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.
Back in her room, she couldn’t sleep. She was worried that Jerry Grimes or Mike Galaz would call her back any time. She had nothing to show for this expensive trip except a gut feeling and a digital photo that could be downloaded by anyone.
Laura turned on the light. The only thing she’d brought to read was her mother’s files on the Tucson murders and the six chapters of Death in the Desert. Laura removed the files from her suitcase and slid out Alice Cardinal’s unfinished manuscript, held together by an industrial-size paper clip. She realized that she never did follow up with the detective on the Julie Marr case. There had been too much going on.
Laura skimmed through the chapter on Julie Marr, still feeling it was strange—almost creepy—that her mother could write about a girl Laura used to see daily at school.
Alice Cardinal’s book echoed much of what Laura had already read in the clippings. The car used in Julie’s abduction had come from A&B Auto Wrecking. Laura’s mother had interviewed the owner, Jack Landis.
Landis told detectives that the car in question, a 1955 Chevrolet sedan, had been one of the few vehicles at the junkyard that was driveable.
Probably he took it because it was parked outside the fence, Landis said, pointing at the tall chain link fence bordering the yard full of twisted, rusty car hulks. Landis explained that he also did muffler repair and that he used the orange and white car as a loaner car to people who needed transportation while they waited.
I guess he didn’t want to face Luke and Laura, he said, nodding to the two Dobermans inside the yard.