Darkness on the Edge of Town

by Black, J. Carson

  She wanted to throw up—such a rasher of shit.

  “When can we meet in person? Your picture is not enough anymore. I think about you all the time.”

  He told her he was seventeen and would be a freshman in college this fall, pre-med. His parents had money but he “wanted to earn his way through college” so he worked two jobs. He described how beautiful Colorado was and how much fun it would be, just the two of them, camping out under the pines and falling in love.

  “We need to get hold of Colorado law enforcement,” Laura said. “It sounds like he knows these places. He might have had another girl there.”

  Victor leaned over her. “Durango, Mesa Verde, Ouray, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs—I have a cousin who lives in Colorado. Most of those towns are on the same highway.”

  “He must have passed through.” But when? She knew he had been in Indio five months ago.

  “He really did take his show on the road,” Victor said.

  Buddy opened up the .jpg photo of “James”, standing in front of the blue Z4, arms crossed.

  “Only you and Duffy knew about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you had this picture, why did you concentrate on Lehman?”

  “You were the one who bird-dogged him, remember?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t have this.” She motioned to the computer screen.

  He shrugged. “I told you. I thought they were two different cases—“

  “Bullshit.” Victor.

  Buddy shot Victor a venomous look. “I did look for him. So did Duffy. We must have stopped a dozen of those blue Z4s.”

  “We could have all been looking for him,” Laura said.

  Buddy Holland had gotten back his equilibrium, and blame bounced off him. “But that wouldn’t have done us much good, would it?” He tapped the screen, the photograph of Peter Dorrance. “Because it wasn’t him.”

  48

  As Musicman drove the last block toward the El Rancho, his mind turned to the problem of Summer. He was angry with himself for treating her the way he did. Now he’d need to woo her all over again.

  A street vendor had set up shop in an empty lot on the corner of the Benson Highway and Palo Verde. On an impulse, Musicman pulled into the lot. Under a parachute-type awning, an old man in a guayaberra shirt sat behind a glass case of cheap-looking jewelry on velvet.

  All his girls had loved trinkets. Of course, that was before they saw him. That was always a shock. They were always willing to accept gifts from a good-looking guy like Dorrance, but they turned their nose up at him.

  He bought a pretty choker, the thin strand of silver almost liquid in the glaring sunlight. Little beads of turquoise were threaded on at intervals. He drove the rest of the way with a smile on his face.

  As he switched on his blinker to make the turn into the El Rancho Trailer Court, he felt a sudden premonition. He’d learned to trust his instincts, so he flicked off the blinker and continued driving on to the next block. He turned there and turned left again, coming up behind the trailer court.

  He’d been right.

  From this angle he could see the revolving lights of a cop car.

  * * *

  Feast or famine, DPS intelligence analyst Charlie Specter thought as he got himself a cup of coffee and sat back down at the computer. Tips from law enforcement entities throughout the state had come in rapidly at first, then slowed to a trickle, followed by another onslaught. Like turning a faucet on and off. Right now was a down-time.

  He checked his watch. Another thirty minutes or so had gone by since the last time he checked his e-mail.

  Laura Cardinal had made sure that Charlie was specifically named in the subpoena to Lundy’s internet server. The messages that Lundy sent and received would be trapped at the server and then sent on to Lundy. After it had been sent to Lundy, an “admin copy” would be sent on directly to Charlie. Along with the text of the e-mail would be a header, showing the date and time of the e-mail, as well as the area code and phone number.

  He took a sip of coffee and logged on.

  Bingo! There was the e-mail address from Lundy’s ISP log.: musicman2@MSN.com. The e-mail was from darkmoondancer@livewire.net.

  Time sent: 1:57 AM. Time received: 10:43 AM.

  Lundy’s ISP had a Tucson area code. He was still in Tucson—a 628 exchange.

  Specter called the 628 number. Familiar music came on—Tom Bodette inviting the caller to stay at Motel 6.

  He looked up Motel 6 and found several. One of them had the 628 exchange.

  He turned the corner and walked to Laura’s desk. “How’s this?” he said. “I know where your bad guy was, up to an hour ago.”

  * * *

  Get a grip, Musicman told himself. There’s no way she could have gotten out of that motorhome. No way anyone could have heard her.

  He parked the car by the side of the road, got out and trotted across the patch of desert toward the chain link fence that bordered the park. The fence was woven with dried-out yellow plastic, so it was hard to see, but he could hear the yelling. It sounded like a drunk male, very angry.

  He snuck up to the fence and peered through a hole in the plastic.

  A shirtless long-haired man was bent over the hood of a Tucson police car as two cops struggled to handcuff him. His jeans were so low on his skinny waist they showed his butt crack and a bad tattoo.

  “What’d I do? What’d I do?” the man kept screaming.

  Even though the guy was obviously suffering from malnutrition, he gave the cops quite a fight.

  The cop cars were parked four trailers down from Musicman’s motorhome. The motorhome was quiet but Summer could be hitting her fists against the windows and screaming—no way to tell.

  He watched the cops. They were so busy with the screaming man that they were oblivious to anything else. A few neighbors had come out, hanging back mostly, on their front stoops. A ragtag bunch.

  Finally the cops wrestled the screaming man into the back of one of the patrol cars. Both cops had to pause for breath, and as they did, they looked at the crowd, which seemed to melt back into the rusting metal of their homes.

  He didn’t like it.

  The first car, the one holding the prisoner, drove away. The second cop walked to his car. Was it his imagination, or did the cop give the Pace Arrow more than a passing glance? He even took a step to the side, so he could see more of it.

  Then the cop’s radio squawked. Whatever it was, he got in and drove off in a cloud of dust.

  Musicman waited for several minutes, then got back into the car and drove around to the entrance.

  Right before the entrance, the GEO stalled and he cursed. Still, he was glad he’d bought the car.

  He needed to get out of here.

  * * *

  Officer Ray Garcia wiped the sweat from his face. Even in the squad car, Timmy Swanson was still kicking and screaming. Let him kick. He wasn’t about to break through that steel mesh.

  “D & D. Possession of crack. Resisting arrest. I guess that’ll about do it,” said Sam Chilcott.

  “Ought to. See you in a few.” Ray knocked on the roof of Sam’s squad car and then walked back to his own.

  He always told his kids he had eyes in the back of his head, which wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been trained to look at everything as a potential threat, and had developed that eye for detail. So as he walked to his car, he scanned the trailer park. Maybe someone would resent the arrest of poor ol’ Timmy, maybe they would rush him, or take a potshot at him. Some people would say he was paranoid, but it was a paranoia he wasn’t ashamed of.

  A vehicle up ahead stood out from the rest. Every other trailer looked as if it had been moored there and the vegetation—and junk—had grown up around it. But the motorhome at the end looked out of place. The trailers here had been scoured by the sun and the dust, burnished to oxidation. But the motorhome looked as if it had been washed recently. It also didn’t look permanent.

  He st
epped out of the lane so he could see the back end. Lace curtains in the back window, just like on the sides.

  He’d heard something about a motorhome recently, but couldn’t remember what kind or where.

  His hand-held crackled—a knife fight two blocks south of here. He got into his unit and floored it on out of there.

  * * *

  Musicman unlocked the door to the motorhome and called out, “Oh, June, I’m home!”

  It was a lame joke but it had become kind of a ritual. He loved the old TV shows on TV Land. At his age, he’d missed the best ones, the Andy Griffith Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, Lucy.

  “There’s been a change of plans. We’re going on our trip sooner than I thought.”

  No reply.

  “I’m sorry about what I did. I just kind of lost it. I won’t act like that again.”

  Nothing. She was being stubborn.

  He was surprised to realize that it excited him. He remembered one porno tape he played over and over where the man did a young girl and she fought and snarled and he kept saying, “You little wildcat!”

  He couldn’t think about that now. Sometimes he felt he lived inside a flame that wanted to consume him, burn him to nothing. This was one of those times. He swallowed. “We don’t have any time to waste. We’ve got to go.”

  He unlocked the padlock. “Let’s go!”

  Still no reply.

  Maybe he should just hitch the GEO up to the Pace Arrow and get out of here. That way he could leave her in her room. Deal with her later. She needed finesse, not force, and he didn’t have time to play games.

  “Okay, you want to play it that way, fine.”

  He walked outside and got into the GEO, drove it up to the hitch.

  As he got out, he saw two cop cars zoom by on Benson Highway. Going fast and silent but with their lights on, headed in the direction of the Motel 6.

  Don’t be paranoid

  Maybe they were going to the Motel 6, maybe not. But what if they were?

  What if it had something to do with him?

  Shit! He didn’t have time. He clambered back into the motorhome and pulled the seat cushions off the dinette seat, flung it open and rummaged inside. He needed his duffle and his computer bag. He grabbed the duffle and started throwing things in. The main thing was the laptop, the power cord, the disks, his Jazz drive.

  His notebooks. His photo albums. His cameras, of course. His cash. And Summer.

  It took him three trips to get everything into the GEO. There was a lot he was leaving behind, but he couldn’t help that. Although no one had put his picture up on television, he could feel them breathing down his neck. He knew he was one step ahead of their snapping jaws—he could feel it. He always trusted his instincts.

  They knew who he was. Maybe it was the way the cop had looked at the motorhome. He should have jumped on that earlier. At least they didn’t know about the GEO.

  After he’d stuffed everything into the back seat, he stood by the car, the sun beating down on him, hyperventilating.

  Where would they go?

  Mexico?

  He’d have to put her in the trunk. But what if the Mexican customs asked to see inside?

  He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Or he could head east or west on the interstate. Or take the backroads, lay low.

  Later. He’d figure it out later.

  He went back inside, feeling strangely jazzed. She was going to give him a battle. He knew it. The wildcat.

  And so he prepared everything ahead of time. The choloroform, the rag, his handcuffs, duct tape. It was all in the same place he’d stashed them after he’d used them on Jessica—

  The boyfriend, standing there in the doorway of the Pace Arrow. “What’s going on?”

  The image so strong it seemed like real time. Stupid kid, surprising him like that. The girl, who’d just stopped struggling, a dead weight. He had no choice but to act—and act fast.

  Still amazed no one saw him drag the kid down into the woods.

  He had the rag, the bottle at the ready. Knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He felt the beginning of impatience.

  “Summer, we can do this easy or we can do this hard. I guarantee you won’t like it hard.” He tried not to laugh at the pun.

  Nothing.

  Bitch

  To think he’d bought a present for her. He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the key to the padlock, unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  Something jumped out at him like a jack in the box.

  “What—?”

  He saw the stick clenched in her hands and his mind had only a split second to wonder what it was when it hit him right in the mid-section, punching into his side.

  Pain, tingly and bright and blood-colored. He thought he screamed.

  He grabbed at her as her impulsion carried her past him, his fingers snagging her dress—

  She jerked away and through a fine haze of pain he saw her bolt through the hallway and out the door, the door banging wham wham wham—

  And he was aware that he was holding his side and it was kind of like hot pudding, slick as snot as his father used to say, and he staggered back, spun around, and that was when he saw the object on the floor. Wood tapering down to a band of brass glimmering at the bottom.

  It was a leg off the swing-out table.

  She’d sawed it off. Somehow.

  Smart girl.

  He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and pressed it to the wound. Compress. It hurt like a sonofabitch but it had missed everything vital. There were splinters, though, big ones.

  Time slowed. His nerve endings screaming. The towel turning red. Still, he’d better go get her and think about cleaning this mess up later.

  49

  As Laura walked across the parking lot to the Motel 6 entrance, the overheated asphalt yielded under her shoe like brownie dough. Traffic hummed and sighed on the street behind her, a constant pedal point. She shielded her eyes against the glare and glanced back at the van parked unobtrusively near the edge of the property—a unit from the Pima County Sheriff’s SWAT team inside.

  The young woman at the desk looked like a college student. She wore a nice blazer with the nametag “Marci”.

  Laura asked Marci if she had either a Dale Lundy or Jimmy de Seroux registered.

  Marci looked through the book. “No one by that name.”

  “Anything close? Maybe a combination of the two? Dale de Seroux? Jimmy Lundy?”

  Uncertain, the girl pored over the names again.

  Laura looked at the names upside down. “That’s it. James E. Lund. Could you pull the card, please?”

  “I don’t know—“

  “We have a warrant.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Marci found the registration card and pushed it diffidently across the desk.

  The date of check-in was July 15th. James E. Lund, Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Drove a 1994 white GEO Prism with a Colorado plate. He was in Room 17.

  A white GEO?

  Laura wondered if he’d ditched the motorhome, or if he’d just added the car. Sometimes the simplest things could slip under the radar. All the agencies were on the alert for a motorhome. But they might not even see a motorhome towing a car.

  She asked Marci for the key to Room 17. Marci handed it over without asking to see the warrant, which was good because Laura didn’t have one. Victor Celaya was on his way with it.

  “How did he pay for the room?” she asked. “Cash, check or credit card?”

  Marci looked up the receipt. “He paid cash in advance.” She anticipated Laura’s next question. “For a week.” Laura counted up in her head. He had three days left.

  She walked back out into the gun-metal haze.

  At this time of day, between check-out and check-in, there were few cars in the parking lot, and no white GEO Prism with Colorado plates.

  She walked back to the 4Runner, got in and turned the air conditioner on
full blast. Immediately her cell started bleeping. It was Charlie Specter. “A TPD officer spotted a motorhome in a trailer court on Benson Highway that looked suspicious. He says it fits the description and the photo—the Pace Arrow. From the looks of the street numbers, it’s less than two miles from where you are now.

  “I got hold of the owner of the trailer court, asked him if he had anyone there by the name of Lundy or de Seroux. He said the guy with the motorhome gave his name as John de Seroux.”

  * * *

  Summer ran through the trailer park pounding on doors, screaming for help.

  But the trailers just dozed in the summer sun. Nobody was going to open their door to her. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true.

  She started running up the lane toward the street.

  Behind her the motorhome door banged open and she heard running feet.

  She knew it was him, but looked back anyway. Dale got into his car, backed it up and swerved around, heading toward her in a funnel of dust.

  Summer knew she wouldn’t make it to the road. She scanned the trailer court and saw a break in the fence near the last trailer she’d been to. She had to go back in the direction of the GEO, but the good news was, he’d have to turn around.

  He saw what she was doing and hit the brakes, but by the time he had stopped the car she was past him and was already cutting across the concrete pad next to the trailer. Behind her, she heard the tiny engine roar as he put it in reverse. She darted toward the break in the fence, trying to figure out how to get through the clumps of prickly pear guarding it.

  Behind her she heard the car slam into park and the door jerk open.

  She had to get down on her stomach, which took time, and shimmy through, careful to avoid the cactus. Chain link snagged her dress and she had to yank at it, legs flailing. Then she was free, out into the desert and running.

  “Summer, get back here!” Dale yelled.

  Then: “Dammit!” And the slam of the car door, the squeal of the engine again as he charged up the drive, spraying gravel.