The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Which it surely would. Laura had lots of experience with small towns.

  After dinner in town, Laura took a glass of red wine from the bar out onto the porch. The air, which had been so heavy and hot during the day, was leavened by a breeze from Apalachicola Bay. She could smell the fecund richness of the bay, the sea life.

  The waitress came out and asked her if she needed anything.

  “Have you lived here long?”

  “Grew up in Port St. Joe.”

  “Do you know a man named Jimmy de Seroux?”

  “Dot would know.” She nodded to the bar. “She’s the bartender.”

  There were only a few people inside. The middle-aged woman wiping down the bar looked up and smiled.

  “Jimmy? Of course I know him. What’s he up to? Haven’t seen him in a coon’s age.”

  “I heard he’s a photographer and he lives somewhere around here.”

  “I didn’t know that. Photographer, huh? Must be one of those multi-talented people." She sighed. “Some people get all the talent. The rest of us have to work for a living." She flicked a dishrag over the polished bar top.

  Laura said, “He does something besides photography?”

  Dot pointed at a autographed photo above the bar. “Jimmy used to play the piano here. Pretty good, too.”

  Laura peered at the photograph. Hard to see in the dim light. She asked Dot if she would take it down, and Dot obliged, handing it to her.

  Laura stared at the picture. She felt the skin of her scalp tighten.

  She’d seen many photographs like it, mostly in bars: A black-and-white photo in a black frame, typical publicity shot. But this wasn’t any photo.

  Looking into that face, Laura had a bad feeling—a visceral reaction rather than anything based on logic.

  If she’d glanced at the photo on the wall in a dark bar, she wouldn’t have looked twice. The guy wasn’t attractive. He wasn’t even interesting. Just an average guy, mid-thirties, pale face and narrow mouth. The distance between nose and mouth was long and simian, like Homer Simpson. Wispy hair on the longish side, combed across a domed forehead. A white short-sleeved shirt that would have gone well with a pocket protector. He looked soft, almost effeminate—harmless.

  He looked like a lot of people. The kind of person you’ve seen before, but couldn’t place.

  But his eyes were dead.

  Dot ducked back behind the bar and snapped down a business card on the bar. “I knew I had it somewhere,” she said triumphantly. “People are always leaving their cards with us.”

  The card said “JIMMY DE SEROUX * Photographer * Musician * Piano Lessons * Piano Tuning." An address, a phone number, and an e-mail address.

  “He gives piano lessons to kids?”

  “Oh yeah. My neighbor’s daughter studied with him for a while. I went to her recital. They had it at the Elks Hall.”

  A pedophile who had access to children through his job. A man who could play a wedding or photograph one. A mild, unassuming little guy.

  She looked at the eyes again. Dull. As if she were looking at them instead of into them, not even a pinpoint of light to show the way to his soul.

  She had seen him somewhere. Maybe in one of the photographs she’d taken on Brewery Gulch near the crime scene.

  “Is this address close to here?”

  “Just go west on C, that’s the street right out front, and you’ll run right into 15th Street.”

  Laura glanced around. The other two patrons were gone, and she and Dot were alone. “How long since he last played here?”

  “A few months ago, at least.”

  “Can you remember when the recital was?”

  “What is this?”

  Laura produced her badge and ID.

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “I know, but I wish you would.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing, that I know of. He’s one of many people we’re looking at who might know something about a crime in Arizona.”

  “What kind of crime?”

  “Do you mind if I ask the questions at the moment? I promise I’ll tell you what I know if you’ll just humor me.”

  Dot’s eyes darkened. Definitely hostile.

  Laura asked, “At the recital. Did he spend a lot of time with the girls?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he enjoy their company more than that of adults? Did you notice anything like that?”

  Dot’s mouth flatlined. “You’ve got it all wrong. That doesn’t sound like Jimmy at all.”

  “You may be right. But why don’t you think it sounds like Jimmy?”

  “He’s … it’s hard to explain. You don’t know what he looks like in person. He’s kind of small. You ever read that story about Walter Mitty? He’s like that. And respectful of women.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He was raised up right. You can tell. He’s almost old-fashioned—giving up his seat at the bar when the place is full or opening the door, just a bunch of ways.”

  “Do you know his family?”

  “No.” She took a deep breath. “All I know is he minds his own business, and I can’t see him wanting to hurt little girls. It just doesn’t fit the kind of person he is.”

  Laura thought Jimmy de Seroux was precisely the type of man who would go after little girls.

  Inadequate.

  30

  The windows of the twin-gabled Victorian cottage on Fifteenth Street were dark. The yard was overgrown and leaves from the enormous live oak out front littered the roof. Wild vines snarled and matted the screened-in porch, as dark and secretive as the night surrounding it.

  Hand near her weapon, Laura stepped into the porch and knocked on the door. She expected and got no answer. Although the place was neat and had been kept up, it had an abandoned feel to it, as if its owner had been gone for a while.

  A breeze blew, heavily laden with the smell of the gulf, and a few acorns pelted the walk. Grass grew between the cracks.

  He wasn’t here. The feeling Laura had about Jimmy de Seroux solidified. He hadn’t been here in a long time. Months maybe.

  She glanced around. The house next door was boarded up. The rest of the street was quiet, a mixture of large houses and small. A few porch lights were on. But nobody looking out their windows, nobody on their front porches, no one driving by. It was too hot, even at this time of night.

  Laura walked along the side of the house, peering at the windows. Most of them were draped, but she could see through the back door into the kitchen. She flashed her light, holding her hand over the top to keep the glare down.

  Yellow linoleum. Honey-maple cabinets. Very neat. A Felix the Cat clock on the wall.

  She closed her eyes. Smelled the fecund earth, growing things. The slight mildew smell of the concrete. She tried to absorb the vibrations of the place, put herself into his place.

  She knew he was gone. Traveling.

  A breeze shifted the massive oak branches, their shadows playing over the crushed gypsum drive to the right of the lawn, bone-white against lush darkness. There was a cleared space beside the drive, scars on the grass where someone had parked.

  An old truck sat inside a carport fashioned from banged-together wood and corrugated plastic sheeting. Parked behind the truck, was a smallish boat covered by a blue tarp. The truck fit Peter Dorrance’s description— a 1967 Chevrolet pickup. Blue, dented, and splotched with rust around the wheel wells.

  She walked around and peered through the side window, which had been cracked a couple of inches. Old, but clean. None of the usual detritus you’d find in a car someone used a lot. Rain had gotten in; the seat covers were water-stained and wet leaves had drifted in through the crack in the window, sticking to the floorboards like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.

  Laura walked to the front and then the back of the truck. No license plate. She pulled on the latex gloves she always carried with her, reached through the passenger side window
, and pulled up on the door handle. The door squeaked open. She paused, looked around, thinking how loud it sounded. Opened the glove compartment and shined her light in. A tire gauge, a few maps, registration two years old. The maps were for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Buried among the change and paper clips was one of those cards where if you get it stamped ten times you get a free meal. A Port St. Joe address. This card was for the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar in Port St. Joe. It had been stamped eight times.

  He was a regular there.

  Jimmy de Seroux was a pianist, which could mean he played piano at the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar. Someone to talk to.

  She started back down the driveway and stopped at the place on the grass next to the driveway where someone had parked. Tire tracks that had sunk deep into the ground and dried that way.

  They belonged to a heavy vehicle. They looked familiar.

  Laura memorized the tread style and walked back to the pickup and looked at its tires.

  The treads on the truck were different. Something else had been parked here on the berm. Something bigger, like the tracks on West Boulevard.

  Back in her room, she couldn’t sleep. She was worried that Jerry Grimes or Mike Galaz would call her back any time. She had nothing to show for this expensive trip except a gut feeling and a digital photo that could be downloaded by anyone.

  Laura turned on the light. The only thing she’d brought to read was her mother’s files on the Tucson murders and the six chapters of Death in the Desert. Laura removed the files from her suitcase and slid out Alice Cardinal’s unfinished manuscript, held together by an industrial-size paper clip. She realized that she never did follow up with the detective on the Julie Marr case. There had been too much going on.

  Laura skimmed through the chapter on Julie Marr, still feeling it was strange—almost creepy—that her mother could write about a girl Laura used to see daily at school.

  Alice Cardinal’s book echoed much of what Laura had already read in the clippings. The car used in Julie’s abduction had come from A&B Auto Wrecking. Laura’s mother had interviewed the owner, Jack Landis.

  Landis told detectives that the car in question, a 1955 Chevrolet sedan, had been one of the few vehicles at the junkyard that was driveable.

  Probably he took it because it was parked outside the fence, Landis said, pointing at the tall chain link fence bordering the yard full of twisted, rusty car hulks. Landis explained that he also did muffler repair and that he used the orange and white car as a loaner car to people who needed transportation while they waited.

  I guess he didn’t want to face Luke and Laura, he said, nodding to the two Dobermans inside the yard.

  Had the killer stolen a car just to use in commission of this vicious and brutal crime? It seems likely that he did. The Tucson Police detective on the case certainly thought so.

  Laura found herself drifting off to sleep. Whatever lessons she could learn from the murder of Julie Marr would have to wait.

  “I want you to run somebody on NCIC for me,” Laura said when she reached Victor the next morning.

  “Can’t you do it yourself? We’re a little busy here.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Lehman’s about to give it up.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “His lawyer wants a meeting. This whole thing could unravel in the next couple of days. You really ought to be here.”

  “I’ll try to hurry it up,” she said. “Do you have the lab report on the tire treads taken up on West Boulevard?”

  “Hold on, let me look." She heard him shuffle papers. “Got a whole shitload of stuff from the lab yesterday. A lot to plow through.”

  Hinting that without her there, it was twice as much work.

  She waited as the paper shuffled for an inordinate amount of time, thinking that if she was wrong about Jimmy de Seroux and had wasted the DPS’s limited budget on a whim, Galaz wouldn’t back her up. She’d be on her own.

  “Here it is,” Victor said at last. “They’re Michelins. XRVs.”

  “What kind of tires are those?”

  “Big ones. The kind you get on trucks, motor homes.”

  “Anything else? Was he able to get the wheelbase?”

  “I’m looking,” he said impatiently. She could tell he resented having to do it. “Here it is. Looks like it was a motor home. That narrows it down. There are only thousands of them all over Arizona.”

  “I’m sending you photos of some treads I found out here. I’m also faxing you the photo of a possible suspect, his name is—“

  “Suspect? Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”

  She ignored that. “I’ll FedEx a copy of the original as soon as I can get it done. The guy’s name is Jimmy de Seroux.” She spelled it for him and gave him the registration number of his truck. “Be sure to run him on NCIC.”

  “Can’t you do it?”

  “I don’t have access to NCIC right at this moment.”

  Silence. Then, “I’ve got to get going. Lehman’s lawyer’s gonna be here any minute.”

  31

  The Apalachicola Police Department offices took up the second story of City Hall near the Apalachicola River. From its proximity to the water, the building could have been a cotton warehouse when the town was a bustling port.

  A giant standing fan dominated Chief Redbone’s office, blowing like a blizzard across the cluttered space.

  A large man with thinning blond hair and a strawberry complexion, Clyde Redbone heaved himself out of his chair and held out a hand. In his late forties, more muscle than fat, he looked like a former linebacker.

  “I’m Laura—“

  “Cardinal. I know. Couldn’t forget a pretty name like that. My secretary told me you’d be coming by.” He directed her to a leather couch against the wall that had seen better days. “Sit down, take a load off.”

  He skimmed his bulk expertly from behind his desk and aimed the standing fan at her. “How’s that?”

  Gale force, but in this heat and humidity, necessary. “Thanks.”

  “Something to drink? Coffee? Co’Cola?”

  She asked for water and he filled a mug with water from the cooler. He sat down and folded his hands on the green felt blotter. He wore a short-sleeved shirt that exposed massive arms mottled with freckles run together under a nest of blond hair. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m interested in a man named Jimmy de Seroux. Do you know him?”

  He leaned back and regarded her through watery blue eyes. Something going on behind them, but she couldn’t tell what it was. “I know Jimmy, but not well. Good piano player.”

  “I’m trying to locate him.”

  “Think he lives over on Fifteenth Street." He reached for the phone book.

  “I know where he lives. I thought you could give me assistance.”

  He stood up and reached for his hat, hooked on an old-fashioned hat stand beside the desk. “Why not?" He checked his watch. “Tell you what. It’s lunch time. I was just going to go down to the park and have my sandwich. We could talk there. I try never to miss my half hour outdoors.”

  Girls’ voices from the stairwell, giggling and strident.

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  A couple of teenage girls—twins—clattered into the office on tall sandals. One blonde, one redhead. The blonde wore her hair long and straight, parted in the middle. She wore a short, flouncy skirt. The redhead wore short shorts, much more makeup, and enough chains to pass for Marley’s Ghost. Identical twins, but each of them had developed her own look. Laura guessed it was a way to maintain their individuality.

  Redbone looked stricken. “Holy moly, you walked down the street like that?”

  From the looks the girls gave him, Laura had the feeling he’d said words to that effect before.

  “Can we take the car?” asked the blond one. “Graham wants us to help him look at boats.”

  “You think that kid ca
n afford a boat?”

  Gum snapped. “Dad. We’re just looking.”

  “Graham should be studying for the SATs, and so should you. By the way, this is Laura Cardinal from Arizona. That one who thinks she’s in the navel academy is Amanda, and this is Georgette.”

  Georgette lifted her hand in a tiny, lacquered wave, Amanda rolled her eyes.

  “Please? Can we have the car or not?” asked Amanda, for all her makeup and chains sounding like a southern belle in training.

  “Yes, you can have the car. But you gotta be back by five. Your mother’s cooking roast chicken. Got that?”

  They were already out the door, their thank you’s banging off the walls behind them.

  Redbone shook his head. “Don’t ever have girls,” he said. “They’ll give you an ulcer, then break your bankbook.”

  “There was a girl,” Chief Redbone said, in response to Laura’s question. He had to talk loud over the riding mower negotiating the lawn at the far end of Battery Park. They sat at a picnic table under a canopy of oaks, eating sandwiches bought from a deli on Market Street. Laura had asked the guy at the deli for a hoagie, and he’d looked at her as if she’d come from another planet. Chief Redbone interceded and got them over the language barrier. Next time she’d ask for a sub.

  Laura looked out the little marina at the edge of Battery Park, enjoying the sight of the sailboats drowsing in the paint-peeling Gulf sun. Watching them rocking gently in the hot light had a soporific affect.

  “Linnet Sobek,” Clyde Redbone said. “Thought she was a runaway.” He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “She ran off twice before. Got herself in all kinds of trouble. You know. Boys, drugs, getting drunk, fighting.” He shook his head, his eyes sad. “Only thirteen years old.”

  Thinking about his daughters?

  “Couldn’t really blame her. She had a rotten home life. Mother was a meth head. Lots to run away from.”