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

by J. Carson Black

  “But why here?”

  Laura shook her head.

  Why anywhere?

  Victor left for Tucson soon afterward, wanting to get home to his new baby. Laura would stay here and go directly to the autopsy in Sierra Vista tomorrow afternoon. The Copper Queen Hotel was full up, but after calling around, she found a place on the main drag through town.

  The storm that had been threatening all day finally unleashed its fury during the short drive to the motel. Rain hit the windshield like a fire hose, but she managed to spot the neon letters spelling out THE JONQUIL MOTEL. She got out and ran through the downpour to the office.

  The Jonquil Motel was a white-stuccoed motor court, circa 1930, situated on what was once the main highway through town. For Laura, it was love at first sight. In her job as a criminal investigator, she’d spent many nights on the road, and the motels often stuck out in her memory. After a long day she’d close the door to her room and give herself time to unwind. Many times she’d find the answers that had eluded her when she was on the job—something would just click. She remembered asking a maid for towels at a Holiday Inn in Flagstaff and abruptly remembering a piece of evidence essential to the case.

  The motels also reflected the peripatetic quality to her job—always starting over, working with someone new. She was invariably seen as an outsider, but Laura didn’t mind that. She liked working her way into the warp and woof of a town, picking up its easy rhythm, slowing down for the odd yellow dog crossing the street.

  Every small town had its own personality.

  She got into bed without bothering to change out of her clothes and lay there thinking about Jessica’s killer. When she wasn’t thinking about the killer, she thought about Tom and the idea of living together, her mind going around like a carousel.

  TRAFFIC STOP ON 92

  Rain tapped on the roof of Officer Duffy’s patrol car as she sat in the Safeway parking lot, keeping her eye on the blue BMW Z4 through the streaming windshield. She’d already run the plate; it came back to a Darrell Lee James, 2452 E. Silver Strand Drive, Gulfport, Mississippi. No wants, no warrants.

  Great car.

  Duffy glanced down at the laser-printed photograph on the seat beside her. In the orange light from the sodium arcs, raindrop reflections from the windshield crawled across the picture like ants. The photo showed a good-looking man leaning against a blue BMW Z4. Hard to believe he could be a child-raper, a great-looking guy like that. Still, when she’d spotted the Z4 on her way out to Tacho’s Tacos for a late dinner, she’d had no choice but to check it out. If it was him, and she was the one who caught him—oh, man. That would show them all up.

  Her thoughts turned to that stuck-up detective the chief had saddled them with. Imagine being kept out of the crime scene, like she was a first-year rookie. She smiled at the picture on the seat and said, “You stupid bitch. You don’t know everything.”

  If this was the guy, she’d be a hero. She pictured how impressed Randall would be if she and Buddy ended up on Today.

  This daydream kept her occupied until she spotted a man carrying a grocery bag in each hand splashing through the parking lot toward the Z4. She couldn’t see much of him; he wore a hooded raincoat. When he drove out of the parking lot, she pulled out right behind him.

  He made it easy for her by speeding. Couldn’t blame someone with a car like that for putting on the afterburners. She stopped him on 92 just south of Tintown.

  The rain was coming down hard now. Mud sucked at Duffy’s shoes as she walked up to the driver’s side, careful to approach him from an angle. Safety first. Darrell Lee James buzzed his window down.

  She flashed her light on his face. It wasn’t him. This guy was fifty if he was a day.

  Duffy kept her face impassive, but her disappointment was deep. She knew she should feel more than disappointed. There was a monster on the loose. The problem was she didn’t feel things deeply the way other people did, with one exception. Love was the most important emotion on earth, and that she felt in spades. Everything else paled in comparison to what was going on between her and Randall—even catching a killer. Love could be sweet torture, or a burning agony, and she couldn’t live without it.

  “Sir, put both hands on the wheel where I can see them.”

  “Officer, I know I was speeding—“

  “Reach down with one hand and remove your wallet. No quick moves.”

  Carefully, Darrell Lee James reached into his coat and produced his wallet, holding it high and away from his body. The move was automatic; he’d been caught speeding before.

  “Slide the license out of your wallet, sir.”

  He did so, and handed it to her, then put both his hands back on the wheel.

  “Do not remove your hands from the wheel, sir. I’ll be watching.”

  She took her time walking back to her unit. Since she had already run his license, she sat there for a couple minutes, looking at the photo on the seat.

  Now that was a good-looking man. A total fucking creep, but good-looking.

  When she felt she’d waited long enough, she got out and trudged through the mud, handed him back his license, and opened her ticket book. “I’m going to give you a warning this time. But keep to the speed limit from now on, okay?”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Eyes like a Pekingese, shiny and moist in his fat pink face.

  Duffy watched him pull back onto the road, driving like a little old lady.

  A shame to see a Z4 being driven like that.

  7

  At two a.m., the clock radio came on. Laura got out of bed, pulled together what she needed, and walked through the rain-slick streets to City Park.

  Ducking under the crime scene tape, she stopped on the sidewalk below the park and looked around.

  The light from a sodium arc lamp tinted the street and buildings apricot. This had a flattening effect, making it harder to see. Most of Bisbee was sleeping, but she saw a few rectangles of light in the old buildings up and down the hills.

  She looked up the tall flight of steps to the street above.

  Laura had always thought it was most likely the bad guy had parked down here on the street and carried the girl up the stairs. She pictured him driving up around the park once to make sure no one was around. On the second pass, he parked right in front of the steps, the passenger door only a few inches from the curb and five feet from the bottom of the steps.

  Were his lights on? Would he leave the engine running?

  Yes to the lights, no to leaving the engine running. The best way to hide what you were doing was to act normally. Drive down the street with your lights on, park, turn off the lights along with the engine. If anyone happened to be awake and looking out the window, they would see nothing suspicious in someone parking a car. People worked night shifts.

  It was doubtful that he had been seen at all. At the briefing, it came out that there were very few houses from which you could actually see the band shell. This had surprised her. There were a couple of houses right on the road facing the park, maybe one or two across the way up high on OK Street, although the trees blocked the band shell from view.

  Laura stood in the street where the driver’s door would be, pantomimed walking around to the passenger side, leaning down and picking up the girl. He could be up the steps in less than five seconds.

  One step into the park. Three more steps to the band shell stairs. Four steps up. Set her against the wall, clasp her hands together, stand back to look at what you’ve done. Admire your still life.

  Water from rain earlier tonight dripped from the band shell arch.

  Just the act of carrying Jessica up here and placing her against the wall would cause him to shed fibers, hair, skin, and some of that would stick. How would he deal with that?

  Would he sweep up?

  Or could he have used one of those sticky rollers, the one people used to pick up pet hair? Lab techs now preferred the sticky rollers to vacuum cleaners when they looked for trace evid
ence.

  Water dripping from the band shell roof: tap tap tap.

  Where are you tonight? Holed up in a motel or have you moved on already?

  The wind rose, whipping the treetops. Their restive shadows danced on the band shell wall beside her. Rain started up, speckling the concrete.

  Where are you tonight?

  As if in answer, notes from an alto sax trickled down from a window somewhere up the street. Pure and sweet; a soulful, lonely sound.

  All the buildings in that direction were dark. The music stopped almost as soon as it had started.

  The rain came down harder, a curtain of clear beads in a doorway. Laura stood under the arch, feeling the chill draft as rain blew inward. With the rain came the stench of death.

  Suddenly, she could feel him, his essence leaking out of the wet cement, the air around her. Controlled rage. A predator. For a moment, she knew what it was like to be a rabbit in the shadow of the hawk.

  Was he watching her now? She looked around, but saw nothing. Imagined she heard footsteps, but it was only the rain.

  The wind blew harder. The tree shadows lashed back and forth on the wall of the band shell in tortured shapes, as if they were being strangled.

  She stared out at the park.

  Something caught her eye in the gleam of the streetlight, wet and shiny at the edge of the stage. A matchbook.

  Laura had been over every inch of this stage earlier today, and she knew the matchbook had not been there when they removed the body. The crime scene had been clean. The matchbook could belong to anyone; kids, tourists, curiosity seekers. The morbid.

  Donning latex gloves, she hunkered down beside the matchbook. The words “The Copper Queen Hotel” were stamped on the front. Holding the edges with her fingertips to avoid smearing any prints, she pried it open.

  On the inside cover, someone had written a message in block letters with a roller ball pen. The cardboard was so soggy it threatened to come apart in her hands, the letters starting to blur where the raindrops hit them.

  Laura scooted back under the overhang. Holding the matchbook open against the concrete, she aimed her flashlight at the block letters.

  CRZYGRL12.

  The rain hissed, chortled, murmured.

  CRZYGRL. Short for crazy girl? The twelfth in a line of crazy girls?

  She caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Suddenly, a bright light shone in her face and a voice demanded, “What are you doing?”

  8

  Laura squinted into the glare of a MagLite.

  “What are you doing?” Detective Holland repeated. The MagLite steady on her face.

  She wondered if he was keeping it on her purposely. Letting her know she was the trespasser here rather than the lead on this case? It made her angry, but it also goosed her heart up a notch. What did he think—she was planting evidence?

  “What’s that?” he said, motioning at her hand with the light.

  She stood up and brushed off her slacks. “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking on the crime scene, same as you.”

  “Earlier today, did you see anything like this?” She held the copper-colored matchbook up to the light.

  “Nope.”

  “Take a look.”

  “I don’t have gloves.”

  “I’ll hold it for you.” She opened the matchbook as carefully as she could. “CRZYGRL12. What do you think that means?”

  He stared at the letters on the matchbook, his gaze stony. But she could tell that something was going on behind his eyes, the cogs turning.

  Laura said “I need a paper bag for this.”

  He just watched her.

  “I have plastic evidence bags but no paper. This thing’s falling apart and it’s wet. If we’re going to put this into evidence, I’ve got to have a paper bag. I’ve got some in the 4Runner. Would you mind running down and getting me one?”

  She tossed him the keys and he caught them. But he made no move to go.

  “I’m parked outside the Jonquil.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a request.” She added, “Don’t you want to catch this guy?”

  He stood there for a moment. Drawing it out—that she needed a favor from him. Then he shambled down the steps, in no hurry.

  Way down the block she heard the big engine of his Chevy Caprice start up.

  Laura wondered how long Buddy Holland had been up here. She would have heard him if he’d just driven up. If she could have planted the matchbook, so could he.

  The rain kept coming down. After a while, her back started to hurt, and she needed to sit down. She sat against the bandshell wall as far away as she could get from where Jessica Parris was. She tried not to look at the spot. Breathed through her mouth and let her mind wander.

  She remembered someone telling her that before the citizens of Bisbee built City Park, this place had been a cemetery. Where did she hear that? On a trip down here a few years ago? Probably. She used to come down overnight with her boyfriend, a member of the Pima County Sheriff’s SWAT team. Mostly they came down to cool off from the Tucson summers and make love. It didn’t work out because he had an ex-wife who kept tabs on him even though they’d split up years ago.

  Counting Tom Lightfoot, that made six serious or semi-serious relationships since college, if she included her ex-husband Billy, who was before, during and after.

  Suddenly she flashed on the night two months ago at the Vail Steak House, going off to the bathroom with Karen, who did the books for the Bosque Escondido. They’d run into each other in the bar on Laura’s first foray out into the world with Tom. Tipsy, blundering into the vinyl-walled cubicle, verging on conspiratorial giggles, Laura asking: What do you think? Like asking someone off the street to tell her if she ought to buy a certain car. On cue Karen said what Laura wanted to hear. He’s so good-looking, and he can’t keep his eyes off you. You guys make a really cute couple.

  It doesn’t bother you that he doesn’t have a real job? Laura asking this as if Karen’s opinion was more important than her own.

  Who cares? You earn enough for both of you.

  A car cruised up the street and the engine died. Buddy appeared at the steps to the band shell a minute later. He pulled a folded evidence envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Sorry it took so long.” He didn’t tell her why.

  She placed the matchbook in the envelope and marked it with a pen. “To preserve the chain of custody, I’ll keep it with me tonight and take it to the crime lab when I get back to Tucson.” Looking for a reaction. He didn’t give her one. “Do you have any ideas who CRZYGRL12 is? Is she a local?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Anything come to mind at all?”

  At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “It could be something to do with the Internet.”

  “What, like an e-mail address?”

  He rubbed his nose. “Or a nick.”

  Looking at her for some sort of reaction. All she could offer was confusion. “Nick?”

  “Nickname. In a chat room.” He stared out at the park. “Are we about through?”

  “Why did you come up here tonight?”

  “Same as you. I wanted to see the place how he saw it.”

  She didn’t get back to the Jonquil Motel until a quarter of four. The rain stopped on the walk back.

  A fluorescent bulb sizzled above the yellow and green door to her room. The glare of the light was so harsh she had to blink. When she stuck her key in the lock, it didn’t turn.

  She jiggled the key in the lock, cursing under her breath. Stared down at the stubborn lock. Funny: Her hand didn’t look like her hand. It looked strange, but she couldn’t figure out why.

  Brain fart. She’d gone without sleep for long periods before—the job required it. Forty, sometimes sixty hours straight. She was young, she was healthy, but tonight she felt every one of her thirty-one years bearing down on her like a weight.r />
  Abruptly, the lock turned. She got the door open, stripped off her clothes and crawled under the covers. But even when she closed her eyes the light from above the door seemed to sizzle behind her eyelids, little fireworks popping in the dark.

  9

  THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

  Musicman bought a cupcake and a box of birthday candles, even though the box of candles was a waste of money because he used only one. He chose a blue candle because blue was her favorite color. He set it down next to the present, even though the present was not for her. He’d wrapped it with care, beautiful eye-catching paper with a bright golden bow.

  While waiting at the checkout counter, he’d picked up a paper. Jessica Parris’s death made the front page. Lots of strokes and attaboys. He was disappointed, though, that cable hadn’t picked it up.

  Back inside with the shades drawn, he lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday, surprised when it made him cry. She would have been thirty years old today. He remembered the last time he saw her in 1998, two years before her boyfriend beat her to death during a drunken binge. Musicman liked to think she had provoked the cretin into killing her because she could not live with herself.

  It still troubled him, her ending up like that. He hated thinking about what had happened in Alert Bay, but sometimes it just reached up and grabbed him, pulling him down into that bad time.

  He had been surprised how warm the village on the west Canadian coast was in midsummer. While browsing through the drugstore on the main drag, he’d even had to take off his jacket and wrap it around his waist.

  Alert Bay was about as far away as you could get from where he lived—so far away it was even in another country. It was almost as if she had drawn a line on a map. He didn’t blame her, after what she’d been through.