“He’ll find shelter with a friend or relative.”
“He’ll retreat to a favorite private spot-a hide-a-way.”
“He’ll try to cross the border.”
“He’ll find a quiet place and kill himself.”
“He’ll…”
No one, including his immediate family, could give us an intelligent guess about the boy’s intentions or location. As far as we could discover, Maurice “Mo” Arnett wasn’t buying into any of the neighbors’ predictions. While every available eyeball was looking for a gold Pontiac, license Charlie Lincoln Thomas four nine nine, we kept plugging away closer to home.
A sweep of the boy’s room showed us nothing beyond a nest for a surprisingly neat teenager, and that in itself made me uneasy. Mo Arnett had a love affair with the Chevrolet Corvette and old steam locomotives. A lad of contrasts, for sure. His choice of art included sixteen framed photographs of Corvette models from the car’s clumsy introduction in the early 50s to the latest heart-thumping twin-turbo version. To compliment those, six photos of huge late-vintage steam locomotives were gathered in framed elegance over the head of his bed.
The clothes in his closet were orderly, and there was nothing hidden under the socks and underwear in his bureau. If he’d left with no intention of returning, it wasn’t clear what he might have taken with him.
A student desk nestled under one window with a view out across the street. Sitting at it, I had a clear view of the Zipolis’ to the right, and Raught’s to the left. Did Mo sit here and stew, watching the fat man go about his home chores, beer can habitually in hand? Did he watch the other kids gather when it was time for a boating and skiing expedition? Did he watch Jim Raught grubbing among the cacti?
The desk drawers yielded nothing beyond the usual-pencils, pen, a calculator, a tiny teddy bear apparently hibernating for a while, a broken ream of printer paper. I sat in the straight-backed chair and regarded the modest computer and its accessories. I was willing to bet that there would be no secrets there, either. “You know how to run this thing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Turn it on for me.”
She did so, and in a few moments I could see that the list of files appeared as innocuous as everything else in the room. “We’ll want to take this with us and do a thorough search of the drives,” I said. “Dollars to donuts says we won’t find anything, but we have to look.”
A single four-shelf bookcase held a couple dozen slip cases for video games-a conservative collection that leaned toward auto racing-a handful of books that ranged from fantasy to those study guides that students use so they won’t have to read the entire novel, and a modest collection of magazines, again leaning heavily toward muscle cars but with a few model railroading issues thrown into the mix. And true to motif, one shelf showcased a plastic model of a late 70’s era ‘Vette, its hood up to show the chromed engine. At the shelf’s opposite end, sitting on a twelve-inch section of track, was an HO gauge steam locomotive bearing the Santa Fe logo.
We found no journal, no diary, no stash of documents illuminating a teenager’s secret life, no little notebook full of sinister plans or names on a hit list, no Polaroid snapshots of either victims or intended victims. I stood at the end of the double bed, surveying the room. “How sad.”
Estelle looked up from her inventory of the closet. “Sir?”
“This place reminds me of a motel room,” I said. “I think about my own kids and the nightmare my wife or I faced when we ventured into their rooms. I mean, the life of a kid is a messy thing.”
She slid the closet door closed gently. “This closet is where they store their Christmas ornaments,” she said.
“And it should be stuffed with his stuff.” She stepped to one side as I slid the closet doors this way and that, double-checking for myself. I pulled a shoe box down off the shelf and opened it to find a pair of baseball shoes, spikes clean and new. “At least there’s a little something,” I said, and tapped each shoe to dislodge anything that might be stashed inside.
“Sir?”
I turned and glanced at Estelle. She reached out with a toe and touched a drawer pull just showing from under the hem of the bed spread. Flipping the spread up, I saw there were actually two brass pulls a yard apart.
“Isn’t that slick,” I said. The “drawer” was actually a piece of three-quarter inch plywood on drawer glides, and it slid out easily. The HO gauge model train layout on the plywood base was neat and organized-nothing fancy, but large enough that the train would be able to negotiate the twists and turns. The thoughtful builder had even engineered two short folding legs on the front edge for further support when the layout was pulled out. I wondered, at the time that Mark Arnett was building the table for his son, if there had been a spark of warmth and camaraderie there.
Estelle dropped to one knee and leaned on the bed with an elbow, taking a closer look. “Not much use,” she said, and reached out to nudge a dust bunny that threatened to block the track.
“He’s not really here, is he.” I glanced at Estelle. “It reminds me of a kid’s room who’s away at college or something. Neat, clean, and unused. A shrink would probably have a field day. God damn sad.”
Another hour was no help in figuring out the enigma that was Mo Arnett, and after Deputy Tom Mears arrived and collected the computer, we left the house. Estelle had been perfectly willing to remain with the Arnetts, or take on any task that I assigned. Her argument was a good one-there was no point in wasting a certified officer as a babysitter for the family. Nor her either, I reminded her. And I sure as hell didn’t want Miss Reyes driving around by herself, in her own private vehicle, playing cop. Badly as we needed personnel, she’d have to be content to sit and watch.
I stopped the county car at the intersection of Bustos and Grande, and in the rearview mirror watched a small group of kids-maybe ten year olds-trooping out with fists full of junk food.
“Where did he go,” I mused, not expecting an answer.
“Assuming he’s not in a shallow grave somewhere,” Estelle said, and I looked at her in surprise.
“I don’t think so.” I didn’t want to think that. Larry Zipoli’s loss needed to end this tangle. Still, Estelle was right. Mo Arnett might have seen someone fire the shot, and been seen in turn. All the firearm evidence weighed against that, but we’d have to wait on some complex lab analysis by the state lab. I was half certain that Deputy Robert Torrez had been blowing smoke when he said the powder residue in the rifle’s chamber could be matched to the residue welded into the base of the bullet. We sure as hell couldn’t do that.
What we could do, however, and Bob Torrez was working on the task at that very moment, was compare the firing pin impressions-the face of the firing pin itself, compared to the dent in the cartridge’s primer. No two firing pins were microscopically alike, nor were the dents that they left.
Of course we could do that, but what difference did it make? What mattered was the bullet that the coroner had pulled from Larry Zipoli’s skull. It had to match a weapon for us to make progress. I wasn’t sure we could do that, but I sure as hell didn’t want anyone to know I had doubts.
“What?” I prompted. Estelle’s black eyebrows were furrowed in ferocious concentration. She leafed through her notebook as if she’d misplaced something now suddenly become important.
“I was wondering when Mo took off. What’s his head start?”
“Zipoli was killed Tuesday,” I said. “If Mo pulled the trigger, he drove home, dumped the shell casing back in the box, put the rifle away-didn’t clean it. One swipe with a patch would have thrown a good roadblock in our path, but he didn’t do that. I gotta wonder-but maybe he was just spooked. Or confident. That’s what it seems to me. I mean, why return the shell casing? Clever kid. He’s thinking.” I touched my forehead. “But he doesn’t know that he used the wrong cartridges. How about that. Clever, but dumb as a box of rocks.” I ticked off finger tips with my thumb. “He didn’t go to school, but his parents didn’t report him missing. They probably didn’t know. They didn’t pay attention to where he was on Wednesday during the day, but they think he was home on Wednesday night. He ditches school today, unbeknownst to mom and dad. Sometime today, he takes the car, bound for who the hell knows where.”