The Laura Cardinal Novels (35 page)
Read The Laura Cardinal Novels Online
Authors: J. Carson Black
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Police Procedurals, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Thrillers
Talons grabbed her, hard, pulled her around, a crushing grip around her throat as the thick arm levered her almost off the ground, elbow catching her chin and neck in a vise. She was dragged off her feet, her hip bumping hard against the side of the van. One of her sandals fell to the ground, and with cold clarity, she realized that she would never need it again. Then she was pulled in, backwards, across the seat. Struggling as the driver put the van in gear.
“No!” Dale screamed.
Just before the door slammed shut, she saw Dale Lundy’s eyes, a mirror of her own bottomless terror.
Laura left the motor home to Victor and drove the few blocks to DPS. Hard to believe that Lundy had been under their noses all this time. Hidden in plain sight.
Although they had cops crawling all over the Benson Highway area, FBI agents at the airport, Highway Patrol and sheriffs in four counties looking for a white GEO with a Colorado license plate, Lundy had slipped through the net.
He could be anywhere.
She went to see Charlie Specter.
He looked up from his computer. “I was just going to call you. I think Lundy’s got a soulmate.”
He handed her a log of incoming e-mails to Lundy’s account that his server had faxed over: [email protected]
Charlie leaned back in his chair, watching her face. “How about that? In my professional opinion, this guy is obsessive.”
“Is there a way to find him?” Laura asked.
Charlie sighed. “Livewire’s a big server with a one eight-hundred number. Which is fine—I was able to trace it to Coffee Anon, place on the west side—but these are old.”
“How old?”
“They’re from four days ago.”
“ Nothing since?”
“Unfortunately, no. Maybe they finally got together.”
“Either they connected or Dark Moondancer gave up. I want somebody to go out and talk to the people at the coffee place. Call TPD and see if they can send Barry White.”
She rapped her fingers on the desk. Where to go from here? If Lundy was panicked, he might kill Summer any time and ditch her somewhere.
She stared at the screen. Dark Moondancer. The name struck her as pretentious—extravagant. Like something from a movie. A fantasy.
She had seen or heard those words somewhere before. Recently. There had been something…
The word “fantasy” struck a chord. Lords. Lords and ladies. Role-playing.
Role-playing
. She remembered now.
Because Laura had come directly to DPS from the airport, her mother’s file and book chapters were still in her suitcase. She got them out and spread them on her desk. There it was—a notation on a scrap of notepaper: “Dk Moondancer?”
She called Barry Fruchtendler and got his machine. She pictured him out there in Montana, a beautiful sunny day, the retired cop out on a stream somewhere, casting flies.
“What’s up?” asked Charlie at her elbow. “You heard of this guy before?”
“I know what Dark Moondancer is—
was
.”
Charlie waited.
“A role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons. Knights, fairies, stuff like that. I don’t know much about it. A few kids at our school played it, but it was really more of a high school and college kid’s game.“
Mostly males. She couldn’t remember if the game was confined to Tucson or if it was popular throughout the country.
“A game?” Specter said. “You sure?”
Laura was thinking out loud. “Mark might know.” Mark Hewitt, her landlord, had gone to school with her. She grabbed the phone book and looked him up. He was home, and he did remember the game.
“The object was to become Dark Moondancer,” he said. “There were groups all over town. I think there was a point system, but it was pretty loose. Game had a bunch of different levels that you had to negotiate to get to the top, the top being the wizard, the powerful one. Only the people who made the top circle had a chance to become Moondancer. They were voted in by their peers.”
“Sounds like
Survivor
.”
“Long before its time. I think … I think there was a certain time span—a month? Maybe it went by moon phases. Then they’d start over.”
“How did someone get into the top circle?”
“I heard they did outrageous things.”
“Like what?”
“Whatever was outrageous when you were a kid—there were tests. Stealing something, bashing mailboxes, waiting outside a store and getting an adult to buy beer. Running naked down Speedway. Getting a popular girl to give it up.”
From buying beer to getting someone to have sex so you could get a few extra points in a game—a lot of leeway. “Did you know anyone who played?”
He rattled off a few names. Most of them were a year or two ahead and already in high school. She wrote them down.
“I’m leaving some of these guys out, I know it. I’ll call you back if I remember.” He paused. “While I’ve got you on the phone, we’re having a wedding in the butterfly garden next weekend. A big one.”
One of the conditions of living on the ranch rent-free was providing security for events whenever she could.
“I’ll look at my schedule and let you know,” she said.
Charlie looked at the list. “These the Dark Moondancer boys? You know any of them?”
“No.”
“I guess it’s something.”
Not much, though. Who knew how long that game went on? Years probably.
Laura spent an hour tracking down the names Mark had given her. Not much luck—she mostly got answering machines.
She wondered if she was wasting her time. Would Dark Moondancer even know where Lundy was? Probably not. All those messages he’d sent—it was clear to her that in their strange cyber-relationship, Dark Moondancer was the beta dog to Musicman’s alpha. But it was possible that Charlie was right, and the messages had stopped because they had made physical contact.
Victor called in to tell her they had found an auto body shop which could be closed up and made dark so they could use Luminol.
“How’s Buddy doing?”
“Fine. There wasn’t that much blood, so he knows he didn’t kill her in there.” He added, “You won’t believe what that girl did.”
“Summer?”
“She covered that bedroom with fingerprints—light fixtures, walls, chrome, you name it. We just filled up seven cards and all of them except one were the same. Plastered all over the place.”
“How do you know they were hers?”
“Buddy picked up some prints from his wife’s house—good enough to eyeball. Plus, the few places she didn’t get to were wiped clean. Probably from the last one.”
Laura wondered if “the last one” was Alison.
“Not only that, she pulled out her hair,
by the roots
. Left some hair in the sink, but some she hid. Like stringing one over the curtain rod, putting one under the lamp. Blond, so they were easy to see. And a barrette Buddy remembers because he bought it for her. You should see Buddy. He’s glowing more than the Luminol. Twelve years old and she does that. She’s a cop’s daughter, all right.”
“See that the lab gets started on the blood right away. We don’t want Buddy wondering any longer than he has to—with DNA it’s going to be long enough as it is.”
“You coming down?”
Laura saw Lieutenant Galaz in her peripheral vision, holding a file folder, waiting for her to finish.
“Soon. Wait—you grew up in Tucson. Did you ever hear of a role-playing game called Dark Moondancer?”
“Dark Moondancer? That’s a silly name.”
Laura told him about the game and the Dark Moondancer who sent the e-mails to Lundy.
“Sounds pretty tenuous to me,” Victor said.
“There’s your big word for the day.”
As soon as she finished talking to Victor, Galaz said, “Why don’t you take a look at this evidence list before I call Tallahassee. I want to get this thing straightened out.”
He dropped the file on her desk and walked across the squad bay to talk to Richie Lockhart. She guessed that meant he wanted her to do it now. She’d just started scanning the list when the phone rang: Barry Fruchtendler calling back.
“When I was looking at my mother’s book, I saw a notation about Dark Moondancer with a question mark,” she told him. “Did that have anything to do with your case?”
Fruchtendler said, “It had a lot of bearing on the case. We found some loose paper from Julie Marr’s notebook in the cemetery—must have blown over the fence. School stuff mostly. She wrote down that there was a party—I think it was the weekend after she was killed. A Dark Moondancer party. We didn’t release that to the press, but your mother knew about it.”
“You followed that lead, Dark Moondancer?” she asked. “Did you look at anyone in particular because of that?”
“Sure did. Talked to prob’ly seven or eight young men. It’s all in the murder book at TPD. I could make some calls, get them to fax it to you.”
More delay. “That would be great. I’ll try to expedite it on my end.”
She was about to hang up when he said, “There’s one name I won’t forget. I always thought that kid had something to do with it, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t connect the dots. Not having a body, that was tough.”
He paused to cough. His cough lasted a long time and did not sound good.
“He attended high school in the same district as Julie Marr,” he said when he was finally able to talk. “His uncle owned A&B Auto Towing. That was where the car was taken from. Michael Harmon.”
“
Mickey
Harmon?” Her voice loud in the squad room.
From his place near Richie Lockhart’s desk, Galaz looked up disapprovingly.
“You know about him? That was his nickname, Mickey. Thought from the very beginning he was lying to me.”
WATCH AND WAIT
Musicman glanced at his fuel gauge—almost empty. He had been parked among the big trucks outside the Crown Paper Company for an hour, keeping an eye on the warehouse at the corner of 17th and Fremont, running the engine to keep cool. He’d have to do something soon, though. Waiting on 100-degree heat, no shade in sight, wasn’t an option. He supposed he could go get more gas. But what if they left while he was gone?
To Musicman’s surprise, the white van hadn’t gone far. The guy driving didn’t care that Musicman was on his tail. He drove sedately down the old Benson Highway, took Park Avenue north, and turned into the manufacturing district near the railroad tracks. Musicman watched as the man unlocked the gate to a tall, chain link fence topped by razor wire. A derelict brick warehouse, the Chiricahua Paint Company, rotted in the sun beyond the fence. Once in the parking lot, the man drove around the back and out of view. Since the road Musicman was on dead-ended, he had to turn before he reached the entrance. And so he drove around the block, trying to think what to do. By the time he came around again, he saw them at the side of the building, a big man holding Summer’s arm, the man opening the door and ushering her inside.
Dark Moondancer.
The GEO was shaking from the air conditioner. He needed to do something, but what?
He did have options. He could make an anonymous call to the police and let them rescue her.
But he didn’t want to give Summer up. She had the potential to be The One, and he could not let her go without a fight. The best thing to do was retreat and think about this. Wait until dark, when at least he’d have a chance to sneak up on them.
He only hoped she’d be alive by then.
Laura jotted down the words Julie Marr, A&B towing, Dark Moondancer, and Mickey Harmon.
Mickey Harmon worked for Dynever Security, Jay Ramsey’s Internet security company. Jay had mentioned they’d grown up together. Jay might know something, either about Dark Moondancer or about Barry Fruchtendler’s suspicions.
She called the Ramsey house and got Freddy, who gave her his number at Dynever Security.
“I heard about that girl,” Jay said when he answered. “If I can help in any way …”
“Maybe you can,” she said. “You know Mickey Harmon pretty well?”
“We’ve been friends since we were in fifth grade.”
“Did you ever play a game called Dark Moondancer?”
“Dark Moondancer?”
“It was a role-playing game.”
“I know what Dark Moondancer is." It was not her imagination; his voice sounded strained. “What’s this about Mickey?”
“Were you aware that the police considered him a suspect in the Julie Marr abduction?”
“Oh that.” He sounded relieved. “For a while there, they really went after him. But Mickey wouldn’t—“
She waited.
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Do you mind if I call you back? I’ve got someone in my office.”
“Sure,” she said, but he’d already hung up.
Thinking he sounded spooked and wondering why.
Galaz caught her eye. She waved at him and held up the evidence list, pantomiming that she’d get to it now.
When she took the list over to Galaz, he and Richie Lockhart were laughing about something.
“What’s so funny?”
Galaz said, “You missed all the excitement around here.”
“Excitement?”
“While you were in Florida. Victor got a message from his mistress. Her plumbing went crazy and she was knee-deep in water, panicked that the water was almost up to her mattress.”