Hello, Darkness (34 page)

“Would be into cameras,” Curtis finished for him. He turned to Gavin. “Janey told you her new boyfriend took that picture of her, correct?”

The kid withered beneath the attention of everyone in the room. His left knee was doing a jackhammer number. “Yes, sir. When she gave me the picture, she said he’d taken that one and lots of others. She said he liked taking the pictures almost as much as the sex.”

“I don’t recall any camera equipment being found during the search of their house,” Rondeau said. “But he’s got to have a setup or he wouldn’t have these family photographs. Some were taken with wide-angle or telephoto lenses.”

“Has the lab turned up anything on that photo Janey gave Gavin?” Malloy asked.

Querulously Curtis shook his head. “The only prints on it belonged to Janey and Gavin.”

“Sergeant Curtis?” Griggs poked his head in, interrupting.

“In a minute,” the detective told him.

“What about the local outlets for photographic supplies?” Malloy asked.

“Still being investigated,” Curtis said. “Running down their clients is a time-consuming process.”

“You wouldn’t think that many people had their own darkrooms,” Malloy said.

“Mail-order customers. Faxed-in orders. People ordering online. It’s a chore.”

Griggs interrupted a second time. “Sergeant Curtis, this is important.”

But Curtis’s mind was moving down a single track. He addressed the detectives who had clustered just outside his cubicle. Some didn’t work homicide cases, but he’d asked everyone in the unit for their cooperation and time if they could spare it.

“Somebody determine if there’s a darkroom in Brad Armstrong’s home. Garage, attic, toolshed, extra bathroom. I don’t care how crude.” One of the detectives peeled away from the group in a hurry.

“We need Brad Armstrong’s telephone records ASAP. Find out what’s taking so long.” Another detective rushed away to carry out that assignment.

“Print out a picture of him—no family members, just him. Get it to all the TV stations in time for their first evening newscasts. He’s wanted for questioning, got it?
Questioning,
” he stressed to the detective who reached for the CD that Rondeau helpfully ejected from Curtis’s computer.

“Also distribute it to the intelligence officers who’re checking out those photo places,” Curtis called out across the cubicles.

“Have it faxed to all the other agencies that are helping us in the search.”

That business dispatched, Rondeau said, “Sir, I apologize for not putting it together sooner.”

“Never mind.” Curtis, dismissing him in a way that stung, turned to Paris. “His wife will be our best source of information. Are you sure she’ll cooperate?”

“Absolutely. Whether or not he’s Valentino, she wants him to be found and has promised to cooperate in any way she can.”

Curtis bobbed his head at a plainclothes policewoman. “Ask Mrs. Armstrong who takes their family photographs. Make it conversational.”

While everyone was distracted, Rondeau looked over at Gavin Malloy and winked. The boy mouthed,
Get fucked.
Rondeau smiled.

“Sergeant?” Griggs was still making a nuisance of himself.

“Excuse me?”

Finally Curtis turned to him and growled, “What is it, for christsake?”

“S…somebody to see you, sir,” he stammered. “And…and Ms. Gibson.”

“Somebody? Who?”

Griggs pointed across the tops of the cubicle walls. Curtis and Paris followed him through the maze of tiny offices to the doubledoor entrance where two uniformed patrolmen were holding a handcuffed man between them.

Paris exclaimed, “Marvin!”

Lancy Ray Fisher was seated at the table in one of the interrogation rooms. Paris sat across from him while Curtis stood at one end and Dean at the other. Even though they’d been focused on Dr. Brad Armstrong, the man she knew as Marvin Patterson remained a viable suspect.

He’d walked into police headquarters and introduced himself to the officers at the lobby desk. Recognizing him instantly, they had put his hands in restraints for his elevator ride up to the third floor. He’d put up no resistance whatsoever. Each time Paris and he made eye contact, he looked away quickly, appearing to be guilty of something.

She was surprised by how nice looking he was without his baggy coveralls and the baseball cap he wore to work. She’d never seen his face in full light. Nor had he seen hers, she reminded herself. Maybe that’s why his glances at her weren’t only guilty, but also curious.

“Should I get a lawyer?” he asked Curtis.

“I don’t know, should you?” the detective replied coolly.

“You’re the one who called this meeting and insisted on Paris being in on it. You tell me if you need a lawyer.”

“I don’t. Because I can tell you right off, and it’s the God’s truth, I had nothing to do with that girl’s kidnapping and murder.”

“We haven’t accused you of having had anything to do with it.”

“Then why’d those guys downstairs pounce on me and put me in these?” He thrust his cuffed hands toward Curtis.

Unfazed, Curtis replied, “I’d have thought you’d be used to them, Lancy. You’ve been in them often enough.”

The young man slumped back in his chair, acknowledging the verity of that.

“Marvin,” Paris said, getting his attention, “they found tapes of my shows, a large number of tapes, in your apartment. I’d like to know why you had them.”

“My real name is Lancy.”

“I’m sorry. Lancy. Why did you collect all those tapes?”

Dean said, “To us, it looks like you have an obsessive interest in her.”

“I swear, it’s not what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?” Dean asked.

“That it’s for some kinky reason. It’s not. I…I’ve been studying her.” He looked at their baffled faces. “I, uh, I want to be like her. Do what she does, I mean. I want to be on the radio.”

If he’d said he wanted to pilot a nuclear submarine through the capitol rotunda, they couldn’t have been more astonished.

Paris was the first to recover. “You want a career in radio broadcasting?”

“I guess you think that’s crazy, considering my criminal record and all.”

“I don’t think it’s crazy. I’m just surprised. When did you decide on this career path?”

“A couple years back. When I got out of Huntsville and started listening to you every night.”

“Why Paris, specifically? Why not another deejay?”

“Because I liked the way she talked to people,” he said to Dean. Then he turned back to her. “It seemed like you really cared about the people who called in, like you cared about their problems.” Looking abashed, he added, “For a while there, I had it pretty rough. Getting back into life on the outside. You were like my only friend.”

Curtis was staring at him with a skeptical scowl. Dean, too, was frowning. But Paris gave him a smile that encouraged him to continue.

“One night this guy called, told you he’d been laid off from his job and couldn’t find another. You said it seemed to you that his confidence had suffered, and that’s when you should aim the highest, reach the farthest.

“I took the advice you gave him. I stopped trying to get penny-ante jobs and applied at the telephone company. They hired me. I was making good money, enough to pay for voice lessons. Better clothes. A good car. But I got greedy, lifted some equipment I knew I could hock fast. They didn’t file charges but they fired me.”

He fell silent, as though castigating himself for such a bad judgment call. Paris looked over at Dean. He lifted his shoulders as though to say that Lancy could either be telling the truth or telling a whopper.

“After a few weeks of unemployment,” he continued, “I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I saw the ad in the paper about a job at the radio station. I didn’t care that it was cleaning out the crapper…uh, toilets. I wanted to be in that environment any way I could get in. So I could observe you. See how you work. Maybe even pick up some of the technology.

“I rigged a recorder up to my radio at home and had it timed to tape every show. During the daytime, I’d replay the tapes and try to imitate the way you talked. I practiced, trying to get your diction and the rhythm of your speech down. I took more lessons to get rid of my accent.”

He shot her a grin. “As you can hear, that’s going to take a lot more work. And of course I know I’ll never be as good as you no matter how hard I work at it. But I’m determined to give it my best shot. I wanted to…I
had
to, what do they call it?”

“Reinvent yourself?” she guessed.

His eyes lit up. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s why I was using an alias. My real name sounds too much like where I came from.”

Curtis tossed a folder onto the table and when Lancy saw that it was his criminal record, he winced. “I know it looks bad, but I swear to God I’ve put that life behind me.”

“It’s a long list of wrongdoing, Lancy. Did you find Jesus in Huntsville, or what?”

“No, sir. I just didn’t want to be trash for the rest of my life.”

Curtis harrumphed, unconvinced.

Lancy glanced around and must have realized that they were still skeptical. He wet his lips and in a tone of desperation said, “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Paris. She’s my idol. I haven’t made any threatening phone calls. As for that girl who turned up dead, I don’t know anything.”

Curtis propped a hip on the corner of the table and addressed the younger man in a deceptively friendly way. “You like high school girls, Lancy Ray?”

“Sir?”

“You dropped out of school at sixteen.”

“I got my GED while I was in prison.”

“But you skipped all the fun of high school. Maybe you’re making up for what you missed.”

“Like the girls, you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t pick up underage girls and have sex with them. I’m not perfect, but that’s not my thing.”

“Do you like women?”

“You mean, over men? Hell, yes.”

“You’ve got a handsome face. Good build. It can get awfully lonely in prison.”

Self-consciously Lancy cast a look at Paris, then lowered his head and muttered, “They left me alone. I stabbed one in the…in the testicles with a fork. I got a year tacked onto my sentence for it, but they didn’t bother me after that.”

She was embarrassed for him. She hoped Curtis would let up, but she was afraid that if she interfered he would ask her to leave and she wanted to hear this.

Curtis said, “I met your mother yesterday.”

Lancy raised his head and looked directly at the detective. “She’s a cow.”

“Whoa! Did you hear that, Dr. Malloy? Did that sound like latent hostility toward a female? A resentment—”

“I don’t like my mother,” Lancy said heatedly, “but that doesn’t carry over into my sex life. If that was your mother, would you like her?”

Curtis persisted. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Want one?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Curtis repeated. “When you get a hankering for a girlfriend, what do you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Lancy Ray.” Curtis tapped the folder with a blunt index finger. “You were sent up for sexual assault.”

“That was a bullshit rap.”

“That’s what all rapists say.”

“This guy, this movie producer—”

“A pornographer.”

“Right. We were making triple-X-rated skin flicks in his garage. He got upset when his girl started coming on to me. It was all right for us to…you know, while his camera was rolling. But not in private. So he and I got into it and—”

“And you cut him up pretty bad.”

“It was self-defense.”

“The jury didn’t buy it, and neither do I,” Curtis said. “When you finished with him, you started in on the girl.”

“No, sir!”

He denied it so emphatically and indignantly that Paris had to believe he was telling the truth. “It was him. He worked her over good.” He pointed to the folder. “All those things that were done to her, he did.”

“They collected your DNA.”

“Because she and I had been together earlier that day. He caught us. That’s what started the fight.”

“His testimony was corroborated under oath by two of the production crew and the girl herself.”

“They were all junkies. He fed them dope. I didn’t have anything to offer in exchange for them telling the truth.”

Dean asked, “Why should we believe your version of this, Lancy?”

“Because I own up to all my other crimes. I did some awful things, but I never beat up a woman.”

Paris leaned across the table toward him. “Why did you run away when the officers called to say they wanted to question you? Why didn’t you tell them what you’re telling us now?”

He sighed heavily and raised his cuffed hands to rub his forehead. “I freaked. I’m an ex-con. That automatically makes me a suspect. Then, I knew if they discovered that I’d been taping your shows, they’d for sure haul me in.”

“Why did you leave the tapes behind?”

He smiled shyly. “Because I’m stupid. I panicked and got the hell out of there. Forgot them. Maybe I’ve lost my criminal instinct. I hope I have.”

He had a safe-effacing manner that Paris liked. But Curtis didn’t appear to be charmed by it.

“If you had admitted this to us the day before yesterday, we might have come closer to believing you.”

Lancy looked at Paris and said earnestly, “I’m telling the truth. I don’t know anything about this Valentino character or those phone calls. I don’t know anything about Janey Kemp except what I’ve heard on the news. The only thing I’m guilty of is wanting to learn to do what you do.”

“You’ve been working at the station for months,” she said softly, “but you’ve never even engaged me in conversation. Why didn’t you come and talk to me about your ambition? Ask for advice? Guidance?”

“Are you kidding?” he exclaimed. “You’re a star. I’m the guy who pushes around the mop bucket. I’d never have worked up my nerve to talk to you. And if I had, you would have laughed at me.”

“I would never have done that.”

He searched her eyes, behind her lenses. “No, maybe you wouldn’t have. I see that now.”

“Where’ve you been all this time?” Curtis asked. “You didn’t return to your mom’s place or your apartment.”

“I keep a…I guess you’d call it a—”

“Hideout?” Curtis prompted.

Lancy looked abashed. “Yes, sir. I’ll give you the address. You’re welcome to search it.”

“You can bet we will,” Curtis said as he hooked his hand beneath Lancy’s arm and hoisted him from the chair. “And while we’re at it, you’ll be residing with us here.”

Chapter Thirty

I
t was a great bar for trolling.

It was on the lakeshore, a cedar-shingle place well known to the locals. Fishermen might stumble upon it, but it wasn’t a watering hole that would attract tourists or country club golfers. The clientele was comprised mostly of construction workers, cowboys, and biker types. A white-collar professional would feel out of his element, so it was highly unlikely that Brad Armstrong would be spotted here by anyone he knew.

Peanut shells crunched underfoot as he made his way across the dim barroom. It was lighted only by neon signs, nearly all boasting the Lone Star flag and a brand of beer. The shaded fixtures suspended over the billiards tables provided supplemental lighting, but it was obscured by tobacco smoke.

The bubbling Wurlitzer in the corner emanated a revolving rainbow of pastel colors, but there was nothing subtle about the music blaring from it. It was old country, the twangy, wailing, woebegone kind, pre Garth, McGraw, and the like.

Customers drank beer from the bottle, Jack Daniel’s, or Jose Cuervo straight. Which was what the girl was shooting when Brad joined her at the bar. He recognized her immediately. That she was here today, now, was a cosmic sign that he was doing nothing wrong.

He glanced down at the two empty shot glasses in front of her and motioned for the bartender to serve up two more. “One for me and one for the lady with the nipple ring.”

She turned to him. “How’d you—Oh, hi. Coupla nights ago, right?”

He grinned. “I’m glad you remember.”

“You’re the guy with all the porno.”

His face registered a crestfallen expression. “I was hoping you’d remember me for my…other memorable quality.”

She licked her upper lip and smiled. “That, too.”

“I wouldn’t expect to find you in a place like this,” he said. “You outclass it.”