Desert Cut Read Online Free

last weekend. Dubbed ‘Precious Doe’ by the medical examiner, the child is African-American, between five and seven years old. Wounds on her body suggest she was the victim of a crime. Anyone with information about this girl is urged to contact Sheriff Bill Avery’s office at 520-555-3215.
”
    Jimmy lowered the newspaper with a look in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Sure was a pretty little thing, wasn’t she?”
    Was
. That horrible past tense. God only knew what a few days in cold storage had done to her.
    “I’m sure the sheriff will track her identity down, along with whoever did…Well, did what they did.” His tone wasn’t as confident as his words. We both knew that bodies dumped in the Arizona desert were seldom identified, their killers remaining free to kill again.
    When I didn’t respond, he said, “Lena, you shouldn’t take everything so personal.” An orphan himself, he knew all about my childhood, my nightmares.
    Before I could remind him that I always took abused children personal, the phone rang. This time I picked it up before the voice mail did. I didn’t care what kind of sad story was on the line, it would be better than the one in my head.
    Desert Investigations has been in business ever since a bullet in the hip ended my career with the Scottsdale Police Department. Jimmy, introduced to me by a man whose son I had once freed from prison, joined me as full partner soon afterward. His Internet skills and my television consulting kept us flush enough to accept more pro bono cases than the average investigative agency usually took, but truth be told, we preferred those. Neither of us liked spending our time ferreting out run-of-the-mill liars and cheaters.
    The office is relatively decent, as P.I. offices go, mainly because of our downtown Scottsdale location and the expectations of our clientele. None of that old Maltese Falcon grimness here, just coffee-colored walls hung with civic commendations, two tasteful blond desks with a row of matching filing cabinets, and several Western-patterned chairs scattered throughout the reception area. Comfortable and anonymous. When clients visit P.I.s, they’re not shopping for decorating tips.
    The day dragged on, broken up only by more paranoid spouses, and a few parents begging me to drug-test their teens. I grew so bored that by the time we closed, even the tourist parade had ceased being entertaining.
    “Ready for some cappuccino at Java Joe’s?” I asked, as we locked up. The art galleries were closing, too, expelling tourists onto the sidewalk, where they just stood around, wondering what to do next. Cajun fritters at Sugar Daddy’s? Jose Cuervo at the Rusty Spur?
    Jimmy didn’t answer right away, but when he did, he sounded uncomfortable. “Ah, cappuccino sounds great, Lena, but I need to rush home and shower. I have an, um, appointment, kind of, tonight.” A hint of pink began to spread across his cheeks, which was in itself strange, since Indians almost never blushed.
    Such embarrassment could only mean one thing; my partner had a date. “Is she anyone I know?”
    His eyes shifted away, something else that seemed strange, because he was usually the most open of men. “I doubt it.”
    Jimmy’s love life tended to be as disastrous as mine. Among his former girlfriends were a convicted felon who’d sold him a stolen Rolex; a refugee from an upstate polygamy compound who tried to make a white man out of him; a bartender who drank more Tecate than she served. The list goes on. Always a sucker for a sob story, he had been used and abused by the supposedly weaker sex ever since we’d known each other.
    As we stood on the sidewalk, tourists swarmed around us, every now and then one of them throwing Jimmy an expression of alarm. Like most Pimas, he was a big man, and his tribal tattoo made him appear fierce. Ignoring the tourists, I framed my next question cautiously. “You’ve known her for a while?”
    A sheepish smile.