Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town lc-1

by J. Carson Black

  He watched Summer’s face. She was staring around, her bewilderment turning to panic.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  He kept his voice steady and low. As you would talking to a frightened animal—and really, that was what she had been reduced to. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I think I’d better go home.”

  “In a minute. Just let me explain to you—“

  “Where’s James?”

  This was always the part he didn’t like. He hated that moment when he had to tell them the truth. Still, he had learned that it was better to get it over with rather than to scare the girl even more. “James is not coming.”

  “Where is he?” She had that look in her eye now, a dawning. He reached behind him, made sure the plastic handcuffs were there, stuck down the back of his jeans. He didn’t want to use them, but he would if she didn’t see reason.

  “I want to explain this to you so you understand that I have only your best interests at heart. I’m James. I’m the person you wrote to, I’m the person you fell in love with.”

  Her mouth dropped open. She started for the door. “Let me out of here!”

  He moved quickly and barred the doorway. She couldn’t stop herself and stumbled into him, her face almost even with his, her tiny breasts in that peasant top brushing against his chest.

  That did it. He wanted her now. Right now. Wanted her badly.

  He closed his eyes, sidling away from the proximity of her breasts. He couldn’t let her touch him again. If she did, that would be it. That would be it because he had such a tenuous grip now on himself now—

  He slid away further. Aware that he was hard as a rock.

  No, he told himself. He knew it wouldn’t work that way. It just wouldn’t. He’d learned from experience. Girls needed to be wooed. His mother had told him that.

  He closed his eyes and started to pray. As he prayed, he pictured what it would be like, the two of them, driving all over the country, going wherever they pleased…

  “You don’t know how great it will be,” he said to her. “We can go all over—the Grand Canyon, Disneyland. Have you ever been to Six Flags Over Texas?”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to go home. You take me home right now.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.” He held his hands up, open. “It’s for your own good.”

  But he was looking at those small breasts. Like tiny buds, just barely stretching the peasant top. And her skin. Golden, like honey. There were white stripes, tan lines where she’d worn a swimsuit or sundress that had tied at a knot at the back of her neck. He could see it because of the blouse’s scoop neck. And the skirt. So short, so tiny, the narrow little girl hips. The smooth long legs. Like satin.

  Misty had dressed like that. His mother used to talk about how slutty she looked. How if Misty were her child she’d dress her in nice dresses. He agreed with that. They hid a girl’s wares. Even pure girls had wares. It was just the way God made them.

  “Take me home or I’ll scream.”

  “Go ahead. I’ve heard two screaming fights since I’ve been here.” He tweaked open the shade, the lace curtains. “See—nobody around now. They’re all at work or inside their trailers.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “You’ll understand. I know it’s going to take awhile to get used to this, but we’ve got a lot of good times ahead. Just the two of us—“

  If only she could understand. He felt the same way when he watched the vet shows on the Animal Planet. When he saw the frightened animals struggling against the people who would help them. They just didn’t understand that they were only making things worse by fighting.

  He made himself turn away from Summer, the thin top, the smooth denim skirt.

  He walked over to the closet and pulled out a dress. Girl’s size 12. He had made it last year.

  He held it out to her. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you go into the bedroom and put that on?”

  He saw she was about to argue. And then he saw the intelligence, the cunning, come back over her face.

  Nothing like Misty.

  Had he made another mistake?

  She took the dress, turned on her heel, and walked into the bedroom at the end of the short hall, closed and locked the door.

  In the bedroom, Summer stood back from the door, her heart pounding.

  This wasn’t happening. Where was James? What happened to James?

  I’m James

  She couldn’t think. Her mind was racing, but she couldn’t think. She was stuck on the man who said he was James when he wasn’t. She was stuck on what he said—God it was so creepy—“Have you ever been to Six Flags over Texas?” Like he thought if he offered that to her everything would be all right, like she was some little kid, and the idea of going anywhere with that ugly, balding, little worm—

  Creepy, the way he looked at her.

  He was probably her parents’ age.

  This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be.

  She became aware of the dress in her hands. It was like a little girl’s dress. She was way too old for it—why’d he want her to wear that? But when he handed it to her, she just took it.

  Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I try to escape?

  Instead, she just accepted the dress—maybe she even said “thanks.” What was wrong with her? How could she have gotten herself into this mess?

  Because she knew this was something very bad. She knew enough about sex—three of her friends weren’t virgins anymore, and they had told her everything—she knew what this guy wanted.

  He was old. He was ugly. The thought of doing it with him made her sick to her stomach. But here she was, in this smothering little room all alone. Her mom didn’t know where she was. Her dad …

  He was a cop, but he lived in Bisbee. Of course they’d start looking for her, but how would they find her here? She had a pager in her purse, but what good would that do? He’d just turn it off. She wished her mom had gotten her a cell phone. She said to wait until her birthday. Now I probably won’t have a thirteenth birthday.

  She had seen enough on TV to know that she was in deep trouble. He would probably rape her. And kill her.

  Adrenaline poured through her, a muscular current of fear. Her hands and legs shook.

  Get hold of yourself. You’re not dead yet.

  Maybe, maybe if she cooperated, put on the dress, tried to talk with him. Get him to see her as a human being. Make friends with him. Maybe she could get to his phone, or his computer, or something.

  She needed to be smart. Observant, like her dad was. He didn’t miss a thing. She remembered when they went to restaurants, he always sat with his back to the wall, scanning the room constantly, always aware. She needed to be like that. Careful and smart.

  She’d put the dress on. She’d try to get Dale to talk to her, to make friends with her.

  Suddenly, she had something to do. She imagined herself as her dad. He was always in control. He’d be looking for her. He was a cop—he’d know how to find her. But in the meantime, she would picture herself as him. She would act like him, and think like him.

  Musicman waited for her to come out. He’d seen this before, the girl going into his bedroom and locking the door, as if she could really escape that way, when in reality she was only putting off the inevitable. One of them—the girl in Colorado—had stayed in the room a day and a half. But she had been so hungry and thirsty, she finally opened the door.

  The bedroom door lock that came with the Pace Arrow didn’t really work, but he knew it gave them a sense of security. They felt they could get away from him, and that put them at ease. What she probably didn’t notice was the hasp on the outside of the door. He could padlock it, but he didn’t. Let her think she had the upper hand.

  The bedroom was soundproofed. The lace curtains in the bedroom windows
looked nice from the outside but they hid the fact that they weren’t real windows—not anymore. He had boarded them up. She had locked herself in there, in that soundproofed room, and she could just think about it.

  44

  Laura massaged her back and stretched her legs. The cabin was dim; hardly anyone else on the plane. Nothing between her and her guilt over the killing in, an itch she could not scratch. Your fault. You didn’t trust your instincts. You knew there was a problem with Oliver, but you ignored it.

  A police officer dead, lives that would never be the same.

  Apalachicola

  She kept seeing Chief Redbone’s face. The sense of failure she saw in his eyes.

  Frank Entwistle used to call her—jokingly—the gunslinger. As in:The gunslinger come to town to help the townspeople chase out the bad elements. Like Wyatt Earp. But this time, she’d brought only devastation and death before slinking off into the night like a coward. She was going home to her little house in Vail—but what would Linda Descartes do tonight?

  “This is getting you nowhere,” she muttered.

  She needed to concentrate on what was happening now—Summer Holland’s abduction.

  Her conversation with Victor had been brief. Summer Holland disappeared from a McDonalds in Tucson. She’d lied about who she was meeting. And Buddy had been insistent. He needed to meet with Laura face-to-face.

  He knew something.

  Laura saw Dale Lundy in her mind. His pale, almost feminine face. The soft, wet eyes that had no soul behind them. The Victorian-style room where he sewed with his mother. The photos of Misty de Seroux.

  The 12-gauge shotgun nestled in a homemade plywood box on the underside of the trapdoor.

  She closed her eyes, trying to think. Could it be Lundy? How many kidnappers could there be, operating in that relatively small part of the world?

  Suddenly, lights started dancing in the corner of her eye. She opened both eyes and stared at the seat back in front of her, expecting them to go away. But the lights kept on blinking.

  Pulsing on and off at the corner of her right eye.

  A thin edge of panic poked its way under her heart. She remembered the same thing happening at the Jonquil Motel the night she found the matchbook.

  Her hand on the doorknob, the strangeness she felt.

  Laura looked down at her hand. Again it looked funny, but she couldn’t figure out why. The one side of her eye—it was like her vision was bleary from being underwater.

  She got up and walked to the back of the plane, heading for the restroom, pushing down the beginnings of panic. Halfway down the aisle, the flashing lights went away.

  She blinked. Nothing there—she could see fine.

  Walking back to her seat, she thought: It’s got to be stress. After what happened in Apalachicola, she had a right to be stressed out.

  Musicman had just dozed off when he heard the door to the bedroom creak. He sat up on the couch and glanced at his watch: almost two in the morning. He’d taken care of his needs twice since she had disappeared into his bedroom, but it hadn’t taken the edge off. He felt like one long nerve.

  In the light seeping in from under the shades from the sodium arc light above the trailer court, he saw her edge into the hallway.

  She wore the dress—he almost lost it right there.

  He made sure to hide the sock he’d used as he fantasized about her, then turned on the light.

  She looked like a burglar, caught red-handed.

  Talk to her gently. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.

  She looked at him, and he rang like a tuning fork.

  He was not expecting his reaction. Usually, seeing the girls in the dresses acted as an inhibitor, cooling his jets, so to speak.

  But she was even more alluring, more exciting, in the dress. It was the juxtaposition of her innate beauty that had a definite sexual quality to it and the way the dress tried to hide it. It did hide those tanned legs, the breasts, the curve of her ass, but it had just the opposite effect than he’d expected.

  It titillated him.

  She stood in the doorway, looking him right in the face. Calm, cool, alert. Just standing there, so serious. So dignified. And underneath—

  No, he wouldn’t think about it.

  “Couldn’t you sleep?” he asked.

  “No.” Her voice quiet.

  “You sure look pretty in that dress.”

  “Do I?” Interested. Friendly, even. Like she was someone else, someone older. Like she was the one who was in control.

  Those cool eyes on him.

  There was a speck of brown in her blue-green iris.

  That hit him square in the heart. Misty had that same imperfection. That was what they called it, but he always thought of it as a beauty mark.

  “You have a brown spot in your eye,” he said.

  “I know. My mom calls it my beauty mark.”

  This had to be a sign from God—she was the one. He felt the rush of joy.

  Not that he believed she was Misty come back to life. That would be ridiculous. He wasn’t crazy, just nostalgic. Still, the resemblance was heartening.

  His mind was babbling now. She was so like Misty. The spot in the eye, the words she used. Beauty mark. The way she tilted her chin—he hadn’t noticed it before. The cool way she looked at him.

  This time, it was going to work. He could feel it. Sure, he’d have to gain her confidence, her trust. He’d have to go slow. But this time would be different from the others.

  “Would you like something to eat?” he asked. “I can cook anything you want. I’ll make you something special.”

  45

  Laura got in at two thirty in the morning. Victor Celaya and Buddy Holland were waiting for her, Holland humming like a power line. He had his keys in his hand as they walked down the steps toward the exit, his stride lengthening so he was way ahead of them, looking back periodically, impatient for them to catch up.

  “He must be going out of his mind,” Laura said.

  “Jesus, can you imagine what he’s thinking? What if it’s Lundy.”

  Laura said nothing, because she thought it was Lundy.

  She remembered what Jay Ramsey had said before she left for Florida—there had been another girl. “How old is Summer?”

  “Twelve.”

  “She lives with her mother? In Tucson?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The heat hit the moment they were through the automatic doors, a hot, dry wind seizing the breath from her lips and nostrils. She’d gone from sauna to oven. It seemed to her it got hotter every year, the monsoon seasons of her memory dwindling down to a few thunderstorms, terminal humidity, and a plague of mosquitos. Maybe it was all due to global warming.

  They drove the one long block to DPS headquarters. Laura had come back empty-handed. Nothing to check into evidence—that was still being decided in Tallahassee. Who got what, when. They headed upstairs to the squad bay, took chairs in the conference room. Buddy sat opposite Laura, and Victor sat between them at the head of the table.

  Victor nodded to Buddy. “Okay. She’s here. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

  Buddy stretched his long legs out in front of him and stared at his feet. Laura thought he had aged ten years.

  Victor said to Laura, “He won’t tell me what’s going on. He said he wanted to wait for you. So give it up, Buddy, what is it?”

  Buddy’s face was pale, his eyes like dark stones. He opened his mouth to speak, then abruptly launched himself out of his chair and started pacing.

  “Come on, Buddy. What’s so important we have to beg for it?”

  He stopped and took a breath.

  “I think I brought him here.”

  Laura wondered if she heard right.

  “What do you mean, you brought him here?” demanded Victor.

  Buddy started pacing again, head scrupulously turned away from them. He said, “I brought him here. It was me.”

  “How’d you do that?” Vict
or’s voice loud in the small room.

  “I found out my daughter was talking to this guy on the Internet. He sent her stuff—an MP3 player, earrings—“

  Laura thought about Endicott’s evidence list. She had been right. It was Lundy. She looked at Buddy, who was still talking. It took her a moment to catch up with his words.

  “… decided to intercept his messages. I knew he was a bad guy, a sexual predator. I’d been on the chief to let us start our own Internet sexual predator task force, but he wouldn’t go for it. This guy was out there, and I couldn’t just let him get away. So we set him up.”

  “Set him up how?” Victor asked.

  “I took over for my daughter. Pretended I was her.”

  Victor whistled.

  Laura said, “We? You said we set him up.”

  “Me and Duffy.”

  Duffy? Jesus.

  Buddy slung himself into a chair. Now that he was talking, it all came out. How he and Heather Duffy had planned a sting, setting up a meeting with Lundy in City Park. “But he never showed. I think he saw something that tipped him off.”

  Laura thought: Duffy would look like a cop even in a negligee.

  “He made you,” Victor said. “He made you and he bolted, and on his way out of town, he saw Jessica Parris. And you kept this secret all this time? What about Lehman?”

  “I thought it could be him.”

  “That’s a huge coincidence, man.”

  “Hey, his prints were on her lipstick.” For a moment, the arrogant Buddy was back. “It could have been an unrelated crime.”

  “Come on! You expect us to believe that?”

  “Where’s Lehman now?” Laura asked.

  “First place I called. He’s at his house. He would have had time to get her to Bisbee. He had three hours.”

  “But he didn’t,” said Laura.

  Buddy looked at her defiantly.

  “You didn’t go to his place, because you knew it wasn’t him.”

  Buddy didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Laura asked, “Did he send her a picture?”

  He nodded. Didn’t look at her.

  “What were you trying to do? Throw us off the track?” Victor again.