27
“This is what CloneImage came up with,” Jay Ramsey said, rolling his chair to the computer monitor.
It turned out that Jay Ramsey’s image recognition program had been quicker than expected; Laura had gotten the call this morning, not twenty-four hours after she last saw him. Jay had already found two matches to the man in the picture.
Ramsey pulled up a site called TalentFish.com. “For a small fee, actors and models can put their pictures online. Kind of like a rogues’ gallery. Lucky for us that young Petey is up on the latest technology.”
“Petey?”
“Peter Dorrance. Actor, model, pretty boy around town. This was a virtual cakewalk.” He laughed at his own joke—virtual.
The TalentFish home page opened up. There were several headings at the top of the page: Actors, Portraits, Head Shots, Actor and Model Composites. Jay pulled up Peter Dorrance’s page under “Actor and Model Composites”.
“CloneImage got this hit pretty quick, since one of these is the same picture he sent that little girl.”
And there it was. The photo of the young man, the house behind him. This was a three-quarters shot, showing his excellent physique, but there were others, including two headshots.
Laura looked at the other photographs, the ones she’d never seen before. Dorrance had three photos taken in front of the house. Two in black and white and one in color. In the color photo, he leaned against a blue sportscar, arms folded over his chest. He wore a cable-knit sweater and looked like a print ad from Land’s End. The house behind him was yellow with white trim.
“Nice wheels,” Laura said.
“Hard to get into,” Jay said, “Unless you’re his age. I also found the house, if you’re interested.”
“In a minute.”
She looked at his resume. Age twenty-two. Six foot three and a half. 40-Regular. Several acting roles in plays Laura did not recognize (she wasn’t a big patron of the theater). Print ads: Hair and Now; Leslie’s Department Store; Eat at Joes. Television ads: Ralph’s Car Sales and Gulf Chiropractic. Not a lot there, but he had gotten a crack at the big time, a cameo as a corpse on CSI: Miami.
“Eat at Joes is in Panama City,” Freddy said.
“Take a bow, Freddy,” Jay said. “The Florida panhandle—just like you said it would be. Prince Charming here lives on the Forgotten Coast, the Redneck Riviera, or—if you’re thinking red and blue states—Bush country.”
Freddy pointed to the bottom of the page. “There’s the address of the Talent Agency.” The Strand Talent Agency, Panama City Beach, Florida.
“So there’s good reason to believe he lives in Panama City,” Laura said.
“Thereabouts. I got another match, though.” Jay clicked through to another site, the Franklin County Home Buyers Guide.
Laura found herself staring at the house. “St. George Island?”
“Down the coast, east of Panama City,” Freddy explained.
“An old listing,” Jay said. “This site hasn’t been updated since 2002.” He zoomed in on a pale plaque near the top of the steps. It was blurry and hard to read, but Laura was able to make an educated guess: “Gull Cottage?”
“Shouldn’t be hard to find. St. George Island isn’t all that big.” He clicked on MapQuest. The barrier island looked like a narrow boomerang, bisected by one main road paralleled by a few ancillary streets. “Twenty-nine miles in length and no more than a mile across at any one place.”
He clicked onto some photographs of St. George Island.
“It doesn’t look like a place Peter Dorrance could afford,” Laura said. “Unless he’s independently wealthy.” Considering the sports car he leaned so casually against, that was a possibility.
“I did a few searches on him. The only times he comes up is in regards to acting jobs—and not very many of them. But at least you’ve got a place to start.”
Laura stared at Dorrance’s headshot. Was this her killer? If she went strictly by the FBI profile, he skewed young for this kind of crime. Usually, it took time to build up to precise ritual-like dressing up of the girl and posing her that way. It took time to develop that kind of self-confidence, time to become a full-fledged sexual predator.
“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.