Darkness on the Edge of Town (31 page)

“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 motorhome 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 clearing house.  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 bandshell.

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 motorhome, he’d debated bringing Summer here.  Ultimately he’d decided against it. There was too much room for error.  The motorhome 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 motorhome 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 Crazygirl 12.” 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, pre-med.  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.

“We need to get hold of Colorado law enforcement,” Laura said. “It sounds like he knows these places.  He might have had another girl there.”

Victor leaned over her. “Durango, Mesa Verde, Ouray, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs—I have a cousin who lives in Colorado. Most of those towns are on the same highway.”

“He must have passed through.” But when?  She knew he had been in Indio five months ago. 

“He really did take his show on the road,” Victor said.

Buddy opened up the .jpg photo of “James”, standing in front of the blue Z4, arms crossed.  

“Only you and Duffy knew about this?”

“Yes.”

“If you had this picture, why did you concentrate on Lehman?”

“You were the one who bird-dogged him, remember?”

“Yes.  But I didn’t have this.”  She motioned to the computer screen.

He shrugged. “I told you.  I thought they were two different cases—“

“Bullshit.” Victor.

Buddy shot Victor a venomous look.  “I
did
look for him.  So did Duffy.  We must have stopped a dozen of those blue Z4s.”

“We could have all been looking for him,” Laura said.

Buddy Holland had gotten back his equilibrium, and blame bounced off him.  “But that wouldn’t have done us much good, would it?” He tapped the screen, the photograph of Peter Dorrance.  “Because it
wasn’t
him.”

As Musicman drove the last block toward the El Rancho, his mind turned to the problem of Summer.  He was angry with himself for treating her the way he did.  Now he’d need to woo her all over again.

A street vendor had set up shop in an empty lot on the corner of the Benson Highway and Palo Verde.  On an impulse, Musicman pulled into the lot.  Under a parachute-type awning, an old man in a guayaberra shirt sat behind a glass case of cheap-looking jewelry on velvet.

All his girls had loved trinkets.  Of course, that was before they saw him.  That was always a shock.  They were always willing to accept gifts from a good-looking guy like Dorrance, but they turned their nose up at him.

He bought a pretty choker, the thin strand of silver almost liquid in the glaring sunlight.  Little beads of turquoise were threaded on at intervals.  He drove the rest of the way with a smile on his face.

As he switched on his blinker to make the turn into the El Rancho Trailer Court, he felt a sudden premonition.  He’d learned to trust his instincts, so he flicked off the blinker and continued driving on to the next block.  He turned there and turned left again, coming up behind the trailer court.

He’d been right.

From this angle he could see the revolving lights of a cop car.

Feast or famine, DPS intelligence analyst Charlie Specter thought as he got himself a cup of coffee and sat back down at the computer.  Tips from law enforcement entities throughout the state had come in rapidly at first, then slowed to a trickle, followed by another onslaught.  Like turning a faucet on and off.  Right now was a down-time. 

He checked his watch.  Another thirty minutes or so had gone by since the last time he checked his e-mail.

Laura Cardinal had made sure that Charlie was specifically named in the subpoena to Lundy’s internet server.  The messages that Lundy sent and received would be trapped at the server and then sent on to Lundy.  After it had been sent to Lundy, an “admin copy” would be sent on directly to Charlie.  Along with the text of the e-mail would be a header, showing the date and time of the e-mail, as well as the area code and phone number.  

He took a sip of coffee and logged on.

Bingo!  There was the e-mail address from Lundy’s ISP log.: [email protected]. The e-mail was from [email protected].

Time sent: 1:57 AM.  Time received: 10:43 AM.

Lundy’s ISP had a Tucson area code.  He was still in Tucson—a 628 exchange. 

Specter called the 628 number. Familiar music came on—Tom Bodette inviting the caller to stay at Motel 6. 

He looked up Motel 6 and found several.  One of them had the 628 exchange. 

He turned the corner and walked to Laura’s desk.  “How’s this?” he said.  “I know where your bad guy was, up to an hour ago.”

Get a grip, Musicman told himself.  There’s no way she could have gotten out of that motorhome. No way anyone could have heard her.

He parked the car by the side of the road, got out and trotted across the patch of desert toward the chain link fence that bordered the park. The fence was woven with dried-out yellow plastic, so it was hard to see, but he could hear the yelling.  It sounded like a drunk male, very angry.

He snuck up to the fence and peered through a hole in the plastic.

A shirtless long-haired man was bent over the hood of a Tucson police car as two cops struggled to handcuff him.  His jeans were so low on his skinny waist they showed his butt crack and a bad tattoo. 

“What’d I do?  What’d I
do
?” the man kept screaming.

Even though the guy was obviously suffering from malnutrition, he gave the cops quite a fight.

The cop cars were parked four trailers down from Musicman’s motorhome.  The motorhome was quiet but Summer could be hitting her fists against the windows and screaming—no way to tell.

He watched the cops. They were so busy with the screaming man that they were oblivious to anything else. A few neighbors had come out, hanging back mostly, on their front stoops.  A ragtag bunch.

Finally the cops wrestled the screaming man into the back of one of the patrol cars. Both cops had to pause for breath, and as they did, they looked at the crowd, which seemed to melt back into the rusting metal of their homes. 

He didn’t like it. 

The first car, the one holding the prisoner, drove away.  The second cop walked to his car.  Was it his imagination, or did the cop give the Pace Arrow more than a passing glance?  He even took a step to the side, so he could see more of it.

Then the cop’s radio squawked.  Whatever it was, he got in and drove off in a cloud of dust.

Musicman waited for several minutes, then got back into the car and drove around to the entrance.  

Right before the entrance, the GEO stalled and he cursed.  Still, he was glad he’d bought the car.