Free 18th Abduction (Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson

would have been questioned. Extensively. What if he didn’t believe her? There was a good chance of that. And Bosnia isn’t exactly on our patch.
    “I didn’t think it through.”
    I remembered Joe’s face when he told me Anna’s story on the night he’d met her. He’d been this close to breaking down when he told me about the scorched-earth destruction of her town. The savage murders of her husband and child.
    “You did the humane thing, hon. Subjecting Anna to anFBI grilling without first vetting her story could have been worse for her, and you, too.”
    “That’s what I told myself. But what I’m doing now, having people in other offices do research, digging into government files on behalf of my concern for this woman … I’m acting like I’m a PI, not a federal agent. It’s inexcusable. Let me be more precise: I could get beached.”
    Joe Molinari was a straight arrow. Solid. Honest. Some would say a hero. He’d taken a hell of a chance for a stranger. A woman. I tried not to let that bother me.
    I asked, “What can you do to fix this?”
    “Now that I’ve gone this far, I want to bring this to the supervisor as a real thing. If Petrović is living on Fell Street legally, I want to know how that happened. Why is he here? Is he in a witness protection program? Is he being managed? What’s his deal? If Anna is wrong and this is a Petrović look-alike, I’ll talk her down and save her the grief of being interrogated by the FBI. And I’ll fess up.”
    “That shouldn’t take too long,” I said.
    He shrugged. “I have to work this myself, not get anyone else involved. Anyway, your turn. Tell me.”
    He didn’t have to convince me. I was dying to tell him about my day.

CHAPTER 28
    Joe and I changed positions on the sofa. I lay down with my head in Joe’s lap, and he stroked my hair. I told him how good it felt. He smiled, but it didn’t quite take. He looked as wrung out as I felt.
    I put it out there; that we’d found Carly’s dead body, that it appeared to be homicide.
    “I heard something about a dead woman found in the Big Four.”
    “That’s her.”
    “Oh, man. Too bad, Linds.”
    I filled Joe in on the details, including the shocker that she’d checked into the motel alone, and that according to the manager, she’d done it before.
    “He said she was a prostitute.”
    “No kidding. The schoolteacher?”
    “So said the manager. Right now I have nothing to support that. But, Joe, if Carly was a party girl,
anyone
could have killed her.”
    Joe commiserated, encouraged me to keep talking.
    I said, “The manager says he may have seen her date, but only from the back. He says Carly had a pimp named Danny or Denny, he doesn’t know. Our night shift is showing Carly’s picture around, talking to their CIs about her and this possible Danny or Denny. And here’s a surprise. None of the hotel guests heard or saw anything suspicious while Carly was at the Big Four.
    “These three women were having good lives by nearly any standard. What am I missing?”
    Joe said, “Maybe it wasn’t them. It was him. What kind of person would have done this?” His anger was right there, just below the surface. Was he thinking about Petrović and Anna? What kind of man had committed this shocking crime?
    I said, “I think her killer was careful. Organized. This wasn’t an amateur job. My guess is he’s killed before.”
    “I couldn’t agree more.”
    I pictured the three women leaving the Bridge feeling happy, maybe a little tired, tipsy … what had happened?
    “Joe, there’s no sign of a struggle in the parking lot outside the Bridge. Assuming the women were offered a lift back to the school after dinner. Say the driver saw an opportunity. Why did these women get into that car?”
    “Was it raining?”
    “Nope.”
    “Maybe they trusted him.”
    I smiled at him, squeezed his hand.
    “Or one of them did.”
    He said, “You’re in the early stages of the investigation. You need more