“He had a doctor’s appointment,” Baker added.
I nodded, and my hand drifted to where my gall bladder was currently trying to tell me something. Some things just have to learn to be patient.
As I pulled the county car to the curb by Arnett’s driveway, we saw Mark Arnett standing with both fists balled on his hips, garage door agape. He swiveled to regard us, his anger index escalating toward the top of the charts. The little Pontiac was still conspicuously absent.
Chapter Thirty-one
I retrieved a small plastic evidence bag from my briefcase.
“At what point do you have to call for a warrant?” Estelle asked.
“When our friend,” and I nodded toward Mark Arnett, who apparently believed that if he glared long enough, the Pontiac would reappear, “decides not to cooperate. I’m hoping that won’t happen.” I made gloving motions. “So, kid gloves.” I counted her question as great progress.
With the car door open, a heavy, throbbing exhaust note attracted my attention, and I looked down the street to see Bob Torrez’s pickup cruising toward us. A ’69 Chevy 4x4, it had been battered, bruised, and wrung out by a string of contractors when he had rescued it a couple of years before. He’d scrounged various parts here and there, and referred to the truck as his “junk yard dog.” He’d been on the team for a drug sting in Cruces the year before, and the truck had gone undercover with him.
Torrez eased the pickup to a stop behind my unit. A half a dozen lengths of PVC pipe were lashed to the headache rack and hung back over the tailgate.
Mark Arnett approached us, hands now hidden in his back pockets. “What do you want to do?” He nodded at Torrez as the deputy joined us. “Bobby, how’s it goin’?”
I handed the plastic evidence bag to Arnett, and he examined it for a second or two before asking, “What’s this?” He looked up at me. “I mean I know what it is. What’s the deal?”
“That’s the bullet that killed Larry Zipoli, Mark.”
“You’re shittin’ me.” He turned the bag this way and that, then donned a pair of half glasses and examined it some more. “Looks like a Mountain States,” he offered. “Didn’t come apart, did it.”
“Nope.” I was impressed that someone could just look at a projectile-not even an entire cartridge-and make an educated guess about its manufacturer. Bobby Torrez could, of course, but his gunny knowledge was legendary.
Arnett pushed his glasses up on his nose and squinted. “This son-of-a-bitch don’t have rifling cuts.” He looked up quickly, a little disappointed when he saw that he wasn’t telling us something we didn’t know.
I asked, “You use these?”
For a long moment, Mark Arnett didn’t answer, then he handed the bag back to me. “I use ’em in silhouette matches from time to time. Expensive as hell, for one thing. But they shoot tight, and I like the extra weight. What’s with this, anyhow?”
“You want to show us the ones you use?”
He frowned at me as if I had threatened him with a cattle prod. “Now wait a minute. What are you saying, sheriff?”
“What we’re trying to do is find out as much as we can about the circumstances of Mr. Zipoli’s death, Mark. To do that, we go to the experts whenever we can. Nobody in Posadas knows more about ballistics and the shooting sports than you do, so here I am.” I shook the bag a little, hoping that flattery would get us everywhere. At this preliminary stage, I didn’t want to waste time with a warrant, but I knew that in all likelihood, that was on the horizon.
“I want to know as much as I can about these little bastards, Mark.” I poked a finger at the evidence bag when I said that, and then shook it for emphasis. “I want to know about this. What can you tell me?”
“Other than that each one costs about half a buck? Not a whole lot. I mean, you got what you got, except I don’t understand why there’s no rifling marks.” He peered at the slug again, rolling it this way and that under the plastic. “Not even a scuff.”
“Worn out barrel?”
He scoffed. “Had to be damn near a shotgun, then. And that wouldn’t give the kind of accuracy you’re talkin’ about-unless the whole thing was some kind of gross accident.”
“We weren’t thinking along the lines of accident,” I said.
Mark regarded me for a long moment, then jerked his head toward the door. “Well, come on inside and let me show you.” He started to turn toward the house, then stopped short. “But none of this is going to find my boy, Sheriff. That’s what’s important to me right now, not some damn bullet. I need to find his ass before he gets himself into a round of trouble.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I said. “We’re going to find him, Mark. Take my word on that. Zipoli’s death has upset a lot of youngsters…neighbor kids, family friends, neighbors, you name it. Right now, Mo doesn’t know what to think. When he’s done chewing it all over, he’ll be back.”
Mark nodded dubiously. “I got the feeling that you know more about this than you’re telling me, Sheriff. You guys are looking for my son. Is he involved somehow? Is that it? Are you going to tell me what I need to know?”
“I wish I could, Mark. I wish Mo was standing right here, right now, explaining himself to you. But he’s not. So we do what we can.”
Arnett sighed and shrugged. “Come on in.” We trooped into the house after him, taking the side door from the driveway. A steep stairway plunged down from the first landing, another shorter one angling up to the kitchen. We headed down into the basement.
A pool table sporting a rich green cover occupied much of the floor space, with a stereo system mounted on one wall that looked as if it was capable of busting windows. A selection of chairs, a rack of pool cues, an apartment-sized fridge and a variety of other toys jammed the basement-not a bad haven for a contractor after a day simmering on a hot roof. I skirted the stereo and eyed a CD case lying on a shelf. I flipped it over and saw that the recording included Frankie Lane’s “Mule Train,” along with a selection of other favorites.
“Is this Mo’s?” I glanced down the table of contents. “‘Liberty Valance,’ ‘High Noon’…this is all good stuff.”
Arnett’s laugh was immediate and disgusted. “Hell no. If you can understand the words, it ain’t his. Borrow it if you want.” I put the CD back, making a mental note that such wonderful things existed and that I should own a copy. Arnett reached up to the top of a door frame at the far end of the room and found a key-one of those magical hiding places that no one could possibly discover-and unlocked both knob and deadbolt.
When he snapped on the light, I saw a neat room about a dozen feet square, with a large safe in one corner. The safe was concreted in place, sunken up to its ankles, not about to be hauled away by some ambitious burglar. It must have taken Mark Arnett and a crew of friends a lot of sweat and several cases of beer to install the unit.
Twisting at the waist, I took the opportunity to scan the room, fascinated. Arnett’s inventory of ammunition reloading components was neatly organized on shelves above the work bench, and revealed a significant investment in this hobby. A series of reloading presses were bolted to a three-inch thick laminated table top, and on the opposite side of the room, three steel wall cabinets were mounted at a convenient height.
I bent slightly and examined a wooden loading block on the bench that held a hundred cartridge cases, little pudgy bodies that necked down sharply to a small caliber bullet. Of the hundred cartridges, thirty were finished. Bob Torrez glanced at them and knew exactly what he was looking at. I looked at the ammo, not recognizing a damn thing.
“I have a bench rest match next week,” Arnett explained. “Up in Ratón.” He saw the puzzlement on my face. “Those are six millimeter PPC’s. That ain’t what you got from Zipoli.” He reached past me. “This is what you want to see.” The unopened red box of Mountain States bullets that he slipped off the shelf featured a fifty-six dollar price tag from George Payton’s shop. He split the tape and opened the box, setting it down on the counter. I lifted the slip of paper that covered the bullets and regarded the shiny array of brass-jacketed slugs, each with a crisp lead tip. “Just like you got there, sheriff. 170-grain flat point, 308 caliber.”