The Death Dealer by Heather Graham

Author:Heather Graham [Graham, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Paranormal Mystery
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2008-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

In the morning, he left before she woke up.

He was suddenly anxious, because Lori Star had never contacted him.

At Lori’s apartment, he once again got no response to his knocking. Before he could move on to Susie’s place, her door opened and she came out to speak to him. She was clearly distressed. “I was going to call you today. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think Lori ever came home.”

He frowned. “You haven’t seen her since Sunday?”

“No. And I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’m not her next of kin or anything. And I always heard that a person had to be missing for forty-eight hours before anyone could fill out a missing-persons report, but I don’t even know if she is a missing person. Oh, God, I’m so upset. I just don’t know what to do.”

“It’s all right. But it’s definitely time to fill out a missing-persons report. I’ll go down to the police station with you.”

“Police station?” she said, and cleared her throat. “Um, Mr. Connolly, you should know…I’ve been arrested before.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he assured her.

But she wasn’t going to go down to the station with him, he quickly realized, so he put through a call to Raif.

“That’s Missing Persons,” Raif told him.

“Raif, this is the woman who was on television after that pileup on the FDR, saying she was psychic.”

“Then talk to Traffic,” Raif said.

“Raif, dammit, Sam Latham was in that accident. It might be connected.”

“And it might not!”

Exasperated, Joe held his temper. “So do you have any answers on the Thorne Bigelow murder yet?” he demanded.

“No,” Raif admitted after a moment, then sighed. “All right, I’ll get someone from Missing Persons and come over.”

“We’ve got to get into the apartment,” Joe added.

“Ask her friend if she has a key,” Raif told him. “Maybe she’s supposed to water the plants or something like that.”

Raif turned to Susie. “Do you have a key to the apartment?” he asked.

She shook her head, and Joe went back to his call.

“She’s a missing person, Raif. Can’t we get a warrant on probable cause to find out if she happens to be lying dead inside?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Raif said. “All right, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Eventually Raif showed up with, as promised, an officer from Missing Persons. Susie did her best to answer all the necessary questions, but it was difficult. If Lori had living parents or other family, Susie had never met them. She didn’t even know if Lori Star was her real name.

While the officer worked with Susie, Raif, who had the warrant in his pocket, entered the apartment. Joe followed him in without asking permission.

“There’s nothing out of order,” Raif said. He sighed, turning to Joe. “Look, I know you thought there was something believable about her, but…the woman is a prostitute. Who knows? She wasn’t bad-looking. Maybe she found someone she could, um, ‘work’ for a while. Maybe she’s shacked up in a motel somewhere.”

“She didn’t leave with any of her belongings, not according to what Susie told us,” Joe said.

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