Cereal Killer

assorted vehicles to leave the shoot. Tesla was the star of each picture. Front and center. Savannah felt a tug at her heart when she saw Tesla stepping into her car, the same black Mitsubishi that they had found abandoned in the coffee shop parking lot.
    Studying Tesla’s expression, captured in the photo, Savannah could see that she was troubled, as she had been during the shoot. But Savannah couldn’t help wondering if Tesla had any inkling that within a very short time, her life would be threatened... or worse.
    “That’s what I thought,” Dirk said with a smug look on his face. “Tumblety was after her even then. I’m telling you, he’s the one who nabbed her in that parking lot. Not some guy in a white van.”
    Tammy picked up one of the photos off the table and held it only a few inches from her nose as she peered at it “A white van?” she said.
    “Yeah,” Dirk replied. “Tumblety’s mysterious, disappearing dude in an old white van.”
    She plunked the photo down in the center of the table and placed her fingertip on an object in the background. “You mean an old white van like this one? With a rack on the top?”
    Savannah felt a shot of adrenaline hit her bloodstream, more potent than any caffeine or sugar hit, as she looked down at the picture. Tammy was right. There in the background, parked about a block away from the beach house, was an old panel body van—white with a rack, just as Tumblety had described.
    She pointed to another vehicle in the background, even farther away than the van. Only the fender was showing, but it was enough for a tentative identification. “And isn’t that Tumblety’s El Camino?” she asked Dirk.
    He frowned and nodded. “Yep, I’m afraid so.”
    “He drove to the shoot location in his own car,” Savannah said, thinking aloud. “Maybe it’s a coincidence that there’s a van like he described in this picture.”
    Tammy tapped on the photo again. “Looks to me like somebody’s sitting in the driver’s seat, too,” she said, “but you can’t see any more than just a dark outline.”
    “And the license plate number is there,” Savannah noted, “but it’s too blurry to do us any good.”
    “How could you tell?” Tammy said, picking up the photo and grinning at them. “You both need glasses and are just too proud to admit it and buy some. Let me take a look.”
    “I do not need glasses!” Dirk snapped.
    “Me either.” Savannah reached over and thumped the side of Tammy’s head.
    “Naw, I can’t see it either.” Tammy sighed and laid the photo back down on the table.
    Savannah jumped up and ran over to the counter in the kitchen where the telephone sat. Opening the drawer beneath the phone, she pulled out a glasses case.
    “Here,” she said as she returned to the table, pulled out the glasses, and put them on. “Let me take another look at that picture.”
    “Don’t need glasses, huh?” Tammy muttered. “Then what are those things on your face?”
    “They’re magnifying aids, which I use to read the phone book these days. They’re printing the names in those things smaller every year. I tell you, it’s a Communist conspiracy.”
    “Medicine bottle directions and maps, too,” Dirk grumbled.
    “I’m telling you, it’s a plot against baby boomers.” Savannah squinted, staring at the photo for ages. Finally, she tossed it back onto the table. “Nope,” she said, “nothing but fuzz.”
    “That’s too bad,” Tammy replied. “It could be exactly what we need to break the case.”
    “Too bad we don’t have the kind of fancy equipment that the feds have,” Dirk said. “You know, the kind you see on TV that can take pictures and... do whatever they do to them.”
    “Enhance them digitally,” Tammy supplied. ‘Yes, it’s too bad we don’t have access to—”
    She looked across the table at Savannah, who was already smiling from ear to ear.
    “Ryan,” Tammy said.
    “And John,” Savannah added. “They’ve still got plenty of connections at the Bureau.”
    “Eh,” Dirk said, “you broads just look for excuses to call those guys.”
    “Don’t knock it,” Savannah told him. Then, in her best impression of Mae West, she added, “In this case, they’ve got the equipment we need.”
    ‘Yeah, right...” He sniffed. “For all the good it’ll ever do ya.”
     

Chapter
    21
     
    S avannah and Dirk were in his car on their way to interview Kameeka Wills’s parents and sisters the next day, when Savannah