“I know,” Jimmy says in a quiet voice. He’s silent for several long moments, lost in thought. Eventually he turns slowly in the moaning chair until he’s facing me directly. “I think we need to focus on the last four names on the list, the ones without the lines or checks. If we can figure out who they are, we can break the cycle, throw him off his game. Save some lives.”
“What about Lauren?” I want the words to come out calm, matter-of-fact, but when they leave my mouth they have an edge to them, an urgent and raw vibration that hints at distress. Inside I’m screaming, I promised her mother. I promised! Somehow that internal scream cuts through mind and matter and attaches itself to those three words: What about Lauren? I realize that I’m clutching the locket in my pocket—Lauren’s locket—and rubbing it with my thumb as if it were a worry stone.
“We’re not giving up on Lauren,” Jimmy insists.
I wish I could be so sure.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
June 29, 2:45 P.M.
“I ran all four names through CLEAR,” Diane says, referencing the massive public records database run by Thomson Reuters and used for corporate security, fraud investigations, skip tracing, and other purposes. It’s a favorite tool of the FBI and other law enforcement because you can locate just about anyone.
Whenever you order cable TV at your new apartment, apply for a loan, get a new cell phone, apply for water and sewer service, or set up just about any other “public” service, the data is added to the tens of billions of public records stored in various corporate databases.
These are the databases that CLEAR calls upon when a query is run. And for those in law enforcement there’s a special version of CLEAR that provides more and better information. It’s a bit Orwellian, but the database is an indispensable tool and a favorite of Diane’s.
“P. Nichols is most likely Peggy Nichols,” Diane continues, “the twelfth name on the list; she moved to Florida last month. Looks like she just closed on a three-bedroom rancher in Punta Gorda—that’s a bit south of Sarasota. I’ll include her new phone number in the e-mail.”
“Can you call the Punta Gorda Police Department as soon as you’re off the phone and advise them of the situation? And if they don’t have a PD, call the county sheriff’s office.”
“I called both before I called you. They tended to agree that the chance of Sad Face going all the way to Florida is remote but promised they’d notify Peggy and take the appropriate precautions until we give them the all-clear.”
“Well … good, then. You’re one step ahead of me.”
“Of course I am.”
The tap dance of fingers on the keyboard drifts through the phone and then Diane continues. “Number thirteen, M. Milne, is Melissa Milne. I’m close to a hundred percent on that because there haven’t been any other Milnes pictured in any of the fifty-seven newspapers I’ve scanned, at least not in the last year and a half. Melissa lives in Redding; the address the sheriff’s office has for her looks like it’s still good. Same with number fourteen, Nikki Dearborn, and her husband Tyson. Their place appears to be a twenty-acre mini-ranch just outside Anderson.”
“How about B. Contreras?” Jimmy asks.
“That one was a little tougher, but it’s most likely Becky Contreras,” Diane says. “I had four different addresses for her in the last two years. After some cross-referencing, which wasn’t pretty, I was able to trace her to an apartment in Corning.”
“Corning?”
“It’s a small town fifteen to twenty miles south of Red Bluff, population less than eight thousand. It’s also known as Olive City and is home to the Bell-Carter Olive Company. Wikipedia says it’s the largest ripe olive cannery in the world.”
“Fascinating,” Jimmy replies dryly. “Do you have an address?”
“It’ll be in the e-mail with the others,” Diane replies a bit tersely, taking Jimmy’s lack of interest in the mechanics of olive production as a snub against olives and, by association, olive lovers—which must include her.
“And when can we expect this e-mail?”
“I just sent it, didn’t you hear the click?”
“I must have missed it.”
“I thought as much.”
“Bye, Diane.”
“Mm-hmm.”
*
Within the law enforcement community there are nicknames and acronyms for just about everything. It’s much like the military in that sense. For example, a holster sniffer is a police groupie, a woman—or man—who loves the uniform and the authority it represents. At the opposite end of the spectrum is your standard asshat, a drunk or high knuckle-dragging degenerate looking for trouble.
Flip-a-bitch means to make a U-turn; a fishwalk is the ground-dance a suspect does when being tased, also known as doing the funky chicken; and leering and peering with the intent to creep and crawl is generally what an Adam Henry (asshole) is up to when you just can’t figure out what he’s up to.
Within this extensive cop vernacular is the term law-enforcement-friendly, which describes a citizen who generally appreciates the police and is cooperative; an upstanding citizen who is always ready to help.
Melissa Milne is not law-enforcement-friendly.
Melissa Milne hates cops.
Jimmy is nearly speechless. “Miss Milne, I just told you that a serial killer has you on his target list.”
“And I told you to get off my porch, ass monkey.”
Ass monkey? I mouth to Walt; he just shrugs.
“Ten women are dead,” Jimmy practically pleads. “It’s been all over the news.”
“I don’t give a— Hey! Where are you going?” she suddenly barks, pointing two cigarette-encumbered fingers at me as I start walking toward the side of the house.
“I’m just checking to see where that smell’s coming from,” I reply, glancing down the side of the house. “Smells like … fresh marijuana; a lot of it.”
“The hell you say.”