Read 10th Anniversary for Free Online Page A

little girl.
    “Hey!” said Cindy.
    I had to laugh—and I did.
    Claire went on, ignoring Cindy pawing at her pocket and retrieving her phone. “I pull back the blankets and the dead man has been mummified by the heat and he’s holding a freakin’ AK forty-seven in his hands.”
    Cindy stopped what she was doing and stared at Claire.
    “He was dead? Holding an AK forty-seven?”
    “He killed himself with that gun,” Claire said. “Sent my pulse rocketing into the low one-eighties. You can believe that.”
    Cindy looked stricken.
    “I’m okay, now, sugar,” said Claire. “It was just a scare.”
    Cindy swiveled her head toward me, her blond curls bouncing, her clear blue eyes locking on mine.
    “That text I just got was from Metro Emergency,” she said. “Another girl thinks she was raped.”
    “Another girl?
Thinks
she was raped?”
    “Linds, I feel it in my gut. A very wonky story is brewing. Do me a favor, will you? Give me a lift to the hospital.”

Chapter 16
    I GUNNED MY CAR along Columbus Avenue to Montgomery Street and past the Transamerica Pyramid, my siren whooping to clear a lane in the dinner-hour rush.
    Beside me Cindy clung to her armrest and told me about Laura Rizzo, a woman who might have been drugged and assaulted the same night Avis Richardson was found wandering under a moonless sky fifteen miles north of the city.
    I had to check out Cindy’s “wonky story.”
    Two girls had been assaulted now, maybe three—and none of them had memories of the assaults? Could there be a connection to Avis Richardson? Or was I just wishing for a lead—any lead?
    I brought Cindy up to speed on the Richardson case asI reached the intersection of Montgomery and Market streets. I came close to clipping a big-assed Lexus and ran onto the trolley tracks along Market. I jerked the wheel again and put the traffic jam behind me. Cindy was pale, but I just kept driving.
    “A teenage girl was brought into Metro ER by passersby a couple of nights ago,” I told Cindy. “That’s off the record.”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay? Seriously.”
    “Yes, Lindsay. O. Kay. It’s off the record.”
    I nodded, took a hard right, and turned onto Mission on two wheels, flying past Yerba Buena Gardens on my left. You almost had to get promises from Cindy in writing. She’s honest, but what can I say? She’s a reporter. And we weren’t ready to churn the waters with a kidnapped baby story.
    I still didn’t know what we had. Was Avis Richardson a victim of multiple savage crimes? Or had she killed her own child? I kept my foot on the gas as if that would actually bring the Richardson baby home.
    “This teenager had recently given birth,” I went on, taking the car through the heart of the Hispanic area of town. We passed check-cashing holes-in-the-wall and cheap souvenir vendors selling T-shirts out of the old 1920s theaters under their cracked and faded marquees.
    I turned right onto 26th, still talking. “But the thing is, Cindy, no baby was found. The girl didn’t remember the delivery, and now that the shock is wearing off and she might be able to talk to us, she won’t do it.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “I swear I don’t know.”
    Cindy made me promise to tell her
whatever
I could,
whenever
I could,
on
the record. I nodded yes as I turned left on Valencia and parked my old heap in front of the hospital.

Chapter 17
    CINDY AND I entered the crowded lobby of Metropolitan Hospital and found Cindy’s friend, Joyce Miller, waiting for us at the main desk. She was a dark-haired woman, maybe thirty-five, wearing a nurse’s uniform.
    She pumped my hand with both of hers.
    “Thanks for coming, Lindsay. Thanks so much.”
    We followed Joyce down a number of branching linoleum-tiled corridors, around corners, and then through the ER, an obstacle course of gurneys and wheelchairs, before we came to a partitioned stall where we met Anne Bennett, a possible rape victim.
    Ms. Bennett was a travel agent in her early forties.