The Laura Cardinal Novels (11 page)

Laura agreed with Victor that there was a high probability that Jessica and Cary had been attacked at the same time. With a body this far gone, it would be impossible to fix a definitive time of death, but Laura didn’t believe in coincidences. The fact that Cary Statler and Jessica Parris had both been victims of homicide was just too big a coincidence to ignore.

Detective Holland said, “He wanted the girl and this poor sad bastard was in the way. So he bashed him in the head and took the girl where he could have his fun without being rushed.”

Laura kept her gaze on Statler, although it was hard to do. He was riddled with maggots. One eye had been pecked out, and several fingers had been torn from one hand, probably dragged off by animals. It was fortunate he had ID on him, because skin slippage and a hardening and darkening of his complexion made his features unrecognizable—his face was marbled lime-green and black.

But Laura knew who it was the moment she saw the Megadeth tee and the yellow pineapple hair.

She straightened up, feeling the twinge in her back. The shade, which had stayed with them most of the day, had given way to full sunlight coming in through the southern window. The air was stifling; the stench almost unbearable. Victor and Buddy had shared dabs of Victor’s jar of mentholatum to block out the smell, but Laura had made it a policy not to use the stuff, since she knew from experience that the stink would linger in the mentholatum long after she had left the scene. She breathed through her mouth, but could still feel death lying on the membranes on her tongue, in her nostrils, on her skin.

Victor cocked his head. “Man, that was some hit he took.” The force of the blow had broken Cary Statler’s neck, even though the wound itself had been higher up to the side of the head. One blow. It had come close to separating his head from his body.

“Had to be someone who knew about this place,” Buddy was saying. “You can’t even see these cabins from the road.”

“Could be." Laura kept her voice neutral.

Buddy had the ball and he ran with it. “I think he knew them. He wanted Jessica, she fit his fantasy. My guess is he followed them, or knew about their little hangout—“

“If it was their hangout.” Laura could feel sweat trickling under her hair. She wanted out of this cabin
now
. She desperately wanted to go back to the car and get to her purse, scrub her face and hands with hand sanitizer, and salve her dry lips.

“If it was Cary’s hangout, this guy would know they hung out there. He’d be able to keep tabs on them, look for his opportunity. I think he planned it,” Buddy said.

“What I still can’t figure out though—why the dress?” Victor asked. “Why did he do all that? He leaves the kid here, like so much garbage dumped out by the side of the road, but he’s careful about the evidence with her.”

Buddy said, “He didn’t think anyone would find the kid. That’s why he brought him to this cabin, farthest from the road. Nobody comes out here. That’s also why I think he’s local. He knows this place. He had to act fast and move this kid, and he knew exactly where to put him.”

“And then what?” asked Laura.

Buddy looked at her and his eyes narrowed. “He takes her to his place.”

“So he’s parked up on the road?”

“I guess he would be.”

“Wouldn’t he be afraid that someone would see his car? Or see him come up to the road with the girl?”

“He’s pretty bold—you said so yourself, dressing her up like that and putting her in City Park. If you don’t like him taking him somewhere, he could have killed and raped her up here, came back later that night, cleaned her up and planted her in City Park.”

“Why?”

“To taunt the police. To show us up.”

Buddy’s theory was logical. Still, something about it bothered her. She had spent a large part of yesterday talking to various law enforcement agencies in Arizona. No one she’d talked to could even remember a case like this one, but there was the phone call from that detective—Endicott—in Indio, California. She’d tried him twice today, would have to keep trying.

If he was a local, she guessed that he had not lived here long. A year or two at the most. She knew he had done this before. He had built up to this.

The mesquite leaf, too, bothered her. She didn’t recall seeing a mesquite tree anywhere up here; it was too high up.

And there was the matchbook she’d found at the bandshell, CRZYGRL12 written in block letters on the inside cover. “Why would he leave the matchbook behind?”

Buddy stared at her. “We don’t know for sure it was his.”

Gauging her reaction.

“No, we don’t know he was the one who put it there. We have to consider it, though. We have to consider everything. This might have something to do with the Internet.”

“That’s how he could have met her.”

“But you think he knew her from here.”

“He knew her from here and he knew her on the Internet. They were probably e-mail buddies.”

She could tell he was getting steamed. She saw Victor grin—the first time today. Victor understood Buddy’s frustration, maybe even sympathized. He’d often said she was
too
even-handed.

“Besides,” Buddy said, “I talked to her teachers. She was carefully supervised and never left alone on the computers. No way someone could have reached her—they’d know. I think CRZYGIRL12 doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Laura didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she stepped outside the cabin. She couldn’t stand the stench in there, and she couldn’t stand Buddy Holland’s attitude. His barely-veiled belligerence. His hints that she’d planted the matchbook.

Concentrate.

She walked out beyond the crime scene tape. From here, she could see the dumpster near the road. The lab techs had removed the dumpster’s contents and already taken it to the crime lab in Tucson, even though they had found nothing overtly related to Cary’s murder.

What Laura hoped for was a blood-stained towel or T-shirt. There had been evidence that Cary’s head had been wrapped in something to keep his blood from getting all over. This dovetailed with her theory that Cary was moved to the cabin from the spot where he’d been killed.

The killer had probably taken the shirt or towel with him. Maybe he knew that it was possible to get latents from cloth. Or maybe it was his natural neatness.

He was still being careful.

She did agree with Buddy on one thing: Cary had been in the way, and the killer had not foreseen this. He had taken some pains to hide Cary’s body, but had been too much in a hurry to clean up.

He had made a big mistake.

She caught a movement down below: Chuck Lehman walking in the direction of the crime scene tape stretching across the road. An unleashed Rottweiler accompanied him.

Officer Noone walked down to meet him. Reporters zeroed in on him like ducks after bread. Voices drifted up, but she couldn’t hear them. She didn’t need to—Officer Noone was telling Lehman he couldn’t go past the tape.

Lehman whistled to his dog and turned on his heel. He walked back in the direction of his house, but didn’t go far. Arms folded over his chest, he watched the ME’s van pull up behind the other vehicles. Laura couldn’t see his expression, but she could sense his excitement even from here. It was evident in the tense way he held his body, pitched slightly forward, as if he were absorbing everything about the scene with all his senses.

She thought about the word Victor had used to describe him.

Avid.

After the body was removed, Laura,Victor, and Buddy headed down to the road. As they reached the crime scene tape, a female reporter thrust a microphone in Laura’s face.

“Is it true the body you found belongs to Cary Statler, Jessica Parris’s boyfriend?”

“We don’t have a positive ID yet,” Laura said.

“But you’re pretty sure it’s Cary Statler?”

“We won’t know that until we get a positive ID.”

“If it was Cary Statler, can you comment on what they were doing in here?”

Someone else shouted, “Did he die trying to save Jessica’s life?”

“We don’t know what happened. We’re just beginning this investigation.”

“But Jessica Parris was here?”

“It’s too early to tell that.”

She finally got past them and walked to her car.

It was going on three o’clock when the news vans pulled out, following the ME’s van down the road. Laura scrubbed her hands and face with hand sanitizer and applied lip balm to her lips. Then she reached into the back seat and tore open the plastic covering on the case of water bottles she carried there, grabbed a new bottle, and drank. Water never tasted so sweet. Ducking into the back of the 4Runner, she stripped off her shirt and replaced it with the blouse she kept on a hanger for emergencies. She ran a brush through her hair, hoping she was respectable enough to meet people.

Victor took the houses on the east side of the street, and Buddy took the houses on the west. Laura headed up to the two houses at the bend in the road.

Again, she got no answer at the first house. But a man answered the door to the green house. Frail and thin, he was bent over a walker. It was clear he was not going to invite her in. The house smelled of boiled cabbage and unclean cat boxes. A TV set blared in the background. She asked him if he had seen or heard anything unusual the last few nights.

He looked at her blankly. “I’ve been in bed all week with a septic throat.”

He hadn’t heard anything and didn’t know Cary Statler or the Parris family. Laura asked him her whole list of questions, but it was clear he didn’t know anything and didn’t
want
to know anything.

“Does anyone else live here?”

“Nope. Have a girl comes in three times a week.”

Laura finally nailed it down: The “girl” worked on the day Jessica had been kidnapped. When Laura asked for her name and phone number, the man sighed and clacked his way into the darkness, returning with a slip of paper that had been torn off the edge of a TV Guide, one inch by one-half inch.

“Is that it?” he demanded. “I’m not supposed to be out of bed.”

“Have you noticed any unusual vehicles drive this road in the last few days?”

“I keep my drapes drawn. Don’t want to fade the furniture.” The door closed in her face.

From her vantage point in the 4Runner, Laura watched Victor get in his vehicle and drive off, and then Buddy. Neither one approached her, even though she was in plain sight. She assumed Victor was going back to the Copper Queen Hotel for a swim and to call his wife. They would meet later at the hotel restaurant and compare notes.

Buddy—who knew what he was going to do?

Laura took out her camera and stepped onto the road. She wanted to be in this canyon at the time of day that Cary died and Jessica was taken.

She guessed that Cary had been killed somewhere between five and seven o’clock in the evening on the day Jessica disappeared. This would fit the timeline for Jessica’s abduction.

The shadows stretched down from Mule Pass, coming from the opposite direction they had been this morning. The trees on the left side of the road were all in shadow now.

Laura stepped into the wood and worked her way over to the cabin that had contained the drug paraphernalia.

She pictured herself sneaking up on them. Tried to move quietly, but it was impossible given the leaf litter underfoot and the whiplashing limbs.

They would hear an intruder, but would they care? They might not be afraid of strangers. Mellow on pot, Cary and Jessica might not see the danger until it was too late. Would he lure them up to the other cabin farther away from the road?

Or did he arrange to meet them here
?

She leaned in through the cabin door and inhaled the smell of pot, which to her smelled like a cross between a burnt-out campfire and old grass and gym socks in a school locker.

The lab techs had removed the pillow, the boom box, the rolling papers, the rug, soil, and debris samples—everything—as possible evidence. They’d also vacuumed the cabin for fibers and hairs, to see if they could place Cary or Jessica or both of them here.

If he did encounter them here, how did he overpower them? Two young, strong kids—that would be hard to do.

She retraced her steps back to the road, looking for any sign where the killer might have come in, and nearly walked right over a couple of divots in the sand north of where she thought he would have gone in.

She squatted on her heels and examined the shallow impressions. They could be drag marks—the divots could be a sign of heels digging in. She followed the trajectory of the marks down into the trees, feeling more excited the more she saw. The leaves on the ground were scuffed, a broken line running in roughly an east-west direction. Not, she noticed, in the direction of the hangout. Plenty of broken limbs and branches—the kid had been dragged by a whirlwind. And swipes and spatters and smears of blood.

Eventually the scuffmarks led to where she thought they would: the cabin on the hill.

She was now sure he did not meet Cary and Jessica at the first cabin.

Laura absorbed the warm stillness of the canyon, thinking. Cary had been dragged down from the road. That meant he had met the killer up there, or at least gone to his car. But where was Jessica during all this?

A raven flew over and settled in a tree farther up the hill, chortling at her.

She returned to the 4Runner for latex gloves and evidence envelopes and retraced the killer’s steps up the hill. She was nearly to the cabin on the hill when she spotted something red on the ground—a rectangular plastic tab. She recognized it as one of those savings cards people used at grocery stores—a Safeway Club Card. It fit on a key ring; the hole punch looked as if it had given out from use.

These cards had a bar code and a number, one reason Laura had never signed up for one despite the savings. She didn’t like the idea that her purchases could be tracked by someone she didn’t know.

She bagged the card. At the edge of the road where Cary had been dragged into the woods, she took several soil samples and marked them as evidence.

Some of the soil looked dark, almost black. It could have been oil spots from a car.