniel’s mind immediately conjured the victim in the ditch. “You could say that.” Abruptly he frowned. “How did you hear about that already?”
    Luke looked uncomfortable. “Ed Randall called. He was worried about you. Your first day back and you pull a case like the Arcadia woman.”
    Daniel swallowed his irritation. They all meant well. “So you brought me food.”
    “Nah, Mama had that all prepared before Ed called. She’s worried about you, too. I’ll tell her you ate a second helping and that you’re doing all right. So,
are
you all right?”
    “I have to be. There’s work to be done.”
    “You could have taken more time off. A week’s not that much, considering.”
    Considering he’d had to bury his parents. “When you add in the week I was in Philly looking for them, I’ve been out for two weeks. That’s long enough.” He leaned over to scratch Riley’s ears. “If I don’t work, I’ll go crazy,” he added quietly.
    “It wasn’t your fault, Daniel.”
    “No, not directly. But I knew what Simon was a long time before now.”
    “And you thought he was dead for the last twelve years.”
    Daniel conceded the point. “There is that.”
    “If you ask me, I’d say your father carried most of the blame. After Simon, of course.”
    Seventeen people
. Simon had taken seventeen lives, with one old woman still holding on in cardiac intensive care in Philadelphia. But Daniel’s father had not only known Simon was evil, he’d known Simon was
alive
. Twelve years ago Arthur Vartanian had banished his younger son and told the world he’d died. He’d even buried a stranger in the family plot and erected Simon’s tombstone, leaving Simon free to roam, doing whatever he wished, as long as it wasn’t under the Vartanian name.
    “Seventeen people,” Daniel murmured, and wondered if they weren’t the tip of the iceberg. He thought of the pictures that were never far from the front of his mind. The pictures Simon had left behind. The faces flashed before his eyes like a slide show. All female. Nameless victims of rape.
    Just like the victim today.
He had to see that the Arcadia victim got a name. That she got justice. It was the only way he’d stay sane. “One of the Arcadia officers mentioned a similar murder thirteen years ago. I was working on checking it out when you got here. It happened in Dutton.”
    Luke’s brows came way down. “
Dutton?
Daniel, you grew up in Dutton.”
    “Thanks. I’d forgotten that fact,” Daniel said sarcastically. “I looked in our database back at the office when I filed my report earlier tonight, but GBI didn’t investigate, so it wasn’t there. I called Frank Loomis, the sheriff in Dutton, but he hasn’t returned my call yet. And I didn’t want to call one of the deputies. If it hadn’t been anything, I would have added fuel to the fire. Bastard reporters are crawling all over the damn place.”
    “But you did find something,” Luke pushed. “What?”
    “I searched online and found an article.” He tapped the laptop he’d set on the coffee table when Luke had arrived with the food. “Alicia Tremaine was found murdered in a ditch outside Dutton on April 2, thirteen years ago. She was wrapped in a brown wool blanket and her facial bones were broken. She’d been raped. She was sixteen.”
    “Copycat killer?”
    “I was thinking that. With all the news about Dutton the past week, maybe somebody found that article and decided to re-create it. It’s a theory. Trouble is,