Joyland

She was right. If you read a whodunit or see a mystery movie, you can whistle gaily past whole heaps of corpses, only interested in finding out if it was the butler or the evil stepmother.

But these had been real young women. Crows had probably ripped their flesh; maggots would have infested their eyes and squirmed up their noses and into the gray meat of their brains.

"Was there a carny in the Maxton area when the Stamnacher girl was killed?"

"No, but there was a county fair about to start in Lumberton — that's the nearest town of any size. Here."

She handed me another Xerox, this one advertising the Robeson County Summer Fair. Once again, Erin tapped the sheet. This time she was calling my attention to a line reading:

50 SAFE RIDES PROVIDED BY SOUTHERN STAR AMUSEMENTS.

"I also looked Southern Star up in Outdoor Trade and Industry.

The company's been around since after World War II. They're based in Birmingham and travel all over the south, putting up rides. Nothing so grand as the Thunderball or the Delirium Shaker, but they've got plenty of chump-shoots, and the jocks to run them."

I had to grin at that. She hadn't forgotten all the Talk, it seemed. Chump-shoots were rides that could be easily put up or taken down. If you've ever ridden the Krazy Kups or the Wild Mouse, you've been on on a chump-shoot.

"I called the ride-boss at Southern Star. Said I'd worked at Joyland this summer, and was doing a term paper on the amusement industry for my sociology class. Which I just might do, you know.

After all this, it would be a slam-dunk. He told me what I'd already guessed, that there's a big turnover in their line of work.

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 ride-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 know 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 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 GIRL. "

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?"