Daddy's Little Girl Read Online Free

boys trapped him against a barn—seen the fear and terror in his eyes spill over into tears. She had been so moved by pity that she was dumbstruck. When she finally gathered her senses she had cracked one of the boys across the mouth hard enough to draw blood.
    Looking at him now, she realized that he could have been thirty or seventy. There was something ageless in his innocent, dumb face. In his ragged brown suit coat, which hung slackly on his bony frame, he looked at her with imploring eyes. You never knew what Richard wanted. Food, or simply to touch some bright piece of clothing you were wearing. Or simply to evoke a smile for some arcane reason of his own.
    She stared at him, at the brown teeth, the unshaven chin, the straw-colored, dirty hair. She shook her head in a burdened pity.
    She was about to invite him in, tell him she’d go next door and buy him a chicken leg (he was fussy about which chicken parts he ate), when for the first time she noticed the long, slender hands he was holding up to her, as if for inspection.
    Horror filled her as she moved closer to the window for a better look at the dark coloration staining his hands.
    Even from here, even in light less than optimum, she knew what she was seeing.
    She knew what Richard had all over his hands.
    There could be no mistaking.
    Blood.

Chapter Two

1
    Behind the crowd of onlookers, many of whom were dressed in the pajamas, robes, and nightgowns they’d been wearing in their motel rooms, flashing red emergency lights appeared to bathe them in a bloody glow.
    The sheriff, the man Adam Carnes had called ten minutes ago, was pulling into the motel driveway.
    The onlookers had been attracted to the noise Carnes had been making as he’d combed the local countryside in a crazed search for any sign of Deirdre. A few people had joined in to help him. Deirdre had been missing nearly half an hour now.
    The sheriff was a tall, flabby man in his early sixties who introduced himself as Bill Wayman. That he looked wide awake and sober at this time of night impressed Carnes, who had feared that the local law would resemble the Jackie Gleason character in the “Smokey” movies.
    “She’s gone,” Carnes said as soon as Wayman had finished the introductions. Carnes knew how shaky he sounded and appeared. He could gauge his present condition by the expressions of the onlookers. Most seemed sorry for him, a few seemed just happy for the excitement, and a handful looked as though no real man, even with his daughter missing, should carry on this way.
    Sheriff Wayman shusshed the crowd away as if he were dispersing a herd of cattle. Tilting his western-style hat off his head to reveal a bald dome with white fringes, he nodded to the motel office and said, “Why don’t we go up there, Mr. Carnes, where we can talk in private?”
    Carnes agreed, moving automatically up the incline to where the motel clerk stood outside sipping on a Coke. “She’ll turn up, son. You wait and see.” There was real sympathy in his voice. Carnes appreciated it.
    “You mind if we use your office, Slocum?” Sheriff Wayman asked the man.
    “Heck, no, Sheriff.” Slocum even held the door for them.
    Inside, the sheriff found a coffee pot that still held liquid and poured them both a cup. Ordinarily, Carnes never drank coffee past six p.m. Tonight he had a terrible sense that he was going to drink pots of the stuff before the light of tomorrow morning.
    Wayman sat down with a squeak of leather from his gunbelt and the deep sigh of a man carrying too much weight. He had an eagle beak of a nose, brown intelligent eyes, and a leisurely, reassuring manner. Carnes trusted the man.
    Wayman tucked a sardonic twist on his mouth. “Afraid I’m going to have to ask you a few questions that may irritate you, Mr. Carnes.”
    “How about calling me Adam?”
    “Sure,” Wayman said, “if that’s what makes you comfortable.”
    Carnes nodded, impatient to get on with the interview.
    “Did you and