Spook’s identity was pretty much established now; some sort of corroborating evidence was all that was missing, and Hickox should be able to supply that. In the days when he still had Colleen, the manhunter in him might’ve chafed at quitting an investigation while parts of it were still hot. Now it just didn’t matter. Employee doing a job, grunt taking orders — that was all he was and all he cared to be.
When he finally reached Mammoth Lakes he found himself in an upscale mountain resort community already teeming with holiday ski crowds. SUVs, vans, ski-laden cars clogged its neatly plowed streets; by the time he maneuvered through the traffic and located the sheriff’s substation, he was better than fifteen minutes late for his appointment.
Lawrence Hickox didn’t seem bothered by the delay. He was in his fifties, ruddy-featured, broad head coated in gray fuzz, friendly manner tempered with reserve. They went into his private office to talk. The reserve faded once Runyon mentioned his background and provided a more detailed rundown on the investigation: two professionals on more or less equal footing.
“Anthony Colton, after all these years,” Hickox said. “I figured him for dead long ago.”
“I would’ve, too, in your place.”
“Pure crazy luck, him squeezing through the dragnet that summer, disappearing without a trace. Seemed like he had to be dead. I mean, he was no Richard Kimble. You know, ‘The Fugitive.’ Colton wasn’t half that smart or resourceful.”
“What kind of man was he?”
“Average. Model citizen until the day he snapped. Lived quietly, no bad habits, never in trouble of any kind. Didn’t hunt or do much hiking or fishing — didn’t have any survivalist skills. I’d love to know how he got out of the Toiyabe after he abandoned his car; we never found anybody who might’ve given him a ride. By all rights a man like Colton, wandering around in that wilderness, ought to’ve been dead inside a week. That’s what I told those TV people that came sucking around.”
“TV people?”
“Scouts for one of those fugitive shows that were popular awhile back — ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ ‘Unsolved Mysteries,’ one of those. They hung around a few days, asked a stream of questions, then went away and we never heard from them again. Maybe my saying Colton must be dead had something to do with it. More likely, they decided the shootings were too cut and dried, or the sex angle too gamy for TV. Two of the victims naked in the sack when they were shot... that’d be hard to adapt for a network show, even these days.”
Runyon had nothing to say to that, just nodded.
“So,” Hickox said. “You’re convinced this dead homeless guy in S.F. is Colton?”
“Everything points to it.” He went into more detaiclass="underline" Spook’s ghosts, the high school yearbook page, the rest of the trail that had led to Mono County. “SFPD didn’t get onto the connection because there was no match when they ran his prints through NCIC.”
“That’s because he was never officially fingerprinted — no military service, no police record, no sensitive job, etcetera. Things were hectic as all hell at the crime scene that first day, people in and out, but we did manage to lift a few clear latents we were reasonably sure were Colton’s. A few others from his office, too. But we had nothing to match them against for verification. Sheriff turned the lot over to the FBI after they came in, but I guess the prints never made it into their database.”
“I saw the body in the morgue,” Runyon said. “Did Colton have a strawberry birthmark on the upper right arm? A scar a couple of inches long under his chin? Three mutilation scars in the genital area?”
“Birthmark rings a bell.” Hickox opened a folder, shuffled through a sheaf of computer printouts. “I pulled up the file after you called. We don’t usually put old cases into the system, even unsolved ones, but I made sure the Colton casefile got saved... Here we go. Birthmark, upper right arm. Doesn’t say if it was strawberry or not, and I don’t recall where the information came from. One of the victims’ relatives, probably.”
“Location seems conclusive enough.”
“Agreed.” Hickox was still studying one of the printouts. “Nothing here about any scars. Did you say mutilation scars in the genital area?”
“Possibly self-inflicted.”
“Suicide attempt? Well, that’d be in character for a man ended up as crazy as you say he was. Bad cuts?”
“Bad enough.”
Hickox shook his head. “That kind down there don’t heal by themselves. He must’ve had professional treatment. And if it was a suicide attempt he’d’ve been held for observation. All that attention... and nobody realized he was a wanted man.”
“It happens,” Runyon said. “People slip through the cracks, homeless and mentally ill more easily than anybody else.”
“Sure, but he kept slipping through for seventeen years, Christ knows how many times. Phenomenal run of luck.”
“Everybody’s luck runs out sooner or later.”
“Yeah. Shot with a forty-one caliber weapon, you said?”
“One bullet, back of the head execution-style.”
“You think whoever did it knew his real identity?”
“We’re not being paid to find out who or why, just the ID.”
“I’m asking your personal opinion.”
“Then yes, that’s what I think. Shooter knew him, had reason to want Anthony Colton dead, not a homeless crazy known as Spook.”
“Seventeen years is a long time to nurse that kind of hate.”
“Not if you were related to one of his victims.”
“That occurred to me, too. Anybody specific in mind?”
“Robert Lightfoot, for one.”
“The wife’s father? I didn’t know he was still alive.”
“Lives in a trailer park in Bridgeport. Had a stroke sometime back, confined to a wheelchair.”
“If he’s in a wheelchair, that lets him out.”
“Not necessarily. He knew Spook was Colton before the shooting. How, I don’t know.” Runyon explained about the phone call to Human Services. “Lightfoot’s involved in the first homicide, if not the second. He threw down on me with a pump gun when I tried to talk to him yesterday.”
“Then you make it a two-man operation?”
“Adds up that way. The shooter somebody with just as much motive to want Colton dead.”
“Another relative?” Hickox said. “Well... maybe. I can think of one who fits the bill.”
“Thomas Valjean?”
Raised eyebrow. “You do dig deep, don’t you? That’s right, Lucas Valjean’s brother. According to him, Colton didn’t just murder one member of his family that day, he murdered three. Father and mother both died within a year or so of the shootings, couldn’t seem to reconcile the loss of their son and just gave up on living. Tom was always a hothead. For a long time afterward he came around the department every few weeks, demanding to know why Colton still hadn’t been caught. Once he pitched a scene and we had to put him in a cell to cool off.”
“Sounds like a man capable of violence.”
“Oh, yeah. Beat up a drunk in a bar fight one time, put him in the hospital. Arrested another time for poaching deer out of season. Big hunter. Collected guns, too, come to think of it.”
“You remember if he has a large facial mole? Next to his nose, left side.”
“Mole? That’s right, sure, Tom has one.”
“A man answering that description was in the city a few days before the shooting, hunting for Spook.”