The Last Detective Read Online Free PDF Page B

a goofy face, they both laughed, and then Ben followed Elvis downstairs. Ben put the Silver Star in his pocket, but every few minutes he fingered the sharp points through his pants and thought that it was pretty darned cool.
    Later that night Ben wanted to see the other medals and the pictures again, but Elvis had acted so upset that Ben didn't want to ask. When Elvis was taking a shower, Ben heaved himself back atop the safe, but the cigar box was gone. Ben didn't find where Elvis had hidden it, and he was too embarrassed to ask.

3
            
    time missing: 3 hours, 56 minutes
    T he police arrived at twenty minutes after eight that night. It was full-on dark, with a chill in the air that was sharp and smelled of dust. Lucy stood sharply when the doorbell rang.
    I said, “I've got it. That's Lou.”
    Adult missing persons were handled by the Missing Persons Unit out of Parker Center downtown, but missing or abducted children were dealt with on a divisional level by Juvenile Section detectives. If I had called the police like anyone else, I would have had to identify myself and explain about Ben to the complaint operator, then again to whoever answered in the detective bureau, and a third time when the duty detective handed me off to the Juvenile desk. Calling my friend Lou Poitras saved time. Poitras was a Homicide lieutenant at Hollywood Station. He rolled out a Juvie team as soon as we got off the phone, and he rolled out with them.
    Poitras was a wide man with a body like an oil drum and a face like boiled ham. His black leather coat was stretched tight across a chest and arms that were swollen from a lifetime of lifting weights. He looked grim as he kissed Lucy's cheek.
    “Hey. How you guys doing?”
    “Not so good.”
    Two Juvenile Section detectives got out of a car behind him. The lead detective was an older man with loose skin and freckles. His driver was a younger woman with a long face and smart eyes. Poitras introduced them as they came into the house.
    “This is Dave Gittamon. He's been a sergeant on the Juvie desk longer than anyone I know. This is Detective, ah, sorry, I forgot your name.”
    “Carol Starkey.”
    Starkey's name sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. She smelled like cigarettes.
    Poitras said, “Have you gotten another call since we spoke?”
    “No. We had the one call, and that was it. I tried reverse dialing with Star sixty-nine, but they must've called from a blocked cell number. All I got was the phone company computer.”
    “I'm on it. I'll have a backtrace done through the phone company.”
    Poitras brought his cell phone into the kitchen.
    We took Gittamon and Starkey into the living room. I described the call that we received and how I had searched for Ben. I showed them the Game Freak, telling them that I now believed Ben had dropped it when he was taken. If Ben had been abducted from the slope beneath my house, then the spot where I found the Game Freak was a crime scene. Gittamon glanced at the canyon through the glass doors as he listened. Lights glittered on the ridges and down through the bowl, but it was too dark to see anything.
    Starkey said, “If he's still missing in the morning, I'll take a look where you found it.”
    I was anxious and scared, and didn't want to wait.
    “Why don't we go now? We can use flashlights.”
    Starkey said, “If we were talking about a parking lot, I'd say fine, let's light it up, but we can't light this type of environment well enough at night, what with all the brush and the uneven terrain. We'd as likely destroy any evidence as find it. Better if I look in the morning.”
    Gittamon nodded agreeably.
    “Carol has a lot of experience with that type of thing, Mr. Cole. Besides, let's hold a good thought that Ben's home by then.”
    Lucy joined us at the glass doors.
    “Shouldn't we call the FBI? Doesn't the FBI handle kidnappings?”
    Gittamon answered with the gentle voice of a man who had spent years dealing with