“Thanks so much! This will make all the difference.”
“Just make sure you have a good photographer. I stinted, and it was the worst mistake we ever made. Good luck!”
Laura loved small towns. People still saw strangers as human beings.
Next, Laura opened her laptop and connected to the Internet. She’d already bookmarked TalentFish.com. She opened it up now and compared the Talentfish photos of Peter Dorrance to the one Detective Endicott sent her.
One of the Talentfish photos, the three-quarters shot in front of the house, was almost identical to the photo from Alison Burn’s computer. Laura held the five-by-seven digital printout up near the computer, eyeballing one and then the other.
In the Talentfish photo, Laura could see half the saw palmetto fronds behind Dorrance, but in the Burns photograph, she could see only one-third. Dorrance’s smile was different, too. Just a millimeter this way or that.
Laura had been to photo sessions before. A photographer took many shots of one pose. The Talentfish photo and the Burns photo were in the same sequence, but slightly different.
She reached Myrna Gorman at the Strand Talent Agency on the first try. “How many different photos do you have of Peter Dorrance?” she asked.
“I’ll have to look to be sure, but usually we get a headshot and a composite.”
“How many in the composite?”
“Three or four.”
“Did he send his photos to Talentfish.com or did you?”
“We did. We have an agreement with them. You want to hold? I’ll get his file.”
When she came back she said, “It’s what I thought. We sent the composite. Four pictures.”
“Can you describe them for me?”
They corresponded with what she saw on the screen. Laura found Chief Redbone’s card and asked her to fax them to the Apalachicola Police Department.
She didn’t need any more convincing, though.
The digital photo that had been sent to Alison Burns did not correspond to any of the photographs up on Talentfish.com. That meant that no one could have downloaded the photo and sent it on to Alison Burns. Either Peter Dorrance had placed publicity shots on another site, or the person who sent the photo had access to all the rolls of film they shot that day.
That meant either Peter Dorrance or Dale Lundy sent the photo to Alison Burns.
And Peter Dorrance wasn’t playing at the Copper Queen Hotel next weekend.
“He’s not gonna like seeing us again so quick,” Chief Redbone said as he turned onto Avenue B. “If we get the warrant, let’s do it tomorrow. That old house hasn’t been lived in for a long time. It can wait till morning.”
Thaddeus Lanier lived in a large, Federalist, red brick building with a gracious white portico and two tall live oaks dressed in widow’s weeds.
Laura was feeling good—especially after they ran Lundy on NCIC. Unlike Jimmy de Seroux, Lundy had two arrests for sexual offenses: peeping and masturbating outside a grade school, both in Dothan, Alabama. One when he was twenty years old, another when he’d just turned twenty-one.
Nothing since then, but if he was the man she thought he was, Lundy had learned to fly under the radar, graduating from peeping and masturbating to taking young girls. His crimes fit into a predictable time line, a clear trajectory. He had been given time to develop predilections and rituals—like dressing girls up in his doll dresses.
He’d learned his craft.
Laura had no doubt he kept a rape kit in his motor home with all the tools he needed to capture, subdue, and kill his victim.
She had been right about the motor home. Dale Lundy owned a 1987 Fleetwood Pace Arrow. He also owned the house next door to the de Seroux house—the one she’d noticed because it was boarded up.
Vindication.
The Lundy house had been empty and boarded up since Bill Lundy died all those years ago, but had never been put up for sale. Dale Lundy had used the address when he bought the motor home, and it was the address listed on his credit cards.
They crossed the neat lawn and knocked on the front door.
Lanier appeared in khakis and a knit shirt—relaxing after a hard day of torpedoing search warrants. A dour, long-faced man with wire glasses perched on his nose, he looked down that nose now. Two grouchy-looking King Charles spaniels barked and yapped at his feet. “What do you want now?” he asked.
Redbone scratched his ear. “Well, Thad, more evidence just turned itself up. Looks pretty convincing to me.”
“Very well.” Lanier opened the door and stood back.
The front room was palatial. High ceilings, plaster rosettes in the corners. A gleaming hardwood floor. A grand piano with a mirror finish. Striped silk Queen Anne chairs.
Lanier led the way to his study, followed by the two muttering King Charles spaniels. He sat down at his massive mahogany desk and directed them to sit, too.
His sigh was long-suffering. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
