Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

Laura said, “He does something besides photography?”

Dot pointed at a autographed photo above the bar. “Jimmy used to play the piano here. Pretty good, too.”

Laura peered at the photograph. Hard to see in the dim light. She asked Dot if she would take it down, and Dot obliged, handing it to her.

Laura stared at the picture. She felt the skin of her scalp tighten.

She’d seen many photographs like it, mostly in bars: A black-and-white photo in a black frame, typical publicity shot. But this wasn’t any photo.

Looking into that face, Laura had a bad feeling—a visceral reaction rather than anything based on logic.

If she’d glanced at the photo on the wall in a dark bar, she wouldn’t have looked twice. The guy wasn’t attractive. He wasn’t even interesting. Just an average guy, mid-thirties, pale face and narrow mouth. The distance between nose and mouth was long and simian, like Homer Simpson. Wispy hair on the longish side, combed across a domed forehead. A white short-sleeved shirt that would have gone well with a pocket protector. He looked soft, almost effeminate—harmless.

He looked like a lot of people. The kind of person you’ve seen before, but couldn’t place.

But his eyes were dead.

Dot ducked back behind the bar and snapped down a business card on the bar. “I knew I had it somewhere,” she said triumphantly. “People are always leaving their cards with us.”

The card said “JIMMY DE SEROUX * Photographer * Musician * Piano Lessons * Piano Tuning." An address, a phone number, and an e-mail address.

“He gives piano lessons to kids?”

“Oh yeah. My neighbor’s daughter studied with him for a while. I went to her recital. They had it at the Elks Hall.”

A pedophile who had access to children through his job. A man who could play a wedding or photograph one. A mild, unassuming little guy.

She looked at the eyes again. Dull. As if she were looking at them instead of into them, not even a pinpoint of light to show the way to his soul.

She had seen him somewhere. Maybe in one of the photographs she’d taken on Brewery Gulch near the crime scene.

“Is this address close to here?”

“Just go west on C, that’s the street right out front, and you’ll run right into 15th Street.”

Laura glanced around. The other two patrons were gone, and she and Dot were alone. “How long since he last played here?”

“A few months ago, at least.”

“Can you remember when the recital was?”

“What is this?”

Laura produced her badge and ID.

“I don’t have to talk to you.”

“I know, but I wish you would.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing, that I know of. He’s one of many people we’re looking at who might know something about a crime in Arizona.”

“What kind of crime?”

“Do you mind if I ask the questions at the moment? I promise I’ll tell you what I know if you’ll just humor me.”

Dot’s eyes darkened. Definitely hostile.

Laura asked, “At the recital. Did he spend a lot of time with the girls?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he enjoy their company more than that of adults? Did you notice anything like that?”

Dot’s mouth flatlined. “You’ve got it all wrong. That doesn’t sound like Jimmy at all.”

“You may be right. But why don’t you think it sounds like Jimmy?”

“He’s … it’s hard to explain. You don’t know what he looks like in person. He’s kind of small. You ever read that story about Walter Mitty? He’s like that. And respectful of women.”

“How do you mean?”

“He was raised up right. You can tell. He’s almost old-fashioned—giving up his seat at the bar when the place is full or opening the door, just a bunch of ways.”

“Do you know his family?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “All I know is he minds his own business, and I can’t see him wanting to hurt little girls. It just doesn’t fit the kind of person he is.”

Laura thought Jimmy de Seroux was precisely the type of man who would go after little girls.

Inadequate.

30

The windows of the twin-gabled Victorian cottage on Fifteenth Street were dark. The yard was overgrown and leaves from the enormous live oak out front littered the roof. Wild vines snarled and matted the screened-in porch, as dark and secretive as the night surrounding it.

Hand near her weapon, Laura stepped into the porch and knocked on the door. She expected and got no answer. Although the place was neat and had been kept up, it had an abandoned feel to it, as if its owner had been gone for a while.

A breeze blew, heavily laden with the smell of the gulf, and a few acorns pelted the walk. Grass grew between the cracks.

He wasn’t here. The feeling Laura had about Jimmy de Seroux solidified. He hadn’t been here in a long time. Months maybe.

She glanced around. The house next door was boarded up. The rest of the street was quiet, a mixture of large houses and small. A few porch lights were on. But nobody looking out their windows, nobody on their front porches, no one driving by. It was too hot, even at this time of night.

Laura walked along the side of the house, peering at the windows. Most of them were draped, but she could see through the back door into the kitchen. She flashed her light, holding her hand over the top to keep the glare down.

Yellow linoleum. Honey-maple cabinets. Very neat. A Felix the Cat clock on the wall.

She closed her eyes. Smelled the fecund earth, growing things. The slight mildew smell of the concrete. She tried to absorb the vibrations of the place, put herself into his place.

She knew he was gone. Traveling.

A breeze shifted the massive oak branches, their shadows playing over the crushed gypsum drive to the right of the lawn, bone-white against lush darkness. There was a cleared space beside the drive, scars on the grass where someone had parked.

An old truck sat inside a carport fashioned from banged-together wood and corrugated plastic sheeting. Parked behind the truck, was a smallish boat covered by a blue tarp. The truck fit Peter Dorrance’s description— a 1967 Chevrolet pickup. Blue, dented, and splotched with rust around the wheel wells.

She walked around and peered through the side window, which had been cracked a couple of inches. Old, but clean. None of the usual detritus you’d find in a car someone used a lot. Rain had gotten in; the seat covers were water-stained and wet leaves had drifted in through the crack in the window, sticking to the floorboards like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.

Laura walked to the front and then the back of the truck. No license plate. She pulled on the latex gloves she always carried with her, reached through the passenger side window, and pulled up on the door handle. The door squeaked open. She paused, looked around, thinking how loud it sounded. Opened the glove compartment and shined her light in. A tire gauge, a few maps, registration two years old. The maps were for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Buried among the change and paper clips was one of those cards where if you get it stamped ten times you get a free meal. A Port St. Joe address. This card was for the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar in Port St. Joe. It had been stamped eight times.

He was a regular there.

Jimmy de Seroux was a pianist, which could mean he played piano at the Zebra Island Trading Post and Raw Bar. Someone to talk to.

She started back down the driveway and stopped at the place on the grass next to the driveway where someone had parked. Tire tracks that had sunk deep into the ground and dried that way.

They belonged to a heavy vehicle. They looked familiar.

Laura memorized the tread style and walked back to the pickup and looked at its tires.

The treads on the truck were different. Something else had been parked here on the berm. Something bigger, like the tracks on West Boulevard.