Read About That Man for Free Online

Jackson?”
    â€œJust trying to make a point.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œThe big city doesn’t have all the advantages over us country folks.”
    â€œNo,” he agreed. “I can see that.”
    She paused in eating her own sea bass bisque. “You know, Detective Ames, it hasn’t escaped my notice that we’ve been together for a half hour or more now and you still haven’t asked about Tommy.”
    Walker sighed and put his sandwich down. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what to ask. Until you called, I didn’t even know he existed.”
    â€œYou and your sister weren’t close?”
    Walker recalled a time when they had been. Beth had trailed him around adoringly, pleading to be allowed to play with him and his friends. He had tolerated his younger sister because no one knew better than he that they received little or no attention at home.
    â€œShe was a beautiful little girl,” he said, recalling her huge blue eyes and halo of strawberry blond curls that hadlater darkened to a golden hue. “She was always laughing. Then she got involved with Ryan Flanagan, and the laughter died.”
    The social worker regarded him sympathetically. “How old was she?”
    â€œSixteen, still a girl, really, but we couldn’t stop her. My parents tried in a halfhearted way. I tried, but I was away at college and Beth was starved for attention. When Ryan asked her to run away with him, it was too much for her to resist, I guess. When our parents died, I couldn’t even locate her. I had to tell her about their deaths the next time she checked in, which was three or four months later, around the time she and Flanagan got married. She called to give me the big news.”
    The anger and dismay he’d felt back then was still alive in him today. “I wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, but it was too late.”
    â€œWas that the last time you heard from her?”
    â€œNo, she called again after he’d abandoned her. She was all alone, scared and pregnant. I wired her some money and begged her to come home. I was married by then. I told her she could stay with us until she had her baby.” He shrugged. “She said she might not even have the baby, and she never did show up. And that was the last time I heard from her. She was somewhere outside of Las Vegas.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Mrs. Jackson said. “That must have been very difficult for you.”
    â€œIt drove me nuts,” he said honestly. “Here I was, this big city cop with all sorts of investigative skills and a lot of high-tech resources at my disposal, and I couldn’t even find my own sister. Turned out she was a couple of hours away and I didn’t even know it.”
    â€œYou should know better than anyone that a person who wants to drop out of sight can pull it off if they’re clever enough. Maybe she was making her way back to you when she ended up here. Maybe she just wanted to be back on her feet by the time she saw you. She and Tommy had been here a few years. They were doing well. She worked a variety of jobs, since much of the work around here is seasonal. She cleaned houses from time to time, waited tables, helped out in several of the shops.”
    â€œWhy not just one job?”
    For an instant Mrs. Jackson looked uneasy. “I suppose it’s of no consequence now, but she seemed to have this fear of getting ‘caught up in the system,’ as she put it. Several people offered her full-time work, but when it came time to fill out the paperwork she balked.”
    Walker uttered a curse. “That was Flanagan’s paranoia at work. No Social Security number, no taxes, nobody tracking his every move. The man liked living on the fringes of society, picking up odd jobs whenever he could, always for cash. I thought Beth was smarter than that.”
    â€œI’m sure she was. In fact, she’d been