Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Laura spent an hour tracking down the names Mark had given her. Not much luck—she mostly got answering machines.

She wondered if she was wasting her time. Would Dark Moondancer even know where Lundy was? Probably not. All those messages he’d sent—it was clear to her that in their strange cyber-relationship, Dark Moondancer was the beta dog to Musicman’s alpha. But it was possible that Charlie was right, and the messages had stopped because they had made physical contact.

Victor called in to tell her they had found an auto body shop which could be closed up and made dark so they could use Luminol.

“How’s Buddy doing?”

“Fine. There wasn’t that much blood, so he knows he didn’t kill her in there.” He added, “You won’t believe what that girl did.”

“Summer?”

“She covered that bedroom with fingerprints—light fixtures, walls, chrome, you name it. We just filled up seven cards and all of them except one were the same. Plastered all over the place.”

“How do you know they were hers?”

“Buddy picked up some prints from his wife’s house—good enough to eyeball. Plus, the few places she didn’t get to were wiped clean. Probably from the last one.”

Laura wondered if “the last one” was Alison.

“Not only that, she pulled out her hair, by the roots. Left some hair in the sink, but some she hid. Like stringing one over the curtain rod, putting one under the lamp. Blond, so they were easy to see. And a barrette Buddy remembers because he bought it for her. You should see Buddy. He’s glowing more than the Luminol. Twelve years old and she does that. She’s a cop’s daughter, all right.”

“See that the lab gets started on the blood right away. We don’t want Buddy wondering any longer than he has to—with DNA it’s going to be long enough as it is.”

“You coming down?”

Laura saw Lieutenant Galaz in her peripheral vision, holding a file folder, waiting for her to finish.

“Soon. Wait—you grew up in Tucson. Did you ever hear of a role-playing game called Dark Moondancer?”

“Dark Moondancer? That’s a silly name.”

Laura told him about the game and the Dark Moondancer who sent the e-mails to Lundy.

“Sounds pretty tenuous to me,” Victor said.

“There’s your big word for the day.”

As soon as she finished talking to Victor, Galaz said, “Why don’t you take a look at this evidence list before I call Tallahassee. I want to get this thing straightened out.”

He dropped the file on her desk and walked across the squad bay to talk to Richie Lockhart. She guessed that meant he wanted her to do it now. She’d just started scanning the list when the phone rang: Barry Fruchtendler calling back.

“When I was looking at my mother’s book, I saw a notation about Dark Moondancer with a question mark,” she told him. “Did that have anything to do with your case?”

Fruchtendler said, “It had a lot of bearing on the case. We found some loose paper from Julie Marr’s notebook in the cemetery—must have blown over the fence. School stuff mostly. She wrote down that there was a party—I think it was the weekend after she was killed. A Dark Moondancer party. We didn’t release that to the press, but your mother knew about it.”

“You followed that lead, Dark Moondancer?” she asked. “Did you look at anyone in particular because of that?”

“Sure did. Talked to prob’ly seven or eight young men. It’s all in the murder book at TPD. I could make some calls, get them to fax it to you.”

More delay. “That would be great. I’ll try to expedite it on my end.”

She was about to hang up when he said, “There’s one name I won’t forget. I always thought that kid had something to do with it, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t connect the dots. Not having a body, that was tough.”

He paused to cough. His cough lasted a long time and did not sound good.

“He attended high school in the same district as Julie Marr,” he said when he was finally able to talk. “His uncle owned A&B Auto Towing. That was where the car was taken from. Michael Harmon.”

“Mickey Harmon?” Her voice loud in the squad room.

From his place near Richie Lockhart’s desk, Galaz looked up disapprovingly.

“You know about him? That was his nickname, Mickey. Thought from the very beginning he was lying to me.”

WATCH AND WAIT

Musicman glanced at his fuel gauge—almost empty. He had been parked among the big trucks outside the Crown Paper Company for an hour, keeping an eye on the warehouse at the corner of 17th and Fremont, running the engine to keep cool. He’d have to do something soon, though. Waiting on 100-degree heat, no shade in sight, wasn’t an option. He supposed he could go get more gas. But what if they left while he was gone?

To Musicman’s surprise, the white van hadn’t gone far. The guy driving didn’t care that Musicman was on his tail. He drove sedately down the old Benson Highway, took Park Avenue north, and turned into the manufacturing district near the railroad tracks. Musicman watched as the man unlocked the gate to a tall, chain link fence topped by razor wire. A derelict brick warehouse, the Chiricahua Paint Company, rotted in the sun beyond the fence. Once in the parking lot, the man drove around the back and out of view. Since the road Musicman was on dead-ended, he had to turn before he reached the entrance. And so he drove around the block, trying to think what to do. By the