The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  The aroma of cooking meat drifted across the park in a smoke haze. Laura glanced over at a large family group taking up two tables across the park. Kids, dogs, overweight adults in shorts and tent-like tees. She remembered Victor’s pictures from Lieutenant Galaz’s cookout. “When did she disappear?”

  “2002. Early summer—June, I think. I’ve got the file back at the office. She was last seen hitchhiking on C30-A near the turnoff to Indian Pass. Telephone repairman up on a pole saw her go by.”

  “You questioned him?”

  “What do you think I do here? Trot myself out for the Fourth of July parade every year?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No offense taken. Man’s got to stand up for himself, especially when the big guns from Arizona come callin’.” He grinned, his expression saying no offense. “Humility is a southern trait, since we have so much to be humble about. You’re gonna choke, you scarf down that sandwich so fast.”

  “It’s good.” She wiped her mouth with a wispy napkin from the deli. “Those times she ran away. Did she come back voluntarily?”

  “Nope. Her brother found her both times.”

  He nodded to the cold thermos at his elbow. “Sure you don’t want to try a little of the local brew?”

  Sweet tea. “No thanks. What did she look like?”

  “That’s the funny thing.” He balled up the butcher paper his sandwich came in and threw it into the garbage can nearby: three points. “Those photos you showed me of your victims? She looked a lot like both those girls. Pretty and blond.”

  After lunch they took a tree-lined rural road, C-30A, out to Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar at Indian Pass.

  Laura glanced at Redbone. He drove in a desultory fashion, the seat back all the way and one freckled hand steering from the bottom of the wheel.

  “Zebra Island Trading Post?” she asked.

  “This is the turn-off for St. Vincent Island. St. Vincent was owned by a rich man who thought it would look good with a bunch of zebras on it.”

  Before they left the park, the chief suggested that he take the lead, since he knew the owners and probably knew the clientele as well. Laura agreed; she was a fish out of water here.

  Redbone swung the wheel and the patrol car slewed into a sandy parking lot, nose in to an old-fashioned country store. Under the pitched roof were a collection of weathered murals depicting an Indian chief’s head—complete with warbonnet—a pastoral scene of zebras grazing, and a giant oyster. A GONE FISHIN’ sign hung in the window.

  “Well, that’s strange. I didn’t know Gary was going fishing,” Redbone said. “Guess we should’ve called first.”

  They were still thinking what to do when a dull red Blazer of indeterminate age pulled into the lot. KC lights up top, jacked-up wheels. A sinewy man in a black T-shirt and camo pants emerged from the Blazer and went to the newspaper vending machines out front.

  The chief buzzed down his window and cocked his elbow on the door. “Ronnie! How you doing?”

  “Hey.” Ronnie came over and bent his head inside the driver’s door. “How’re you?”

  Chief Redbone nodded Laura’s way. “This pretty lady here is Criminal Investigator Laura Cardinal from Arizona. You know Jimmy de Seroux, don’t you?”

  “Jimmy? He photographed my sister’s wedding.”

  Redbone turned to Laura. “Ron’s cousin owns this place. Where is Gary, anyway?”

  “Went down to St. George for a couple of days of R and R. I’m keeping an eye on the place.”

  “Was Jimmy a regular?”

  “Sure was. Came in at least once a week.”

  “He tell you he was going anywhere?”

  Ron rubbed the bristles on his chin. “As a matter of fact, he did. Said he was taking a trip to see the country.”

  “When was this?”

  “Long time ago. It was still cold—I remember talkin’ to him outside, and as I recall, there was a hard frost from the night before.”

  “He say anything else?”

  Ron thought about it. “I don’t think so.”

  “You know Jimmy very well?”

  “Just, he likes his burgers. Every time he come in here he ordered a burger medium rare. Ron don’t cook medium rare anymore. They’d go round and round on that.”

  “Jimmy have a girlfriend?”

  “Never saw him with anybody. I don’t remember him socializing with anybody, male or female. Real quiet guy, kind of kept to himself.”

  “How come he told you he was going on a trip?”

  “I don’t remember how that came up. Is it important?” He peered in through the window again. “Did he do something in Arizona?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Redbone said. “Somebody still breaking into those vending machines?”

  “Nope. But it don’t hurt to check.”

  Laura asked, “Do you know if he had an RV? Camper, motor home?”

  Ron shook his head. “Heck, I was surprised when he told me he was going on a trip. Must have been feeling talkative that day.”

  Back at Apalachicola PD, Redbone showed Laura the file on Linnet Sobek. It was a thin file because she was considered a missing person. The photograph attached was eerily similar in appearance to that of Alison Burns. Same heart-shaped face, big blue eyes, child’s small nose. Blond hair.

  They could have been twins.

  Scanning the file, Laura saw nothing that Redbone hadn’t already told her, but she asked for a copy of the file anyway.

  “I’ll just run him on NCIC and see what comes up,” Redbone said.

  There were no wants or warrants on a Jimmy de Seroux. No previous convictions. If he was who Laura thought he was, he had been very successful as a criminal, sailing under the radar all his adult life.

  Next, Redbone checked the Motor Vehicle Division records. Jimmy de Seroux owned only one vehicle, the blue 1967 Chevrolet pickup.

  “So much for the motor home theory,” the chief said. “You ask me, it’s pretty thin.”

  “What’s pretty thin?”

  An Apalachicola PD officer appeared in the doorway and the room decreased in size by twenty-five percent.

  “Just helpin’ out a fellow peace officer run down a suspect.” Chief Redbone introduced Laura to the officer, Jerry Oliver.

  Oliver took off his hat and Laura saw the sweat line in his hair above his moon face. She also noticed that his brass was unpolished, his nameplate so filmy,she couldn’t read his name.

  “So who’s the guy?” Oliver said. “Maybe I know him.”

  “It’s none of—“

  “Jimmy de Seroux,” Laura said.

  “Jimmy?” Oliver snorted. “No way. No way he’d do anything violent, considering what—”

  “Jerry, did you go by Mrs. Darling’s?” Chief Redbone said. “She’s mighty agitated about that Buckner kid and his loud music.”

  “I’ve talked to her three times. The kid doesn’t play that loud.”

  “Well, go talk to her anyway. See if you can work it out. Use your negotiating skills.”

  Oliver’s face turned stubborn, and he rested his hand on his nightstick. “Let me at least get a drink of water. It’s hot as Hades out there." He crossed over to the water cooler. “Arizona, huh? How’d you get a line on Jimmy?” he asked Laura, pouring water on his hands and rubbing his face.

  “Jerry, I want you to get your butt out there now." Redbone’s voice boomed. Laura looked at him. She saw a hard light in his eyes.

  “I’m goin’, I’m goin.’”

  Chief Redbone watched him leave.

  “That boy is the laziest sonofagun I ever saw." Back to his easy-going, affable self. Smiling, expansive. “Can’t do a thing about it, though. His daddy’s on the city council.”

  When Laura got back to the Gibson Inn, she checked at the front desk for messages. Victor still hadn’t called back. She called him and got his voice mail. Left her own and paged him, too.

  She wondered if Lehman had c
onfessed. There might already be a deal in the works. And here she was in Florida with nothing.

  Tilting at windmills.

  She looked at her list again.

  Alison Burns - similar

  Dress patterns – Inspirational Woman

  Motor home seen at Brewery Gulch

  Motor home seen near primary crime scene

  Digital camera, jewelry sent to Alison/Internet connection (?)

  CRZYGRL12

  The man in the photo—beach house?

  Peter Dorrance

  Serial killer, organized type?

  Differences between Jessica and Alison: period of time kept, age, manner of death

  Postmortem vs. antemortem

  She had added five items to the list:

  Dorrance – J. de Seroux photog

  Tire treads at J’s

  Linnet Sobek – last seen near oyster bar

  J.S. regular at oyster bar

  Linnet Sobek looks like Alison and Jessica

  Chief Redbone was right: Pretty thin.

  De Seroux had no criminal record. He didn’t own a motor home. And as Victor had pointed out, anyone could have downloaded Dorrance’s picture from the Internet.

  Laura stared at the picture of de Seroux she had photocopied. The deadness in his eyes didn’t translate to the dark photocopy, or it could be that she had attached too much significance to it. A lot of people looked dull. Her conviction that he was Jessica’s killer was starting to evaporate.

  To cheer herself up, she went out and treated herself on her own money to a good dinner. Oysters, crab cakes, and Merlot at the Owl Café. The place was small and intimate. The rest of the diners were all couples.

  Usually, she wasn’t bothered about dining out alone. But tonight she felt self-conscious, as if people were looking at her. That wasn’t true—one glance at the other diners told her that. They were too concerned with each other.

  Maybe that was it. She pictured Tom opposite her, their heads bent together over wine glasses. Pictured them walking out on the marina dock set in a plain of marsh and sawgrass, holding hands and watching the sun set on the water. Or on the porch at the Gibson Inn, listening to the night sounds, making out if no one else was around.

  In the king-sized bed.

  His presence, the way he looked at her, the quiet way he talked. Never, ever in a hurry. His life just the way he wanted it. Something to be said for that.

  Except his life wasn’t exactly the way he wanted or else he wouldn’t want her.

  As a cop, she always worked with a partner. Someone to watch her back, an ally. Not being alone …

  It always came as a surprise to her that she didn’t have any family. There were relatives back east, people she hardly knew. She doubted they would welcome her intrusion and she didn’t want anything from them. She was used to being alone; only children were, as a rule, self-reliant.

  Still, she’d always thought she would find someone. She had thought that Billy Linton would solve all her problems, that he could wipe out the idea of her parents dying by gunshot at close-range. Of course that had not worked. She and Billy didn’t have the stuff to sustain even a normal relationship, let alone one that was that had been banged up from the beginning. Ever since, all she had to show for a personal life was a string of failed relationships.

  Now Tom was asking her to give it a try one more time. Living together wasn’t marriage, but it was a commitment. She couldn’t even think about getting married again, but she could think about sharing her house.

  She paid her check and walked back to the Inn, decided to prolong the night by having another drink out on the gallery. She walked into the bar, glancing up at Jimmy de Seroux’s publicity photo.

  She’d seen him before … well, of course she had. She’d studied that photograph more than a few times in the last two days. But there was something else.

  Then it came to her.

  Where she had seen him.

  32

  “What a day,” Victor said when he finally got back to Laura that night. “We really thought he was going to take a plea, but he backed out at the last minute.”

  “Lehman? What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He demanded to talk to his lawyer in private and that was it, man. Never came back. Is Cruller pissed!”

  Roger Cruller was the county attorney.

  “I knew—knew—he was going to confess. Why else did Glass call this whole fucking dog-and-pony show? And then, nada.”

  Laura wondered about Lehman’s attorney, Barry Glass, who had a reputation for winning big cases. Why had he called the meeting if he didn’t want to work out a deal? Only if Lehman himself got cold feet.

  “And the bad thing? We don’t have enough to arrest him at this point. The forensics on the computer could take months. You should hear the lame shit his attorney tried to feed me—like the screenplay? He said it was in the refrigerator because, get this, he wanted to protect it in case there was a fire.”

  She let him rant for a while before changing the subject. “Did you run my guy’s name through NCIC?” she asked.

  “I’ve been so busy, I must’ve forgot. You still want me to do it? I’ll get to it first—”

  “That’s okay, we ran him at the PD here. He doesn’t have a criminal record.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it.”

  “Maybe not.”

  He ignored that. “I have some news you might be interested in. Timmy Judd’s in intensive care. He tried to kill himself today. Drank some drain cleaner. They don’t know how he got it. But you know he’s gotta be suffering.”

  Laura thought about Shannon Judd, only seven years old, having the presence of mind to make her way into the crawl space underneath her house—the house she had lived in all her short life—to hide from her own father. The pain and fear she must have experienced as her life drained away along with the blood from two gunshot wounds.

  “Hope it destroys his throat, his esophagus, his digestive tract—I hope he gets cancer.”

  “He’s feeling it, that’s for sure.”

  They were both silent for a moment.

  Laura sensed that whatever rift had been between them was healing. She might as well make him even happier. “I’m thinking about coming back soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “I want to get into his house, but I don’t have enough to get a warrant.”

  “Come on, do you really think he’s the one? I’m telling you, Lehman was this close to telling it all.”

  Laura mentally shrugged. “I would like you to do one thing for me. The photographs I took at the crime scene that first morning—of all the people hanging out there? Could you FedEX them to me?”

  “I came straight home from Bisbee. I’d have to go back to the squad bay to pick them up, then Fed Ex—“

  “I know he was there, in Bisbee. I saw him. You did, too.”

  “Where?”

  “He was the pianist at the Copper Queen Hotel.”

  33

  MUSICMAN. HOT WHEELS. WARLOCK. SMOOTH TALK. TRAVELER.

  It was like having a wardrobe full of costumes. You could change your clothes whenever you felt like it. You just decided what person you wanted to be that day—whatever fit your mood—and donned the name like a favorite shirt or jacket.

  His favorite right now was “Traveler,” for a couple of reasons. One, he had always loved the open road, loved to drive. Just pick a route—back road or freeway, it didn’t matter—and follow it. Go where he pleased, always looking for what was beyond the next bend in the road. But the most pertinent connotation of the word “traveler” came from the books the profilers used, those books about people like him. Men who killed—serial killers—had a tendency to go from place to place so they wouldn’t get caught. They were called “travelers,” and he thought this the height of irony to use that for one of his e-mail names. It was a hint, even though no one had ever picked up on it. A clever nod to fair play.

  He had not done much trav
eling lately, although he had moved ninety miles to the north. Tucson was an easy town to disappear in. He had melted right into the Tucson melting pot. He was careful, though, staying close to the freeway in a Motel 6, only venturing out of the neighborhood to a UPS Store to pick up the money Dark Moondancer had sent him.

  He was in the Motel 6 now, doing what he loved best—trolling the net. But even that paled in comparison to what was on his mind: the e-mail from LVRGRL@livewire.com.

  Intrigued, he’d opened it—and knew right away it was her.

  She told him what happened—how her parents had discovered the camera and jewelry he’d sent her and demanded to know where she got them. She’d refused to tell, and her father, the son-of-a-bitch, took away her computer privileges.

  But his girl had spunk. It took her awhile, but she managed to talk her mother into letting her use her computer for school, and immediately she set up a new e-mail account.

  Kids these days.

  I was scared but now I know how much I really luv U and I know its right. They cant keep us apart

  Reading that, Musicman couldn’t help experiencing a tiny kernel of hope.

  He had to be sure, though.

  He went through all his CRZYGRL12 messages, starting with the most recent and going backward. He read the messages which had lured him to Bisbee, messages he now knew were false:

  I have to go visit my dad in the poduk town. Boriiiing. Theirs nothig to do there.

  A lie.

  I’ve been thinking. Your right. Its time we got together.

  Lie, lie, lie.

  I know a park were we coud meet

  I want to do it now

  I luv U

  Musicman went back through each e-mail, scrupulously, trying to figure out when the imposter had taken over. Looking for changes in syntax and content. He couldn’t see anything different. She used “lay” instead of “lie”, a common grammatical mistake. Lots of smiley faces and sad faces, depending on her mood. The same misspellings: “their” for “there”; “coud” for “could”.

  He printed everything up; sometimes you could spot stuff on hard copy that you missed on the screen. Went through the e-mails again, starting with the most recent, going backward in time.