Prodigal Son Read Online Free Page A

in. When I showed up, the guy was standing here running in place to keep his heart rate up.”
    In recent years, runners with cell phones had found more bodies than any other class of citizens.
    “As for place,” Officer Lohman continued, “the body’s just where the jogger found it. He made no rescue attempt.”
    “The severed hands,” Michael suggested, “were probably a clue that CPR wouldn’t be effective.”
    “The vic is blond, maybe not natural, probably Caucasian. You have any other observations about her?” Carson asked Lohman.
    “No. I didn’t go near her either, didn’t contaminate anything, if that’s what you’re trying to find out. Haven’t seen the face yet, so I can’t guess the age.”
    “Time, place—what about occurrence?” she asked Lohman. “Your first impression was…?”
    “Murder. She didn’t cut her hands off herself.”
    “Maybe one,” Michael agreed, “but not both.”

CHAPTER 5
    THE STREETS OF NEW ORLEANS teemed with possibilities: women of every description. A few were beautiful, but even the most alluring were lacking in one way or another.
    During his years of searching, Roy Pribeaux had yet to encounter one woman who met his standards in every regard.
    He was proud of being a perfectionist. If he had been God, the world would have been a more ordered, less messy place.
    Under Roy Almighty, there would have been no ugly or plain people. No mold. No cockroaches or even mosquitoes. Nothing that smelled bad.
    Under a blue sky that he could not have improved upon, but in cloying humidity he would not have allowed, Roy strolled along the Riverwalk, the site of the 1984 Louisiana World’s Fair, which had been refurbished as a public gathering place and shopping pavilion. He was hunting.
    Three young women in tank tops and short shorts sashayed past, laughing together. Two of them checked Roy out.
    He met their eyes, boldly ogled their bodies, then dismissed each of them with a glance.
    Even after years of searching, he remained an optimist.
She
was out there somewhere, his ideal, and he would find her—even if it had to be one piece at a time.
    In this promiscuous society, Roy remained a virgin at thirty-eight, a fact of which he was proud. He was saving himself. For the perfect woman. For love.
    Meanwhile, he polished his own perfection. He undertook two hours of physical training every day. Regarding himself as a Renaissance man, he read literature for exactly one hour, studied a new subject for exactly one hour, meditated on the great mysteries and the major issues of his time for another hour every day.
    He ate only organic produce. He bought no meat from factory farms. No pollutants tainted him, no pesticides, no radiological residue, and certainly no strange lingering genetic material from bioengineered foods.
    Eventually, when he had refined his diet to perfection and when his body was as tuned as an atomic clock, he expected that he would cease to eliminate waste. He would process every morsel so completely that it would be converted entirely to energy, and he would produce no urine, no feces.
    Perhaps he would
then
encounter the perfect woman. He often dreamed about the intensity of the sex they would have. As profound as
nuclear fusion.
    Locals loved the Riverwalk, but Roy suspected that most people here today were tourists, considering how they paused to gawk at the caricature artists and street musicians. Locals would not be drawn in such numbers to the stands piled with New Orleans T-shirts.
    At a bright red wagon where cotton candy was sold, Roy suddenly halted. The fragrance of hot sugar cast a sweet haze around the cart.
    The cotton-candy vendor sat on a stool under a red umbrella. In her twenties, less than plain, with unruly hair. She looked as baggy and as simply made as a Muppet, though without as much personality.
    But her eyes.
Her eyes.
    Roy was captivated. Her eyes were priceless gems displayed in a cluttered and dusty case, a striking greenish