clean. None of the usual detritus you’d find in a car someone used a lot. Rain had gotten in; the seat covers were water-stained and wet leaves had drifted in through the crack in the window, sticking to the floorboards like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.
Laura walked to the front and then the back of the truck. No license plate. She pulled on the latex gloves she always carried with her, reached through the passenger side window, and pulled up on the door handle. The door squeaked open. She paused, looked around, thinking how loud it sounded. Opened the glove compartment and shined her light in. A tire gauge, a few maps, registration two years old. The maps were for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Buried among the change and paper clips was one of those cards where if you get it stamped ten times you get a free meal. A Port St. Joe address. This card was for the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar in Port St. Joe. It had been stamped eight times.
He was a regular there.
Jimmy de Seroux was a pianist, which could mean he played piano at the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar. Someone to talk to.
She started back down the driveway and stopped at the place on the grass next to the driveway where someone had parked. Tire tracks that had sunk deep into the ground and dried that way.
They belonged to a heavy vehicle. They looked familiar.
Laura memorized the tread style and walked back to the pickup and looked at its tires.
The treads on the truck were different. Something else had been parked here on the berm. Something bigger, like the tracks on West Boulevard.
Back in her room, she couldn’t sleep. She was worried that Jerry Grimes or Mike Galaz would call her back any time. She had nothing to show for this expensive trip except a gut feeling and a digital photo that could be downloaded by anyone.
Laura turned on the light. The only thing she’d brought to read was her mother’s files on the Tucson murders and the six chapters of
Laura skimmed through the chapter on Julie Marr, still feeling it was strange—almost creepy—that her mother could write about a girl Laura used to see daily at school.
Alice Cardinal’s book echoed much of what Laura had already read in the clippings. The car used in Julie’s abduction had come from A&B Auto Wrecking. Laura’s mother had interviewed the owner, Jack Landis.
Landis told detectives that the car in question, a 1955 Chevrolet sedan, had been one of the few vehicles at the junkyard that was driveable.
Probably he took it because it was parked outside the fence, Landis said, pointing at the tall chain link fence bordering the yard full of twisted, rusty car hulks. Landis explained that he also did muffler repair and that he used the orange and white car as a loaner car to people who needed transportation while they waited.
I guess he didn’t want to face Luke and Laura, he said, nodding to the two Dobermans inside the yard.
Had the killer stolen a car just to use in commission of this vicious and brutal crime? It seems likely that he did. The Tucson Police detective on the case certainly thought so.
Laura found herself drifting off to sleep. Whatever lessons she could learn from the murder of Julie Marr would have to wait.
“I want you to run somebody on NCIC for me,” Laura said when she reached Victor the next morning.
“Can’t you do it yourself? We’re a little busy here.”
“What’s up?”
“Lehman’s about to give it up.”
“What makes you think that?”
“His lawyer wants a meeting. This whole thing could unravel in the next couple of days. You really ought to be here.”
“I’ll try to hurry it up,” she said. “Do you have the lab report on the tire treads taken up on West Boulevard?”
“Hold on, let me look.” She heard him shuffle papers. “Got a whole shitload of stuff from the lab yesterday. A lot to plow through.”
Hinting that without her there, it was twice as much work.
She waited as the paper shuffled for an inordinate amount of time, thinking that if she was wrong about Jimmy de Seroux and had wasted the DPS’s limited budget on a whim, Galaz wouldn’t back her up. She’d be on her own.
“Here it is,” Victor said at last. “They’re Michelins. XRVs.”
“What kind of tires are those?”
“Big ones. The kind you get on trucks, motor homes.”
“Anything else? Was he able to get the wheelbase?”
“I’m looking,” he said impatiently. She could tell he resented having to do it. “Here it is. Looks like it was a motor home. That narrows it down. There are only thousands of them all over Arizona.”
“I’m sending you photos of some treads I found out here. I’m also faxing you the photo of a possible suspect, his name is—“
“Suspect? Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”
She ignored that. “I’ll FedEx a copy of the original as soon as I can get it done. The guy’s name is Jimmy de Seroux.” She spelled it for him and gave him the registration number of his truck. “Be sure to run him on NCIC.”
