Galaz. She didn’t like the idea of going over Jerry Grimes’s head, but she also knew that Mike Galaz would be more enthusiastic. After debating back and forth, she finally went to see Jerry. She couldn’t leave him out of the loop.
He was gone for the day. She tried his cell, got a message and left one of her own. Looked at her watch. She needed to make reservations if she was going to fly out there tomorrow. She went looking for Mike Galaz.
He was practicing his putting. “How’d it go with Ramsey?” he asked her.
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
She ran it down for him.
Galaz didn’t take his eye from the ball. “Jay has a point, don’t you think? It could be the guy, or it could be someone else who got his picture off the ‘Net.”
“Either way, I think he’s from around there. Other than Lehman, it’s the only real lead we’ve got, and I think I should go and check it out. This guy isn’t going to stop with Jessica Parris.”
Galaz tapped the ball, which rolled up to the lip of the cup and hung there. He frowned.
Laura waited as he adjusted his stance and nudged the ball in.
Without looking at her, he started over. She knew better than to say anything. Lucky for her, the ball made it in right away this time.
He looked up at her and smiled. “Ah, much better.” Then he retrieved the ball and set it up again.
Laura contemplated grabbing the putter and whacking him on the shin with it.
She wondered if he was getting a perverse pleasure out of making her wait. He sure was milking it—the stance, the grip, the way he rocked back and forth before squatting down and stretching the putter out toward the cup before doing it all again. At last she couldn’t take it anymore. “Sir? I’ve got to get moving if I’m going to go.”
He held up one hand: Just a minute.
So she waited, the tasteful cherry and brass mantel clock on the shelf behind the desk ticking out her presence. After another successful putt, he palmed the ball and studied her. “Is this coming from logic or from your gut?”
“Both.”
“But if you had to choose. You think this is woman’s intuition?”
Woman’s intuition?
He didn’t answer right away, but seemed to be weighing her answer—an answer she had tossed on a fifty-fifty throw. At last he said, “ Go ahead.”
He was setting up the next putt when she left.
Next she called Victor, who had been in Bisbee all day, working the case from there.
“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?” he asked.
“I think it’s the guy. Or he can lead me to the guy.”
“Are you sure these killings are connected?”
“The similarities are pretty striking.” Feeling defensive.
“There’s a lot that doesn’t add up.” He enumerated the same dissimilarities that had bothered her. “Shit, a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. That’s a big difference on the Tanner chart. You know how choosy these guys can be.”
Thought about telling him her theory, but realizing that arguing would get her nowhere.
“There’s something I’d like you to do personally. Check with Jessica’s friends again. I never did get a straight answer from Buddy about whether or not she used the computer at school. If she didn’t use it at school, find out if she used one at the public library.”
“Anything else?” His voice was cool.
“That should do it.”
After he hung up, she stared off into space. She realized she was skating on a very thin edge. Going over Jerry Grimes’s head, working with Jay Ramsey, her less than enthusiastic investigation of Lehman. Working just as hard, putting in the hours, but more and more certain that with Lehman, they were heading down the wrong road.
28
Laura rented a car in Panama City and drove in the direction of the Strand Model and Talent Agency in Panama City Beach.
Panama City gave Laura the impression of a beach town being swallowed whole by Wal-Mart and shopping malls—a battle of old versus new. Fast food chains vying with mom-and-pop burger stands, bait shops and boat rentals in the shadow of superstores. Colored pennants and tacky signs marked mobile home sales and car dealerships adjacent to tracts of land marked for sale as “unimproved” property.
As if you could improve on quiet two-lane roads disappearing into live oak and stands of southern pine.
The Strand Model and Talent Agency was located three blocks from the beach. Blue with gray trim, the modest saltbox was bordered by a row of immature banana trees and sat in one corner of a parking lot roped off by a giant, sand-encrusted hawser stretching from piling to piling. The plastic sign out front had stick-on letters, like many a drive-by church she’d seen on the way out here.
She was impressed by the pelican statue on one of the pilings—until it flew off.
