The Dead Man at Doyle Saddle

by Charles Williamson

  “We’re treating Dr. Cantor’s death as a probable homicide; a drug connection might be very relevant. What can you tell me?” Drugs, money, love, or hate are responsible for most premeditated homicides.

  “This is part of an ongoing investigation involving several Phoenix pharmacies that have sold an unusual amount of Oxycodone, the chemical name of the narcotic in the time release version of the prescription drug OxyCotin. Addicts dissolve the pure Oxycodone tablets and inject the drug. Because so many of the prescriptions were from Dr. Cantor, we were going to interview him when he got back from his hunting trip. The DEA systematically monitors pharmacies that sell unusual amounts of any of the morphine-like drugs. Oxycodone is at the top of the list. The abuse problem started in Appalachia where they called it hillbilly heroin, but in the past ten years, it’s spread to affluent and celebrity groups here in the west. That’s just the group that Dr. Cantor served.”

  “Was there any chance he knew you were looking into his prescription practices?”

  “No one from our office had contact with Dr. Cantor, but we’ve had our agents going over the pharmacies’ records for the past week. Even though he was out of town, someone might have tipped him that we were looking at things. Could his death have been a suicide?”

  “The rifle we found with his body had not been fired. Dr. Cantor was shot right through the forehead with a high-powered rifle from a substantial distance away. It looks like he was ambushed.”

  “I will help any way I can if you’ll keep me informed of your progress,” Emerson said. I wondered if he was sincere. He didn’t sound like it.

  “Was enough Oxycodone sold to generate a lot of money?” I asked, thinking of the pile of cash in Dr. Cantor’s gun safe.

  “His problem prescriptions would have a street value of $75,000 to $100,000.”

  I thanked Emerson for the information and promised to keep in touch.

  The amount was not peanuts, but I didn’t think a successful plastic surgeon would risk his license over it. He might have been helping a friend who was addicted or he might have just been liberal in prescribing painkillers for his affluent clients. It’s just another bit of information that might lead nowhere.

  CHAPTER TEN

  After I hung up, I noticed June standing quietly beside my door. She seemed reluctant to enter. “Sir, The same man sat next to Mrs. Cantor on both flights. They were in first class seats.”

  “Excellent. What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Dr. Steven Boatwright, I checked on him; he’s one of Dr. Cantor’s partners in the Scottsdale Cosmetic Surgery Clinic.”

  “Good work, June.” I smiled in a way that I hoped was not intimidating. “Can you do a search for additional information on both Dr. Cantor and Dr. Boatwright; also, see what you can find on Alexis Cantor? I’m interested in their credit records as well as their criminal records. And June, please call me Mike. This is not a military organization where you need to call me sir.”

  She nodded and hurried off.

  I returned calls from two guides that I’d not been able to reach the previous day, but the conversations added nothing to the case. At 9:30, Sean came to provide an update on his meetings with hunters.

  “Captain, I didn’t find anyone who actually saw Dr. Cantor on Sunday, but I found two hunters who also used the Weatherford Trailhead. They confirmed that Dr. Cantor’s truck was parked at the trailhead when they arrived before sunrise on Sunday. He must have started very early to reach Doyle Saddle by dawn. He would have needed the headlamp we found is his pocket to start his hike that early.”

  “Was there anything unusual in any of their comments?” I asked.

  “Maybe so. Two of the hunters who were north of Humphreys claimed they heard as many as ten closely spaced shots about forty minutes before dawn. They were pissed because there’s no hunting permitted until sunrise.”

  “I take it that would have stirred up the elk, made them wary,” I said.

  “Damn right. If I’d waited years to get an elk tag, I’d be furious too. No one uses ten shots to take down an elk. It was a deliberate attempt to spoil the hunt by spooking the elk.”

  “Perhaps, to spook them into crossing Doyle Saddle. It might have been part of Dr. Cantor’s strategy.”

  “Damn it; if he did that, I’m not sorry he’s dead. What kind of a bozo uses that sort of trick and hurts everyone else’s chances?” If Sean was that annoyed with the tactic, maybe another hunter was mad enough to shoot the man who was spoiling everyone else’s hunt. It was still a possibility if he had help.

  “Dr. Cantor’s rifle had not been fired,” I said. “It might have been his murderer or a partner he hired to get the herd moving. The shots would spook the herd and get them up near Doyle Saddle at least forty minutes earlier than normal. The killer might have taken down that bull elk just before dawn and then waited for Dr. Cantor to show up and examine it.”

  “It sounds like you think this was premeditated. Is there anything else I can do to help with the case?” Sean asked.

  “I’d like you to go to the guard station at the entrance to Forest Highlands and get their records of every non resident who entered the neighborhood this past week. The sign-in sheets will indicate which homes they were going to visit. We’re looking for anyone who saw Dr. Cantor. Also, find out which property owners were in Flagstaff this past weekend. Once you have the lists, find phone numbers and addresses for everyone who might have seen Dr. Cantor. I’d like to talk with them.”

  Sean grinned, happy that he was still part of the investigation. I updated him on everything that I’d learned before he left for Forest Highlands.

  I had a meeting with the district attorney about another case, which took up much of the morning. When I returned, I found a report on my desk from June. Neither Dr. Cantor nor Dr. Boatwright had criminal records although Dr. Boatwright had four speeding tickets in the two years he’d lived in Arizona.

  Dr. Cantor was thirty-four and Mrs. Cantor was thirty-three. Dr. and Mrs. Cantor’s financial reports indicated that they had excellent credit, and tended to pay off their credit cards each month. Their highest credit balance had been to the Scottsdale branch of Tiffany’s. There had been $110,000 charged last December that was paid in full within three months. There was certainly no sign of the financial distress that would encourage Dr. Cantor to be involved in illicitly prescribing drugs. From this report, I could not tell the size of the estate, but the mortgage on the Paradise Valley home was only $490,000, much less than its likely value in that location. They had no mortgage on their Flagstaff home, which was certainly worth more than two million.

  On the other hand, Dr. Boatwright was only twenty-nine and not in good financial shape. He still had over a hundred thousand in student loan debt and high credit card balances on which he paid the minimum each month. He was not married and lived in an apartment in Scottsdale near the clinic. He leased a Porsche Boxster on a five-year lease; it was a car that would have cost more than sixty thousand.

  There was a hand-written note from June suggesting that I check a web address. When I entered it, it was the homepage of the Scottsdale Cosmetic Surgery Clinic. Five smiling doctors, one woman and four men, stood in front of the contemporary building that was the clinic. All the doctors seemed young and attractive looking; however, even in that group Steven Boatwright stood out. He was a head taller than Dr. Cantor and looked as if he should be playing a young doctor on daytime TV.

  The site gave profiles on each physician. Dr. Cantor had graduated from the City University of New York and attended John Hopkins Medical School. He’d done his residency at a large hospital near downtown in Phoenix. Dr. Boatwright had graduated from the University of Texas and gone to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. He’d done his residency at a large hospital in Houston. All the physicians in the practice had impressive lists of certifications and awards.

  The website had a series of before and after photos of both men and women. The cosmetic re
sult appeared extraordinary, but digital photos are easy to manipulate. I noticed that in most of the ‘before’ photos the people had serious expressions. In every ‘after’ photo they were smiling. I wondered if the big grins were a result of excessive doses of Oxycodone.

  I decided that I would like to confirm that Steven Boatwright and Alexis Cantor had actually stayed together in San Diego. I assumed that if they flew to San Diego first class they would not have stayed in a cheap motel. I did a hotel search on Expedia and started calling the most expensive first. In fifteen minutes, I’d found that Mr. and Mrs. Steven Boatwright had stayed in the Del Coronado on Coronado Island across the harbor from San Diego. They’d been in an ocean view suite at $675 per night.

  I talked to the duty manager after he confirmed my identity by calling the general extension of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department and asking for me. He located the desk clerk who handled their checkout. The woman the clerk knew as Mrs. Boatwright fitted my description of Mrs. Cantor. He remembered her well because she had been the one who paid the $7,000 hotel bill in cash.

  Although an affair with a husband’s colleague was not proof of a murder, the couple was now on the top of my suspect list. They might have had a motive, but neither was likely to have killed Dr. Cantor in person. I needed to find the shooter if I was going to break this case.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As I enjoyed a barbequed pork sandwich that Margaret had made from leftovers, Sheriff Taylor came to my office for an update.

  “Mike, I have a call from the Arizona Republic. They’re doing a front page story tomorrow about the progress in the Cantor shooting. What’s the latest, and how much information are you ready to release?”

  “I’m beginning to feel this was a murder-for-hire. At the time of the shooting, Mrs. Cantor was shacked up with one of the victim’s partners. I have nothing definitive yet, and of course, we can’t release that.”

  “Are we ready to say that this was a homicide?” he asked.

  “I guess we could say we are investigating it as if it’s a homicide. An independent expert, Pop Cramer, maintains it could not possibly have been a hunting accident. You might mention that without naming him. Cantor was shot right between the eyes; such a perfect shot is not likely to be merely bad luck on the doctor’s part.”

  “Anything else you want in the article?” he asked.

  “You might mention that we would like anyone who was at the Weatherford Trailhead Sunday morning to contact us. Something that should not be mentioned yet was that Dr. Cantor was the subject of a DEA investigation into excessive prescriptions of Oxycodone.”

  “No shit; you never really know about these big shot doctors.” He nodded and left.

  Professional hits have always given me problems. They probably represent less than five percent of the murder cases I have investigated, but they have the lowest rate of successful resolution. Even when I have found the shooter, the professional killer would seldom finger the person who hired him. The man who killed Dr. Cantor was a phenomenal shot, and that indicated an expert with a rifle. If my hunch was correct, the murderer would not stay around Flagstaff waiting to be caught. He already would be a thousand miles away enjoying his fee.

  I’d solved one similar case by tracing the fee. That suspect had withdrawn twenty thousand dollars in cash over a period of three months, keeping each withdrawal below the Treasury Department’s reporting limit. We’d won the murder conviction even though we never found the contract killer who pulled the trigger. In that successful prosecution, there had been repeated threats and bad blood that supported the prosecution’s case.

  I saw a large amount of cash in his gun safe at the Cantors’ Flagstaff home, and that Alexis Cantor had paid a $7,000 hotel bill in cash. Since the Cantor family seemed to have large supplies of the green stuff around the house, Alexis Cantor might not have needed to look far for the money to pay for a hit.

  I spent the next two hours calling everyone on the poker list that Hank Mayer had provided. I wanted to know exactly who was aware of Dr. Cantor’s hunting strategy. They had played poker until nearly 2:00. I didn’t regard them as suspects because they had learned of the strategy Saturday evening, too late to arrange for a contract killer to be in position for the shooting at dawn.

  The only people that I’d identified who knew of Dr. Cantor’s plan to hunt from Doyle Saddle in time to act were Mrs. Cantor and the guide that he had hired to help him find his trophy elk, Joe Banning. The guide claimed he was guiding a hunter twenty miles away on Sunday morning, but I wasn’t ready to dismiss him as a suspect. He was probably a good enough shot to have taken down that elk with a single round through the heart and to put a bullet through Dr. Cantor’s forehead from a substantial distance. I needed to talk with him in person and verify his alibi.

  I called Banning and asked him to come to my office at 4:00. I wanted to see him face to face as he told his story.

  The other possibility was that someone followed Dr. Cantor, but that did not explain why the shooter waited until the victim climbed all the way up to nearly 11,000 feet. It also did not fit with the trophy elk that was found near the body.

  I phoned the Forest Highlands Guard Station and got the name of the man who’d been on duty when Dr. Cantor left for his hunting trip. When I called the home of Gilbert Michaels, he sounded groggy, but he was alert enough when he realized that the Sheriff’s Department was on the line. I explained that I was tracing the last hours of Dr. Cantor’s life and asked if he had seen the doctor leave early on Sunday.

  “Sure, Doc Cantor left the neighborhood about 3:30 in his truck. He was excited about getting to Doyle Saddle to shoot a really big bull elk that hangs out there.”

  “So you talked with him that morning?” I asked.

  “No he just waved, but he looked excited. All the guards knew about his plan to get that trophy elk. He mentioned it every time he entered the gate. When owners leave, the gate opens automatically, and we don’t usually talk with them. The Doc always spoke when he drove in, real personable fellow, terrible accident.”

  “Did you notice anyone else around when he came through the gate? Perhaps someone was waiting on 89A to follow him.” I thought it was a long shot but worth a try.

  “The only vehicle that hangs around waiting is one of your Sheriff’s Department Explorers. I’ve seen him hiding just down the road from the entrance many times. I think one of your deputies wants to catch our residents or their guests who’ve been enjoying a Saturday night out. Dirty trick if you ask me.”

  “Was the deputy waiting Sunday morning when Doctor Cantor left?”

  “Probably not at 3:30, but he was there part of the night for sure. Now that I think about it, a vehicle may have followed Doc Cantor as he headed north on 89A; at least I saw some other car lights.”

  “Who else knew that Doctor Cantor was going to hunt at Doyle Saddle Sunday morning?”

  “All of the guards knew about it. As I said, he was real proud of his plan. I first heard about it when I went on duty Thursday evening.”

  I added the names of all the Forest Highlands guards to my list. “Did you mention it to anyone else?”

  “I meet with some other night shift guys for breakfast at Denny’s every morning. I described it to them on Friday. One avid hunter thought it was a good idea, but he doubted that it was strictly legal by the Game and Fish Department rules.”

  I added the names of the five breakfast friends to my list. The list was getting unwieldy. If the plan was known by all five Forest Highlands guards on Thursday, it could have spread all over town before Sunday morning. While I doubted that the guards had anything to do with the crime, the widespread knowledge of Dr. Cantor’s exact hunting spot reduced that line of investigation’s usefulness.

  By 3:30 that afternoon, I had called all of the other guards and added a total of fourteen names to the list of people who knew that Dr. Cantor would be at Doyle Saddle at dawn on Sunday. The list was likely to grow.


  I decided that I needed to interview the people who worked with Doctor Cantor. Some of them might have known about his hunting plans as well. I also wanted a chance to size up Dr. Boatwright in person. I phoned the clinic and talked with the business manager. She agreed to set up meetings for tomorrow with the physicians, nurses, and support people. She would schedule 15-minute meetings with everyone available beginning at 9:30.

  Promptly at 4:00, the hunting guide, Joe Banning, arrived. He reminded me of the Grizzly Adams character from the 1970’s TV series when I was a kid. He was only slightly smaller than the stuffed grizzly in Dr. Cantor’s cabin. Banning looked like he would be more likely to kill you by ripping your head off than by staging a complicated ambush. However, he was the man who had encouraged Dr. Cantor to be at Doyle Saddle at dawn last Sunday.

  “I’m sorry about Dr. Cantor’s death. He was a pretty nice fellow, and the accident gives hunters a bad name.” His tuba voice sounded sincere.

  “Did you read the account of his death in the Daily Sun?” I was curious about how much he already knew, and I wanted to determine how much I should say.

  He nodded. “It sounded like he got his prize elk but got hit by a stray round from another hunter even though that seems unlikely to me. The paper didn’t give much detail.”

  “The elk was downed with a single shot to the heart, and Dr. Cantor took a single round to the middle of his forehead.” I paused to judge Banning’s reaction. He didn’t say a thing, and I could not read the expression on his bearded face.

  I continued, “You’re a professional guide and probably an expert shot. What are the odds of both the elk and Dr. Cantor being killed by stray shots at the perfect kill spots?”

  “About a billion to one against,” he replied. There was still no readable expression on his face. I would hate to play poker with Mr. Banning.