“It looks like a common font,” Roth said.
“How can you be sure?”
“I do the monthly newsletter for my kid’s soccer league,” Roth said, looking at it again. “In fact, I use this typeface all the time. It’s called Arial Narrow.”
“Did the techs lift any prints?”
“Not from the note or envelope,” Roth replied. “But there are lots of partials from the car.”
“I need to have the carcass examined.”
“Sure thing. We use a vet here in town who does a good job with animal forensics. I’ll have it dropped off after we finish up with the inspection at the lab. But from first look, Fido was probably left outside for a couple of days after he was killed. The techs found some dirt and pine needles matted in the dried blood on his fur.”
“That’s good to know,” Ramona said. “A trace evidence analysis might give us a general idea where the perp stashed the dog. Can you arrange to have the vehicle towed to Santa Fe? I don’t think Kaplan will want to drive it home. Not until it’s fumigated at least.”
“You got it,” Roth said, giving her the once-over for the second time.
Ramona smiled tightly in response, left Roth in the hot sun, went to her unit, cranked up the air conditioning, and started calling the off-duty attendants on her cell phone.
She hit pay dirt on the second call. Yesterday afternoon, a man driving a van had entered the lot only to drive out after a few minutes. As a precaution, the attendant had written down the van’s license plate number on the lot ticket.
Ramona made an appointment to interview the attendant, hung up, and went immediately to the manager’s office to search for the ticket. Wearing gloves, she went through the date and time stamped tickets until she found it. She slipped it into an envelope, and called in the license number from her unit. The plate had been stolen three weeks ago from a car in Socorro, eighty miles south of Albuquerque.
“We’re almost done here,” Roth said with a big smile, as he slid into the passenger seat next to her. “Want to grab some lunch?”
“Not today.”
“You don’t take meal breaks?”
“I’ve got work to do,” Ramona said, hoping Roth would take the hint and go away.
“We still don’t know how the perp got in the car.”
“I’m working on it, Detective,” Ramona said flatly.
Roth got the message and shrugged. “Hey, let me know how it turns out.” He handed Ramona his card. “The vet’s name is on the back. I’ll have our lab get a report up to you by tomorrow.”
“Ask him to rush it,” Ramona said.
“Anything for a fellow officer.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
Ramona left Roth and went to meet up with Officer Neal and Norm Kaplan. When she’d secured Potter’s keys into evidence, only one car key had been on the ring. She was betting Kaplan would tell her that, just like any other couple, both men carried keys to each other’s cars. The perp must have taken it after shooting Potter.
Which meant that from the start everything the perp had done had been carefully thought out. She wondered if Kaplan was the next target. It wasn’t far-fetched to think so. But why, was the unanswered question. And what did the perp have planned for the dog’s severed head?
She switched the radio frequency to the secure channel, keyed the microphone, asked for Lieutenant Molina by his call sign, and brought him up to date when he answered.
At state police headquarters, just a bit further down Cerrillos Road from Kerney’s office, State Police Officer Russell Thorpe was pumped. After several hours of intensive, detailed questioning, Jack and Irene Burke’s description of the man in the blue van had yielded a good sketch of the subject. Thorpe asked the couple to look at mug shots, which they willingly agreed to do, and left them with a technician to scroll through the department’s computerized data files.
At the lab, he checked to see if the tests had been completed on the bullets removed from Kerney’s horse, and got more good news: the rifling of the spent. 38-caliber rounds matched a dented, partially flattened bullet that had been retrieved earlier in the morning near the Potter homicide scene. Forensic evidence now conclusively tied both cases together. Thorpe took the stairs two steps at a time and asked to see Chief Baca.
Ushered quickly into Andy’s office by the receptionist, Thorpe stood in front of the desk, handed over the artist’s sketch of the suspect, and gave the chief his news, dampening an almost overwhelming eagerness to blurt it out. Although he was hardly a seasoned veteran, he had no intention of looking like a bonehead rookie in front of Baca.
Andy smiled when Thorpe finished his report. “This is good,” he said. “Things are starting to come together. One of Chief Kerney’s detectives phoned in a sighting of the blue van at a parking lot near the Albuquerque airport, with plates stolen out of Socorro County. The driver left a decapitated dog in a vehicle belonging to Potter’s lover.”
Russell felt stupidly out of the loop. “Sir?” he asked, hoping that would be enough of a hint to get some clarification from the chief.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “Let me bring you up to speed. The dog was Potter’s lost mixed-breed collie, and it was left with another threatening note to Kerney. At this point we don’t know if the perp has targeted Potter’s lover as his next victim or is just playing mind games with Chief Kerney. An APB went out on the van thirty minutes ago.”
Thorpe nodded.
“Make a copy of the sketch, leave the original with my secretary, get down to Albuquerque, and hook up with Detective Pino. She’s about to meet with a witness. See if that person can confirm that our perp drove that van. I’ll have Santa Fe PD dispatch let Pino know you’re on the way.”
“I’ve got the Burkes looking at mug shots,” Thorpe said.
“I’ll put an agent with them,” Andy replied. “Call me as soon as you know something one way or the other.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when you get back, report to Santa Fe Police headquarters. You’re on this case until further notice.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’ve earned the assignment, Thorpe,” Andy said, hesitating as he reached for the phone. “When Kerney was my chief deputy, he told me you had the makings of a good officer, and he was right.”
Ramona Pino waited for Thorpe’s arrival at a small city park near a technical college, within easy driving distance of the Albuquerque airport. Except for a busy one-way street that bordered the park and funneled traffic from the downtown core of the city, it was a pretty spot with big shade trees and a thick carpet of grass.
Norm Kaplan had freaked over the news that the dead dog was a Border collie. Kaplan had given the dog to Potter as an anniversary present. After calming the man down, Ramona had asked who knew about his flight home. Kaplan swore he’d told only Sal Molina, Potter’s secretary, and the woman who managed his antique store. A call to the store manager revealed that some unnamed officer had phoned yesterday to confirm Kaplan’s flight information.
Ramona checked in with Sal Molina, who validated her suspicion that the call was bogus. But how did the perp know which parking lot Kaplan had used? Maybe he’d just cruised all of them until he found Kaplan’s car. There weren’t that many, so it would have taken only a couple of hours at most to make the rounds.
While she waited, she spoke to the pathologist who’d examined Potter’s body. The entry and exit wounds weren’t aligned, and the exit wound was larger and more irregularly shaped, which was due to the bullet hitting the sternum. The path of the slug through Potter’s body could mean the killer was smaller in height than his victim, but the pathologist wasn’t about to bet on it.
Thorpe arrived, and while Pino looked over the sketch and the information about the blue GMC van, he caught her up on the forensic results from the examination of the bullets.
Ramona stifled any reaction. Under different circumstances, she would’ve been pleased to know she’d found an important piece of evidence that tied the perp to two crimes. But the news paled in comparison to yesterday’s screw-ups.