Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake - Страница 117
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The Parris house, a craftsman bungalow, had a three-foot-high base of dark volcanic rock with red brick above that. The porch, windows, and doors were painted white. A picket fence flickered in and out of the shadow of a massive sycamore tree, and an American flag hung dispiritedly from the porch roof. Blinds in the front windows were shut tight.
The day was steamy after the rain and the sun blindingly bright. Laura was grateful for the shade of the porch. She used the deer-head knocker, preparing herself.
No answer. A breeze shuttled a few oak leaves across the floorboards. She knocked again, scanning the street while she waited, then tried the doorbell.
“They’re out.”
Laura looked up and saw a bare-chested man watering his plants next door. Was this the neighbor Victor had told her about?
“You with the police department?” he asked.
“Laura Cardinal, Department of Public Safety.” She held her wallet badge up for him to see and approached the fence.
She studied him as he looked at her badge: Five-feet-nine, average build, tattoos on his arms, head like a bullet. Intense eyes.
He shook her hand over the fence. A grip like a mountain climber. “Chuck Lehman.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Dave mentioned making funeral arrangements yesterday, so I’m guessing they’re at the funeral home. You just missed them.”
Laura tried not to show her disappointment. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
He picked up the hose and started watering again. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Did you notice Jessica coming home from school day before yesterday?”
“Nope. I was in the back room on the computer. Stock trading.”
“You didn’t hear anything, see anything? Maybe earlier? A car you didn’t recognize, maybe going slow? Someone hanging around?”
She was plowing old ground; Victor had already asked him questions like this, but she wanted to hear his answers for herself.
Chuck Lehman was willing. He gave her a thumbnail sketch of the family (father, authoritarian; mother, a pretty doormat; boyfriend, probably will end up being gay; Jessica, a “cute kid”; younger brother, a little shit). He pondered at length how her agency could use its resources to better advantage, they needed to get the media involved “on a national level”, put up roadblocks. “You don’t even have the Amber Alert.”
“You sound like you’re in law enforcement.”
“Me? No. I’m a carpenter." He touched his forehead. “But I have good powers of observation.”
She noticed the tautness in his face, the slight trembling in his body—he seemed to be on an adrenaline high. Was he excited about being included, or covering up something?
“Did you talk to Jessica much?”
“Me? No.” He waved at the air vaguely. “Hardly ever saw her.” Mister Amiable, suddenly closing up.
“You know of any of her friends I could talk to?”
“How would I know that? If you haven’t noticed, I’m a big kid.” Confident smile.
“All the days she’s walked home from school, nobody, nothing stuck out in your mind?”
“I don’t notice who comes and goes. They’re just kids.”
He seemed increasingly uncomfortable. It occurred to her that he could be hiding an interest in young girls.
Something not right about him. She remembered what Buddy Holland had said, that CRZYGRL12 could be an e-mail address or a chat room name. She lowered her voice, her inflection friendly: You and me in his together. “You said you have a computer. Do you know anyone with the e-mail address CRZYGRL12?”
He blinked. “What?”
“CRZYGRL12? Maybe Jessica’s e-mail? You wouldn’t know if she had a computer, would you?”
“Why would I know that?”
Angry. Offense was the best defense.
Without conscious thought, Laura shifted her weight to her back leg. Aware of the gun under her jacket. She made her voice even quieter, non-threatening. “Sir, could you tell me about your conviction?”
His eyes turned hard. “You can call my probation officer.”
She waited.
“Criminal damage,” he said, his voice as hard as his eyes. “I broke into my ex-wife’s house and tore up her clothes.”
“Her underpants,” Laura said, sounding as if it was something that happened every day.
“Right. Her underpants. Satisfied?” Anger radiated from him, making him seem bigger.
She stepped back, hand near her hip. “Sir—“
Suddenly he crossed the space between them, so quick she had to back up another couple of steps. His chin thrust out like a drill sergeant. “I said, are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” she said. Keeping the calm in her voice, though she was anything but.
He glared at her, his eyes like twin blue flames.
“Good.” With a jerk of the head for emphasis, he walked into his house and slammed the door.
Laura stood there for almost a minute, shame and anger riding a river of adrenaline. She had reacted in an acceptable way—stepping back to allow space between them so that she had room to draw her weapon—but couldn’t help feeling she’d looked weak. Would Victor have retreated like that?
Lehman got a big charge out of intimidating her—in his mind, he had won. She looked back at the Lehman house. One of the blinds moved in the front window. He was watching her. She straightened her back, trying to ignore him. She’d planned to do something. What was it?
The houses at the hairpin. That was it. Someone there might have seen something.
She started up the road, careful to stay to the asphalt, scanning the ground on either side. She doubted she’d find anything; the general consensus was that Jessica had been picked up coming home from school, which would mean she didn’t get this far. But Laura looked at the ground anyway, trying to concentrate. Trying not to think of Lehman staring at her back. A hundred yards up, she noted a clearing on the left side of the road, and another turnout on the corresponding side. Several cars had turned around there.
A dog barked at her from behind the redwood fence of the first house. She knocked and got no answer, stuck her card in the door with a request that the homeowner contact her when they got home.
The second house was set back from the road, a faded green cinder block. The drapes were closed. A swamp box cooler rattled like a cement mixer. She thought she heard a TV set going, but no one answered her knock. Many people these days didn’t answer their doors—a safety issue. She left another card.
On the way back to the car, Laura stopped at the turnout and examined the tire tracks. Many of them overlapped. One set of tread marks in particular caught her attention. A heavy vehicle, judging from the way the tracks sank into the ground. She could see corresponding tread marks on the other side of the road; he’d had to back and fill.
The mud had dried, hardening into bas-relief. They’d make excellent plaster casts.
She squatted down and stared at them. Double wheels. From looking at both turnouts, she thought the vehicle had a big wheelbase.
Like a motor home.
The sun bore down on her neck like an iron and flies buzzed around, lighting on her face and arms, tickling her. No telling if the tracks here belonged to a motor home at all, let alone the one Jeeter had seen on the Gulch. She knew what Frank Entwistle would say. When in doubt, be thorough.
She walked back to the 4Runner and got a spool of yellow crime scene tape and blocked off the area around both turnouts. She called the station and asked to be patched through to Officer Noone.
“What are you doing?” she asked him when he answered.
“Looking up motor homes." He added hastily, “The chief said I could.”
Laura glanced at her watch. She had to be at Cooger & Dark’s in ten minutes. “I’ve taped off some tire tracks up at the end of West Boulevard,” she said. “I want you to come up here and keep an eye on them until I get back. Can you do that?”
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