Joyland(61)

He couldn't tell me offhand if they'd picked anyone up from the Wellman show, but he said it was likely-a couple of roughies here, a couple of jocks there, maybe a ride-monkey or two. So the guy who killed DeeDee and Claudine could have been at that fair, and Darlene Stamnacher could have met him. The fair wasn't officially open for business yet, but lots of townies gravitate to the local fairgrounds to watch the !ide-monkeys and the local gazoonies do the setup." She looked at me levelly. "And I think that's just what happened."

"Erin, is the carny link in the story the News and Courier published after Linda Gray was killed? Or maybe I should call it the amusement link."

"Nope. Can I have another nip from your bottle? I'm cold."

"We can go inside-"

"No, it's this murder stuff that makes me cold. Every time I go over it."

I gave her the bottle, and after she'd taken her nip, I took one of my own. "Maybe you're Sherlock Holmes," I said. "What about the cops? Do you think they missed it?"

"I don't lmow for sure, but I think .. . they did. If this was a detective show on TV, there'd be one smart old cop-a Lieutenant Columbo type-who'd look at the big picture and put it together, but I guess there aren't many guys like that in real life. Besides, the big picture is hard to see because it's scattered across three states and eight years. One thing you can be sure of is that if he ever worked at Joyland, he's long gone. I'm sure the turnover at an amusement park isn't as fast as it is in a road company like Joy land

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Southern Star Amusements, but there are still plenty of people leaving and coming in."

I knew that for myself. Ride-jocks and concession shouters aren't exactly the most grounded people, and gazoonies went in and out like the tide.

"Now here's the other thing that troubles me," she said, and handed me her little pile of eight-by-ten photos. Printed on the white border at the bottom of each was PHOTO TAKEN BY YOUR

JOYLAND "HOLLYWOOD G IRL. "

I shuffled through them, and felt in need of another nip when I realized what they were: the photos showing Linda Gray and the man who had killed her. "Jesus God, Erin, these aren't newspaper pix. Where'd you get them?"

"Brenda Rafferty. I had to butter her up a little, tell her what a good mom she'd been to all us Hollywood Girls, but in the end she came through. These are fresh prints made from negatives she had in her personal files and loaned to me. Here's something interesting, Dev. You see the headband the Gray girl's wearing?"

"Yes." An Alice band, Mrs. Shoplaw had called it. A blue Alice band.

"Brenda said they fuzzed that out in the shots they gave to the newspapers. They thought it would help them nail the guy, but it never did."

"So what troubles you?"

God knew all of the pictures troubled me, even the ones where Gray and the man she was with were just passing in the background, only recognizable by her sleeveless blouse and Alice band and his baseball cap and dark glasses. In only two of them were Linda Gray and her killer sharp and clear. The first 204





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showed them at the Whirly Cups, his hand resting casually on the swell of Gray's bottom. In the other-the best of the lotthey were at the Annie Oakley Shootin' Gallery. Yet in neither was the man's face really visible. I could have passed him on the street and not known him.

Erin plucked up the Whirly Cups photo. "Look at his hand."

"Yeah, the tattoo. I see it, and I heard about it from Mrs. S.

What do you make it to be? A hawk or an eagle?"

"I think an eagle, but it doesn't matter."

"Really?"

"Really. Remember I said I'd come back to Claudine Sharp?

A young woman getting her throat cut in the local movie theater-during Lawrence of Arabia, no less-was big news in a little town like Rocky Mount. The Telegram ran with it for almost a month. The cops turned up exactly one lead, Dev. A girl Claudine went to high school with saw her at the snackbar and said hello. Claudine said hi right back. The girl said there was a man in sunglasses and a baseball cap next to her, but she never thought the guy was with Claudine, because he was a lot older. The only reason she noticed him at all was because he was wearing sunglasses in a movies how . . . and because he had a tattoo on his hand."

"The bird."

"No, Dev. It was a Coptic cross. Like this." She took out another Xerox sheet and showed me. "She told the cops she thought at first it was some kind of Nazi symbol."

I looked at the cross. It was elegant, but looked nothing at all like a bird. "Two tats, one on each hand," I said at last. "The bird on one, the cross on the other."

She shook her head and gave me the Whirly Cups photo again. "Which hand's got the bird on it?"



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He was standing on Linda Gray's left, encircling her waist.

The hand resting on her bottom . . .

"The right."

"Yes. But the girl who saw him in the movie theater said the cross was on his right."

I considered this. "She made a mistake, that's all. Witnesses do it all the time."

"Sure they do. My father could talk all day on that subject.