Read Lassiter 08 - Lassiter for Free Online Page A

to be friends?”
    “Just hear me out.”
    “Give me the name you supposedly came up with.”
    “I can do more than that. I can help you find out what happened to Krista.”
    “Jake Lassiter,
help
? When I look at you, all I see is that grinning ape in the strip club. A man without a serious thought beyond his next beer and his next lay.”
    “I made a mistake. I want to make it right.”
    “Get over it. This isn’t about you and your redemption.”
    “You’re playing an away game, Amy. This is my town.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I have street savvy. Experience. Contacts.”
    “You?”
    The concept seemed ludicrous to her.
    “The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
    “So what?”
    “I can get you official help.”
    “Why should I believe you?”
    “Let’s have dinner and talk about it,” I suggested.
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “One drink, then.”
    “Not thirsty, either.”
    “C’mon. Let me lay out a plan. If you don’t like it, I’ll back off. Deal?”
    “Give me the name of the man Krista was mixed up with, and I’ll think about it.”
    “Nope.”
    “You’re a real bastard, Lassiter.”
    “Yeah, but I’m your bastard. You might not like me, Amy Larkin. Hell, you might even hate me. But the truth is, you need me.”
    She let out a long, whistling sigh and said, “Where do we meet?”

8      The Taste of Wet Steel
    Amy Larkin had been sitting on the motel room bed, cleaning a pistol when Lassiter called. Now she hung up the phone and pushed the brush through the barrel of the gun, scrubbing out wet streaks of lead.
    Her father’s gun. A Sig Sauer .380 that fit her hand comfortably. She’d never known he owned a weapon until he ended his life just six weeks earlier. One shot to the temple, with this very gun.
    It was the beginning of this whirlwind. When she found the photo with her father’s angry scribble on the back.
“The Whore of Babylon.”
    How Amy hated the self-righteous bastard. He had been so much happier believing sin—not the dysfunctional Larkin family—destroyed Krista. God, how Amy missed her sister. There had been an emptiness inside her from the day Krista left.
    Oh, the damage our parents can inflict. When she was still a teenager, Amy’s father had berated her.
    “Your sister is Satan’s mistress, and you’re her handmaiden!”
    “All I did was kiss the boy, Dad.”
    “Why don’t you run away the way Krista did?”
    No, she wouldn’t do that. There was a better way to put distance between herself and her screwed-up family. As a child, she kept her parents hidden from her friends. Mom praying in tongues, Dad withdrawn into his silent world. Amy threw herself into schoolwork. She studied hard,paid her own way through Ohio State, and became a solid citizen with a 9-to-5 job and a 401k.
    Whatever neuroses had been implanted at home, she’d buried inside. The anxiety, the sense of dread, all sealed tight beneath her polished exterior.
    Why, then, was she unable to shake her mother’s teachings? Why, when all logic told her that her mother’s faith stemmed from ancient superstitions—not the word of God—did she still pray for the divine healing promised by the Holy Ghost? The contradictions chiseled away at her.
    She jammed the brush through the barrel of the Sig Sauer, her thoughts turning to Lassiter. In just a few hours, he claimed to have found a lead.
    “A guy Krista was involved with,”
was the way he put it.
    Was he telling the truth? Or was he just coming up with a sideshow, some distraction to protect himself or someone else? An old teammate, maybe.
    At first, she had thought Lassiter was just another man-beast, like so many she had known. Hiding their fangs behind toothy grins, oiling their way into women’s beds.
    Losers
.
    Users
.
    Abusers
.
    She had no proof that he had harmed Krista. But her instincts told her he had lied about that night at the strip club. He knew more about Krista than he was telling. Could he have