Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

“Sheila, did Jack ever discuss what he did or where he went on the weekends when he was out of town?”

“Nah, and I never asked. Figured he was bopping somebody else on the side.”

“That didn’t bother you?”

“Not as long as he made nice with me. He was generous, you know? Real loose with his money.”

“Do you remember seeing any syringes around the apartment?”

“Needles? No way. Jack isn’t a user. He doesn’t even drink much.”

“Any items that might have come from other women-a ring, a bracelet, even a lock of hair or a button from a blouse?”

“Nothing like that. Why? Did he keep, like, souvenirs?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

The lip was quivering again. “He didn’t have pieces of them stashed in a drawer someplace, did he?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The truth was that searches of Dance’s apartment, office, and car had so far failed to turn up any trophies or syringes. Conclusive evidence linking Dance to the murders continued to elude the task force. His fingerprints on the drinking glass at the Phoenix bar were not enough.

After the print run, it had been hoped that a surreptitious inquiry into Dance’s credit-card accounts and bank statements would yield a record of airline-ticket purchases that could be matched to Mister Twister’s weekend outings. But there was no record of any such purchases. He must have paid cash.

Then it had occurred to someone that Dance was unlikely to have left his Nissan Z in an LAX parking lot, notorious for poor security. LAPD detectives had made the rounds of the privately operated parking lots near the airport and had found the one Jack used. He had paid cash there, too, but that precaution hadn’t helped him; it was standard procedure at the establishment to log in every vehicle, recording the license number, make, and model. The Nissan had been left there each weekend when Mister Twister was at work.

The coincidence of dates still wasn’t sufficient to ensure a conviction. But it had persuaded a judge to sign the arrest and search warrants early this morning.

Now the arrest had been bungled, and the searches had come up empty. If Dance could not be definitely tied to the homicides, he might end up being prosecuted only on multiple counts of telemarketing fraud. After the publicity given to the manhunt, such a reversal would constitute a disaster.

“Was there anything in the apartment that was off limits to you?” Moore asked. “Any room he didn’t want you to enter? Any drawers you weren’t supposed to open?”

“No way. He couldn’t boss me around like that. What do you think, he had me tied around his little finger like some fucking bimbo?”

“Did you ever see him hide anything or cover up something he was looking at?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Did he have a scrapbook, photo album, Polaroids?”

“Not that I ever saw.”

“Did he act strange at times?”

“Strange, how?”

“Secretive. Defensive. Paranoid.”

“That’s not the way…” Her lashes batted, and a small crease of concentration appeared above the bridge of her nose. “Well, there was one kind of weird thing.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, see, one time I walked in on him when he wasn’t expecting me. He’s on the phone. Sees me and goes ballistic. Says I should ring the goddamn doorbell next time. I say, then what’d you give me a goddamn key for?” She shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like shit, but man, it felt really bizarre. I mean, he never gave a crap whether I rang the doorbell any other time.”

“Which room was he in?”

“Uh… the bedroom.”

“Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know. He must have hung up right after.”

A knock on the door, and Peter Lovejoy stuck his head in.

“Just got off the phone with Drury.” Deputy associate director. “He wants us on a plane to Miami ASAP.”

“I’m not finished here.”

“How about letting Baxter take the rest of Miss Tate’s statement?” Linda Baxter was a street agent in the L.A. office.

“Right.” Moore smiled at Sheila. “Got to run. Sorry.”

“Is Jack in Miami? Is that why you’re going there?”

“We don’t know where he is,” Moore said, rising. She left before Sheila could press her with another question.

Lovejoy was already heading for the elevator, wiping his runny nose. Moore caught up with him in the hallway. “My things are at the hotel.”

“Mine, too. We’ll pick them up on the way.” He checked his watch. “It’s eleven-forty. Delta has a redeye to Atlanta at twelve-fifteen. We can connect with an eight-twenty flight to Miami and get in at ten a.m. Eastern time.”

“Can we stop off at Dance’s apartment first?”

“Why? The girlfriend tell you something?”

“She may have.”

The apartment building was only a few blocks east of the FBI office. Moore watched the Wilshire corridor blur past. It reminded her of Phoenix at night. Tall modern buildings, elegant landscaping, many lights. Wealth built beauty; she’d always known that.

And the absence of wealth… She knew about that, too. The Oakland projects. The urine-stained stairwells, the caged light bulbs, the concrete walls of her mother’s apartment, beading with sweat on summer afternoons.

The worst part of poverty was the grinding ugliness of it. That feeling of never being clean. She wondered if Sheila Tate had ever known that feeling, or ever would.

She turned to Lovejoy at the wheel. “How positive are we that Jack flew to Miami?”

“Maybe eighty percent. Miami P.D. got the flight attendants out of bed to look at his mug shot. One of them is almost certain she remembers him.”

“Wearing glasses?”

“Right. And blue jeans. Just like Mr. Markham said.”

Hugh Markham represented a lucky break for the task force, and a bad break for Jack Dance. Sixty-eight years old, a retired bus driver, he ate lunch at a Burger King in Encino every day, usually lingering over the L.A. Times. Said his wife was grateful to have him out of the house for a while.

Markham was a people-watcher. In thirty years of driving for RTD, he had seen a parade of characters pass in and out of the bus’s folding doors. He noticed things.

He had been watching when a man in a blue business suit, carrying two shopping bags, entered the restaurant via a side door and disappeared immediately into a rest room. For a few minutes Markham tried idly to guess what line of work the man was in. It was a game of his.

Then it occurred to him that the man was taking a long time to come out. He found this mildly interesting. He went on watching the rest-room door over the top of his newspaper.

Five minutes. Ten.

Finally the door opened, and someone emerged. But it couldn’t be the same man. The outfit was different, the hair was different, the shopping bags were gone.

No, it was him, all right. He’d undergone a complete transformation. Left without ordering any food, too. Very odd.

When he told his wife about it, she made him watch the local news, waiting for an update on the day’s big story, the manhunt for Jack Dance. “Was that the man you saw?” she asked when Jack’s picture appeared on the screen.

Hugh Markham said it was. Twenty minutes later, he was saying the same thing to a West Valley cop.

Markham had a good memory for details. He ticked off the specifics of Jack’s new look: moussed hair, glasses, denim shirt, blue jeans, knapsack.

A sketch artist altered the mug shot accordingly. Police circulated copies of it in the vicinity of the Burger King. A taxi driver stationed outside a hotel two blocks away recalled driving Jack to LAX. The American Airlines terminal.

The ticket clerks had already gone home for the day. LAPD tracked them down and showed them the picture. One clerk remembered selling that man a one-way ticket to Miami.