Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

interrogation rooms. Stefan did a quick count of the murder board as they passed: no cases had been cleared today.
    The rest of the precinct looked modern, but the interrogation room looked like a warehouse with a desk and some folding chairs set up. It was the only room he’d seen that looked as though it hadn’t been changed in decades.
    Lunds sat in one chair, and Stefan sat next to him. Lunds leaned back, setting his arm on the backrest, and exhaled with his eyes closed. “So what made you want to be a fed?” he asked.
    “9/11, I guess. I was in high school, and I knew that I’d be doing something related to terrorism.”
    He smirked. “Well, this is about as terrorism as it gets.”
    Stefan was still trying to figure out what Lunds meant when the door opened and a uniformed officer brought in the prisoner. The man was shackled and looked defeated, unable to lift his eyes from the floor. He was led to the table and sat down, his chains rattling against the tabletop.
    “Mr. Mendoza,” Lunds said, turning to him, “this is Special Agent Miles with the FBI. He’d like to ask you a few questions.”
    “I told you everything,” the man said, his voice cracking.
    “Well, you haven’t told Agent Miles here everything.”
    Mendoza finally raised his eyes. Stefan thought he looked like the kind of guy who would sit behind a computer all day and not want to venture out into the world. He was maybe a hundred ten or a hundred twenty pounds, with arms as thin as sticks. Glasses sat on a thin nose, and he looked as though he was having trouble breathing. Stefan could hear the faint, raspy sound of asthma with each exhalation.
    “Virgil,” he said in the friendliest voice he could muster, “tell me everything about that video.”
    He swallowed. “The one where the kid—”
    “Yes,” he said a little too quickly.
    “I bought it from Naughty Nancy’s. It’s that store down there on Seventh, next to the gym and the hair salon.” Virgil paused as though he were waiting for Stefan to say he knew the place.
    Since Stefan didn’t, he just remained quiet and stared at him.
    “Anyways,” Virgil said, looking down at the table, “that’s where I got it.”
    “How?”
    “I was just there, and the dude workin’ there asked if I wanted some crazy porn and I said sure. So he pulled that out from the back and brought it out. It was in, like, a black case. No pictures or nothin’ on the cover. And he said it was the craziest shit I was ever gonna see. He said it was two hundred bucks but that it would be the best two hundred bucks I ever spent.”
    “Just like that?” Stefan asked. “He just offered some random customer a video like that?”
    Virgil shook his head. “Nah, man. I been in there a lot. They get me porn that ain’t legal—”
    “Child porn, you mean.”
    “Yeah, man. Yeah they get that for me. For a lotta dudes. But he said this was the craziest shit I ever seen.”
    “So what’d you do then?”
    “I said I wanna see some of it. And he said I couldn’t. That I had to take his word for it and just buy it. So I did.”
    “So you took it home and played it?” Virgil nodded. “Then what?” Stefan said. “After you saw it, and you knew what it was, what’d you do?”
    He shrugged and looked down at the table. “Nothin’.”
    “Nothing. You saw that, and you didn’t think you should call the police?”
    “That shit was crazy, man. Too much for me. I just put it away and never touched it again. On my mom’s, bro. I never watched that shit again.”
    Stefan leaned back. “How much child porn have you bought from Naughty Nancy’s?”
    “I don’t know. A lot.”
    Stefan looked at Lunds, who rose slowly. The two men stepped outside and shut the door behind them.
    “What’s going on with that place?” Stefan asked.
    “Everybody’s tight lipped. We executed a search warrant. Tore the place apart from top to bottom. Nothing illegal, just porn and sex toys. The guy he’s talking about is