The Laura Cardinal Novels (32 page)

She did as she was told, gently parting the wrapping where the Scotch tape was until it revealed her gift: A Lucite photo cube.

“Well? Do you like it?”

“It’s great,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

“That’s for our trip. Here, let me put it away so we don’t get food on it." He cleared the paper and put the cube away up in a top cupboard. He removed the bow from the wrapping paper and smoothed the paper out, folded it neatly, and put both the paper and the bow in a kitchen drawer. Then he sat down at the dinette table to watch her eat.

The idea of eating anything made her want to gag, but she smiled and bit into the sandwich. It tasted like cardboard. She chewed and chewed, trying to make the food small enough to swallow, and kept smiling. That seemed to please him. He acted like he had a crush on her—like he was shy or something. He reminded her of Justin Teeters in fifth period, who, whenever he saw her, got this look on his face that was really comic. She’d say “hi” and he couldn’t even answer back.

In that way, Dale was just like Justin. She knew he wanted to do it with her, but she also knew that he was holding back. Because he was shy?

Was he just like Justin, only older? She closed her eyes, imagined that her power was bigger than herself. That she was bigger and bigger, and Dale was smaller and smaller.

When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her. Staring. “How is it?” he asked.

“Mmmm. Really good.”

“I bought ice cream for dessert. I know it’s almost breakfast time, but hey, we can do anything we want.”

Like a little kid. Jeez.

“Would you like some?”

She swallowed more of the cardboard. “Sure.”

“I got Neopolitan,” he said shyly. “That way you can choose what you want—chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.”

“Cool.”

“You look so much better in that dress.”

That reminded her. “What did you do with my clothes?”

“They’re gone. Never you worry about that. You won’t have to see them again.”

She almost said she
liked
them, but bit her tongue.
Humor him. Humor him until you can find a way to get out of here
.

She set the sandwich down, sipped some Coke. Looked at him, memorizing his face. That way, her dad would be able to track him down after she escaped.

How she was going to escape, she didn’t know. But the more time she spent with him, the better she felt about her chances. He was kind of pathetic. She almost felt sorry for him. Sorry and grateful that he wasn’t the kind of kidnapper she’d seen on the Discovery channel, the ones who murdered their victims. She couldn’t see him murdering anybody.

“You like the sandwich?” he asked again.

“Oh yeah. I just don’t eat a lot. I’m on a diet.”

He frowned. “You don’t need to diet. Why do girls do that? You should be healthy, enjoy your life, not diet. I told Misty that.”

“Who’s Misty?"
Get him talking
.

“She was my first girlfriend.”

“I bet she was pretty.”

“Oh, she was.”

“How come you aren’t still with her?”

“We grew apart.”

“I’m sorry … I don’t know why she’d want to leave someone as nice as you. I mean, you’re really pretty cool.”

He stood up abruptly. “If you’re not going to finish that, I’ll throw it away.”

She’d made him mad.

He shoved the picnic plates into the garbage. He wouldn’t look at her, but she could tell he was angry by the way his shoulders hunched, the way he slammed around.

Finally he turned to face her. “Why do you have to be so
sly
?”

His face was dark red, his eyes like marbles. Suddenly he looked dangerous.

Her heart sped up. What was he mad about?

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said.

“I just meant—“

“I know what you meant. You think you can wrap me around your little finger? Well, that’s not going to happen.” He stepped forward, his hands clenching and unclenching. “That makes me so mad.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Honest.”

“I think you’d better go to your room, young lady.”

“Okay." She slipped out from behind the dinette table, had to pass right by him to get to the bedroom. She tried not to touch him at all, but her dress brushed against his thigh.

His hands came out and he whipped her around to face him. Bands of steel around her upper arms, nails digging in. His hands were trembling. His head was trembling.

His face was so close. It blotted out everything. His mouth was working, and his eyes— His eyes were dark, like holes. Like there wasn’t anything there behind them. Just black space. She opened her mouth to say she was sorry, but nothing came out.

He shook her, once, hard, and slammed her against the stove. The edge of the stove whacked into her elbow, the shock running up her arm to her chin. She groaned.

He continued to stare at her. Eyes like holes. She was distracted by the pain in her elbow. Her funny bone.

Then she saw something else way down deep in his eyes. Pain? It was shiny, slick, desperate. He turned around and walked away from her. “Best get to your room,” he said without looking at her.

She bolted for the room and locked the door.

A few minutes later she heard something bang against the doorjamb, then the sound of a padlock clicking shut.

Victor, Laura, Buddy, and Jerry Grimes set up a task force, calling their contacts at other law enforcement agencies—the FBI; US Customs; her own DPS Highway Patrol; US Border Patrol; and the sheriffs in all Arizona counties, the Tucson, South Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, and Green Valley police departments. Laura contacted the detectives she knew with these agencies. Every agency was faxed a picture of a 1987 Fleetwood Pace Arrow, the headshot of Lundy, both names, and his license plate number. They also contacted law enforcement in New Mexico, California, and Mexico.

Anybody and everybody to help them out.

Buddy asked, “What about media?”

Laura was torn about that. “We have no idea if he’s still in Tucson, but if he is, we don’t want him to run.”

“I think we should keep it to law enforcement,” Victor said.

Laura agreed.

Buddy wanted the Amber Alert.

“It’s too fucking late for that,” Victor snapped.

Charlie Specter, a DPS intelligence analyst, started entering what data they had on Lundy in the Rapid Start system. Rapid Start was a computer program developed by the FBI for just this kind of situation. He would enter the data as information came in from various law enforcement entities—one man in charge of everything.

“Too bad we don’t have his computer,” Charlie said to Laura. “I guess he’s had it with him all this time.”

“Is there any way to track his movements on the Internet?” she asked. Just then her mobile rang. She excused herself, walking away so she could hear.

The caller was Barry Fruchtendler. She rummaged through her overloaded circuits and pulled up the name—the cop who worked the Julie Marr case—and told him she’d have to get back to him later. He gave her his number in Montana and she wrote it down. As she flipped the phone closed, she tried to recapture her line of thought. “What if we had his e-mail address?” she asked Charlie.

“That depends. If he’s gone wireless …" He shrugged. “Worth a shot, though.”

“How would that work?”

“If he’s on the road, he’ll need one of the big servers he can access by an 800 number. All he needs is a phone jack, and he can keep up on his correspondence, no matter where he is.”

Laura was puzzled. “The motor home wouldn’t have a phone jack, would it?”

“Nope, but there are plenty of places he can go. Cyber cafés, any place he could get his hands on a phone line. Which would give us a great way to find out where he is. Once you have his e-mail account, you could subpoena his Internet server and have them intercept his e-mails. Trick is to let the e-mails go through so he doesn’t notice anything unusual, but a copy comes here to us." He saw Laura’s puzzled expression. “When an e-mail goes out, it has to go some place to wait before it’s sent on—kind of a like a clearinghouse. When you log on, you ask for your e-mail and that’s when the server sends it.”

“And that could pinpoint where he was?”

“The general area where he’s calling from. It goes by area code. We’d know if he was in Tucson or Green Valley or in New Mexico—wherever. We could even track him if he’s moving, as long as he checks his e-mail.”

Laura looked at Buddy. “It would be on your wife’s computer, wouldn’t it?”

“Better than that,” Buddy said. “I’ve got his e-mails.”

Musicman knocked on the bedroom door late in the morning. “Summer? You okay?”

No reply. He didn’t blame her, the way he’d acted. What had possessed him?

“You’re going to have to stay in the bedroom while I’m gone. Screaming won’t help. A lot of people scream at each other around here, and everybody minds their own business. I just have a couple of errands, and then I’ll be back. Is there anything you want me to pick up? Ice cream? Soda?”

Still no answer.

“Once we get to know each other, I won’t have to take this kind of precaution.”

The hot air hit him as he walked outside. The El Rancho Trailer Court was bad enough at night, but in the summer sun it looked as if it had been left out to rot. It was an ideal place to go to ground, though, for several reasons. The people here minded their own business. They remained inside, trying to stay cool. No doubt most of them were drugged to their eyeballs. An added bonus: The El Rancho Trailer Court was a short shot to the freeway and the airport if he had to get away in a hurry.

One of the best things about El Rancho was its proximity to the Motel 6.

He pulled into the Motel 6 parking lot and took his laptop into room 17. Inside, he set it on the round table near the door and closed the drapes against the summer heat. He turned the television to CNN and the air conditioner on high. Then he logged on.

When he wasn’t on the road, he had to check it several times a day. He usually tried to find a cheap motel room—it didn’t matter what color the drapes were, as long as it had a phone jack.

Every time he logged on, he felt an incredible rush of anticipation. His heart beat faster, his fingers practically itched. Maybe it was because his mother had so looked forward to getting the mail every day, as if she thought there might be a grand prize or a love letter from an old lover—something special. It got to be kind of a game. They would walk out to the mailbox together, and she’d say, “I wonder what I’ll get today?”

Even if it was just a bill, she liked getting mail. It was always an adventure.

He was like just like her. Even though he got a lot of spam, it was still mail.

He’d been hoping to hear from his friend Marshall, who lived in Chicago and had sounded interested in the pics of Jessica Parris. But all that came up were more messages from Dark Moondancer.

He had mostly ignored Moondancer. He’d sold him the pics, and as far as he was concerned, that was the end of it. But Dark Moondancer was nothing if not persistent. He must have sent thirty e-mails in the last week. All of them telling him to come and bring his latest sweetheart. Cryptic, subtle. Stuff like “I’d love to meet your new girlfriend." And “I have such a cozy, out-of-the-way place, far from the rat race.”

He opened the latest message. “
I wish you’d think about coming for a visit. I could give you the run of the place. Please think about it. Yours, Dark Moondancer. PS, am enjoying my trips down memory lane.
”

Memory Lane was the title of one of the photos he’d sent to Dark Moondancer. A forest glade. But underneath it was a dark secret—Jessica Parris in the band shell.

The idea of that cretin coming near Summer sickened him. The man was untrustworthy and dangerous. It wouldn’t be wise to put Summer into that kind of situation.

When he was through, he locked the door behind him and took his laptop back to the GEO. The room was so much cooler than the motor home, he’d debated bringing Summer here. Ultimately he’d decided against it. There was too much room for error. The motor home was a controlled area. He’d used it for all his girls, and had everything down to a science. You never wanted to do anything that could throw you off your game.

The GEO felt like an oven. The sour smell of cheap vinyl rose up around him. He started the car, yelped as his fingers touched the burning metal. He grabbed a gas receipt on the floor and used it to steer, narrowly missed running into a white panel van entering the parking lot. Feeling churlish, he flipped the driver the bird.

Hot air coming through the vents—the air conditioning sucked on this thing. But it was his get-away car. If it got too hot, he could always leave the motor home and take off in the GEO.

Laura had Buddy print up three copies of all the e-mails and started going through them.

“So Summer was CRZYGRL12.” She stared at Buddy. “Must have been a shock for you when that matchbook turned up.”

He looked at her stonily.

She decided to move on. “Let’s see what they’ve been saying to each other.”

Laura had to admit that Buddy had a good ear. He had imitated his daughter perfectly, and Lundy had not suspected a thing. The only problem: He’d come early to their meeting and something had spooked him.

Laura read samples of Musicman’s pitch:

“
I can’t believe how sweet you are. You’re not like other girls not in any way. Your different and I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

“I want to be the one to make love to you for the first time. The first time should be perfect. I picture giving you a bubble bath, get you nice and relaxed, candlelight, maybe a little something to drink. And when you’re all warm inside and out …”

She wanted to throw up—such a rasher of shit.

“When can we meet in person? Your picture is not enough anymore. I think about you all the time.”

He told her he was seventeen and would be a freshman in college this fall, premed. His parents had money, but he “wanted to earn his way through college,” so he worked two jobs. He described how beautiful Colorado was and how much fun it would be, just the two of them, camping out under the pines and falling in love.