Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [27]
But while most of the witnesses who met with Adam and Kendra had nothing new to add, at the end of the day one resident of Walnut Crossing had proved to be the witness they’d all prayed for.
An amateur boxer in his youth, Joe Tursky took pride in the fact that he worked out on a daily basis. Early in the morning, on Founder’s Day, Joe had parked his station wagon at the edge of the woods while he and his German shepherd jogged the path that traced along the entire circumference of the park.
“What time had you arrived, do you recall?” Adam had asked.
“It was right around eight in the morning. Before the festivities started. I run that park every day with my dog, usually in the afternoon, but with a dog that big, you know, people get nervous, so on days when I know there’s something going on, I try to get out early.”
“When you arrived at eight, were there other cars in the parking lot?” Adam continued his questioning.
“Only up in the area toward the square, you know, people setting up for the concerts and that sort of thing, but no one down around the ball fields or the park areas.” The middle-aged Tursky shook his head. “Not when I arrived.”
“So take us through what happened, what you saw.” Adam rolled his chair back from the table to directly face the witness.
“Well, Casper and me—that’s my dog, we call him Casper, like the ghost, because he’s a white shepherd—anyway, we did our run along the path and stopped halfway at the spring. There’s a creek there with a natural spring, water’s pure as you can find anywhere. People come with plastic bottles and fill ’em up to take home. Anyway, I stopped there for a drink, and to let Casper drink, too. It was already getting warm. Then, all of a sudden, Casper goes on the alert, you know what I mean?” Joe Tursky turned to face Kendra. “He just went still as a stone, like he was watching something down the path. And then before I knew it, he just took off. Like a shot.”
“He wasn’t on a lead?” asked Kendra.
“He had been—you just can’t let a dog like that run free—but I’d dropped the lead while we were drinking. So I took off after him, calling him, but he’s a lot faster than I am, you know what I mean? You try to keep in shape, but . . .” He shrugged.
“But you caught up with him . . .” Adam gestured for Tursky to continue.
“Yeah, a minute or two later. He was barking his head off. Had some guy backed up against a tree and Casper was barking like nobody’s business.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I apologized all over the place—the guy was obviously scared shitless. I grabbed Casper’s leash and the guy just took off. White as a sheet, he was, and shaking like a leaf.”
“Can you describe him?” Kendra opened the file in front of her so that she, but not Joe Tursky, could see the sketch that lay within.
“Six feet or a little better. Dark hair, curly in the front. Wearing dark jeans, dark shirt, like a polo shirt.” Tursky paused to recall.
“Had you seen him before?” Adam exchanged a glance with Kendra. So far it sounded like their man.
“Not before, but I saw him again on the way out of the park. I had Casper on a short lead coming up that last ridge, where all the paths converge, that’s where I saw him. I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me. He jumped near out of his skin when he saw Casper.”
“Mr. Tursky, does this look anything like the man you saw in the park?” Kendra slid a copy of her drawing across the table.
Pulling a worn brown eyeglass case out of the inner pocket of the light jacket that lay across the arm of the chair, Tursky put them on and studied the sketch.
“Yeah, that’s him.” Tursky nodded.
“Please. It’s very important that you look at the sketch very