The 37th Hour
Chapter One
Every cop has at least one story about the day the job found them.
It's not uncommon. Out on the streets, on duty or off, suddenly an
officer sees two guys in baseball caps and sunglasses run out of a
bank as if their heels were afire. By pure luck, there's an officer
on the scene even before Dispatch takes the call.
With missing-persons cases, though, it's a little different. The
people you're looking for, generally, are already dead, out of town,
out of state, or in hiding. As a rule, they're not in highly visible
places, waiting for you to all but run into them. Ellie Bernhardt,
fourteen, was to be the exception that proved the rule.
Yesterday, Ellie's sister had come to see me, all the way to
Minneapolis from Bemidji, in northwest Minnesota. Ainsley Carter was
21, maybe 22 at the outside. She was thin and had that tentative,
ne ... read full excerpt from 37th Hour, The ebook
