Darkness on the Edge of Town (Laura Cardinal Series)

by J. Carson Black

“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 22. 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 ad: 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 Map Quest. 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 sportscar 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 that 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 that 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. Tha
t’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.

  28

  Laura rented a car in Panama City and drove in the direction of The Strand Model and Talent Agency in Panama City Beach.

  Panama City gave Laura the impression of a beach town being swallowed whole by Wal-Mart and shopping malls—a battle of old versus new. Fast food chains vying with mom and pop burger stands, bait shops and boat rentals in the shadow of superstores. Colored pennants and tacky signs marked mobile home sales and car dealerships adjacent to tracts of land marked for sale as “unimproved” property.

  As if you could improve on inviting lanes disappearing into stands of southern pine.

  The Strand Model and Talent Agency was located three blocks from the beach. Blue with gray trim, the modest saltbox was bordered by a row of immature banana trees and sat in one corner of a parking lot roped off by a giant, sand-encrusted hawser stretching from piling to piling. The plastic sign out front had stick-on letters, like many a drive-by church she’d seen on the way out here.

  She was impressed by the pelican statue on one of the pilings--until it flew off.

  The Strand Talent Agency must have been a doctor’s office at one time. A partition divided the front office from the receptionist’s window, and next to the window was the door to inner offices. Posters of sullen-faced models lined the gray fabric walls. A blonde, equally sullen faced receptionist sat behind the window, concentrating on her nails. She would be pretty if not for her spoiled expression. Laura asked to see the owner of the agency.

  “You’ll have to wait your turn,” the girl said, and went back to filing her nails. Ludicrous. Laura was the only one here. She wondered how talent agencies made a living on the Florida panhandle. She glanced at the stack of brochures sitting in the receptionist’s window and saw the rates for runway modeling and deportment classes. Now she understood.

  A young man carrying a portfolio emerged from the door to the inner offices and Laura took the opportunity to duck past him. If she expected a protest from the blonde, it wasn’t forthcoming. She found herself in a hallway, poked her head into the first room. A heavyset woman with jet-black hair and white sideburns was making photocopies. She wore an outfit that could have looked great on the streets of New York.

  “I’m looking for the owner of the agency.”

  “I’m the owner. Who are you?”

  Laura introduced herself. “I need to get in touch with one of your actors.” She handed Myrna Gorman the composite of Peter Dorrance. She could have found his address in Public Records in Apalachicola, but had another reason for talking to Myrna Gorman.

  Gorman led Laura into another room lined with file cabinets. For a big woman, her movements were swift and economical. “Peter. A great look, but we haven’t been able to do much with him. He’s one of those people who can’t act.” She opened a file cabinet and ran Turandot nails over the files, scooped one out. “Here it is. We sent him out on two modeling jobs this year. He lives far enough away that we don’t send him too many places.”

  “But he did make it to ‘CSI: Miami.’”

  “They wanted the most beautiful male corpse they could find. Last I looked, corpses don’t have to act.”

  “These headshots…Did he use your photographer?”

  “We don’t have a photographer on staff. There are two or three we use. I have their names and phone numbers if you want them.”

  Laura did.

  “What do you know about Peter Dorrance? Other than he can’t act?”

  Mrs. Gorman returned to her office chair and drummed her fingernails on the desk blotter. “He’s one of those with stars in their eyes. I know he’s planning to move to L.A.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Months.” She looked inward. “April? I had an audition for him in Tallahassee—a national commercial. He didn’t get it. What brings you here, all the way from Arizona? Did he do something illegal?”

  “I can’t discuss that.”

  “Well, I think you should tell me what he did. I have a reputation in this town and I don’t want to be associated with something like that.”

  “You sound like you think he’s capable of bad things.”

  Myrna Gorman’s stare hardened. “I know he knocked up one of my models. But I guess that isn’t a crime.”

  “How old was your model?”

  “Alissa? Twenty-two.”

  “Are they an item?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? It isn’t very often we get a production company coming through here to film. I landed that girl a good role. The day before filming was due to start, she had a miscarriage and ended up in the hospital. They had to recast, and City Confidential got the commission. You could say that Peter Dorrance has cost me more than he ever made me.”

  * * *

  Laura took Highway 98 going east past Tyndall Air Force Base, past miles of slash pines, then into a pretty town called Mexico Beach. Late in the afternoon, the sky, though clear, had a metallic quality—grayish green down at the horizon. The beach was on the right side of the road. An incoming wave caught the sun, the shape and color of a 7-Up bottle lying on its side, and crashed down into foam. Laura wished she could pull over, buy a bathing suit somewhere, and go for a swim.

  She drove through Apalachicola just after six PM. According to her map, Apalachicola was once a major port city in the south. The place struck her as gracious; neatly gridded streets, live oaks draped with Spanish moss, a fisherman walking down a street spattered by shadow. Following her map, she drove over the Gorrie St. Bridge and across Apalachicola Bay to Eastpoint.

  Peter Dorrance lived at the Palmetto Cove apartment complex in Eastpoint, the jump-off point for St. George Island. Two stories, Palmetto Cove Apartments reminded Laura of a Travelodge. She followed the stairs up to a sway-backed concrete walkway and found his room overlooking the parking lot. When she knocked, the orange door rattled in the frame. Cheap. He was probably at work.

  On to Bennies at the Beach, where Dorrance worked as a waiter. Laura backtracked to the St. George Island Causeway and drove across to the island. The bay shimmered in the lowering sun, brimming with oyster boats and sparklets of late light. The first thing she saw on the island was a water tower. It looked like a plastic golf tee.

  Bennie’s at the Beach was just down E. Gulf Beach going east. Easy to spot: Three stories of weathered wood topped by a thatched roof , colorful surfboards lining the walls. She counted at least thirty cars parked along the road.

  Laura was almost to the restaurant when she spotted a house on the right that looked familiar. She pulled over to the side of the road and looked across a vacant lot of sand and sea oats to the pastel-colored houses facing out onto the Gulf.

  They appeared to be relatively new. From what she’d seen in the renters and buyers guide she’d picked up at the airport, prices for homes on the Florida panhandle were going up exponentially. Beachfront property was at a premium. Laura guessed these were vacation rentals. The house nearest to her looked like the Gull Cottage from the photograph.

  She got out of the car and walked up the road for a closer look. Pale yellow siding, white trim, a red metal roof, widow’s walk. She reco
gnized the steps to one side, the palmetto, and the garage under the house.

  What clinched it was the sportscar: A blue BMW Z4.

  The neighbor must be some nice guy to let an out-of-work actor pose with his car.

  Or maybe Peter had waited for the owner to leave, and then had his photo session. Laura glanced at Bennies at the Beach, approximately fifty yards up the road. Every day Peter Dorrance came to work, he would have driven by this house.

  She revised her notion that the house was a vacation rental; the publicity photos were at least five months old, yet the Z4 was still here. She debated talking to the owner, but decided that she would talk to Dorrance first.

  The sky was turning sherbet colors--flamingo pink, orange, lemon—as she drove the rest of the way to Bennies.

  Bennies was a Parrothead paradise. Fish nets hanging from plank walls, sawdust on the floor, middle-aged men in loud Hawaiian shirts. The noisy babble rose to the rafters. A sign above the bar: Oysters - Half Dozen for a dollar. Exotic-sounding drink specials with names like “Banshee Breeze” written in colored chalk on a blackboard.

  A waitress in a white dress shirt and black trousers whipped by, holding a huge tray overflowing with colorful food, making Laura hungry. She pressed her way through the crowd to the bar and yelled over the music until the bartender understood. He pointed to a tall young man with shoulder-length black hair.

  Laura waited for Dorrance to finish taking his order and stood in his path. He smiled absently at her.

  “Mr. Dorrance?” she asked.

  “Yes. Hi. I’ll be right with you.” He expertly side-stepped her and headed for the kitchen. Laura couldn’t follow him—the way he threaded through the crowd could have made him a star on the football field.

  She waited at the kitchen entrance. “Mr. Dorrance. I need to talk to you.” She held up her shield.

  “Department of Public Safety? What’s that?”

  She found herself shouting. “An Arizona law enforcement agency.” She watched him carefully, but saw only confusion. “Is there a place we can talk?”