APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
An IQ of 126, thought Nick. A cool older brother. Cut the growers’ throats? Cut Janelle’s? He remembered the initials CB from the scribbled numbers by her telephone-the guy who’d told him to kiss his ass on the phone. And Bonnett hadn’t been seen since the day after her body was discovered.
Nick flipped through the juvenile court transcripts and looked at the photographs of Cory Bonnett. Good face. Big features, something offhand and hopeful in his expression. Chipped teeth, sun-bleached eyebrows, and a crooked nose. Blond wavy hair to his shoulders. The hippie affectation made him look more like a deranged Round Table knight than a love child. He has been to the yellow cottage. Nick didn’t like the idea of tracking down a criminal with the same IQ as his own.
And he knew that none of these drug world contacts was the Sears, Roebuck customer who bought the Trim-Quick.
Though any of them could have bought or stolen one there or anywhere else.
And any of them could have been the one who raped and murdered Janelle and carried her into the SunBlesst packinghouse on his back.
He thought of large, violent Bonnett and Janelle flying down to Mexico. Being together in her little yellow cottage by the ocean.
He has been to the yellow cottage.
The yellow cottage, thought Nick. Not her yellow cottage. The.
An idea came to him. He went to Captain Frank del Gado’s office. The captain was at his desk reading the Journal.
“Becker. What gives?”
“Did we rent Janelle Vonn’s cottage for her?”
“More or less.”
“And we had a wiretap on the phone?” asked Nick.
“Sure. Court order. She knew. So.”
“Was the cottage miked for surveillance?”
“Yeah. So,” said del Gado.
“I want to hear the tapes.”
“We got hundreds of hours.”
“Good.”
Del Gado dropped the paper and looked at Nick. “I’ll have the dupes on your desk by end of day.”
Harloff came in a minute later, said he talked to Special Agent Hambly over at the bureau. FBI was interested in Janelle’s friends Tim Leary and Roger Stoltz. Leary was high on President Johnson’s new COINTELPRO New Left list. Stoltz was on Johnson’s new COINTELPRO white hate list. Hambly wasn’t working her murder at all.
A Fed working two counterintelligence programs, thought Nick. Glad we got to her place first.
“What’s the Stoltz-Janelle connection?” asked Harloff.
“He helped her get straightened out after the molestations. Off the drugs.”
“Then these Laguna guys got her back on them.”
NICK SPENT an hour watching the ID fingerprint examiners trying to match the partial fingerprint from the packinghouse lock to those of Leary, Fowler, Herald, and Bonnett. The print was only big enough to contain one, maybe two, comparison points. California courts would accept ten points and nothing less.
But two good comparison points was a start. You couldn’t bring them to court, but you could eliminate.
Nick looked at the lock print with his magnifying glass. A nice bifurcation. Clear and unambiguous. Almost certainly a thumb. The criminalists had done a good job on the lift.
Leary was a bust. He had the wrong basic pattern: a loop instead of a whorl. Leary the loop, thought Nick. It figured.
The ID examiner pointed out that Fowler’s booking deputy had used a little too much ink. Some of the spaces were muddy and confused. Nick wondered why they’d let something like that pass. On Fowler’s thumb, Nick couldn’t really tell if he was looking at a ridge ending or a bifurcation or an ink bridge. It looked like a bifurcation more than an ink bridge. The pore pattern was totally obliterated.
Price Herald was a bust, too. A whorl, but a much tighter pattern than the lock print.
The examiner showed Nick that Bonnett had a similar bifurcation on his right thumb whorls, but Nick remembered that Bonnett was left-handed. His left thumb, on the hand he’d logically use to pull off a lock, contained not a bi- but a trifurcation. Still, they had found a comparison point. The distribution of sweat pores was similar but most examiners wouldn’t bring the pore patterns into court.
So Bonnett, maybe. But he hadn’t been seen since the day after Nick had stood in the SunBlesst packinghouse and looked down through the slanting sunlight at Janelle Vonn. Maybe the Laguna cops could give a hand finding him.
Nick had already eliminated the Talon Security guards, Terry Neemal, Jonas Dessinger-who’d been printed on a DUI arrest ten years ago, and brothers Casey and Lenny Vonn.
Jesse Black had never been fingerprinted but his alibi was good.
The trouble was, Janelle’s killer may never have even touched that lock. Nick had no solid connection between the print and what happened that night. Someone could have pulled open that lock hours earlier. Days earlier. Someone with reasons unrelated to Janelle Vonn.
Nick sighed and sat back. Tapped the magnifying glass on the palm of one hand. Thought they should put all the prints on a big computer someday and let it match them up.
Two weeks into my first case, Nick thought. And no suspect.
20
“TWO WEEKS AND no suspect in the Vonn murder,” said sleek Jonas Dessinger. He touched his forehead. “That’s Thursday’s lead story, all editions. And I want to know why our illustrious Sheriff’s Department is holding the Wolfman Neemal but won’t charge him in the murder.”
“You got it,” said Teresa Dessinger. “Yours, Andy.”
Andy nodded. “I’m interviewing Janelle’s sister tonight. Lynette. If it goes well, I’ll have that for Thursday, too. She told me on the phone she had some letters from Janelle.”
Letters she should have given to Nick when he interviewed her, thought Andy. He felt slightly guilty about keeping them a secret from Nick until he read them.
“Ask her how she feels about two weeks and no suspects,” said Jonas. “And I also want a tough editorial on whether or not a homicide detail rookie is the right man to be heading up this case. Laud the O.C. Sheriff’s Department all you want, but isolate the dick and put the floodlights on him. All editions.”
“Wrongheaded,” said Andy. “I won’t touch it.”
Jonas chuckled and snugged his silk suit coat. Then sat back. “Actually, Andy-you have to touch it. You’re going to write it and you’re going to sign it. It will mean something, coming from the Journal’s best crime reporter.”
“And the dick’s brother.”
“Exactly.”
You prick, Andy thought, but held his tongue. Jonas had been even more abrasive than usual since early last week, when Nick and Lobdell had written Janelle’s age in black ink on the associate publisher’s forehead. When Nick told him, Andy had laughed with grand satisfaction. Then seriously cussed out Nick for complicating his job. Nick had seemed more worried about it than he was. Around Jonas, Andy had played deaf and dumb.
“Jone,” said Teresa. “Maybe Andy could write both but leave the editorial unsigned? No reason to set brother against brother like that. Nick gives Andy extra info. He’s valuable to us.”
Jonas eyed his cousin with contempt. Then turned his gaze to Andy. Same gray eyes as Teresa, Andy thought. How could one pair be so brightly beautiful and the other so brutally stupid? He glanced at the associate publisher’s forehead, then away. Wasn’t there still some sign of abrasion, and the dark outline of 19? Almost biblical. Could ask David about it.
“I’ve made my decision, Teresa,” said Jonas. He fiddled with a gold cuff link. “Andy’s writing both and signing both and that’s final. Now, onto ‘Nation,’ then the local editions…”
Andy sank down in his chair a little. Listened to Jonas and the editors and reporters argue whether to lead the “Nation” page with Buzz’s upcoming space walk or Cong artillery pounding Saigon. Watched Teresa take notes and make comments, puzzled that such a smart and organized woman could also be sexually qualmless and practically insatiable. Since they had worked the Oaxacan grass into the routine, their nightly sessions had gone from an hour to two, sometimes three hours. They were going through rubbers and ice cream at an astonishing pace. He was constantly sore and occasionally exhausted. He had begun to wonder if he was satisfying her. And she had said something yesterday evening on the phone to Chas Birdwell that was still bothering him. Something about “Seven Seas time.” Seven Seas was a salad dressing. But the Seven Seas was also a motel in Newport not far from the Journal building. Andy pondered this as Teresa carried the vote for Cong artillery.