The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Freddy insisted that Laura wait in the living room while they “took care of some essentials.”

  She waited, feeling uncomfortable. Wondering if he was being cleaned up because he had overheated, wondering if he had, indeed, pissed his pants. Wondering, too, if he thought that just because a majority of people thought something was right, there was an excuse for cruelty. Did he really think that, or was he just playing devil’s advocate?

  Forty minutes later, Jay Ramsey reappeared, his hair combed nicely and his color better. “Let’s get down to it, babe,” he said.

  Jay situated himself in front of the computer and connected to the Internet. Laura noticed that even with his limited hand motions, he was fast with his two index fingers; they seemed to fly over the keyboard like ten digits.

  Laura watched as he pulled up a no-frills site, devoid of graphics.

  Ramsey said, “Welcome to WiNX. This is the quintessential Internet relay chat program.”

  Laura tried to remember what Buddy Holland had told her. “Does it have something to do with Instant Messaging?”

  “That’s the currency. People talking to each other in real time. You’ve probably done something like it on Facebook or Yahoo.”

  “Uh no.”

  He twisted in his chair a little, smiled. “The principle is really simple. You put yourself out there and pretty soon someone wants to talk to you.”

  He hit a couple of keys and brought up a screen that reminded Laura of her first experience with a computer, back in the covered wagon days. “That looks like DOS.”

  “See? You know more than you think. WiNX is a DOS-based system. See these?” He keyed down through several lines of old-fashioned courier print and pointed with a thumb. “These are channels—rooms where people with like tastes can meet. There’re probably 20,000 channels on WiNX right now." He flinched again, moved in his seat. Looked at her. “Am I confusing you?”

  She remembered how Buddy had thrown technical terms at her without telling her what they meant. Enjoying her discomfort. She hesitated to make a fool of herself, but couldn’t help asking, “Are they kind of like TV channels?”

  He grinned lopsidedly. “That’s as good a description as any. Imagine a station with unlimited channels on everything you can imagine." He clicked on another page. “WiNX has been around forever. The thing you’ve got to know is that this is the real underground. There are no controls. Nobody’s watching you to see that you don’t go over the line. There’s nothing to stop you from doing anything you want to do. It’s a no-man’s land.”

  Laura felt a kinetic snap in her spine. A no-man’s land. She got the feeling that she was on the brink of knowing something she’d rather not.

  He scrolled down what seemed like miles of print. “Ah, here we are.” He clicked on something called Warezoutpost, and a list of titles came up, all after the word “warez”.

  “Warez is ‘wares’,” Jay explained. “As in ‘let me show you my wares.’ See? Software for games. Movies, music. This is where the kids are at because they can download stuff for free.”

  He showed her how to locate what he wanted, a movie called Ghost Recon. “This is what draws the kids. Free music, movies. I’m next in line if I want it.”

  With a few clicks to the keyboard, he moved on.

  “The kids are always the first to know. You can get anything you want off these boards. They cater to every taste. This one is general, but there are channels where kids talk to each other.” He pulled up another window. “Let’s see what we’ve got in the Girls’ Room.”

  “The Girls’ Room?”

  “I call it that. It’s used by lots preteen girls.”

  He pointed out the list of names on the sidebar to the right. “Those are the people in the room now. What I’m going to do is …” He hit a key and then typed in a name, erased it, and typed in another. “Gotta have a nick.” He added helpfully, “Nickname.” He typed in “nick1amber/." This was accepted, and then he typed: “hi.”

  It showed up like this:

  Amber: hi

  Laura heard a chime and a message box popped up. Jay pointed to the status bar and Laura saw the name Gitmo.

  Gitmo: how old r u?

  Amber: 2

  Gitmo: pic?

  “He wants a picture.”

  Amber: ok were you fro?????????

  Amber: from

  Gitmo: CA u?

  Laura heard a chime. Another person wanting to talk to Amber. Jay hit a key and another instant message box popped up.

  Podunk89: a/s

  “He’s asking her age and sex.”

  Amber: alost 13

  Jay nodded to the status bar at the top of the screen. Podunk’s name changed from red to black. He was gone. “Wrong age,” Jay said, going back to Gitmo.

  Gitmo: where you been?

  Amber: My mom calledm e

  Gitmo: send me a pic

  A flurry of chimes. Four new names lit up the board.

  Amber: well see how old r you?

  Gitmo: you ever had sex?

  Amber: I had a bf last year

  “Bf?” asked Laura.

  “Boyfriend.”

  Gitmo: Did bf getta bj?

  Amber: You sonud mean!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Gitmo: can’t handle a joke LOL

  More chimes, the board lighting up with suitors. Jay opened another instant message box.

  Smooth Talk: Amber u a little girl?

  Amber: im thrteen how old r u???????????????

  Smooth Talk: let me see a pic

  Amber: I have 1 at shchol school – not here

  Smooth Talk: where d you live

  Amber: I live in az

  Smooth Talk dropped out. Back to Gitmo:

  Gitmo: I want a pic

  Amber: not fair if u don send me pic toO

  Gitmo: you playing games little girl

  Amber: fairs fair my pic for yours

  Gitmo: if you don’t want to fuck your wasting m time

  Gitmo’s name went from red to black.

  Jay sat up straighter, twisted, adjusted himself against the back of the chair. “That’s what you’re dealing with. These creeps are on these boards all day, trolling for kids.”

  Laura was about to say that she didn’t think any child would fall for that, and then shut her mouth.

  Children would fall for it. Teenagers would fall for it. Because they had not yet developed that distrust life ground into you over the years, like grime into clothing.

  “We did a survey,” Jay said. “Among parents. They think of computers as just another appliance, like a TV set. They don’t realize it’s like leaving the back door to your house open. Anybody can come in, and some of these guys are really smart. They know how to push the buttons.”

  “How do you find someone like this? Can you find his ISP?”

  “Doubtful. Guy like that, he’d use one of the big servers, like earthlink, hotmail—it’s easy to be anonymous. There are search engines that you can look on, but I’m pretty sure this guy wouldn’t have a local ISP.”

  “Oh.”

  “But there’s an easier way. That’s what’s so interesting about technology. Sometimes the best things are simple. You know the photo you have of him? We can probably trace him through that." He hit a couple of keys and a beach scene came up on the screen.

  “This is why you need me.” Sounding cocky. “Not many people can get their hands on this kind of software.”

  He explained that there was something called image recognition software, which could break up every photograph into its elements, then run each element against all kinds of databases, looking for a match. He zoomed in on a man on the beach. “See this guy’s T-shirt? With the software I’m going to use, I can run a search for exact matches. It’s like a search engine, instead of searching for like words, it searches for images. I’m going to need the original photo, though.”

  “From what Endicott said, it was a digital photo, and the only thing we have is an inkjet pic
ture.” She nodded to the black-and-white photocopy. “It’s not all that much better than that.”

  Jay looked troubled. “It might be harder, but we can still do it. Where is the original?”

  “Endicott’s FedExing it—I should get it today.”

  “What we’ll do,” Jay said, “is re-scan the picture using high resolution. Then I’ll compare it to the databases. It might take a few days, though.”

  “You sure you can’t find him with the ISP?”

  “I’ll try that, too. I’m warning you, though, this guy isn’t your average Internet user. I think you know that.”

  “But this image recognition software, it’ll take a few days? That’s a long time.”

  “How many days has it been so far?”

  Too many, she thought.

  27

  “This is what CloneImage came up with,” Jay Ramsey said, rolling his chair to the computer monitor.

  It turned out that Jay Ramsey’s image recognition program had been quicker than expected; Laura had gotten the call this morning, not twenty-four hours after she last saw him. Jay had already found two matches to the man in the picture.

  Ramsey pulled up a site called TalentFish.com. “For a small fee, actors and models can put their pictures online. Kind of like a rogues’ gallery. Lucky for us that young Petey is up on the latest technology.”

  “Petey?”

  “Peter Dorrance. Actor, model, pretty boy around town. This was a virtual cakewalk.” He laughed at his own joke—virtual.

  The TalentFish home page opened up. There were several headings at the top of the page: Actors, Portraits, Head Shots, Actor and Model Composites. Jay pulled up Peter Dorrance’s page under “Actor and Model Composites”.

  “CloneImage got this hit pretty quick, since one of these is the same picture he sent that little girl.”

  And there it was. The photo of the young man, the house behind him. This was a three-quarters shot, showing his excellent physique, but there were others, including two headshots.

  Laura looked at the other photographs, the ones she’d never seen before. Dorrance had three photos taken in front of the house. Two in black and white and one in color. In the color photo, he leaned against a blue sportscar, arms folded over his chest. He wore a cable-knit sweater and looked like a print ad from Land’s End. The house behind him was yellow with white trim.

  “Nice wheels,” Laura said.

  “Hard to get into,” Jay said, “Unless you’re his age. I also found the house, if you’re interested.”

  “In a minute.”

  She looked at his resume. Age twenty-two. Six foot three and a half. 40-Regular. Several acting roles in plays Laura did not recognize (she wasn’t a big patron of the theater). Print ads: Hair and Now; Leslie’s Department Store; Eat at Joes. Television ads: Ralph’s Car Sales and Gulf Chiropractic. Not a lot there, but he had gotten a crack at the big time, a cameo as a corpse on CSI: Miami.

  “Eat at Joes is in Panama City,” Freddy said.

  “Take a bow, Freddy,” Jay said. “The Florida panhandle—just like you said it would be. Prince Charming here lives on the Forgotten Coast, the Redneck Riviera, or—if you’re thinking red and blue states—Bush country.”

  Freddy pointed to the bottom of the page. “There’s the address of the Talent Agency.” The Strand Talent Agency, Panama City Beach, Florida.

  “So there’s good reason to believe he lives in Panama City,” Laura said.

  “Thereabouts. I got another match, though.” Jay clicked through to another site, the Franklin County Home Buyers Guide.

  Laura found herself staring at the house. “St. George Island?”

  “Down the coast, east of Panama City,” Freddy explained.

  “An old listing,” Jay said. “This site hasn’t been updated since 2002.” He zoomed in on a pale plaque near the top of the steps. It was blurry and hard to read, but Laura was able to make an educated guess: “Gull Cottage?”

  “Shouldn’t be hard to find. St. George Island isn’t all that big.” He clicked on MapQuest. The barrier island looked like a narrow boomerang, bisected by one main road paralleled by a few ancillary streets. “Twenty-nine miles in length and no more than a mile across at any one place.”

  He clicked onto some photographs of St. George Island.

  “It doesn’t look like a place Peter Dorrance could afford,” Laura said. “Unless he’s independently wealthy.” Considering the sports car he leaned so casually against, that was a possibility.

  “I did a few searches on him. The only times he comes up is in regards to acting jobs—and not very many of them. But at least you’ve got a place to start.”

  Laura stared at Dorrance’s headshot. Was this her killer? If she went strictly by the FBI profile, he skewed young for this kind of crime. Usually, it took time to build up to precise ritual-like dressing up of the girl and posing her that way. It took time to develop that kind of self-confidence, time to become a full-fledged sexual predator.

  “Something you might want to think about,” Ramsey said, as if he’d read her mind. “You saw how easily I found this site. Could be your killer looked for the best-looking hunk he could find and sent it to the girl to impress her. Easy enough with gullible little girls.”

  Laura thought he had a point. But it had always been her experience that most people stayed within their comfort zones—including sexual predators. Even if the man in the photo wasn’t her killer, she was willing to bet they had crossed paths sometime or other.

  A call into the Panama City Police Department revealed there was no one by the name of Peter Dorrance in either Panama City or Bay County, Florida. While she had the detective on the phone, Laura described her own case and asked if he had anything similar.

  “Nothing that comes to mind, and that one would. But I’ll check around, see if anything like that’s turned up in the other counties up here.”

  Next she called Detective Endicott in Indio, the detective who had investigated Alison Burns’ murder. She laid out what she had and asked him if he wanted to accompany her to Florida. He declined, but asked her to keep him updated.

  The rest of the afternoon she put her case together, wondering if she should go to Jerry Grimes or directly to Galaz. She didn’t like the idea of going over Jerry Grimes’s head, but she also knew that Mike Galaz would be more enthusiastic. After debating back and forth, she finally went to see Jerry. She couldn’t leave him out of the loop.

  He was gone for the day. She tried his cell, got a message and left one of her own. Looked at her watch. She needed to make reservations if she was going to fly out there tomorrow. She went looking for Mike Galaz.

  He was practicing his putting. “How’d it go with Ramsey?” he asked her.

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”

  She ran it down for him.

  Galaz didn’t take his eye from the ball. “Jay has a point, don’t you think? It could be the guy, or it could be someone else who got his picture off the ‘Net.”

  “Either way, I think he’s from around there. Other than Lehman, it’s the only real lead we’ve got, and I think I should go and check it out. This guy isn’t going to stop with Jessica Parris.”

  Galaz tapped the ball, which rolled up to the lip of the cup and hung there. He frowned.

  Laura waited as he adjusted his stance and nudged the ball in.

  Without looking at her, he started over. She knew better than to say anything. Lucky for her, the ball made it in right away this time.

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Ah, much better.” Then he retrieved the ball and set it up again.

  Laura contemplated grabbing the putter and whacking him on the shin with it.

  She wondered if he was getting a perverse pleasure out of making her wait. He sure was milking it—the stance, the grip, the way he rocked back and forth before squatting down and stretching the putter out toward the cup before doing it all again. At last she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Sir? I’ve got to get moving if I’m going to go.”

  He held up one hand: Just a minute.

  So she waited, the tasteful cherry and brass mantel clock on the shelf behind the desk ticking out her presence. After another successful putt, he palmed the ball and studied her. “Is this coming from logic or from your gut?”

  “Both.”

  “But if you had to choose. You think this is woman’s intuition?”

  Woman’s intuition? Jesus. She tried to figure out what he wanted, but couldn’t read him so she picked one. “I have a real gut feeling about this, sir. I think Jay does, too.”

  He didn’t answer right away, but seemed to be weighing her answer—an answer she had tossed on a fifty-fifty throw. At last he said, “ Go ahead.”

  He was setting up the next putt when she left.

  Next she called Victor, who had been in Bisbee all day, working the case from there.

  “Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?” he asked.

  “I think it’s the guy. Or he can lead me to the guy.”

  “Are you sure these killings are connected?”

  “The similarities are pretty striking.” Feeling defensive.

  “There’s a lot that doesn’t add up.” He enumerated the same dissimilarities that had bothered her. “Shit, a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. That’s a big difference on the Tanner chart. You know how choosy these guys can be.”

  Thought about telling him her theory, but realizing that arguing would get her nowhere.

  “There’s something I’d like you to do personally. Check with Jessica’s friends again. I never did get a straight answer from Buddy about whether or not she used the computer at school. If she didn’t use it at school, find out if she used one at the public library.”

  “Anything else?” His voice was cool.

  “That should do it.”

  After he hung up, she stared off into space. She realized she was skating on a very thin edge. Going over Jerry Grimes’s head, working with Jay Ramsey, her less than enthusiastic investigation of Lehman. Working just as hard, putting in the hours, but more and more certain that with Lehman, they were heading down the wrong road.