Mouledoux assumed she was the photographer and she was pretty good.
And fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, Mouledoux was pretty good at Photoshop. He could put a cow on the Moon and make it real. So, putting Amy in a photograph with herself, then changing the eye color on one of them was dead easy.
Back at Dr. Eisenhower’s, he deleted the originals, set back the computer’s clock, then copied his copies with the two Amy’s into one of the files that had been taken only a couple months back. Now all he had to do was to get a warrant, find the pictures and bingo, the whole world would be on the lookout for young again, brown-eyed, Isadora Eisenhower.
After resetting the system clock, he went next door to prime Thelma Prescott, but when he knocked it wasn’t her who answered.
“ Who are you?” Mouledoux didn’t flash his badge. He didn’t have to. This guy was as shifty looking as they came, the kind who could spot a cop clear across the casino from whatever table he was cheating at and be out the door, before a jack rabbit could jack.
“ Robbie Finch.” The man was wearing a purple shirt with a miniature sheriff’s badge pinned to his shoulder, but the man was no sheriff, no cop, not even a wannabe. Just a shark trying to curry favor with any law enforcement official he might come in contact with by showing his support.
“ What’s with the badge?” Mouledoux pointed to the man’s collar.
“ My dad was an L.A. County Sheriff. Killed in the line of. This was his, I wear it in his memory.”
“ Ah,” Mouledoux said. Then, “I need to talk to Thelma Prescott.”
“ My mother, she’s pretty traumatized about what happened last night.”
“ Yeah, I got that, that’s why I told her I’d come by today for her statement, rather than having her come right on downtown, you know courtesy of the RPD.”
“ That was considerate of you,” Finch said.
“ Different last names,” Mouledoux said.
“ My mother outlived two husbands. My father was the first.”
“ Ah.” Mouledoux smiled. “You tweaking?”
“ No.” Finch was sweating. His pupils were dilated. He was fidgeting. He was lying too. His mother was a drunk and he was a tweaker still living at home.
“ Listen, Mr. Finch, I don’t want to make your mother’s life any more difficult than I have to. She was pretty loaded yesterday and I should’ve taken her in.”
“ She might have had a few drinks.”
“ Yeah and a little meth.” Mouledoux was sinking the hook. “I’m betting if I were to come inside and have a look around, I’d wind up taking you two down to the hoosegow. Wouldn’t that be something, mother and son sharing a cell?”
“ You’d need a warrant.” If fear had a smell, Finch would be reeking.
“ And I have one, but I don’t necessarily want to use it.” He tried to look sincere. “I’d rather tear it up and I would if somebody could corroborate your mother’s story.”
“ Anything to help the police.” Finch reached up to his collar, fingered the badge. “What do you need?”
“ The problem is nobody seems to know anything about this mysterious woman she saw running off with a gun in her hand.”
“ Nobody seems to know what happened to the two cops either,” Finch said.
“ I’m taking this one thing at a time. I need the girl. Maybe she can explain what happened here. We know she killed two, maybe three people, maybe more. Then you’re right, there’s those missing policemen to think of.”
“ So you think the cops vanished, like my mom said?”
“ I don’t know what to think, but I know this, I need someone else who has seen this cousin of Amy Eisenhower, who could pass as her twin sister, otherwise I’m going to have to think your mother was a bit too under the influence, maybe illegally. So if you knew anybody who’d seen these two look alike girls together next door, say maybe a couple months ago, that’d really help the case.”
“ Jeez, yeah, I saw ’em. I thought they were twins.”
“ You see Dr. Eisenhower taking pictures of these girls, you know, like maybe you were looking outside that back window there?” Mouledoux pointed toward Eisenhower’s backyard.
“ Come to think of it I did.”
“ You’ve been a big help.” He turned to go, turned back. “You should know I appreciate you telling me this and that it’ll help catch a killer.” Mouledoux smiled. “And you should also know it’s against the law to lie to a police officer. So, if anybody else comes asking-”
“ I’m not stupid, Detective Mouledoux.”
“ I never thought you were.”
Chapter Eleven
Izzy felt like she was running on emotional overload as she pulled into the gas station in McCloud, a tiny Northern California town nestled among tall pines. The sunrise promised to be gorgeous. Lately she’d been spending her mornings enjoying every one as if it might be her last; sunsets too, because at the rate the cancer had been moving through her body, they could’ve been.
She got out of the car, reached into her oversized purse, pushed the forty-five aside, got out her wallet, withdrew a credit card, but stopped herself as she was putting the card in the pump. She jerked her hand back as if she’d been scalded. What had she been thinking? Hadn’t she told Amy to destroy her cell phone, because she didn’t want her tracked? Hadn’t she seen enough detective shows on television? Use the card, tell them where you are.
Oh shit! She’d used the card to rent that motel in Susanville. How bloody stupid. She was going to have to be more careful, because she was sure they’d track her there and now they’d know she was heading to California, where they’d figure she was either going north, to Canada maybe, or south to L.A. and perhaps Mexico beyond.
She put the card back in her wallet, started for the convenience store and the cash register inside.
“ I’d like to fill it on three,” she told a smiling teenager. He had hair yellow as the sun she’d been watching so much these past few weeks. It was long and framed a freckled face with twinkling blue eyes and a golden smile. He was watching CNN on a small ceiling mounted television.
“ Sure thing.” He tapped on a computer screen as she laid three twenties on the counter. “That little girl’s gonna live. They say it’s a miracle.”
“ The one they got out of the well?”
“ Yeah, she rallied during the night. It looks like she’s gonna make a full recovery.”
“ That’s great.”
“ Yeah, it’s good when you can start the day with a positive news story.”
“ It is.” She returned his smile. “I’ll be back for the change.”
“ Okay.”
When she got back he was still engrossed in CNN, but his smile had been wiped away, replaced by a furrowed brow.
“ Something happened to the girl?”
“ No, breaking news,” he said. “Someone went on a killing rampage in Reno.”
“ What?”
“ Six people dead. Three doctors, a lawyer and two security guards, plus another doctor is missing and presumed dead. They all worked at St. Catherine’s Hospital.” He looked worried. “My mother’s there. She’s having cataract surgery.”
“ Did they catch the killer?”
“ No, she’s still at large.”
“ She? A woman?”
