The Botanist Read Online Free PDF

as innocent as that?” Tom asked.
    The captain sighed. “Worst case scenario: there could be a domain nearby.”
    Cody groaned. So Tom got crazy-librarian-telling-ghost-stories and he got a pedophile case. Fantastic.
    “Cody, I want you to go up there and have a look around. If you can’t find anything, consider it a dead end and file it away. I don’t want you wasting a lot of time on this.”
    Cody nodded at the captain. That was fine with him. He wanted to spend as little time on this as possible.
    “That’s all, then,” the captain said. “Let’s create some order out there.”

Chapter 4
    Cody knew he wouldn’t have time to check out the twisted doll case that day, especially with his mom expecting him for dinner. He usually liked to get the nastier aspects of his job over with quickly, but he wasn’t at all sad about putting his hiking trip off until the next day.
    After leaving the precinct, he dropped by the grocery store to pick up some sour cream ’n chive potato chips—his parents’ favorites—then went home to shower and change. Glancing at his appearance in the mirror before leaving, he ran his fingers over the now-familiar scar.
    It ran from above his right eyebrow, down over his eye, and part-way down his cheek. The fugitive who had given it to him had made sure it was deep enough that only plastic surgery would fix it, and his insurance didn’t exactly cover that. Now it stared back at him daily, a reminder of why he did the work he did, and the price that sometimes had to be paid.
    The drive to his parents’ house was a pleasant one. The traffic wasn’t bad for rush hour, and Cody enjoyed a casual spin past the places he’d grown up. Mt. Dessicate was a tranquil little town that in recent years had blossomed into a small city in the desert. It was a mining town, and new caches of mineral had been opened about ten years before. That had brought more people, which in turn brought more modern businesses. Mt. Dessicate may have been just a bump in the road compared to some of the bigger cities up north, but it was still much more urban than it had been when Cody was a kid. Gone were the days of knowing everyone in town by their first names—the population was too large for that anymore—but Cody still knew the majority of them; if not personally then by acquaintance.
    Pretty much everything in Cody’s life was within a twenty minute ride of his home, most things much closer than that. The streets of Mt. Dessicate were clean and wide. Children played basketball and rode their bikes in the residential areas. Commercial streets were much busier, of course, but not unsafe.
    Cody had been north to the larger cities plenty of times, but he wasn’t someone who longed for big city life. There had always been plenty of diversions for him in Mt. Dessicate, even as a teenager, and besides, all his friends and family were here. He didn’t mind working in a big city—he might wind up in one someday, for some part of his career—he just hadn’t found incentive enough to leave yet.
    At six-fifteen, he knocked on the front door of the house he’d grown up in. No one answered, but it was unlocked, so he let himself in. The knock was really just a courtesy anyway.
    The parlor and living room were empty, but when Cody followed the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen, he found his mother rinsing spinach in a colander. Diced tomatoes and cucumbers leaked juice onto a cutting board beside her.
    “Mom?”
    “Oh, Cody. You made it.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and met him half way across the kitchen.
    “You really shouldn’t leave the front door unlocked, Mom. Any screwball could have walked in here, and you wouldn’t have known you were in danger until he was in the kitchen with you.”
    “Oh.” She waved her hand dismissively, going up on her tip toes so he could kiss her cheek, which he did. “I knew it was you, dear. And don’t say screw.”
    Cody smiled and held up the chips for her