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afternoon, when Turner offered to sell Humes his truck. Asked about the red Mustang, Humes said he’d seen it in Turner’s driveway “off and on for the past year or so.”
    In one Kimberly Drive home, cops found Tamara Florence and Thomas Grant (pseudonyms), who were particularly annoyed at being roused in the middle of the night for evacuation. (At four-thirty that morning, the pair were taken to HQ to give a written statement, but were not in a cooperative mood. Although they did give their interviewer their landline and cell phone numbers, they refused to say anything about anything until they got a full night’s sleep. Their written statement was only two words long: Sleeping today .)
    Next door to Florence and Grant, police talked to Jamila Woodberry, who said she was at work and missed everything.
    Police had better luck at the home of Rosa Yaccobashi, who said she’d seen the red Mustang repeatedly in front of Turner’s home “for the last few weeks.” She’d seen that guy they were looking for on several occasions, just sitting in the yard talking to Turner. Police asked Yaccobashi when was the last time she saw Turner.
    “Few days ago,” she said. “He was out on his Harley.”
    “Anybody else come visit him?”
    “Yes, there was another gentleman that stayed with Henry. Big, tall guy, maybe sixty. They rode motorcycles together.”

    Not long after police arrived at the Ling scene, Sheriff Cribb ordered a WANTED poster be created for Stanko, one that included his 1996 mug shot and a photo of Laura Ling’s Mustang. The poster gave a description of Stanko, a description of the car, and said he was wanted for murder and criminal sexual conduct.
    A day later, when Turner’s body was discovered, the poster was updated. The photo of the Mustang was replaced with one of the Mazda, and the line Armed and dangerous, Con man was added.
    Detective Troy Allen Large was armed with the McDonald’s receipt they’d found, and he had located an eyewitness who saw the wanted man returning with a bag of McDonald’s. Using the receipt, which was stamped with the time, as well as the date, Detective Large was able to access and seize surveillance video from the store that showed the killer navigating the fast-food restaurant’s drive-through.

THE BLUE MARLIN
    Behind the wheel of the black pickup, Stephen Stanko left the cul-de-sac in which Turner had lived and headed west—378 to Interstate 20, into the city of Columbia. He’d had a busy night and could really go for a beer. He began looking for an appropriate place to eat and have a drink or two. He stopped at a bar-restaurant on Lincoln Street, not far from the state capitol or the University of South Carolina campus, a steak house called the Blue Marlin.
    It was the kind of place that bragged about the quality of its food: Blue Marlin produced a cuisine that captured perfectly the strange and perhaps mystical concoctions of the Low Country. The story went that the menu evolved from the days of the plantation owners, when the owners, up till then fed with bland European-type fare, smelled and were enticed by the spicy aromas coming out of the Low Country. As their peoples possessed kindred spirits, the Blue Marlin also worked some Louisiana Delta into their cuisine, a strong Cajun and Creole influence.
    Perfect, Stanko thought. He could eat and sit in at the bar for a couple—shoot the breeze. He had a wallet full of Turner and Ling’s cash and was eager to spread it around a little. He was a big man—and big men made the party happen. Finally he had some noticeable affluence, and he could affect a lifestyle he felt was owed to him, a style long overdue. He changed his shirt before going in. He sat at the bar and drank steadily. Repeatedly he bought a round for the house, and quickly became a popular guy. How could one act less like a killer on the run? Though he was even then the subject of a nationwide manhunt, he did not hide. He was boisterous and social.