Strawgirl Read Online Free PDF Page B

there! They've been gone since 7:00. You won't need that gun!" The man, about eighty and dressed in painter's pants and a pajama shirt, grinned sheepishly from his position flat on the ground amid the roses. "Been skittish around guns since the war," he explained. "Lost an eye at Pearl."
    Bo wondered for the millionth time in her life just how she was able to know, without even caring, that the old codger was lying. He had a glass eye, all right. But he hadn't lost the real one defending Pearl Harbor.
    "It's an acute sensitivity to tone and presentation," Lois Bittner had tried to explain years ago. "You're a walking litmus test for imperceptible clues that anyone else would miss. Have you given any thought," the wiry psychiatrist lapsed into her characteristic accent, "to a chob as a chypsy?"
    Bo smiled to herself as Reinert made easy work of unlocking the flimsy door with the edge of his tie clasp.
    "Isn't this illegal?" she said.
    "Door was unlocked," the detective recited. "I feared that the older child might be alone in the house, injured and unable to call out. On that cause I entered the premises accompanied by a representative of Child Protective Services, Ms. Bradley."
    Reinert's written report of the entry would say precisely that. But they couldn't stay beyond a few minutes or remove any evidence.
    The living room, carpeted in a threadbare chartreuse shag, was completely empty. A dining ell to the left contained a Formica table and four mismatched chairs that could have been purchased in any thrift store in North America. Four plastic placemats in a sunny yellow showed evidence of regular cleaning, and matched a basket of silk daisies in the table's center. The kitchen was equally tidy, if devoid of personality. There was nothing about the place to suggest that anybody really lived there. There was also nothing to suggest diabolical secrets.
    "I don't get a sense of anything unwholesome going on here," Bo said tentatively. Houses sometimes seemed to whisper of events they had sheltered. This one merely yawned. "What makes you think this Massieu's involved in a cult?"
    Reinert was checking the contents of the refrigerator. "The mother told the admitting clerk at St. Mary's that they were in San Diego so Massieu could buy some land out in the desert for this New York group she called the Seekers."
    "So? California's full of people seeking something different. It's the primary pastime. Crystals, channeling, past lives, Eastern mysticism, Zen dentistry—it's just openness, curiosity. What's wrong with that?"
    "People get a little too curious, you ask me," Reinert answered enigmatically from a cabinet beneath the sink. "Makes 'em crazy."
    Marveling at the non sequitur, Bo chose not to respond to it and congratulated herself. There would be no point in explaining to Dar Reinert what "crazy" really meant or that it could not be the result of curiosity, a quality already erroneously damned for its ability to kill cats. Moving into a hall accessible from both kitchen and living room, Bo inspected a bathroom situated between two bedrooms. On a shelf was a half-used pack of pink bathroom tissue and a large bottle of baby shampoo. Bo remembered pale curls and shivered. The baby shampoo would have been for Samantha. On the toilet seat and on the floor bright red stains were drying.
    "Dar," she whispered, "better see this."
    "Mother said she was bleeding this morning," he said gruffly behind her. "Bastard must've torn her up last night. She goes to bed. The blood pools in her abdominal cavity while she's sleeping. Then when she gets up ..."
    Bo touched the door frame in an attempt to curb a wave of nausea. What had been done to Samantha Franer did not bear close scrutiny. Not without throwing up, at least.
    You've seen this before, Bradley. Remember your job is to protect the sister. Let the police worry about the perp.
    "Well, well, looka here ..." Reinert singsonged from one of the bedrooms. The tone made it clear that he'd