Read Blood Ties for Free Online Page A

casinos, bars, and pawnshops, and the crime rate soars. Most homicides, rapes, robberies — not to mention unsolved drownings — occur within a two-mile radius.

    “Alone?” I said skeptically. “She didn’t have any other family or friends to crash with for a while?”

    He shook his head. “Th
    e only relative that lives here is
    her grandma, but she spends the winter in Arizona.”

    “What about out-of-town relatives?”

    “I’d hoped maybe she took off to stay with her cousin in Lincoln, you know, to get herself together. By the time I talked to Meredith again, it’d been two weeks since anyone’d heard from her.”

    Th
    e muscles in my shoulders grew tight. Th e next few
    questions wouldn’t be easy for me to ask or for him to answer. “Why is it so important for you to fi nd out where Sam was those last two weeks?”

    David’s gaze turned murky. “Last time I talked to her, she seemed . . .” He faltered. “Less angry, more . . . smug.
    Something had changed. She’ d changed. Like she had this great big secret. She swore the next time we got together, she’d explain everything.”

    Kevin glanced up sharply.

    A sixteen-year-old with a secret. How novel. But most young girls’ secrets weren’t serious enough to get them dead.

    “How long did she stay at the place on East North?”

    44

    “A few days, I guess, she didn’t have much money.
    She had a job waiting tables on weekends up at Johnson’s Siding.”

    Coincidence her body had been found downstream from where she’d been slinging hash? “Th at’s ten miles out
    of town. How’d she get there?”

    “Dick bought her a piece-of-shit car when she turned sixteen. But she barely made it to work and back.” David sneered. “You’d think a mechanic would make sure her car ran.”

    “So, realistically, she could have earned enough money to live anywhere for a couple of weeks?”

    “Doubtful. After the tourists leave, the tips drop way off . She said it was depressing.”

    “Was she depressed often?”

    “I’d never seen her depressed before any of this happened, and believe me, she had plenty to be depressed about.”

    “Would she attempt suicide?”

    His face paled. “No, she’s Catholic.”

    I snapped my mouth shut. Catholics expected Protes-tants to accept that statement at face value, for any situation, as a testament of true faith. I never did.

    “After what she’d been through? Wouldn’t she at least consider it?”
    “No.”

    “Julie, you’re getting off track here,” Kevin said.

    45

    “Not even to make her parents sorry? Make them suff er?” I paused. “Did Sam use drugs?”

    David’s guilty eyes darted away when he admitted,
    “We smoked pot once or twice.”

    “Could she have gotten mixed up with more serious stuff ?”
    “No.”

    “Did she drink?”

    His jaw clenched. “For Chrissake, no .”

    I had one chance left to test my theory. “Maybe she changed in those two weeks. Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought.”

    After his deliberate pauses, his vehement denial came swiftly. “I knew her better than anyone. She was upset, yes, but she’d never run away, or kill herself, that much I do know.”
    “Th
    en why is she dead, David?”

    “I don’t know.”

    A placating, sympathetic comment arose, and I shoved it aside, hating the hard-nosed bitch act that fi t me like a second skin. I lit another cigarette and considered him through the haze, knowing it hid the turmoil in my eyes.

    “Apparently, you don’t know too much.”
    He jumped to his feet, looming over me like a Cornhusker linebacker. “You have no right to sit there and make me feel like I did nothing. I gave her as much support as I knew how . . .” His hands squeezed open, then shut in 46
    tight fi sts. “It’s not my goddamn fault this happened in the middle of midterms. My Dad told me if I didn’t pass, he’d stop paying my tuition. I couldn’t leave, so I hired him .”
    He pointed a slender