Ladies Man (Laura Cardinal Series Book 6)

by J. Carson Black

  There were probably hundreds of them still on the road. Or backed into yards, or in junkyards, falling apart.

  Laura looked again at Carla’s face. She was a beautiful woman. But there was something about her expression. Not sad, not scared, not angry. Laura squinted hard at the picture, trying to divine what had touched her about Carla.

  Worried?

  Troubled?

  Or was it desperation, which she masked behind the smile?

  Her smile seemed pasted on. Laura made the picture of her face larger. Was it . . . recognition? Someone behind the camera?

  The only word that came to mind was: “hope." Laura tried to puzzle it out. Why was Carla hoping? Was she looking for a way out? Did she see the photographer as a savior? It was so hard to tell what was going on. But all Laura could feel, in the soup in her gut, was that Carla wanted something— desperately. Maybe it was just to stay alive. Maybe she hoped to get away. Laura thought, looking at Carla, that the woman had an inkling of what was in store for her.

  If escape was Carla Borel’s hope, it had been dashed.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” Laura said aloud. But of course there was no answer. Or there were several answers. Women stayed for all sorts of reasons. One of them, Laura knew, was a case of women not trusting their own instincts.

  Any way you looked at it, this beautiful and talented woman had been left in the desert to rot like so much refuse.

  “He won’t get away with it,” Laura said to Jenny. She looked at Carla Borel again. “I promise you that."

  Laura would put out a BOLO for a 1998 Shasta Cheyenne—once she was absolutely sure of the make, model, and the year it was manufactured.

  Of course, the camper would very likely be long gone. Predators were peripatetic. They kept moving. A professional predator would ditch a camper like that in a place where it would not be found.

  Still, Laura visited five different camper sales lots, sellers of new and older models, but as she’d expected, there were no Shasta Cheyennes of that particular vintage.

  But now they had something. They had a photo of the camper, the man, and Carla Borel. They would put together a poster with the photo of the camper, Borel, and the man with her.

  Next stop after that: The Arizona Daily Star.

  The photo ran in the paper. Unfortunately, the photo had required a blow-up and crop to produce any detail, and with the contrasty light and shadows, the man’s face looked more like a Rorschach test. They got very few calls—and none of them panned out. Still, it was all they had, and so Laura decided to go ahead and put the photo out to the public again. It ran in the Star for three days, with the caption: “Do you know this man?”

  One of the local network TV affiliates ran a brief story and included the photo.

  There were plenty of calls but most of them were from people who had seen a guy in line at the grocery store who looked like the picture or thought they’d seen a picture of him before.

  Leads diminished, then dwindled down to nothing. There were other cases that took Laura’s attention—plenty of them. But Laura made inquiries where and when she could, and followed every lead as they came up, sparse though they were. She knew that if a homicide was not solved within a short window of time, it was almost impossible to close the case satisfactorily—unless . . .

  If her luck was good. She was hoping for a wild card.

  Chapter 5

  In April of the following year, she got a break in the case. She asked the Arizona Daily Star to put up the photo of Carla Borel again—a total longshot. She expected nothing.

  But luck was with her. A friend of hers, who watched an episode of a show called True Crimes which profiled the disappearances of two older women, emailed her. Both women had been romanced by a man approximately their age, and had left with him on “an adventure." They’d gone with him in a camper to travel the West.

  Laura managed to get a copy of the episode. Actors played the roles of the women and the man.

  And there was an artist sketch, a clay model made of the victim’s face. From numerous clues from the remains, they were able to determine that she was in her mid-to-late fifties.

  It appeared that someone was killing middle-aged women, and he was very good at it.

  Laura reached out to the Sheriff’s Office in Fresno County, California. Detective Mark Wallen, who had worked the Marcy Sabato case, returned her call.

  Wallen sounded wary at first, but warmed up quickly. He told her that Sabato had been missing since May of 2016. From an interview of Sabato’s daughter, they learned that her mother had met a man and fell in love—something that, apparently, happened often.

  Laura asked him to send an interview transcript.

  “We’ll expedite it, Wallen said. “We want this guy, too. Sabato’s daughter never met the man, but she produced a photograph of the two of them and their camper."

  Laura asked if they had the photo in evidence, and if she could get a copy. He said “Hold on."

  He emailed it to her in attachment.

  Laura opened it.

  “You think it’s your guy?” Wallen said.

  Laura couldn’t believe her good luck. “It’s him. Ninety percent sure."

  The photo was eerily similar to the one she’d already seen. The woman was shorter, chunkier, and sported cropped grey hair. Laura gave the detective the make, model, and year of the Shasta, and asked him if those were the same statistics on his end. “In the photo we have, there’s a swoosh coming from the left,” Laura said. “But the door is the same, and the yellow curtains over the sink are the same."

  “Excellent. Send me your photo, okay?”

  “Give me your email address,” Laura said.

  After ending the call, Laura stared at the photo. It was so similar to the one she had. She wondered if he had photos taken of every victim he was with. A conceit? The same motorhome, a different woman, another campground. Serial killers generally kept something of the victim—a souvenir. She wondered if the killer put all the photos together in a photo album. Possibly. If he’d killed more than one victim, he might be a serial killer. What Laura called a “collector." He would have photos to commemorate each of his conquests.

  She wondered how he targeted the women who interested him. Certainly, he had already targeted her. The Wicked Witch GIF on her phone—she knew it was him.

  She wondered if he would try to reach her again, just to frustrate her. And . . .

  How did he know she was working the case?

  If he was indeed a serial killer, he would be peripatetic, moving constantly, expanding his range.

  He could be anywhere.

  Laura had done her best to open a window into this guy’s soul, and he’d flown right in. He was aware of her, and she was aware of him. Two could play that game.

  She wondered if he would come back at her. She thought that he would. Why else would he reach out to her?

  Cocky.

  He thought he was in control, and at this juncture, maybe he was. But if she played it right, maybe she could start a conversation. Maybe he would come back to bait her, to tease her, to match his wits with hers.

  That would be a mistake.

  Suddenly, she felt as if there was a hot stone in her belly. She’d had it many times—had learned to trust her gut, or at least consult it. There were times when her gut was right on, and she’d acted quickly to save herself. Other times, her gut warned her of nothing—virtually nothing. But she always listened to the feeling, that hard, bearing-down feeling.

  She knew the guy was crafty. He’d made an art of this. His own performance art.

  A good percentage of killers wanted recognition. They didn’t want to be caught—they thought they were too smart for that—but they wanted to put their stamp on what they’d done. Of course, the really smart ones knew it was a bad idea—that they could be caught out.

  This guy was proud of his handiwork, and wanted the credit. Why else take pictures of himself and his victim? He was
almost asking for an arrest.

  And she’d be happy to give it to him.

  The question that had not been answered: how did he know who had been assigned to the case? Most likely, he’d been monitoring the area—maybe even that day, waiting to see who turned up.

  Could he have watching them the day they worked the crime scene?

  Laura knew she was getting ahead of herself—wandering into speculation. It was a stretch to think he nailed the right day to be there when investigators showed up at the crime scene. She sensed that he’d moved on. He had a motorhome, which meant he liked to travel.

  Serial killers were peripatetic. And the smart ones kept moving.

  She sat there for a few minutes, staring out the window. Then she pulled a small, spiral-bound notebook.

  Over the years, Laura had learned to take notes quickly—in cursive penmanship her grandmother taught her. She’d liked writing that way, and did so in school, instead of writing in block letters. The way the pen moved, it seemed to mirror the pace of her thoughts, moving forward, without breaking. She didn’t know if science had been done on this, but her grandmother’s gift of cursive writing helped her to connect in some way to a deeper consciousness, allowing her to remember things she might have forgotten. Maybe it was the way the words moved forward, connected to one another. Maybe it was the act of using a pen. When she had real thinking to do on something that puzzled her, she would often take out a ruled pad and write out her thoughts in cursive. And so she wrote:

  Three females,

  Middle-aged women

  Motorhome. Link?

  “Middle-aged women." Carla Borel definitely was middle-aged, and single. And the photos she’d seen of the guy and the camper seemed to fit into the puzzle just the way she’d hoped for.

  Why middle-aged women?

  Why did he pick them? Were they easy prey? Laura knew a lot of older women, and most of them were savvy. But then again, there were women who might fall for this lothario, fall for the prospect of being footloose and fancy-free, going off for an adventure in a motorhome with a man they were attracted to.

  He’d have to groom them. Clearly, he would have to put in some time to get his victim to go with him. He might try with some, and fail with others—which would provide another shot at finding him, or at least finding out who he was.

  And the question was: How many women did this guy lure into his web?

  Laura pulled up the photos of the camper and the two women.

  There had to be others.

  She started online, looking for stories of middle-aged and elderly women who had disappeared. She found one, in addition to her own count. The missing woman was Marjorie Reeves Gaynes, a resident of Colorado Springs. Marjorie Gaynes told her grown son that she had met a man, they had fallen for each other hard, and they’d decided to travel the West together. The son was used to his mother “falling in love,” and thought nothing of it—

  Until he received a call from the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office in northern New Mexico.

  Laura called them and asked to speak to the detective who worked the Marjorie Gaynes case.

  He called her back within minutes. “This is Detective Ray Espinosa. How can I help you?”

  Laura ran it down for him, her case of the woman killed and dumped in the Arizona desert. She told him she’d read the account of the particularly gruesome double murder at the NAH DOS TE Trading Post.

  He described the scene, which was bloody and had to be terrifying. Two women dead, one of whom worked at the trading post. “You think there might be a connection?”

  “Might be,” Laura said. “Both the women who were killed at the Trading Post, how old were they?”

  “The proprietor was forty-nine, and the other one—the primary victim—was sixty. From what evidence we have, one of the women might have been fleeing an assault. It’s our theory that she went into the Trading Post through the back door. There was blood on the screen door handle. As I understand it, one of the women was trying to get away."

  “She ran into the Trading Post. Killed instantly, and the other woman, Miss . . . Pye,” he said, “she was also shot. She was killed in the parking lot."

  “No one saw it?”

  “Not that we know of. You gotta understand how remote that place is."

  “Any leads?”

  “Just the names of victims and their ages. Manner of death, which I believe made the news."

  “No vehicle?”

  “As I said, the place is pretty remote. No one else was there at the time—at least no one who stuck around." He cleared his throat. “There were only three people there that we know of: the two victims, and the killer. We assume the perpetrator’s male. We took tire track molds, but, number one, the ground was so hard in that parking lot, they were pretty much worthless, and number two, there were a lot of tire tracks. But it rained a couple of days before and that’s what made the parking lot hard as concrete."

  Laura asked for a description of the two women’s injuries, and took down the information. “Can you send me the info on this and photographs of the crime scene?”

  “Will do."

  They exchanged information.

  After the call, she compared the double homicide at the trading post to the woman found dumped in the desert. The only thing they seemed to have in common was the fact they were middle-aged.

  And the man.

  She knew what he looked like. She knew what the camper looked like.

  Laura put out a BOLO with the photo of the man and his camper in five states: Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, and New Mexico. In addition, she contacted the newspapers in six cities in Arizona and asked them to run the photo.

  And two days later, she received a phone call from a woman in Flagstaff, a Doris Acosta. Acosta described her relationship with the man she knew as Jeffrey Thomas.

  Laura asked her if the man had a motorhome.

  “How did you know that?”

  “It fits with the description of the man we’re looking for." She asked for Doris’s email address and sent the photo of the motorhome to her inbox. “Have you seen this man?”

  “Yes—yes it is, I mean, that’s him. I don’t know who the woman is, though. Probably his next conquest."

  Next, Laura asked about what she knew of “Jeffery,” how and where she’d met him, what his temperament was like, down to his mannerisms and their obvious breakup. She had to type quickly.

  Jeffrey was “courtly,” thoughtful, and fun to be around. After a while, though, he changed. He seemed to lose enthusiasm. “It was almost as if he didn’t see me. Like I didn’t matter—nothing I said mattered."

  “Was this a change in his demeanor?”

  “No. He was always like that, but I thought maybe he was just preoccupied about things."

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. And he just kept saying that he loved me, that we were meant to be together.

  “Was that true during the whole relationship?”

  A pause. “Yes. He tuned me out, but you know, men do that. But he made it up by being such a gentleman. Opening doors for me, buying me dinner, flowers, all of that. But I was beginning to wonder if he liked me at all. Even after he insisted we get married and vagabond around the West, as he called it."

  These conflicting signals bothered Laura. Why the rush? Why were there times he tuned her out, and yet he clearly wanted to tie the knot? He pushed her to set a date, although at times, he was moody and preoccupied. She began to have second thoughts. “It was strange. Like, sometimes, he didn’t actually see me."

  Laura was confused. “What do you mean, he didn’t see you?”

  “It wasn’t that he couldn’t see me physically, but sometimes it was like I just wasn’t there. Like there wasn’t a “me” there. It was crazy-making. One minute he didn’t seem to acknowledge me at all, and the next, he was declaring his undying love. He kept telling me how much he loved me, that he wanted to ge
t married, but then he just kind of . . . went blank."

  “Blank."

  “Like he was just done talking to me. Like he was in another world, and it certainly wasn’t mine. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I’m so glad I didn’t go with him. Even if he wasn’t . . . what you said—dangerous—there was enough about him that bothered me, and the longer I knew him, the more I felt it. Most of the time it was like I wasn’t with him at all."

  “When you told him you wouldn’t go through with the wedding, how did he respond?”

  “He tried to get me to change my mind. Tried hard, argued, pleaded with me. And then it was like a switch flipped and he was gone."

  Laura asked Doris if she could write down everything she knew about “Jeffery,” no detail too small or insignificant.

  “I’ll be happy to."

  Later that day, Laura got the email from Doris. Doris described their relationship. At first, Jeffery was a real gentleman, old-fashioned and chivalrous. He opened doors for her, which kind of embarrassed her, but she got used to it. He took her out dancing at the clubs, out to dinner, to movies, on picnics. He wooed her. And for a while, she thought he was more in love with her than she was with him. He complimented her and brought her flowers every time he took her out somewhere.

  She liked him well enough, but after a while, all the flowers and cards and tiny gifts began to run together, and it felt like overkill. He kept pressing her, made her feel guilty.

  And then Laura saw something that made her blood run cold. Doris wrote: “I don’t think he likes animals."

  “Can we talk on the phone?”

  “Sure. I’m assuming you have my number. Call me."

  When Doris answered, she said, “I have two cats and a dog. He insisted I lock up Mikey—he’s my dog—when he came over. He said he was bitten by a dog when he was a kid. I understood that. He didn’t go near the cats, but one time I noticed him looking at Tank, and the look on his face . . . I think that might have been the moment I realized that this relationship was going nowhere. When it came right down to it, I’d take my animals over a guy like him any day."