The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

particularly useful, but Sky was patient.
    "Good girl. Now I want you to tell me everything backwards." Sky tried to make a game of it because she knew the child was tiring.
    Molly brightened. In her child's warble she described her wait on the wooden bench downstairs. Her eyes were wide open now, and she peppered her recollections with gesture and pantomime. And, as most subjects did when given the peculiar task of reverse recall, Molly presented her memories in discrete scenes, like a stage play performed backwards.
    She was talking about the corpse in the woods now. "I saw red hair like my friend Briana. I think she was taking a nap." Then, she and Noah at the pond, fishing.
    "Noah put some bologna on my hook but the fish ate it and Noah told me "Bait your own hook!"" Molly mimicked Noah's voice so perfectly that Sky smiled in spite of herself. The child had a gift.
    "So I had to put the bologna on that hook all by myself, so that's why I didn't hide when those people came."
    Sky waited.
    "Noah told me, "Hide behind the boat house if anybody comes." But when I heard the woman laughing I didn't run behind the boathouse because I was putting cheese on the hook and it kept falling off and it was my last piece." Molly looked at the ceiling in mock despair.
    Sky watched an invisible vein pulse softly along the child's pale, exposed throat. Behind the blonde head, in the Audubon print, bloody entrails spilled from the falcon's beak.
    “Can you tell me what was the woman was doing, Molly?”
    “She was running. I think she wanted to fish.”
    “Why do you think she wanted to fish?”
    “Cause she was running toward the water but the man pulled her arm. He said ‘No’ and pulled her arm.”
    “Tell me about the man.”
    “He was big. Like my daddy.”
    Sky proceeded carefully, allowing Molly to lead, letting the child narrow down the possibilities. Tall, wide shoulders, dressed in black sweats, black shoes, a black hood hiding his features. A deep voice.
    “Do you think it hurt when the man pulled the woman’s arm?”
    “No, she was laughing and laughing.”
    “Was the man laughing, too?”
    Molly shook her head. No.
    "Can you tell me what the woman looked like?"
    Flipping the hood of her jacket over her head, Molly peered out and said, “She looked like this.”
    Sky wasn’t sure what Molly meant so she tried a different tack. “Who did she look like?”
    “Like nobody.” Molly shook her head vehemently. “I didn’t see her face. I heard her laugh. The man said ‘No,’ and pulled her arm and she still laughed. They ran away.”
    “Where did they run?”
    “Down the street.”
    Sky sketched a quick map of the pond, the boat house and the street. “Show me where you were on the map, Molly.”
    “Here.” The child put a finger on the north side of the boat house. “Next to a tree.”
    “Where was Noah?”
    Molly pointed to the far side of the boat house.
    “Show me where the man and woman ran.”
    Molly slid a finger north along Dexter. “They went that way. That’s the way home. Maybe they were going to my house.”
    “Were they running together or was he chasing her?”
    “Together.” She jumped up from the chair. “He ran like this.” She scooted across the floor in a crabbed stance, arms tucked in front of her body like a boxer. She circled the room twice and plopped down in the chair.
    “Did you see where they went?”
    “No. I told Noah I wanted to go home.”
    A shadow darkened the window and the door swung open.
    Kyle stepped inside. "Jake wants you downstairs," he said to Sky. He gave Molly a wink.
    Sky turned the tape recorder off and shot Kyle a look.
    Kyle responded with a wordless, world-weary shrug. Yes, the shrug said, interruptions are absolutely unacceptable during witness interviews. No, the shrug also said, Jake shouldn't have preemptive power, but there it was.
    He was gone before Sky could protest.
    She reminded herself that she would be off the case and back in