Darkness on the Edge of Town (5 page)

The rain kept coming down.  After awhile, 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 bandshell 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 Crazy Girl 12 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.

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.

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.     

There were plenty of knick-knacks on the half-empty shelves.  Most of them had a native or marine theme, which was fine except Misty had lived here a while and none of it would be new to her.

Who are you trying to impress
?  It didn’t matter what he bought.  He knew that.  She would know what was in his mind, and that was what counted.

He glanced at his watch.  If he was going to surprise her, he’d better get a move-on.  She got off work at two.  Hurriedly, he picked out a ceramic orca and a card, one of those soft-filtered ones showing two cute little kids together.  He also grabbed a roll of breathmints.

He walked fast, worried he might miss her. As he rounded the bend he saw the yellow clapboard building housing the Midnight Sun Hotel and Restaurant.  He’d just started up the steps when a woman pushed the door out, struggling with a kid in a stroller. The woman looked used-up, your basic white trash—stringy hair, tattoos on her bare arms.

He waited for her to get through the door. She made a big show of wrangling with the stroller, but he refused to help.  She gave him a dirty look and he returned her gaze serenely, not letting her know what he was thinking.  What he was thinking:
She looks like a hype
.

“Thanks for your
help
,” she said.

He ignored her and went inside.  The place was empty except for a woman he presumed worked there sitting at a table by the window.  He asked her pleasantly if Misty Patin was there.

“She just left.”

“Could I get an address?”

The woman parted the curtain and then looked at him.  “She’s still there.  Didn’t you see her when you came in?”

He felt his heart drop, the funny feeling you get when an elevator goes way up.  “I didn’t see anybody.”

The woman looked at him as if he were crazy.  She shoved back the curtain again and pointed.  “She’s right out there.”

He leaned down and peered out.  He saw the hype and her kid across the street.  A brand-new navy pickup pulled up.  The driver looked like an Eskimo, although that wasn’t what they were called around here. He wore a tank top, shorts and flipflops.  A little girl, maybe ten years old, hopped out right behind him.  She was blonde and didn’t look anything like the man or the kid in the stroller.  The girl ran down to the rocky beach and threw rocks into the water.

Looking at her, he knew it was true.

She looked just like Misty.

He felt a wall in his gut give way, the dam he had carefully built up over the years.  He could feel something dark and toxic seep out, the resentment and anger that had always been there but that he had managed to control up until now.

The woman said, “You better hurry if you want to catch her.”

“Shut up.”

“No one talks to me like that.  You’d better go, mister—“

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll make you shut up, you dried-up old hag!”

For a second, there was quiet.  Then the woman catapulted to her feet, her chair screeching across the floor and ricocheting against the wall as she made a beeline for the kitchen.  “I’m calling the police. Nobody talks to me like that.”

He ignored her, pulling the curtain back and staring out the window. He watched the little girl, the delight she took in picking out stones and hurling them into the bay.  She was fruit of the poisoned tree but still innocent, like an angel.  The way Misty used to be.

He let the curtain drop.  Looking down, he realized he had crumpled the paper bag holding his recent purchases.  Also, he’d forgotten to take a breath mint. 

It didn’t matter now.

When Laura arrived at the Bisbee Police Department the next morning, she looked for Buddy Holland, but he wasn’t at his desk. She’d planned to divide up the phone work, but that didn’t look like it would happen now.

Chief Ducotte had scrounged up a phone and phone jack for her computer and given her the table by the window where they kept the coffee urn.  Fortunately, the coffee urn had been moved so she’d have some privacy.  She sat down in the folding metal chair, thinking that if she sat here very long, her back would be in agony.  She scanned the list of contacts at other law enforcement agencies in the state.  Might as well get started.

In the next hour she reached close to a dozen of her counterparts in other jurisdictions, but none of them had encountered a similar crime. 

She knew this wasn’t this guy’s first kill. Dressing the victim up was the killer’s signature—something he’d do every time. It would have taken him time and practice to perfect a ritual like this one.  Unfortunately, looking for one piece of information in the staggering wave of data from VICAP was a daunting task. VICAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—was only as good as the agencies entering the data. The FBI database cross-referenced violent crimes nationwide, but participation was voluntary and many smaller jurisdictions didn’t use the system.

Somebody standing at her elbow— Officer Noone.  “Ma’am?”

She straightened up, felt a twinge in her back.  Smiled at him.

“I heard you were looking for a saxophone player? My sister dated a guy who played the sax.  I heard he lived on the Gulch, so I asked around and I found him.  Name’s Jeeter.”  

“Jeeter who?”

“Just Jeeter.” 

Through the window Laura saw Buddy Holland and Officer Duffy approaching from the parking lot.  Duffy looked pissed.  Laura got the impression that was a permanent condition.

As Buddy approached the window he ducked his head to look in at her.  No, not at her.  He was looking at himself.

“Jeeter doesn’t have a last name?” Laura asked Noone.

“Apparently not, ma’am.” He looked chastened, as if Jeeter’s not having a last name was a reflection on him.

“What’s Jeeter’s story?” she asked.

“Guess you could say he’s a night owl.  Itinerant musician, takes up the slack with odd jobs.”

Laura glanced at Buddy Holland’s desk, at a faded but eye-catching photo of Buddy, a woman, and a little girl posing in front of Old Faithful at Yellowstone.  “Did Jeeter happen to look out his window?” Laura asked Noone.

“As a matter of fact he did.  He likes to sit next to an open window when he plays.  Feel the night air.”  

“Great for his neighbors.  Did he see anything?”

His broad handsome face lit up—what he had been building up to.  “He saw a motorhome.” He consulted his memo pad. “He noticed it for a couple of reasons.  Almost nobody drives down the Gulch in the wee hours of the morning. And, this motorhome went up and back on the Gulch twice.”

“What time was that?”

“Between two and three.”

“Did he notice anything else?”

“Just that it went slow.  He wasn’t thinking make, size, anything—just noticed it driving down the street a couple of times. Here’s his number.” He handed her a While You Were Out slip, the name Jeeter, his phone number and address neatly printed on it.

He lingered.

“Yes?” Wishing he would go so she could think.

“If there’s anything else I can do—“

She glanced at her watch, thinking she should get out to see the Parris family soon or she’d have to wait until early afternoon—and that would be cutting it close.  She was meeting the owner of the Cooger & Dark shop at eleven and the autopsy in Sierra Vista was at four.  She looked at Noone.  “As a matter of fact there is something you can do. I want you to look up motorhomes—you can do it on the Internet.  Go back at least fifteen years and get a representative sample.  Go show them to Jeeter and see if anything jogs his memory.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I’ll do that right now.”

“When does your shift end?”

“Three o’clock, but—“

“You’d better ask your sergeant if he can spare you, otherwise it will have to wait.”

After he was gone, she thought about the motorhome. Saw it in her mind’s eye, cruising down the Gulch in the early hours of the morning.

It made sense.  A motorhome was an ideal vehicle for a sexual predator.  Portable, self-contained, window shades so no one could see in. 

She glanced at Buddy Holland’s desk.  He must have come in and gone again while she was talking to Noone.  She powered down her computer and went looking for him, catching Officer Danehill at the coffee urn, which had been set up outside the bathroom. “Have you seen Buddy?”

“Buddy?  He just left.”

Laura decided that could be a good thing.  She doubted Buddy would be a help and might be a hindrance.  She headed up canyon to see Jessica’s parents.

David and Linda Parris lived on West Boulevard, the last house before vacant land. Three hundred yards up, West Boulevard bottomed out in a hairpin turn before slanting up the mountain.  According to Laura’s map, this road, old Route 80, switchbacked up to the top and then down again to connect up with the main highway on the other side of Mule Pass.