Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
The office was quiet on Svensdays, with just the essential staff working, so it was the one day I could actually get some work done.
The results of my database search for a DNA sample match popped up on my screen with the same answer it gave me week after week, month after month, year after year: no matches found.
I logged into another state’s database and uploaded the sample there. As I waited, there was a soft scratch on my office door.
“You finally remember it’s Svensday, Radar?” I said as I got up from my chair and walked over to the door.
I opened it just wide enough for him to walk through, because I didn’t want anyone else getting any ideas about coming in during my quiet work time.
The black cat, who spent his days on a sunny window ledge in the lobby, getting attention from the dispatchers in their workroom or sleeping in a bed behind my desk, meowed and brushed past my leg.
“I got you something good,” I said, reaching into my pocket before I sat back down.
He jumped up on my desk as I set down several strips of dried salmon. Every Svensday, I brought him back something from the potluck lunch. That was the only part of the day I usually participated in. Painting windows and singing Christmas carols weren’t my thing, but I did take part in the fishing tournaments in the summer.
As Radar ate his snack, I went back to my computer screen.
No matches found.
I moved on to the next one, following the same list of databases I did every week. There was a nationwide database, but not every department was connected to it. Though I wanted more than anything to get a hit from one of these searches, I did them for my own peace of mind.
This cold case would haunt me for the rest of my life, whether it got solved or not. It was my greatest failure as a man and as a police officer, and my inability to solve it only added salt to the wound that would never close.
While I waited for the next database search, I picked up the newspaper from the corner of my desk. There was a photo of Billy Grafton’s kid trying to catch snowflakes with her tongue, and the caption below it said Avon Douglas/Chronicle Staff.
She was impulsive, at least I assumed so based on the way she’d run out in the street that day, and she had the same disdainful attitude most people from the big city had about the Beard.
Fun to visit, but why would anyone want to live there?
I’d never live anywhere else. This was my home, and I’d take the small-town busybodies over big-city snobs any day. Avon didn’t know this place and its people like I did.
Her feistiness intrigued me, though, and I could never seem to make myself look away from her long, wild red hair that wasn’t quite curly or straight, but a sexy in between. There weren’t many people with the guts to dive in and run a newspaper they didn’t even ask for, but she had.
I’d heard she fired the advertising representative, who never showed up on time, and was handling ad sales herself while she looked for a replacement. She probably didn’t know that her fearless, hardworking attitude made her more like the people in this town than she realized.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, telling myself to stop thinking about her. I had a policy about women in the Beard—strictly professional relationships only. And women I saw for a night when I went into the city for a weekend a couple of times a year weren’t relationships, either. Just a quick, easy way to scratch an itch. It had been close to a year since I’d even done that because it was a pain in the ass finding women who only wanted one night.
Radar finished his salmon and looked at me expectantly.
“That’s it, buddy,” I said, running a hand over his back. “You’ll have to settle for your cat food later.”
He stalked off, pissed. Radar was a moody bastard, just like me. That was probably why we got along well.
A window popped onto my computer screen: no results found.
I heard a commotion in the lobby and looked at the video feed on one of the screens hanging on the wall next to my desk. A group of people had arrived to paint the City Hall windows. I scanned the faces and saw that Avon wasn’t with them. I’d assumed when she took off after Ron Fucking Davison’s thoughtless comment that she wouldn’t be returning to paint windows, and I couldn’t blame her.
She’d looked so damn hurt as his words sank in, finding out in front of a bunch of strangers that her parents had deceived her and, worse, that everyone but her knew about it.