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to her, then put both his hands back on the wheel.
    “Do not remove your hands from the wheel, sir.  I’ll be watching.”
    She took her time walking back to her unit.  Since she had already run his license, she sat there for a couple minutes, looking at the photo on the seat. 
    Now that was a good-looking man.  A total fucking creep, but good-looking.
    When she felt she’d waited long enough, she got out and trudged through the mud, handed him back his license, and opened her ticket book.  “I’m going to give you a warning this time.  But keep to the speed limit from now on, okay?”
    “Thank you, ma’am.”  Eyes like a Pekingese, shiny and moist in his fat pink face.
    Duffy watched him pull back onto the road, driving like a little old lady.
    A shame to see a Z4 being driven like that.

7

    At 2 A.M. the clock radio came on.  Laura got out of bed, pulled together what she needed, and walked through the rain-slick streets to City Park. 
    Ducking under the crime scene tape, she stopped on the sidewalk below the park and looked around.
    The light from a sodium arc lamp tinted the street and buildings apricot.  This had a flattening effect, making it harder to see.  Most of Bisbee was sleeping, but she saw a few rectangles of light in the old buildings up and down the hills.
    She looked up the tall flight of steps to the street above. 
    Laura had always thought it was most likely the bad guy had parked down here on the street and carried the girl up the stairs.  She pictured him driving up around the park once to make sure no one was around.  On the second pass, he parked right in front of the steps, the passenger door only a few inches from the curb and five feet from the bottom of the steps. 
    Were his lights on?  Would he leave the engine running? 
    Yes to the lights, no to leaving the engine running.  The best way to hide what you were doing was to act normally. Drive down the street with your lights on, park, turn off the lights along with the engine.  If anyone happened to be awake and looking out the window, they would see nothing suspicious in someone parking a car.  People worked nightshifts.
    It was doubtful that he had been seen at all.  At the briefing, it came out that there were very few houses from which you could actually see the bandshell.  This had surprised her.  There were a couple of houses right on the road facing the park, maybe one or two across the way up high on OK Street, although the trees blocked the bandshell from view.
    Laura stood in the street where the driver’s door would be, pantomimed walking around to the passenger side, leaning down and picking up the girl.  He could be up the steps in less than five seconds. 
    One step into the park. Three more steps to the bandshell stairs. Four steps up.  Set her against the wall, clasp her hands together, stand back to look at what you’ve done.  Admire your still life.
    Water from rain earlier tonight dripped from the bandshell arch.
    Just the act of carrying Jessica up here and placing her against the wall would cause him to shed fibers, hair, skin, and some of that would stick.  How would he deal with that? 
    Would he sweep up? 
    Or could he have used one of those sticky rollers, the one people used to pick up pet hair?  Lab techs now preferred the sticky rollers to vaccum cleaners when they looked for trace evidence.
    Water dripping from the bandshell roof: tap tap tap.
Where are you tonight?  Holed up in a motel, or have you moved on already?
    The wind rose, whipping the treetops.  Their restive shadows danced on the bandshell wall beside her.  Rain started up, speckling the concrete. 
Where are you tonight ?
    As if in answer, notes from an alto sax trickled down from a window somewhere up the street.  Pure and sweet; a soulful, lonely sound.
    All the buildings in that direction were dark.  The music stopped almost as soon as it had started.   
    The rain came down harder, a curtain of clear beads