Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) by Harper James Page A

course.
Anyone would. And he'd realized that he couldn't say for sure if any of her
clothes were missing or not. The discovery had shocked and dismayed him. What
else had he been oblivious to? Had the reason for her disappearance been under
his nose the whole time? He didn’t know if it made him stupid or insensitive.
Probably both.
    'Are you listening to me?' Schneider
barked, jumping out of his seat again and snapping Evan out of it.
    'Yes, I'm listening,’ Evan said
curtly. He was getting fed up with Schneider’s rudeness. ‘So you think
something must have happened to her.'
    'It's got to be one or the other.
Either she hated my guts and I never knew it, or she's dead.'
    After only ten minutes in his company,
the first option seemed a distinct possibility, but it was the second one that made
Evan stop and think. The word hung in the air. He realized it was the first
time in the whole case that anyone had come out and said it. Up until then
everyone had simply disappeared . Now it was out in the open, it brought
it home to him that there was very little chance of a happy ending. The best he
could hope to provide was the relief that comes from finally knowing .
    'It's not too difficult to imagine,
is it?' Schneider said. 'Some married man gets her in the family way...' He stretched
out his hands and gripped an imaginary pair of hips, pulled them towards him
and thrust his pelvis back and forward, grunting with an obscene leer on his
face.
    It was all Evan could do to keep a
straight face. The guy should be in an asylum. 'Was there anyone in particular
that she was seeing?'
    Schneider stopped his gyrations, thought
for a moment and then nodded to himself. 'Actually I think there was, just
before she disappeared, but I don't know who it was.'
    'Did you tell this to the Police
back then?'
    At first Evan thought he hadn't
heard. He was staring absently at the table top. Then he gave a small shrug and
sat back down again. 'I can't remember,' he said. 'I'd have told them if they
asked. Why wouldn't I?’ He grunted as if someone had kicked him. ‘Not that it
would have made any difference, the useless imbeciles.'
    Evan hoped he didn't sound too much
like Schneider when he talked about Sarah's disappearance.
    'I think perhaps I talked to someone
called Fukner,' Schneider said.
    Evan coughed into his hand to hide a
laugh. He couldn’t take much more of this nutty old man. He wasn't sure whether
it was his accent, or whether Schneider was just being offensive. 'You mean
Faulkner?'
    'That's what I said, wasn't it. Are
you deaf too?'
    Schneider was starting to lapse back
into his quarrelsome self. Time was running out. Evan wasn't going to get much
more out of him. 'What did he say?' he asked.
    'He said he couldn't waste his time
chasing after some low-rent whore.'
    Evan was glad that he didn't chew
gum because he would have choked on it. 'He actually said that?'
    'Well, no. Not exactly,' Schneider
admitted, 'but that's what he was thinking.'
    'How do you know that?'
    Schneider looked at him like he was dealing
with a retard. 'I could see it in his eyes. He looked at me like I was some
stupid old man making it all up.'
    Evan couldn't see how that made his
sister a whore, but he definitely agreed with the stupid old man assessment.
'Whatever could have given him that impression?' he said under his breath.
    He was still holding the framed
photograph and set it down carefully on the table. Schneider looked at it. Suddenly
he back-handed it violently, smashing the glass with the force of the blow and sending
it flying across the room. A small trickle of blood appeared on the back of his
hand. He lifted his hand to his mouth and sucked the cut. Evan went over to
where the picture lay to pick up the pieces.
    'Leave it there, where it belongs.'
Schneider hissed. He slammed his fist down onto the table making Evan jump and
muttered something under his breath. It sounded to Evan a lot like filthy
whore .
    The sudden outburst of violence