He could narrow the list down in any event. He had a certain day to work with, even a block of hours on that day. Donovan would begin with the premise that LuAnn Tyler had fled the country. He would focus on international flights departing from JFK during that time frame, ten years ago. If the records at JFK turned up nothing, he would focus on LaGuardia and then Newark International Airport. At least it was a start. There were far fewer international flights than domestic. If he had to start checking domestic flights, he concluded he would have to try another angle. There were simply too many. As he was about to start this process a package arrived from Sheriff Harvey.
Donovan munched on a sandwich at his cubicle while he looked through the files. The autopsy photos were understandably gruesome; however, they didn’t faze the veteran reporter. He had seen far worse in his career. After an hour of reading he laid the file aside and made some notes. From the looks of it, he believed LuAnn Tyler to be innocent of the charges for which Harvey wanted to arrest her. He had done some independent digging of his own into Rikersville, Georgia. By virtually all accounts, Duane Harvey was a lazy good-for-nothing with no greater ambition than to spend his life drinking beer, chasing women, and adding nothing whatsoever of value to mankind. LuAnn Tyler, on the other hand, had been described to him by several persons who had known her as hardworking, honest, and a loving, caring mother to her little girl. Orphaned as a teenager, she seemed to have done as well as she could under the circumstances. Donovan had seen photos of her, had even managed to dig up a videotape of the press conference announcing her as the lottery winner ten years ago. She was a looker all right, but there was something behind that beauty. She hadn’t scraped by all those years on her physical assets alone.
Donovan finished his sandwich and took a sip of his coffee. Duane Harvey had been cut up badly. The other man, Otis Burns, had also died from knife wounds to his upper torso. There had been serious but nonfatal head trauma also present, and the clear signs of a struggle. LuAnn’s fingerprints had been found on the broken phone receiver and also all over the trailer. No surprise since she happened to live there. There had been one witness account of seeing her in Otis Burns’s car that morning. Despite Sheriff Harvey’s protests to the contrary, Donovan’s research led him to believe that Duane was the drug dealer in the family and had been caught skimming. Burns was probably his supplier. The man had a lengthy rap sheet in neighboring Gwinnett County, all drug related. Burns had probably come to settle the score. Whether LuAnn Tyler knew of Duane’s drug dealing was anybody’s guess. She had worked at the truck stop up until the time she had bought her lottery ticket and disappeared only to resurface, however briefly, in New York City. So if she had known of Duane’s sideline, she hadn’t reaped any discernible benefits from it. Whether she had been in the trailer that morning and had had anything to do with either man’s death was also unclear. Donovan really didn’t care one way or another. He had no reason to sympathize with Duane Harvey or Otis Burns. At this point he didn’t know what he felt about LuAnn Tyler. He did know that he wanted to find her. He wanted that very much.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jackson sat in a chair in the darkened living room of a luxurious apartment in a prewar building overlooking Central Park. His eyes were closed, his hands neatly folded in his lap. Approaching forty years of age he was still lean and wiry in build. His actual facial features were androgynous, although the years had etched fine lines around his eyes and mouth. His short hair was cut stylishly, his clothing was quietly expensive. His eyes, however, were clearly his most distinctive feature, which he had to disguise very carefully when he was working. He rose and moved slowly through the amply proportioned apartment. The furnishings were eclectic: English, French, and Spanish antiques mixed liberally with Oriental art and sculpture.