The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  “How many people from out of town know where West End Boulevard is?” demanded Heather Duffy. “Nobody.”

  “He could’ve grown up here and come back,” said Danehill.

  “It’s one theory,” the chief said. “But I’ve been thinking there might be an Internet connection. It could be what drew the guy here, like maybe he met her on the Internet. Buddy’s been raising concerns about this—his daughter—” He looked at Holland. “You’re the logical choice, why don’t you look into it?”

  “Okay,” Holland said. “We have to cover all the angles.”

  Laura knew she should say something before the chief took the briefing over and started making assignments. “Looks like we’ve got a plan." She looked at the chief. “I know you’re short-handed, but if you could spare an officer to help canvass the houses facing the park once I get the photos from the scene, that would be helpful.”

  Chief Ducotte stood up. “No problem. My people are your people. You want Detective Holland to coordinate that?”

  Code for: He wanted Detective Holland to work closely with her.

  “No,” she said. “He’ll have more important things to do.”

  If she’d expected Holland to be grateful, she would have been disappointed.

  As the briefing broke up, all of them crowding around to squeeze through the door of the conference room, Heather handed Laura a tampon still in its package. “You drop this?” she asked.

  Her voice had the exaggerated sweetness of a bully.

  Laura became aware of men shuffling, coughing, some of them amused, no one looking at her. Mention a tampon and you’re back in second grade, never mind most of these guys were married and had umpty-ump kids.

  Laura took the tampon, thought briefly about stabbing Duffy in the eye with it. “Thanks, Duffy. I never turn down anything that’s free.”

  It took the drive back to the Copper Queen Hotel to get her heart rate back down. Hard to not show how humiliated she was. It took her right back to grade school.

  It had been her experience that there were certain women who knew just where the soft underbelly was—an instinct they were born with. A toxic form of cunning. She supposed there were men like that, too, but she hadn’t met any.

  Victor didn’t help—reliving the scene more than a few times. “Jesus, I bet you haven’t been razzed like that since you were a rock at the Academy.”

  “Fuck you, Victor.”

  They ate in the dining room at the Copper Queen just before the kitchen closed, then headed for the bar. She wanted to talk about this guy, bounce some things off Victor. This was a bad bad guy. He was on a roll, and she knew he wouldn’t stop with Jessica Parris.

  A man was playing the upright piano in the bar, “Rhapsody in Blue”. On the table next to him was a jar for tips. Laura loved Rhapsody in Blue, so she put some cash in the jar. He nodded to her as she and Victor went out onto the terrace.

  The moment they sat down, Victor produced the photographs. Laura had been expecting them. Victor’s daughter Angela had been born a week ago, his fifth child.

  Laura oohed and ahhed over the baby, who looked like a red thumb wrapped in a bandage. The baby did look cute in her little green blanket with the yellow ducks.

  The rest of the roll was from the “get-acquainted barbecue” at Lieutenant Galaz’s a couple of months ago. There was Let’s Go People! himself, holding a meat fork and wearing an apron emblazoned with the words GOT CARCINOGENS?. Detectives and their wives playing volleyball, chowing down on burgers and dogs, holding plastic cups of beer and smiling hazily at the camera. A couple of group photos, Laura conspicuous by her absence, Richie Lockhart’s fingers forming bunny ears behind Let’s Go People!’s head.

  “A great time had by all,” Laura commented.

  “You should have been there,” Victor said. “It was fun.”

  “I was busy, remember?”

  She had been working the most disturbing case of her career. A Safford man had shot his wife, his mother, and four children. At first they thought he had taken the youngest—a little girl—with him. But it turned out she had crawled under the house and died of her wounds. The little girl had been alive for at least a day.

  “How did the notification go?” she asked Victor, not wanting to think about that case.

  “You know it’s never good. On a scale from one to ten, maybe a seven. No hysterics.” He took a drink of his Chivas Regal. “The mother was pretty weird. Too busy kowtowing to her husband, making sure his dinner was still hot—can you believe it? When I did get her attention she seemed embarrassed. Like the kid made her look bad. Could be just shock. She kept saying stuff like, ‘I told her something like this would happen,’ and ‘that’s what happens when you don’t listen,’ as if the kid skipped school or something. Almost like she expected her daughter to turn up dead.”

  “They’ve been living with it since yesterday afternoon,” Laura said. “If they’ve been watching cable at all they know the drill." Hungry for filler, the cable news channels had blown stranger abductions up into epidemic proportions, the experts drilling it into the American psyche that children abducted by strangers were killed within three to five hours after being taken.

  One cable TV network had labeled this “The Summer of Fear.” The spotlight had moved on in recent months to three separate grizzly bear attacks, and a reasonable person might assume that the child abductions had ceased altogether.

  “Did you meet the boyfriend?” she asked.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “According to the tattoo artist next door to the doll place, Jessica’s boyfriend lived with her family. His name is Cary Statler.”

  “Nobody mentioned him, and I didn’t see anyone matching a boy her age.” He took out his notebook and wrote the name down. “He lives with them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Cozy—just another modern American family.” Victor sipped his Chivas. “There’s someone else we should look at, just in case Sherlock Holmes in there is right and it was a local. A neighbor—a friend of the family. Chuck Lehman. Guy was over there in the role of concerned friend, but there was something … I dunno, avid, about the way he was tuning in. So I checked him out. Two DUIs in the past three and a half years—one in Colorado and one here. Also, he broke into his ex-wife’s house, tore up some of her dainties. Felony trespass and criminal damage, both DVs. They pled the felony down."

  “How old is he?”

  “Early forties. I know, I know. He skews old for this.” He lit a cigarette, even though he knew Laura didn’t like it.

  Victor turned his head and blew out the smoke, and also held his hand away—his try at meeting her halfway. “It’s a lead. Don’t worry, we’ll get a match on this creep somewhere, you’ll see. Jesus. Dressing her up like it’s her first fucking Communion.”

  The pianist had finished Rhapsody in Blue. Even though they were outside, Laura applauded with the rest of the bar patrons, Victor following suit. The door was open and it was possible the pianist might hear.

  “With Lehman, there are some serious stressors,” Victor said. “Guy’s divorce was finalized a month or so ago, just around the time he got laid off from work." He saw the question in her eyes. “He worked at the mine—well, what’s left of the mining operation out here.”

  “Where’d you hear this?”

  “I asked around. Danehill was the one popped him for the DUI and the DV. I’ve got the number for his probation officer if you want it.”

  “Sure. We have to look at everything.” The story depressed Laura. “How’s Elena doing?”

  “Fine now. At least she’s not cursing my name anymore. There was about eight hours there where she seemed a little pissed off at me.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Come on, it’s not all my fault.” Victor showed her his most irresistible grin, no doubt the one that had snagged Elena into motherhood five times. “She was the one who wanted another one.” He took a sip of Chivas. “Some women actually want k
ids. It’s the maternal instinct, something you’d appreciate if you ever grew up, found a nice man, got married—”

  “Hey, I put in my time.”

  He laughed. “Seven months? That’s a slap on the wrist.”

  “I got time off for good behavior." Laura realized that she’d never told Victor the whole story about her marriage. Maybe because, logic to the contrary, she still felt embarrassed.

  “One of these days you’ll find the right guy and you’ll know what I’m talking about. I got the impression you didn’t agree with Buddy back there, about the guy being a local.”

  Laura sighed. It didn’t feel local to her, but her gut could be wrong. “Who knows? Maybe there’s an Internet connection, like the chief said. In that case, it could be someone from anywhere. Buddy Holland says the guy wouldn’t know Bisbee, but it’s not that big. It wouldn’t take much to figure this place out.”

  “But why here?”

  Laura shook her head.

  Why anywhere?

  Victor left for Tucson soon afterward, wanting to get home to his new baby. Laura would stay here and go directly to the autopsy in Sierra Vista tomorrow afternoon. The Copper Queen Hotel was full up, but after calling around, she found a place on the main drag through town.

  The storm that had been threatening all day finally unleashed its fury during the short drive to the motel. Rain hit the windshield like a fire hose, but she managed to spot the neon letters spelling out THE JONQUIL MOTEL. She got out and ran through the downpour to the office.

  The Jonquil Motel was a white-stuccoed motor court, circa 1930, situated on what was once the main highway through town. For Laura, it was love at first sight. In her job as a criminal investigator, she’d spent many nights on the road, and the motels often stuck out in her memory. After a long day she’d close the door to her room and give herself time to unwind. Many times she’d find the answers that had eluded her when she was on the job—something would just click. She remembered asking a maid for towels at a Holiday Inn in Flagstaff and abruptly remembering a piece of evidence essential to the case.

  The motels also reflected the peripatetic quality to her job—always starting over, working with someone new. She was invariably seen as an outsider, but Laura didn’t mind that. She liked working her way into the warp and woof of a town, picking up its easy rhythm, slowing down for the odd yellow dog crossing the street.

  Every small town had its own personality.

  She got into bed without bothering to change out of her clothes and lay there thinking about Jessica’s killer. When she wasn’t thinking about the killer, she thought about Tom and the idea of living together, her mind going around like a carousel.

  TRAFFIC STOP ON 92

  Rain tapped on the roof of Officer Duffy’s patrol car as she sat in the Safeway parking lot, keeping her eye on the blue BMW Z4 through the streaming windshield. She’d already run the plate; it came back to a Darrell Lee James, 2452 E. Silver Strand Drive, Gulfport, Mississippi. No wants, no warrants.

  Great car.

  Duffy glanced down at the laser-printed photograph on the seat beside her. In the orange light from the sodium arcs, raindrop reflections from the windshield crawled across the picture like ants. The photo showed a good-looking man leaning against a blue BMW Z4. Hard to believe he could be a child-raper, a great-looking guy like that. Still, when she’d spotted the Z4 on her way out to Tacho’s Tacos for a late dinner, she’d had no choice but to check it out. If it was him, and she was the one who caught him—oh, man. That would show them all up.

  Her thoughts turned to that stuck-up detective the chief had saddled them with. Imagine being kept out of the crime scene, like she was a first-year rookie. She smiled at the picture on the seat and said, “You stupid bitch. You don’t know everything.”

  If this was the guy, she’d be a hero. She pictured how impressed Randall would be if she and Buddy ended up on Today.

  This daydream kept her occupied until she spotted a man carrying a grocery bag in each hand splashing through the parking lot toward the Z4. She couldn’t see much of him; he wore a hooded raincoat. When he drove out of the parking lot, she pulled out right behind him.

  He made it easy for her by speeding. Couldn’t blame someone with a car like that for putting on the afterburners. She stopped him on 92 just south of Tintown.

  The rain was coming down hard now. Mud sucked at Duffy’s shoes as she walked up to the driver’s side, careful to approach him from an angle. Safety first. Darrell Lee James buzzed his window down.

  She flashed her light on his face. It wasn’t him. This guy was fifty if he was a day.

  Duffy kept her face impassive, but her disappointment was deep. She knew she should feel more than disappointed. There was a monster on the loose. The problem was she didn’t feel things deeply the way other people did, with one exception. Love was the most important emotion on earth, and that she felt in spades. Everything else paled in comparison to what was going on between her and Randall—even catching a killer. Love could be sweet torture, or a burning agony, and she couldn’t live without it.

  “Sir, put both hands on the wheel where I can see them.”

  “Officer, I know I was speeding—“

  “Reach down with one hand and remove your wallet. No quick moves.”

  Carefully, Darrell Lee James reached into his coat and produced his wallet, holding it high and away from his body. The move was automatic; he’d been caught speeding before.

  “Slide the license out of your wallet, sir.”

  He did so, and handed it to her, then put both his hands back on the wheel.

  “Do not remove your hands from the wheel, sir. I’ll be watching.”

  She took her time walking back to her unit. Since she had already run his license, she sat there for a couple minutes, looking at the photo on the seat.

  Now that was a good-looking man. A total fucking creep, but good-looking.

  When she felt she’d waited long enough, she got out and trudged through the mud, handed him back his license, and opened her ticket book. “I’m going to give you a warning this time. But keep to the speed limit from now on, okay?”

  “Thank you, ma’am." Eyes like a Pekingese, shiny and moist in his fat pink face.

  Duffy watched him pull back onto the road, driving like a little old lady.

  A shame to see a Z4 being driven like that.

  7

  At two a.m., the clock radio came on. Laura got out of bed, pulled together what she needed, and walked through the rain-slick streets to City Park.

  Ducking under the crime scene tape, she stopped on the sidewalk below the park and looked around.

  The light from a sodium arc lamp tinted the street and buildings apricot. This had a flattening effect, making it harder to see. Most of Bisbee was sleeping, but she saw a few rectangles of light in the old buildings up and down the hills.

  She looked up the tall flight of steps to the street above.

  Laura had always thought it was most likely the bad guy had parked down here on the street and carried the girl up the stairs. She pictured him driving up around the park once to make sure no one was around. On the second pass, he parked right in front of the steps, the passenger door only a few inches from the curb and five feet from the bottom of the steps.

  Were his lights on? Would he leave the engine running?

  Yes to the lights, no to leaving the engine running. The best way to hide what you were doing was to act normally. Drive down the street with your lights on, park, turn off the lights along with the engine. If anyone happened to be awake and looking out the window, they would see nothing suspicious in someone parking a car. People worked night shifts.

  It was doubtful that he had been seen at all. At the briefing, it came out that there were very few houses from which you could actually see the band shell. This had surprised her. There were a couple of houses right on the road facing the park, maybe one or two across the way up high on OK Street, although th
e trees blocked the band shell from view.

  Laura stood in the street where the driver’s door would be, pantomimed walking around to the passenger side, leaning down and picking up the girl. He could be up the steps in less than five seconds.

  One step into the park. Three more steps to the band shell stairs. Four steps up. Set her against the wall, clasp her hands together, stand back to look at what you’ve done. Admire your still life.

  Water from rain earlier tonight dripped from the band shell arch.

  Just the act of carrying Jessica up here and placing her against the wall would cause him to shed fibers, hair, skin, and some of that would stick. How would he deal with that?

  Would he sweep up?

  Or could he have used one of those sticky rollers, the one people used to pick up pet hair? Lab techs now preferred the sticky rollers to vacuum cleaners when they looked for trace evidence.

  Water dripping from the band shell roof: tap tap tap.

  Where are you tonight? Holed up in a motel or have you moved on already?

  The wind rose, whipping the treetops. Their restive shadows danced on the band shell wall beside her. Rain started up, speckling the concrete.

  Where are you tonight?

  As if in answer, notes from an alto sax trickled down from a window somewhere up the street. Pure and sweet; a soulful, lonely sound.

  All the buildings in that direction were dark. The music stopped almost as soon as it had started.