suspect?”
Lola gave him a noncommittal shrug. “His background certainly points toward him being a sociopath, but I’d need harder evidence to put that label to him. From what you’ve told me I suspect that his father is quite domineering. That could very well be the root of his psychological problems, but again that would require analysis, perhaps even long-term analysis.”
“So I’ve got nothing,” Harry said.
“You have a suspect, Harry. That’s always something.”
When Harry returned to the office he found Anita Molari, the exotic dancer known as Jasmine, going through driver’s license photographs of the men who had visited Darlene’s home. She was seated in the conference room next to Pete Rourke’s office, which now housed the additional members of the task force. One of the newly assigned uniformed deputies sat across from her.
Harry placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go grab some coffee,” he said. “I’ll take over for a while.” When the deputy left Harry gathered up the photographs. “Let’s move out to my desk,” he suggested. “I’m expecting some phone calls I don’t want to miss.”
Anita Molari was a different person away from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. The last time Harry had seen her she was wearing only a thong and a see-through beach robe that put her very shapely body on open display. Today she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and loose-fitting shorts that made her seem small, almost frail. Her short, dark hair was damp, as though she had rushed straight from her shower, and the vivid blue eyes Harry remembered from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge simply looked tired. She reminded him of the saying: Rode hard and put up wet.
“Do any of the photographs look familiar?” he asked, as they seated themselves at his desk.
“Not yet.” She looked at him, head tilted to one side. “I don’t really understand why it’s important for me to look at these pictures if you already know these guys were at Darlene’s house.”
“I want to know if anyone who visited her home might also have followed her to other places.”
“You mean like a stalker?”
“That’s right. Anyone who might have been obsessed with her, or who might have been stalking her because of something she had done to them, or to someone else.”
“Like that kid they said she molested?”
“That’s right.”
Anita gave a small shake of her head. “I never understood that. I always wanted to ask her how she could do something like that, but we never got close enough where I felt I could.” She gave Harry a questioning look as though he might know the answer. “I mean she was beautiful, really beautiful. There aren’t many women who look like that. And the way men stared at her…” She shook her head again, then shrugged. “I get those looks when I’m up on the stage, practically naked. Darlene would have got them if she walked in wearing a burlap bag. And you know something? She wasn’t a bad person. I don’t know if she was a good person. I mean I talked to her and all, but not that much.”
“But enough to know she wasn’t a bad person,” Harry said.
“Yeah, that’s right. Somehow it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Many things don’t.” Harry opened his notebook to the last page he had used and started to turn to a fresh one.
Anita leaned forward suddenly and pointed at the notebook. “You’ve got the name of a church written there. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but see it… it just sort of jumped out at me.”
Harry looked at the notebook. The First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord was written in large capital letters and underlined. “What about it?” he asked.
“I know that church,” Anita said. “I mean from work.”
“How so?”
“One of their cars scratched mine in the parking lot.”
“The Peek-a-Boo Lounge lot?”
“Yeah.” She gave him a small shrug. “Whenever I park my car there, when I’m going to work, I write down the make, model, and license plate numbers of the cars on either side of me. I mean guys leave there pretty sloshed-hell, most of them get there pretty sloshed-and I want to be sure if somebody clips me I have a way to know who it was.”
“So you got clipped by a car belonging to the church?”
“I sure did.” She leaned forward. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I got a friend of mine who’s a cop to run the plate. And it comes up belonging to that church. So I called there and eventually got to talk to one of the ministers.”
Harry felt a rush of excitement. “You remember his name?” Anita screwed up her face. “It was a funny name, real Southern. You know what I mean?”
“Bobby Joe?” Harry asked in return.
“Yeah, that’s it. Bobby Joe Waldo, I remember now.” There was a big smile spread across her face, and Harry thought it made her look like a schoolgirl who had just gotten a difficult question right. “It was funny. He was real nervous when he got on the phone, and when I told him where the car was parked and that I was one of the dancers who worked there, he was even more nervous. He said the head minister at the church would be real upset if he found out, and that he’d like to handle it privately, no insurance companies or anything, just to tell him what it cost to fix the car and he’d get the money to me.”
“Did he send you a check?” Harry asked.
“No. It was only a small dent, and he told me to get an estimate on how much it would cost to fix it. I did and called him back the next day and he had the cash delivered to me the day after that.”
“Who delivered the money?”
“I dunno. Just some guy. I was working days that week and he met me in the parking lot of the club like we had arranged. I remember thinking that I’d seen him before someplace, maybe the club. But I couldn’t be sure. Unless a customer asks me for a private dance I don’t pay much attention to individual guys.”
“Can you describe him?”
Anita wrinkled her brow. “Sure, I guess I can. Let’s see, he was tall, not real tall, more like you. But real thin; there wasn’t any heft to him at all. The thing I remember most was his hair and eyes. His hair was down to his shoulders and real light, kind of a fake blond, like maybe a dye job. It was the same with his eyes. They were sort of a cold blue, not really natural. They kind of made me wonder if he was wearing those tinted contact lenses.”
“How old?” Harry asked.
“Oh, maybe late twenties. At least that’s what I thought at the time.”
She had just described Bobby Joe Waldo, and it was a description that would be good enough for any jury. Harry kept that information to himself. He didn’t want to be accused later of prejudicing a witness.”
“Did he give you his name?”
Anita shook her head. “He just said Reverend Waldo had sent him and handed me an envelope with the money in it.”
Harry slowly nodded, digesting what she had told him. “I need you to hang around just a bit longer,” he said at length. “I want to put together a photo lineup-that’s just a handful of mug shots-so we can see if you can pick this guy out.”
Anita glanced at her wristwatch. “My kid doesn’t get out of kindergarten for another two hours, so I guess I’ve got time.”
Twenty minutes later Harry had eight photographs lined up on the conference room table-all men in their twenties, all with long, blond hair. Anita picked out Bobby Joe Waldo on her first try and Harry told her he might want to do a live lineup sometime in the near future. But not quite yet, he thought. First he would do some serious digging into Bobby Joe Waldo.
Pete Rourke pensively tapped the side of his nose as Harry gave him a rundown on Bobby Joe, his father, and the First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord Church. When he finished he warned the captain that down the road he might be asking a judge for a warrant to seize church records and to search Bobby Joe’s home, car, and personal effects.
Rourke leaned back in his chair and raised a warning finger. “Before you do that, you better be pretty damned certain what you’re gonna find. And I mean ninety-nine percent certain. This is still Florida, Harry, and asking a
