Terri came flying through the open door. “Is she… is she…” she gasped.
“She’s left,” I said. “No OD or anything. Just gone.”
Terri was in sweat pants and a hooded sweatshirt, no socks, and old tennis shoes. She’d hurried all right. She was panting and bending over to put her hands on her knees. “My damned”-she took a deep breath-”old car”-and another one-”wouldn’t start.” She took two more deep breaths and straightened up. “I hate that car,” she said. She gasped again. “How cold is it?”
“About twenty, I think.”
She nodded. “Original battery.” Another deep breath. “So? What’s up?”
Hester emerged from the bedroom. “Hi, Terri. Where do you think she went?”
“Boy, God, Hester, it beats me. You think”-and she took one last really big breath-”you think maybe they took her?”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know. Whoever killed Rudy.” She began looking about the place. “I don’t know.”
“If they did,” said Hester, “it looks like they let her pack. You have any idea where she might go?”
“Boy. Well, not right offhand. Maybe her mother’s house? Shit, I don’t know.”
That sounded pretty good to me, except that Linda’s mother lived right here in Battenberg. It didn’t seem to me that she’d have to pack to go four blocks.
We let Terri make the call to Linda’s mom. Zip. She had absolutely no idea where Linda might have gone. She was just getting ready to come over herself, to see how she could help, in fact.
Terri hung the phone up, having had the presence of mind not to mention us, and said, “So, then, her car’s gone, too?”
“What’s it look like?” I could also call Dispatch, and have them run all vehicles registered to her, but Terri would be much faster.
“Old wreck of a red Datsun pickup,” said Terri. “It’s always parked out back.”
Hester said, “I looked out the back windows while I was in the bedroom,” she said. “There’s no vehicle at all parked back there.”
Well, then.
A teddy bear caught my eye, sitting upright on the couch. “She left her teddy bear,” I said. “I wonder…” and reached for it.
“Don’t,” snapped Terri, grabbing the bear. “She wouldn’t have him with her.” She paused. “It was a loaner. He’s mine.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good, then.” I looked around. No sign of any sort of disturbance, none at all. “It sure as hell looks voluntary,” I said. “You gotta think, Terri, there’s gotta be a place she’d go.”
“I’m trying.”
“Think about this first,” said Hester. “Why did she go? Think if she’s gone because she just can’t handle it, or if she’s gone because she’s running from somebody.”
“Hell,” said Terri, “I don’t know. I mean, you know I always thought Rudy was into dope pretty deep. I can’t prove that, but the dude sure acted that way…”
“What way’s that?” I asked.
“You know. They didn’t have much money, but he always came up with what he needed to get things. The stereo. Clothes. He’d take off and come back a couple of days later, always had money for that.” She gestured at the new TV. “That thing. Paid cash at my cousin’s store for that. Didn’t even have to go to Wal-Mart. Yet they couldn’t afford a decent car. I heard him tell her that.” Terri leaned against the kitchen counter. “He was always going to meet somebody, but wouldn’t say who. For ‘business.’ That was all. I mean, I wasn’t spying, but I saw him once, when he told Linda he had ‘business,’ and he was just driving around with some of his Mexican buds. You know.”
“How long ago?” asked Hester.
“Four, maybe five, six weeks. At the Pronto Market. It was cold. I don’t remember exactly when. It was after Halloween, though, because the candy was on sale.” She shook her head. “Best guess is five weeks. Three, or for sure two, other guys in the car with him. Rudy was in the front, passenger side. I waved.”
“He wave back?”
“No way. He pretended not to see me. That’s how I knew whatever it was, it was no good. What he was doing.”
Hardly an indictment. However, “You remember the car?”
“What car? “Terri was busy reading through the notes on the refrigerator.
“The one he was with his ‘Mexican buds’ in. When you saw him.”
“Oh…yeah, sure. It was a kind of ugly tan, one of those Jap cars. Nissan, maybe? Honda? I can never tell.”
Bingo. “You might describe it as maybe cream-colored? “I asked. “Or as we say around here, calf-shit yellow?”
She giggled. “I’d say calf-shit yellow fit it pretty well, tell you the truth.”
That little exchange earned Terri fifteen minutes of our undivided attention.
Most of Terri’s information was pretty vague. We went back over the photos we had, and she’d say “maybe” or “could have been” regarding everybody we thought might have been in the car with him. With one exception, and that was Jose Gonzales, aka Orejas. Great. The only two people in the car she could positively identify were dead. I said as much.
“Sorry.”
“But the more you think about it, you’re pretty sure there were four people in the car, total?”
“I think so, Carl. I know Orejas was in the backseat, and he was scoonched way over. There had to be at least one more back there, maybe even two.”
“Why you suppose Gonzales was there? Is he a dealer, too? I mean, was-”
“Not much of one,” interrupted Terri. “I think it was…well, Orejas wasn’t Rudy’s ‘muscle’ or anything like that…more like his portable witness, I think. I mean, like, you want to kill me, you’re going to have to kill both-Oh, my God.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. “It’s a possibility,” I said. “Nothing more. But we have to consider that.”
“Linda figured it,” said Terri. “She’s running. Now I know that. Shit. She’s afraid.”
While Hester and Terri talked, I phoned in to the office to get an “all vehicles registered to” on Linda. There was just one, a red ‘74 Datsun pickup, Iowa license BHB 466. I told Sally to do an “attempt to locate,” but just for our area, and not on the radio.
“You want an ATL, like, Teletype, surrounding counties? “she asked.
“Yeah. Use her DL information. Give the twenty-eight info, too.” The 28 was the vehicle registration information. It was really 10-28, but we usually left the 10 off on the phone. “Tell our own people over the phone, or when they come in to the office. The teletype should say something about no radio traffic.”
“So, what do you want me to give for a reason?”
“Say something like ‘Wanted for questioning regarding a homicide investigation in Nation County.’ That ought to do it.”
“It sure as hell should,” she said. “Stop and hold, or what?”
“If she’s moving, do not stop, just advise location and direction of travel. We want to know where she’s headed. Otherwise, like if she’s at a motel or something, just have them notify us and keep her under surveillance until we contact them. We don’t want her to get away, but I really don’t want to scare her to death or piss her off by having her stopped.”
“I’ll try to rephrase that,” said Sally. “What about out-of-state notification?”
“Just give it to Conception County by phone, attention Investigations. Harry’ll take care of the rest.”
Sally had already brought the correct form up on her screen and was filling in the blanks as we talked. “Armed, dangerous, suicide risk?”
“No, no, no.”
“No clothing description, I suppose?”
“No.”
