Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗
“Something you might want to think about,” Ramsey said, as if he’d read her mind. “You saw how easily I found this site. Could be your killer looked for the best-looking hunk he could find and sent it to the girl to impress her. Easy enough with gullible little girls.”
Laura thought he had a point. But it had always been her experience that most people stayed within their comfort zones—including sexual predators. Even if the man in the photo wasn’t her killer, she was willing to bet they had crossed paths sometime or other.
A call into the Panama City Police Department revealed there was no one by the name of Peter Dorrance in either Panama City or Bay County, Florida. While she had the detective on the phone, Laura described her own case and asked if he had anything similar.
“Nothing that comes to mind, and that one would. But I’ll check around, see if anything like that’s turned up in the other counties up here.”
Next she called Detective Endicott in Indio, the detective who had investigated Alison Burns’ murder. She laid out what she had and asked him if he wanted to accompany her to Florida. He declined, but asked her to keep him updated.
The rest of the afternoon she put her case together, wondering if she should go to Jerry Grimes or directly to Galaz. She didn’t like the idea of going over Jerry Grimes’s head, but she also knew that Mike Galaz would be more enthusiastic. After debating back and forth, she finally went to see Jerry. She couldn’t leave him out of the loop.
He was gone for the day. She tried his cell, got a message and left one of her own. Looked at her watch. She needed to make reservations if she was going to fly out there tomorrow. She went looking for Mike Galaz.
He was practicing his putting. “How’d it go with Ramsey?” he asked her.
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
She ran it down for him.
Galaz didn’t take his eye from the ball. “Jay has a point, don’t you think? It could be the guy, or it could be someone else who got his picture off the ‘Net.”
“Either way, I think he’s from around there. Other than Lehman, it’s the only real lead we’ve got, and I think I should go and check it out. This guy isn’t going to stop with Jessica Parris.”
Galaz tapped the ball, which rolled up to the lip of the cup and hung there. He frowned.
Laura waited as he adjusted his stance and nudged the ball in.
Without looking at her, he started over. She knew better than to say anything. Lucky for her, the ball made it in right away this time.
He looked up at her and smiled. “Ah, much better.” Then he retrieved the ball and set it up again.
Laura contemplated grabbing the putter and whacking him on the shin with it.
She wondered if he was getting a perverse pleasure out of making her wait. He sure was milking it—the stance, the grip, the way he rocked back and forth before squatting down and stretching the putter out toward the cup before doing it all again. At last she couldn’t take it anymore. “Sir? I’ve got to get moving if I’m going to go.”
He held up one hand: Just a minute.
So she waited, the tasteful cherry and brass mantel clock on the shelf behind the desk ticking out her presence. After another successful putt, he palmed the ball and studied her. “Is this coming from logic or from your gut?”
“Both.”
“But if you had to choose. You think this is woman’s intuition?”
Woman’s intuition? Jesus. She tried to figure out what he wanted, but couldn’t read him so she picked one. “I have a real gut feeling about this, sir. I think Jay does, too.”
He didn’t answer right away, but seemed to be weighing her answer—an answer she had tossed on a fifty-fifty throw. At last he said, “ Go ahead.”
He was setting up the next putt when she left.
Next she called Victor, who had been in Bisbee all day, working the case from there.
“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?” he asked.
“I think it’s the guy. Or he can lead me to the guy.”
“Are you sure these killings are connected?”
“The similarities are pretty striking.” Feeling defensive.
“There’s a lot that doesn’t add up.” He enumerated the same dissimilarities that had bothered her. “Shit, a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. That’s a big difference on the Tanner chart. You know how choosy these guys can be.”
Thought about telling him her theory, but realizing that arguing would get her nowhere.
“There’s something I’d like you to do personally. Check with Jessica’s friends again. I never did get a straight answer from Buddy about whether or not she used the computer at school. If she didn’t use it at school, find out if she used one at the public library.”
“Anything else?” His voice was cool.
“That should do it.”
After he hung up, she stared off into space. She realized she was skating on a very thin edge. Going over Jerry Grimes’s head, working with Jay Ramsey, her less than enthusiastic investigation of Lehman. Working just as hard, putting in the hours, but more and more certain that with Lehman, they were heading down the wrong road.
28
Laura rented a car in Panama City and drove in the direction of the Strand Model and Talent Agency in Panama City Beach.
Panama City gave Laura the impression of a beach town being swallowed whole by Wal-Mart and shopping malls—a battle of old versus new. Fast food chains vying with mom-and-pop burger stands, bait shops and boat rentals in the shadow of superstores. Colored pennants and tacky signs marked mobile home sales and car dealerships adjacent to tracts of land marked for sale as “unimproved” property.
As if you could improve on quiet two-lane roads disappearing into live oak and stands of southern pine.
The Strand Model and Talent Agency was located three blocks from the beach. Blue with gray trim, the modest saltbox was bordered by a row of immature banana trees and sat in one corner of a parking lot roped off by a giant, sand-encrusted hawser stretching from piling to piling. The plastic sign out front had stick-on letters, like many a drive-by church she’d seen on the way out here.
She was impressed by the pelican statue on one of the pilings—until it flew off.
The Strand Talent Agency must have been a doctor’s office at one time. A partition divided the front office from the receptionist’s window, and next to the window was the door to inner offices. Posters of sullen-faced models lined the gray fabric walls. A blond, equally sullen-faced receptionist sat behind the window, concentrating on her nails. She would be pretty if not for her spoiled expression. Laura asked to see the owner of the agency.
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” the girl said, and went back to filing her nails. Ludicrous. Laura was the only one here. She wondered how talent agencies made a living on the Florida panhandle. She glanced at the stack of brochures sitting in the receptionist’s window and saw the rates for runway modeling and deportment classes. Now she understood.
A young man carrying a portfolio emerged from the door to the inner offices, and Laura took the opportunity to duck past him. If she expected a protest from the blonde, it wasn’t forthcoming. She found herself in a hallway, poked her head into the first room. A heavyset woman with jet-black hair and white sideburns was making photocopies. She wore an outfit that could have looked great on the streets of New York.
“I’m looking for the owner of the agency.”
“I’m the owner. Who are you?”
Laura introduced herself. “I need to get in touch with one of your actors." She handed Myrna Gorman the composite of Peter Dorrance. She could have found his address in Public Records in Apalachicola, but had another reason for talking to Myrna Gorman.
Gorman led Laura into another room lined with file cabinets. For a big woman, her movements were swift and economical. “Peter. A great look, but we haven’t been able to do much with him. He’s one of those people who can’t act." She opened a file cabinet and ran Turandot nails over the files, scooped one out. “Here it is. We sent him out on two modeling jobs this year. He lives far enough away that we don’t send him too many places.”
