Beth said, “The reason we’re asking is that the girl who disappeared a few months before Crissy had a tattoo she’d kept hidden from her parents. No one knew about it until yesterday when the young man accused of her disappearance told about it. It was under her arm, covered by her bra. It was a red crescent moon, the goddess Luna’s symbol.”
Carla snorted. “Back to Luna.” She divided a disparaging look between them. “Crissy would never have gotten a tattoo.”
“Perhaps without your knowledge.”
“Nope.”
“Maybe peer pressure—” Beth began, only to be cut off.
“No. Wouldn’t have mattered if I approved it or not, whether it was hidden or in the center of her forehead, under no circumstances would she have gotten a tattoo, because of the needle. She had a needle phobia like none other. She’d scream like a banshee. Whenever she had to get a shot, I practically had to hog-tie her.”
She looked each of them in the eye, hard, then said, “Call me if you ever catch the bastard who took my girl. I want to see him shackled, in handcuffs, and an iron collar around his neck. Otherwise, leave me the hell alone.”
After leaving Carla, her strong admonishment still ringing in their ears, John suggested they pick up a late lunch of carryout and find a place to park and eat. “That warrant hasn’t gone away, so I don’t want to risk going into a restaurant.”
“I’m not really hungry,” Beth said absently as she checked her borrowed phone for messages.
“Well, my breakfast has worn off. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to figure out where we go from here. Any luck?” He chinned toward the phone in her hand.
“No. I wish to heaven Richard would grow a pair and storm into Brady’s office, demanding that he talk to me.”
“How likely is that?”
“As likely as Carla having us over for afternoon tea.”
At a drive-through he got a loaded burger for himself and a salad for Beth, then drove around a sleepy neighborhood to a municipal park. He pulled into the crushed shell lot, turned off the car, and dug into their lunch.
Around his first bite, he said, “I don’t get Carla’s hostility toward us.”
Beth was squeezing dressing over her salad. “She still holds you—and everyone on the police force—responsible for failing to find Crissy.”
“Of course, but I’ve owned up to all the foul-ups. I’ve apologized for my part in letting her down, and now I’m trying to make amends by getting justice for Crissy and Billy. None of that has made a dent with Carla. In fact she’s thornier now than—”
One of his phones rang. He checked the readout. It was Morris, whom he hadn’t expected. He answered and put it on speaker. “Hi, Gayle.”
“You bastard.”
“Sorry?”
“You laid a guilt trip on me. I skipped lunch so I could talk to the Whitmores and just wrapped up a conference call with them. I told them about the numerology stuff and asked if Larissa or any of her acquaintances were into the paranormal of any stripe, as you phrased it.
“They reminded me that I’d already asked them that. I apologized but told them to stretch. Was anyone in Larissa’s sphere a little ‘off’? After a moment’s thought, her dad said, ‘That tree trimmer.’ They’d hired him to do some work in their yard, and he was good, so neighbors also retained his services.”
“Which kept him in proximity to Larissa for a length of time.”
“You got it. The two of them talked, flirted, and hung out for a week or two. But then Larissa tried to close it down. She told her folks that he was into some ‘weird stuff.’ This coming from a reputed party girl.”
“Indicating that the ‘stuff’ must have been really weird,” John said. “Do you think he influenced the crescent moon tattoo?”
“I asked. They didn’t know, because they didn’t even know about the tattoo. But it’s possible.”
“Did you get his name? Is he still around?”
“Yes to the first, and he lives in Beaumont. He has two priors. Both for stalking, which resulted in restraining orders. He was never even looked at because we had Dobbs naked and stoned and Larissa’s DNA all over him and his boat. Which brings me to the best part.”
John said, “The stalker has a boat.”
“Yes, sir. I’m going to get Beaumont PD to keep an eye on him, but not to spook him until I can get the log books from every marina along at least one hundred miles of coastline, Texas and Louisiana. Let’s see if his boat launched from one of them on May sixteenth of ’22.
“And before you ask,” she continued, “I already checked your date in November. This guy was serving thirty days in jail for harassing one of his stalking victims. He’s not Crissy’s abductor. But I think you’re on to something, John. It’s multiple perps. They’re the common factor, not the women.”
“Gayle, I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me. If this is the guy who took Larissa, we completely dropped the ball and made a suspected murderer out of Patrick Dobbs. I’ll keep you updated, but right now I gotta run and get busy. You asshole, you just doubled my workload.”
She hung up before he could form a comeback.
He clicked off and looked across at Beth. “What do we do with this?” she asked.
“First off, call Roberts in Jackson, report this, and urge him to take another, closer look at the dark web guy who gets his jollies exposing himself.”
John quickly demolished his burger. While Beth was finishing her salad, he called Roberts and fortunately caught him at his desk. John related what he’d learned from Gayle Morris, and, as he’d anticipated, the information was galvanizing. “I’m on it,” the detective said.
“Go back to the wife, too. Words like aiding and abetting, complicity, and conspiracy may alter her memory of that night.”
“Will do. Thanks, Bowie.”