Free Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) by Matthew Storm

long stay in a federal prison. I could say under oath that I had no idea
who he was, if I ever needed to, and in a way I’d actually be telling the
truth. I liked it that way. So did he, I was sure.
    I spent
a few minutes pacing around my living room to make sure my ankle was going to
hold up. It seemed like it would. For a while, anyway. Jogging was out of the
question, though. It was a good thing I never jogged.
    I’d have
preferred to spend the day inside, but I wanted to talk to someone at the food
bank, and I wasn’t sure I could describe Krystal well enough to distinguish her
from any of their other more desperate clientele over the telephone. I had the
photo of her on my cell phone that I could show to people, though. I didn’t
much like the thought of doing that, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
    It was
just past 10:30 now. I’d head out shortly, but I wanted to do something else,
first. Something I should have done a long time ago. I took my phone and called
Sarah’s extension at the SDPD. She answered on the first ring, her voice dull
and lifeless. “Sarah Winters.” I’d never heard that tone out of her before, and
I didn’t like it.
    “Jesus,”
I said. “Are you all right?”
    It took
her a minute to place my voice. “Oh. Nevada,” she said. She was silent for a
moment. “What’s going on?”
    “I
wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I heard you maybe weren’t so good. I guess I
was right.”
    “I’m
bored,” she said. “Dan won’t let me off the desk until he’s sure I’m not
dangerous. Asshole.”
    That was
the first time I’d ever heard her speak badly about him. It wasn’t a good sign.
I wanted to say something reassuring, or maybe even hopeful, but that was a
language I wasn’t really familiar with. “You’ll be back out there soon,” I
said. It didn’t sound convincing at all.
    “Sure.”
    I had no
idea where to go with this. Why had I even tried? “Sarah…” I hesitated. Was
this the right path to go down? “Nothing that happened was your fault. You understand
that, right? You can’t beat yourself up over it.”
    “I
already have a therapist, Nevada.” Her voice was cold. “I’m not getting into
this with you.”
    “Well,
if you ever want to talk…”
    “I
don’t.”
    “I’m
just saying I’ve been through a lot, you know? Odds are I can relate to what
you’re going through.”
    “I just
said I don’t want to talk, Nevada. Was there anything else?”
    This
wasn’t the Sarah I knew at all, but I was out of things to say. I really was a
shit friend. Relationships of any kind had never been my strong suit. Besides,
I probably needed to get back into therapy, myself. “I won’t bother you about
it,” I said. “But if you’re as bored as I think you probably are, I’ve got
something that might help with that.”
    Sarah
didn’t say anything for a long moment and I wondered if she was angry with me.
She had a right to be, I supposed. A better person than me would have touched
base with her a lot earlier. “All right,” she finally said. “What the hell?
Amuse me.”
    Nothing
I had to say was amusing, but I explained the situation with Krystal, and that
she’d claimed to have information about three murders. Sarah thought about it
for a while. “Dan was telling the truth,” she said. “We don’t have an unsolved
triple. I can’t think of a double we haven’t put to bed, either. Did it sound
like a serial?”
    “I’d
have to assume you guys would have picked up on some commonality,” I said.
“Same weapon, same method, same victim profile, same… something .”
    “Not on
our radar,” Sarah said. “There are plenty of unsolveds, though. There always
are.”
    “Do you
think you could find three for me that do have something in common?
Anything?”
    “I don’t
know, Nevada. There are a lot of variables to look at. Besides race, gender,
backgrounds…I could probably think of fifty more.”
    “Do you
have anything better to