Laura Cardinal 01 Darkness on the Edge of Town

by J. Carson Black

  This was his show.

  Musicman knew, though, that Dark Moondancer was getting impatient. The gravy train wouldn’t last forever.

  Utilizing a user-friendly software program he had downloaded from the Internet, Musicman embedded the first photo into the picture of the baby ducks. He pulled up another scenic from his photo library—boats in a marina.

  He would send four pics in all. Each pic would be encrypted and require a password to open. Dark Moondancer would have the baby ducks, but he would not have the real picture underneath until Musicman got his payment. Only then would he send back the encrypted password.

  He pictured Dark Moondancer looking at the little duckies, wishing he could see what was underneath.

  “Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” Musicman intoned. He hit the SEND button, consigning the ducklings and their invisible cargo into the ether.

  13

  “Her hyoid was broken,” Cochise County ME Carmen Sotomayor said as she snapped off her gloves and dropped them into a BIOHAZARD container.

  The smell of sawed bone clung to Laura’s nostrils, almost as bad as the odor of death. The last thing Carmen Sotomayor had done before sewing Jessica Parris back up was to use an electric saw to open up her cranium to examine her brain.

  Laura thought the killer had been crafty, but now she knew to what extremes he had gone to avoid detection. He’d bathed the girl’s body and washed her hair, clipped her fingernails, even given her a douche.

  The douche was necessary. He had sexually assaulted his victim after death, not before. Postmortem sex was another indication that the killer didn’t want to risk abrasions to Jessica and to himself. Whoever he was, he knew something about the collection of evidence.

  She looked at Jessica Parris, small and forlorn on the stainless steel autopsy table. Gutters running around the edge of the table gleamed in the light, still holding the residue of blood from the autopsy. The girl who had reminded her yesterday of a Victorian doll now looked more like Raggedy Ann, big ugly stitches forming a Y down the length of her body.

  “When you measured her—you said she was small for her age?” Laura asked.

  “And underdeveloped.”

  “You mean more like a little girl than a teenager, anatomically?”

  “There’s a phenomenon we’re just beginning to see in the physical development in girls. They’re maturing at a faster rate than, say, when you and I were their age. But this girl is on the immature side, although it appears she had enough pubic hair for him to shave.”

  “He shaved her so he could think of her as younger,” Laura said.

  “And to destroy evidence—her pubic hair and his.” Carmen Sotomayor stared at the girl, her eyes sad. Laura noticed she had bitten her lip, a little gash, dark lipstick edging her teeth.

  Carmen added, “If he did it to make her seem younger, it wasn’t too much of a leap—she’s pretty flat up top. She wasn’t wearing a bra. You’d think a fourteen-year-old girl would wear a bra, whether she needed to or not.”

  Laura thought of the bras in the top drawer of Jessica’s dresser. “He took it.”

  “But he left the bikini underwear.”

  Laura said, “I wonder if he had a replacement pair and they didn’t fit.”

  “What would he replace them with?”

  “Maybe something more modest.”

  Two vertical lines appeared between Carmen’s dark brows. “You think so?”

  “Who knows? It was just something that occurred to me." Laura divested herself of the paper booties, gown, the gloves.

  She knew not to jump to any conclusions. Her method had always been to disprove a theory, rather than prove it. That way, she avoided making leaps in logic just to bolster a theory that might not pan out. She liked to look at evidence as if it were a disassembled car spread out on a tarp, making damn sure that whatever parts connected weren’t forced into place.

  Something didn’t fit here. Maybe it was the girl herself. She seemed out of place, although Laura couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was her age; maybe it was more than that.

  “That dress is homemade,” Carmen Sotomayor said. “No tag anywhere, and those darts looked like they were from a pretty simple pattern. So that ought to narrow it down.”

  By the time Laura left the ME’s office in the Sierra Vista Community Hospital, it was going on six o’clock and looked like it would storm. She rolled down the window, inhaling the scent of the impending rain on the dense air. The area had greened up a lot since she’d been down here a couple of weeks ago—johnsongrass lined both sides of the road, lush and green, soaking up the runoff. Ocotillo on the hills looked like dark green pipe cleaners.

  The evidence for the DPS Crime Lab resided in the back of the 4runner, each piece packaged separately and bearing her initials: head and pubic hair samples from Jessica, fingernail clippings, scrapings from under her fingernails, swabs from her body, and her clothing. And of course the tire tread moulage and the matchbook in its paper evidence envelope.

  He had been pretty sure of himself to go back and leave the matchbook—another taunt. He was playing with them. In a way, that was good. Laura knew that when you got cocky you made mistakes, and she intended to be there when he did.

  The dress intrigued her, the idea of it having been run up on a sewing machine from a pattern. Did that mean he could sew, like Ted Olsen? Did he have someone in his life who sewed for him—a girlfriend, wife or mother? He’d tried to buy a dress that would fit a fourteen-year-old girl because his own dress didn’t fit.

  It would be time-consuming to locate the company that produced the pattern and backtrack from there to the outlets. Laura was even less optimistic about tracing the material, the zipper, the thread, the lace, and the ribbon.

  If he didn’t purchase those in the area, you could forget about that.

  The storm hit just as she reached Tucson. She took the Valencia Road exit and drove west to the Department of Public Safety on Tucson Boulevard down the street from the Tucson International Airport.

  Lightning sizzled across the sky as she turned into the parking lot. Built in the sixties, the DPS building reminded her of a grain elevator. In the blowing rain, the concrete building darkened to the same slate color as the sky. US and Arizona flags whipped in a wind-driven frenzy, their chains rattling. Laura waited for the automatic gate to roll back and drove in, taking note of the cars in the inside lot. Victor’s truck wasn’t there. She doubted she’d see anyone at this hour.

  She booked the tire moulage, the matchbook, Jessica’s clothes, and other items from the autopsy into evidence, filled out the paperwork, and requested the types of tests she wanted from the crime lab. On her way to the squad bay, she passed Mike Galaz’s office and noticed something new—two rows of photos on the wall by his door. Mostly of the Tucson social scene, Let’s Go People! and his wife standing in groups of three or four at various fundraising events. Expensive coifs, more expensive smiles.

  Laura had never been part of that social circle, and knew by now she never would be. Fortunately, she didn’t need an expensive evening gown to send her check to the Hermitage No-kill Cat Shelter.

  Everybody had gone home except for Todd Rees, the youngest and newest member of the squad. His desk was catty-corner to hers, facing the other direction. She liked that, because it kept their interaction to a minimum. He looked up and then back at his computer.

  Her plant was looking a little dry. She prodded it, filled a coffee cup with water from the bathroom sink, and gave it a drink before checking her messages and her voice mail.

  One message had been placed on the center of her desk in Rich Lockhart’s handwriting: “Call Myra Maynes at the medical examiner’s office.”

  “My remains. Very funny,” she muttered, tossing the note into the wastebasket.

  A California detective named Barry Endicott of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department had left a message on her voicemail, “regarding your child homicide in Bisbee.”


  She didn’t recognize the name. One of her contacts at another agency must have made some calls. As she picked up the phone, Todd Rees slipped on his suit jacket, picked up his briefcase, and ambled past her. He always dressed in a suit and tie.

  Tall and thin, he reminded her of a praying mantis. Now he craned his neck over her shoulder, looking at her notes.

  She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Watcha need?”

  “Nothing.” He slouched past her, but she could feel him lurking in the doorway. Todd had a reputation for keeping his mind on other people’s business, always looking for a way to ingratiate himself with the brass. “You have a good time in Bisbee?”

  The phone started ringing on the other end and she broke the connection. “’Good’ is not the way I’d describe it.”

  “The lieut kind of wondered why you didn’t come back with the techs.”

  So that was it. What, he thought she turned it into a vacation?

  One of the new rules Galaz had instituted was financial: He wanted to see a justification of every expense over a hundred dollars. This affected overnight stays. If at all possible, he wanted his detectives to drive back rather than stay the night.

  “I used my own money,” Laura said, mad at herself for letting Todd put her on the defensive.

  “Did you use your own time?”

  It was a parting shot; he was already out the door and halfway down the stairs. Todd had a habit of sniping at people and then running for cover. Still, she knew she’d have to smooth it over with Jerry Grimes, and he in turn would smooth it over with Galaz.

  She wasn’t going to worry about it. Jerry knew she got results. Maybe her methods were a little unorthodox, but that had always been the way she worked.

  Lieutenant Mike Galaz had been here for five months. Other than his watchful eye over the budget, he was an unknown factor, generally considered to be a good (if political) administrator who left the sergeants to run their own squads.

  His first official act was to institute weekly briefings where everyone in the criminal investigation division got together and discussed their cases. Galaz himself didn’t take part, but stood at the front of the room listening intently. At the end of each meeting, he’d give a short speech about the importance of their mission, ending with a phrase he must have picked up from a TV show: “Let’s go, people!”

  Laura punched in Detective Endicott’s number, but got his voice mail—gone for the day. She looked at the clock: seven-thirty. Next she called Cary Statler’s uncle. No answer, no machine.

  Where was Cary Statler?

  It nagged at her, even though Laura’s instincts told her he wasn’t Jessica Parris’s killer. Strangling a person face-to-face showed rage, which would fit a domestic abusive relationship. But Laura worked under the assumption that the killer was older. Dressing her like that didn’t fit with a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. And the way he’d cleaned her up; so careful not to leave evidence. It was possible Cary could have done all that, but unlikely.

  Still, she wished she knew where he was.

  When she looked at the clock again it was eleven thirty. By this time there were stacks of papers all over her desk, some on chairs, some on the floor. Transcripts of interviews, autopsy results, her own notes torn from a yellow legal pad. A sea of information, including a printout of City Park drawn to scale. She had looked it over three times now, worrying that she was missing something. Now she was staring at it without really seeing it.

  Time to go home, and sleep—if she could.

  14

  The 4Runner’s tires rumbled over the cattle guard marking the entrance to the Bosque Escondido Guest Ranch. The storm had gone, leaving a few luminous clouds and a full moon that turned the dirt road white, a chalk line through the desert.

  The moment she drove onto the Bosque Escondido, Laura felt something give in her chest. She loved her job, but it wasn’t natural to have to look at so much ugliness day after day. The evils people visited on one another, the unspeakable cruelties she saw almost daily, had the cumulative effect of a house of cards—one insult building up on top of another until over time the whole thing threatened to come crashing down. She was almost to that point now. She could feel it, tiny cracks running through the wall she’d put up.

  Structural damage.

  Tonight she had nothing to go home to except the flat-roofed Mexican adobe in the middle of the desert.

  Normally she liked being way out at the edge of Tucson, in a shallow indentation in the desert where she could not even see the city lights, but tonight she didn’t want to walk into an empty house. Putting it off, she drove past the main ranch house, the guest bungalows, the cantina, then turned onto the short loop road that took her by Tom’s place—a tin-roofed adobe with a screened-in porch. The place was dark—no welcoming light. She wondered if he was thinking about her.

  Right now—at this moment—she wanted him to move in and never leave. It was almost physical, this need she had. She wondered how she had managed to go so long without someone. When you had someone, everything was better. You had a mate in a world where most people had mates. You went more places, and there was an aura to being in love, like you had God’s blessing. People saw you differently.

  She thought of all the places she wanted to go with him. Just overnight stays because she worked so much. But good times. Good times piling up one on top of the other, photos in an album.

  She wished he was here right now. She wanted him to hold her, she wanted him to make love to her, see if that could wipe out the image of Jessica Parris, dehumanized and left like a piece of meat on display in a shabby band shell in a concrete park. Obliterate it from her mind. Tape over it with something good.

  She didn’t want to be logical and look at the long run. She wanted them to live together. Hell, if he asked, she’d go to Las Vegas with him right now. Why not just abdicate responsibility, do something for the pure thrill of it? Like getting married to a man you’ve only known for a few months.

  The two of them against the world.

  “Good thing you’re in New Mexico,” she said to the dark house.

  She followed the road back into the desert, the road dipping down into the Agua Verde wash and out again. A quarter-mile to her place. Just where the dirt lane right-angled, there it was, Mi Nidito. It looked like a hacienda in Mexico, white-washed by the moonlight, almost hidden by mature mesquite trees.

  Mi Nidito. My little nest. Laura didn’t know who’d named it, spelling it out in Mexican tile by the door. Someone else who had lived here for a while? She saw it as her house, but she knew it wasn’t, that someday she’d have to move on.

  Stepping out of the car, she was careful to avoid the cow pies; the ranch cows went where they pleased. She did step on plenty of mesquite bean pods, though, soft, yielding crescents on this hot humid night. The old metal gate creaked as she went through.

  Laura was serenaded by cow-like crying—spadefoot toads. She smiled, remembering how her mother had told her that the noise, which always came after a summer storm, came from rabbits who’d lost their homes. Now she knew better, but she loved the sentimentality—the Irishness—of her mother’s story better.

  She walked up onto the deep porch and stopped to listen, hoping the bobcat kittens who lived on her roof were back. They hadn’t been around for at least a week.

  The place was quiet.

  She had it all to herself.

  Looking at the cemetery and sky was like peering through a sheet of bright yellow cellophane. Laura knew where she was: the Mexican cemetery on Fort Lowell Road down the street from her parents’ house. The cemetery belonged to los fuertenos, the community of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans which grew up around the abandoned fort on the rich bottomland of the Rillito River. Laura used to walk by here every day on the way to school.

  The graveyard was both stark and beautiful, an anthill riddled with plaster and iron crosses, statues, and heaps of flowers both plastic and real. Graves alt
ernated with cactus and creosote bushes.

  Julie Marr was standing outside the wire fence by the curve in the road, looking at Laura. From where she was, Laura could see the old car coming. The picture in the paper was black and white, but in this bright yellow world she knew the car was orange over ivory. She knew the make, too, thanks to her experience with the Highway Patrol: a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan. Primer on the rocker panels, a crucifix hanging from the rear-view.

  Laura sat up in bed, her pulse hammering in her ears. Her dreams had always been vivid and easily recalled. In recent years, she’d had one recurring dream—going home to show off her DPS Crown Vic to her parents, just a few weeks out of the Academy. It always relieved her to see that they’d come through the months of intensive care, physical therapy, and countless operations with flying colors. Dad didn’t walk so well, and Mom was forgetful. But they’d made it through.

  Except it wasn’t true.

  Laura’s mind veered back to the dream. She remembered how her parents had freaked out when they heard about Julie Marr on the news. “But for the grace of God, it could have been her” she’d overheard her father say about his only child. Julie’s kidnapping had affected Laura’s mother strangely, leading to an obsession with true crime—the grislier the better. It sent her to a journal-writing group, which she attended faithfully, and a year or so later she started receiving letters with New York postmarks. Laura’s mom never told her what was in them, but she guessed they were rejection letters. Maybe writing about crime was Alice Cardinal’s way of facing her fears.

  The car—the 1955 Bel Air—had been stolen specifically for the purpose of abducting Julie Marr on that terrible spring day in 1987. Julie had never been found, but there had been blood evidence in the car.

  Lots of it. That didn’t show up in black and white either.

  She got on the road early the next morning. The faded moon hung in a clear indigo sky as she drove off the ranch and through the little town of Vail, over the railroad tracks and onto the freeway going east toward Bisbee. Ahead, there was a blush over the far mountains. Julie Marr’s death faded from her mind like an old photograph in a scrapbook.