“Do you know if he lives around here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “He doesn’t. He asked me if there was a cheap place he could stay. He was afraid the roads would get closed because of the storm.”
This is rapidly approaching “too good to be true” territory. “Did you recommend a place?”
He nods. “Two of them. The Days Inn out on Route 5 and the Parker Motel.”
“Where’s that?” I ask.
He points. “Four blocks that way, then make your second right.”
Kevin and I both thank him and head for the door. Just before I leave, I stop and ask, “By the way, how big was this kid?”
“Maybe five eight, a hundred and forty-five.”
I allow myself a quick sigh of relief; between us, Kevin and I should be able to handle someone that size. Unless, of course, he has a knife. Or a gun. Or an attitude.
The proximity of the Parker Motel makes that the likely first choice for us to try, so we drive the four blocks and park in front of the office. The two-story place is a borderline dump, and the fact that the sign advertises vacancies is not a major shock.
We enter the small office, which basically consists of a counter and a display with flyers advertising the tourist attractions in the area. There’s a coffee machine, which looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the invention of decaf.
There’s a girl behind the desk, maybe twenty-one years old and incongruously perky for these surroundings. “Hi, I’m Donna. Welcome to the Parker,” she says. “Snowing pretty hard out there, huh?”
The office is mostly glass-enclosed, allowing her to see “out there” quite easily, so I assume the question is rhetorical. “Sure is,” I say, trying to keep up the banter level.
“You need a room?”
I explain that we’re looking for a guy named Eddie Carson, most recently seen wearing a Brett Favre jersey and no coat. Since the FBI mention worked so well in the convenience store, I trot it out again.
Donna’s brow furrows in worry, but she’s nothing if not cooperative. “I think I know who you mean… but we’re not supposed to give out room numbers.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I say as I write Cindy’s office phone number on a piece of paper. “Call this number. It’s the Boston office of the FBI. Just ask for Agent Spodek, and she’ll tell you what to do.”
There is as much chance that Donna will call the Boston office of the FBI as there is that she will put on a bikini and go outside and catch some rays. But the offer has its desired effect, and she looks up the room number in her register. “He’s in room 207. Second floor, back towards the parking lot.”
“Thank you,” I say, and Kevin and I go outside. We start walking around toward where the room is when I see a car leave the parking lot at as high a speed as the snow-covered pavement will allow.
“Uh-oh. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
We move more quickly toward the room, and my bad feeling is confirmed. The door is open, and no one is inside. Eddie must have been watching our arrival and put two and two together. We should have been far more careful, and by not being so, we let him off the hook. Simply put, he outsmarted us, which doesn’t exactly qualify him for a Rhodes scholarship.
A few items of clothing are strewn on the floor, and a toothbrush and toothpaste are on the bathroom sink. Poor Eddie keeps having to leave places in a hurry, and his possessions are dwindling by the moment.
Kevin leans over the balcony and looks in the general direction that Eddie’s car went. There is no way we are going to catch him, and the idea of trying holds little appeal for either of us.
For the most part the trip here was a fiasco, and the ride back is going to be an endless one. But one good result is that what we suspected is now a virtual certainty. Eddie either did something bad or knows something important, and it is more crucial than ever that we find him.
• • • • •
SOUNDS LIKE IT wasn’t exactly a textbook operation.” Laurie is talking about the unsuccessful invasion of the Parker Motel that Kevin and I executed. “If the Mexicans had tried the same approach at the Alamo,” she continues, “Davy Crockett would be doing talk shows today.”
We’re in my house, having just finished dinner, listening to an Eagles CD. Kevin is up in his room practicing his sneezing, and as always I have no idea where Marcus is.
Laurie and I are in our favorite spot, sitting on the couch and simultaneously petting Tara. If I have to be mocked and humiliated, this is as good a place as any to have it done.
“I admit we could have handled it a little better, but I just didn’t think the kid would be so paranoid. He’s really scared of something.”
“You think he killed the two girls?” she asks.
“It’s possible, but I doubt it. Janet Carlson was pretty sure the person who killed Calvin was very strong. I’m betting it’s the same person.”
“But if Eddie was Liz’s ex-boyfriend, and she was going to see Jeremy that night, maybe Eddie thought she was going back with Jeremy,” Laurie says. “So he went crazy and killed her, and Sheryl was unlucky enough to be with her friend at the time.”
I nod. “And he would have known who Jeremy was, so framing him makes sense. It all fits; I just don’t believe it.”
“Why not? Just because of what Janet said? She didn’t even see the body.”
“No, it’s more something that Calvin said the first time I met him. He said that his gut doesn’t trust anything that comes out of Center City.”
“Eddie came out of Center City,” she points out.
“And Mrs. Barlow denied that there even was an Eddie. She lied right to my face. That really pisses me off.”
“You want me to tell her so tomorrow?”
“You’re meeting with her tomorrow?” I ask.
Laurie nods. “A follow-up interview; I’m going out to her house. She doesn’t drive, if you can believe that.”
“I think you should tell her what happened. Tell her she’s going to be answering questions about Eddie under oath. Maybe she’ll give something up.”
Laurie agrees to do it, and we both agree not to talk business any more tonight. We’ve got other stuff to do, stuff that a couple of months ago I thought we wouldn’t be doing together anymore.
Laurie leaves at six in the morning, and I call Cindy Spodek to ask her to remain on the computer lookout for Eddie. I tell her that we missed catching him, but I make it slightly more heroic than it was in real life. In my version Eddie had a dozen bodyguards, plus a helicopter in which to make his getaway. For some reason Cindy doesn’t believe me, but she does agree to keep the search going.
I need to focus less on the search for Eddie and more on the rapidly approaching trial. There is no guarantee that we are going to find Eddie, and we must be prepared to create a reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds even without him.
To that end I’ve agreed to Kevin’s request that we meet with a jury consultant this morning. I’ve used consultants before but lately had stopped doing so. It’s not that I don’t believe they can be of value, it’s just that I trust my instincts more than I trust theirs.
I’m making an exception in this case because of my feeling that there’s a lot that I don’t know about small- town Wisconsinites. Of course, there’s a great deal that the jury consultant, a woman name Susan Leidel, doesn’t know about them either, because it turns out that she’s come up from her office in Milwaukee.
What Ms. Leidel proposes is that we do a substantial amount of research within the greater Findlay area to get a handle on what the people think, in general, and how they view this case, in particular.
Once I learn that she has no special knowledge about the area and its people, I mentally disconnect from the meeting and let Kevin carry the ball. I sit there quietly and spend about half the meeting trying to think of a way to find Eddie and the other half recalling last night in bed with Laurie. Kevin is smart enough to make the meeting mercifully short.
While we’re having lunch, Kevin says, “It’s nice to see you and Laurie together like this.”
