Read Online Stripped by Brian Freeman - Free Book Online

games. Linda and Carter Hale thought they were lucky. Linda Hale didn’t work. Peter had someone to open the door for him after school. He had been playing outside in the driveway, tossing a tennis ball against the door and catching it in his mitt, when Linda Hale heard the thump all the way inside the kitchen. And she knew, the way any mother knows that something catastrophic has happened. She found Peter outside, half on the sidewalk, half on the street. No one around. No witnesses. The most they found was a maid three blocks away who caught a glimpse of a blue car racing through the neighborhood around the time of the accident. The lab was dragging its feet figuring out the model from the blue paint and the pieces of grill. Serena knew that didn’t matter now. It was an Aztek. It was this car.
    “Did you search inside the car?” Serena asked.
    “No, ma’am, I sure didn’t,” Crawford assured her. “The car was locked, and that wouldn’t be procedure anyway. I didn’t touch a thing.”
    “How about running the plates?”
    “Well, that I did do. Yes, ma’am. The car is registered to Mr. Lawrence Busby. He doesn’t have a sheet. Thirty-four, African American, six-foot-two, two hundred forty-five pounds. Or that’s what his driver’s license says. Mr. Busby reported the car stolen at eight thirty last Friday night.”
    “Several hours after the accident,” Serena said. “Isn’t that convenient?”
    Crawford offered her a shy, country-boy smile. “I thought so myself. A little too convenient. That’s why I offered Mr. Busby a free ride over here to collect his vehicle.”
    “You did what?” Cordy asked.
    “I got the supervisor to send a patrol car over to Mr. Busby’s home on Bonanza. You know, in case he decided to make like a prairie dog and scamper. Then I called him. Told him we had found his car and we’d be happy to bring him over to the scene. He should be here in a couple minutes.”
    “You’re one smart Texan, Officer Crawford,” Serena told him.
    “Thank you, ma’am. That’s what my mama says. My wife, she’s not so sure.”
    “How did Busby sound on the phone?”
    “Well, the first thing he asked was whether there was any damage,” Crawford said. “Guess that’s natural, but I thought it was interesting. I told him it was nothing a good body shop couldn’t make go away.”
    Serena thought about it, trying to put herself in Busby’s shoes. He’s just killed a kid. He’s afraid someone saw the car, or that he left evidence behind at the scene that would lead them right to his doorstep. Another perp who watches too much
CSI
. So he ditches the car at the mall, then hops the bus home and reports it stolen. If he’s lucky, no one ever connects it to the accident. If they do, he’s laid the blame on someone else.
    But something didn’t smell right. The Summerlin neighborhood in which the Hales lived was lily-white, and she figured that a black man the size of Lawrence Busby would have attracted somebody’s attention. She also couldn’t understand why Busby, who lived a couple of miles from downtown, would be speeding around a residential neighborhood on the far west side of the city.
    “Open the car for us, will you, Crawford?” Serena asked. “I’d like to take a look before Busby gets here.”
    “Don’t we need a warrant for that?”
    Serena shrugged. “That’s a stolen vehicle, according to Mr. Busby. We need to look for evidence of who stole it.”
    Crawford popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a stiff narrow wire with a loop at one end, and disengaged the lock on the driver’s door of the Aztek in a few seconds. Taking care not to disturb any prints, he gingerly swung the door open.
    Serena peered inside, then squeezed behind the wheel. She looked around. Busby had cleaned up after himself. The interior was spotless, vacuumed clean, no papers or trash. With the tip of a pen, she opened the glove compartment, but found only the owner’s manual inside.