The Laura Cardinal Novels (6 page)

Laura stood in the street where the driver’s door would be, pantomimed walking around to the passenger side, leaning down and picking up the girl. He could be up the steps in less than five seconds.

One step into the park. Three more steps to the band shell stairs. Four steps up. Set her against the wall, clasp her hands together, stand back to look at what you’ve done. Admire your still life.

Water from rain earlier tonight dripped from the band shell arch.

Just the act of carrying Jessica up here and placing her against the wall would cause him to shed fibers, hair, skin, and some of that would stick. How would he deal with that?

Would he sweep up?

Or could he have used one of those sticky rollers, the one people used to pick up pet hair? Lab techs now preferred the sticky rollers to vacuum cleaners when they looked for trace evidence.

Water dripping from the band shell roof:
tap tap tap
.

Where are you tonight? Holed up in a motel or have you moved on already?

The wind rose, whipping the treetops. Their restive shadows danced on the band shell wall beside her. Rain started up, speckling the concrete.

Where are you tonight
?

As if in answer, notes from an alto sax trickled down from a window somewhere up the street. Pure and sweet; a soulful, lonely sound.

All the buildings in that direction were dark. The music stopped almost as soon as it had started.

The rain came down harder, a curtain of clear beads in a doorway. Laura stood under the arch, feeling the chill draft as rain blew inward. With the rain came the stench of death.

Suddenly, she could feel him, his essence leaking out of the wet cement, the air around her. Controlled rage. A predator. For a moment, she knew what it was like to be a rabbit in the shadow of the hawk.

Was he watching her now? She looked around, but saw nothing. Imagined she heard footsteps, but it was only the rain.

The wind blew harder. The tree shadows lashed back and forth on the wall of the band shell in tortured shapes, as if they were being strangled.

She stared out at the park.

Something caught her eye in the gleam of the streetlight, wet and shiny at the edge of the stage. A matchbook.

Laura had been over every inch of this stage earlier today, and she knew the matchbook had not been there when they removed the body. The crime scene had been clean. The matchbook could belong to anyone; kids, tourists, curiosity seekers. The morbid.

Donning latex gloves, she hunkered down beside the matchbook. The words “The Copper Queen Hotel” were stamped on the front. Holding the edges with her fingertips to avoid smearing any prints, she pried it open.

On the inside cover, someone had written a message in block letters with a roller ball pen. The cardboard was so soggy it threatened to come apart in her hands, the letters starting to blur where the raindrops hit them.

Laura scooted back under the overhang. Holding the matchbook open against the concrete, she aimed her flashlight at the block letters.

CRZYGRL12.

The rain hissed, chortled, murmured.

CRZYGRL. Short for crazy girl? The twelfth in a line of crazy girls?

She caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Suddenly, a bright light shone in her face and a voice demanded, “What are you doing?”

Laura squinted into the glare of a MagLite.

“What are you doing?” Detective Holland repeated. The MagLite steady on her face.

She wondered if he was keeping it on her purposely. Letting her know she was the trespasser here rather than the lead on this case? It made her angry, but it also goosed her heart up a notch. What did he think—she was planting evidence?

“What’s that?” he said, motioning at her hand with the light.

She stood up and brushed off her slacks. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking on the crime scene, same as you.”

“Earlier today, did you see anything like this?" She held the copper-colored matchbook up to the light.

“Nope.”

“Take a look.”

“I don’t have gloves.”

“I’ll hold it for you.” She opened the matchbook as carefully as she could. “CRZYGRL12. What do you think that means?”

He stared at the letters on the matchbook, his gaze stony. But she could tell that something was going on behind his eyes, the cogs turning.

Laura said “I need a paper bag for this.”

He just watched her.

“I have plastic evidence bags but no paper. This thing’s falling apart and it’s wet. If we’re going to put this into evidence, I’ve got to have a paper bag. I’ve got some in the 4Runner. Would you mind running down and getting me one?”

She tossed him the keys and he caught them. But he made no move to go.

“I’m parked outside the Jonquil.”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s a request." She added, “Don’t you want to catch this guy?”

He stood there for a moment. Drawing it out—that she needed a favor from him. Then he shambled down the steps, in no hurry.

Way down the block she heard the big engine of his Chevy Caprice start up.

Laura wondered how long Buddy Holland had been up here. She would have heard him if he’d just driven up. If
she
could have planted the matchbook, so could he.

The rain kept coming down. After a while, 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 band shell 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 CRZYGRL12 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 knickknacks on the half-empty shelves. Most of them had a native or marine theme, which was fine except Misty had lived here awhile 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 breath mints.

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 flip flops. A little girl, maybe ten years old, hopped out right behind him. She was blond 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.