Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake - Страница 124

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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.

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