“He must have passed through.” But when? She knew he had been in Indio five months ago.
“He really did take his show on the road,” Victor said.
Buddy opened up the jpeg photo of “James” standing in front of the blue Z4, arms crossed.
“Only you and Duffy knew about this?”
“Yes.”
“If you had this picture, why did you concentrate on Lehman?”
“You were the one who bird-dogged him, remember?”
“Yes. But I didn’t have this.” She motioned to the computer screen.
He shrugged. “I told you. I thought they were two different cases—“
“Bullshit.” Victor.
Buddy shot Victor a venomous look. “I did look for him. So did Duffy. We must have stopped a dozen of those blue Z4s.”
“We could have all been looking for him,” Laura said.
Buddy Holland had gotten back his equilibrium, and blame bounced off him. “But that wouldn’t have done us much good, would it?” He tapped the screen, the photograph of Peter Dorrance. “Because it wasn’t him.”
48
As Musicman drove the last block toward the El Rancho, his mind turned to the problem of Summer. He was angry with himself for treating her the way he did. Now he’d need to woo her all over again.
A street vendor had set up shop in an empty lot on the corner of the Benson Highway and Palo Verde. On an impulse, Musicman pulled into the lot. Under a parachute-type awning, an old man in a guayaberra shirt sat behind a glass case of cheap-looking jewelry on velvet.
All his girls had loved trinkets. Of course, that was before they saw him. That was always a shock. They were always willing to accept gifts from a good-looking guy like Dorrance, but they turned their nose up at him.
He bought a pretty choker, the thin strand of silver almost liquid in the glaring sunlight. Little beads of turquoise were threaded on at intervals. He drove the rest of the way with a smile on his face.
As he switched on his blinker to make the turn into the El Rancho Trailer Court, he felt a sudden premonition. He’d learned to trust his instincts, so he flicked off the blinker and continued driving on to the next block. He turned there and turned left again, coming up behind the trailer court.
He’d been right.
From this angle he could see the revolving lights of a cop car.
Feast or famine, DPS intelligence analyst Charlie Specter thought as he got himself a cup of coffee and sat back down at the computer. Tips from law enforcement entities throughout the state had come in rapidly at first, then slowed to a trickle, followed by another onslaught. Like turning a faucet on and off. Right now was a down-time.
He checked his watch. Another thirty minutes or so had gone by since the last time he checked his e-mail.
Laura Cardinal had made sure that Charlie was specifically named in the subpoena to Lundy’s Internet server. The messages that Lundy sent and received would be trapped at the server and then sent on to Lundy. After it had been sent to Lundy, an “admin copy” would be sent on directly to Charlie. Along with the text of the e-mail would be a header showing the date and time of the e-mail, as well as the area code and phone number.
He took a sip of coffee and logged on.
Bingo! There was the e-mail address from Lundy’s ISP log: musicman2@msn.com The e-mail was from darkmoondancer@livewire.net.
Time sent: 1:57 a.m. Time received: 10:43 a.m.
Lundy’s ISP had a Tucson area code. He was still in Tucson—a 628 exchange.
Specter called the 628 number. Familiar music came on—Tom Bodette inviting the caller to stay at Motel 6.
He looked up Motel 6 and found several. One of them had the 628 exchange.
He turned the corner and walked to Laura’s desk. “How’s this?” he said. “I know where your bad guy was, up to an hour ago.”
Get a grip, Musicman told himself. There’s no way she could have gotten out of that motor home. No way anyone could have heard her.
He parked the car by the side of the road, got out, and trotted across the patch of desert toward the chain link fence that bordered the park. The fence was woven with dried-out yellow plastic, so it was hard to see, but he could hear the yelling. It sounded like a drunk male, very angry.
He snuck up to the fence and peered through a hole in the plastic.
A shirtless, long-haired man was bent over the hood of a Tucson police car as two cops struggled to handcuff him. His jeans were so low on his skinny waist they showed his butt crack and a bad tattoo.
“What’d I do? What’d I do?” the man kept screaming.
Even though the guy was obviously suffering from malnutrition, he gave the cops quite a fight.
The cop cars were parked four trailers down from Musicman’s motor home. The motor home was quiet, but Summer could be hitting her fists against the windows and screaming—no way to tell.
He watched the cops. They were so busy with the screaming man that they were oblivious to anything else. A few neighbors had come out, hanging back mostly, on their front stoops. A ragtag bunch.
Finally the cops wrestled the screaming man into the back of one of the patrol cars. Both cops had to pause for breath, and as they did, they looked at the crowd, which seemed to melt back into the rusting metal of their homes.
He didn’t like it.
The first car, the one holding the prisoner, drove away. The second cop walked to his car. Was it his imagination or did the cop give the Pace Arrow more than a passing glance? He even took a step to the side, so he could see more of it.
Then the cop’s radio squawked. Whatever it was, he got in and drove off in a cloud of dust.
Musicman waited for several minutes, then got back into the car and drove around to the entrance.
Right before the entrance, the GEO stalled and he cursed. Still, he was glad he’d bought the car.
He needed to get out of here.
Officer Ray Garcia wiped the sweat from his face. Even in the squad car, Timmy Swanson was still kicking and screaming. Let him kick. He wasn’t about to break through that steel mesh.
“D&D. Possession of crack. Resisting arrest. I guess that’ll about do it,” said Sam Chilcott.
“Ought to. See you in a few.” Ray knocked on the roof of Sam’s squad car and then walked back to his own.
He always told his kids he had eyes in the back of his head, which wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been trained to look at everything as a potential threat and had developed that eye for detail. So as he walked to his car, he scanned the trailer park. Maybe someone would resent the arrest of poor ol’ Timmy, maybe they would rush him or take a potshot at him. Some people would say he was paranoid, but it was a paranoia he wasn’t ashamed of.
A vehicle up ahead stood out from the rest. Every other trailer looked as if it had been moored there and the vegetation—and junk—had grown up around it. But the motor home at the end looked out of place. The trailers here had been scoured by the sun and the dust, burnished to oxidation. But the motor home looked as if it had been washed recently. It also didn’t look permanent.
He stepped out of the lane so he could see the back end. Lace curtains in the back window, just like on the sides.
He’d heard something about a motor home recently, but couldn’t remember what kind or where.
His hand-held crackled—a knife fight two blocks south of here. He got into his unit and floored it on out of there.
Musicman unlocked the door to the motor home and called out, “Oh, June, I’m home!”
It was a lame joke, but it had become kind of a ritual. He loved the old TV shows on TV Land. At his age, he’d missed the best ones: The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Lucy.