One Perfect Shot

by Steven F Havill

  “Okay.”

  “The original retablos disappeared in the art theft with several other important pieces four years ago. No trace since.”

  I handed the photos back to her. “I’m impressed, although not with the timing of all this. Look, we’ve got a missing kid, maybe armed and dangerous. The saints can look after themselves for a little while longer.”

  “Did Mr. Arnett have any notions?” Her easy change of subject suggested that she was easy with relegating the saints to the back burner.

  “None. So we start digging. Are you ready for that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not suggesting that we’re going to forget all this.” I waved a hand at the photos she was sorting back into her briefcase. “But right now, the good judge is signing a warrant for us, and that’s where we’re headed…to take Mo’s life apart and see what we can find.”

  She nodded, almost eagerly sure enough, but I could see the resignation just the same.

  A few minutes later, with a fresh warrant in hand, we talked with his parents, now sitting hand-in-hand on the living room sofa while officers upset their household. Mark had given up blustering and promising a punch, and now had deflated a couple of sizes. We talked with Mo’s little sister, and finally elicited from fiesty little Maureen the evaluation that Mo was decidedly “a creep.” Of course, to a fourth grader, most of the world was full of creeps. Mindy ‘Mom’ Arnett’s favored expression was, “I just don’t understand this.”

  We discovered that Mo’s life wasn’t an open book. That was scary. Mo Arnett was truly a stranger in his own house. We had heard lots of helpful gossip from others.

  “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.”

  “He would have had to leave after his parents both went to work,” Estelle said.

  “Certainly, unless the Arnetts were so numb they didn’t bother to check the boy this morning—or open the garage to see that the car is gone. I think it’s likely that he left after they did, though. Mom and Dad go off to work this morning, and the boy is home…we assume.”

  There’s a limit to how long you can park at an intersection, even when it’s a cop car. I pulled 310 out of my lane and idled to the curb. Two cars—what amounts to a traffic jam in Posadas—slid by, both drivers looking over at me curiously. Or perhaps my passenger.

  “It’s now five forty-five,” I added. “To guess at an answer to your question, the boy could have a nine or ten hour head start. How scary is that. He could be…” I shrugged. “You name it. He could be anywhere.”

  “I’m wondering why he waited so long before taking off.”

  “Well, think about it. For a while, maybe he thought he’d pulled it off. Keep mum, just like a school kid. He didn’t even have to say, ‘I didn’t do it!’.” I shrugged. “There’s also the possibility that he didn’t know what he did, that somehow, he didn’t even see Larry Zipoli inside that grader. He didn’t walk over to check, and later in the day, when he heard what happened, he’s petrified. He doesn’t know who knows what. We started talking to his buddies today, right? This morning, in fact. We stopped Tom Pasquale out on West Bustos. What time did we do that?”

  Damned if she didn’t know right where that particular notebook page was. “Nine fifty-five, sir.”

  I reached for my aluminum clip board and scanned my own log for verification. She was right.

  “You think young Mr. Pasquale called Mo? I mean, he got stopped by the cops—that’s news, right? That’s good stuff. Call a friend and tell ’em you got stopped for rolling a stop sign on a bike. How cool is that. But Tommy didn’t say that he reached Mo this morning, or that he talked with him.”

  “Very likely, sir. If he knew that Mo had not gone to school either.”

  “Well, shit. There’s that.” I frowned. “But regardless, by Thursday morning, Mo would have to be living under a rock not to know about the death. Time to split. Time to run. Five or six hours ago, maybe. Sixty-five miles an hour in that Pontiac, and he’s three hundred miles away.”

  “To where, sir?”

  I laughed. “That’s why we need your woman’s intuition, sweetheart.” I didn’t know Estelle Reyes well enough to excuse calling her “sweetheart”, but what the hell. I was impressed. Let her sue me.

  Back at the office, we spent fifteen minutes with Sheriff Eduardo Salcido, who looked like shit after his doctor’s appointment. He wanted nothing more than to go home to bed, and I encouraged that very thing. I would have done the same if sleep was my friend. He listened as I filled in the informational chinks.

  “He’s only seventeen,” Eduardo observed. “He’s not going to get far.”

  I didn’t argue, since there was no predicting what the kid would do, and history had proven that teenagers could accomplish all kinds of things, nefarious or otherwise.

  At 7:15 p.m., we were assisting State Police Officer Mark Adams with a roll-over accident on the interstate seven miles west of Posadas. Life goes on. Just because we had a mess on our hands with Zipoli’s killer, the rest of the world didn’t slip into suspended animation. The rolled car was totaled, but four occupants inside, including two little kids, were just shaken. It took some soothing to convince them that their luck hadn’t run out. The family all rode in one ambulance to Posadas General for a check up. The two little kids needed Teddy Bears, and Adams had only one. I don’t know why Estelle looked surprised when I hauled another out of 310’s trunk.

  Adams and I made sure the family had arrangements at the Posadas Inn via a courtesy car from the motel, and I left them with my card and assurances that the Chavez brothers at Chavez Ford-Lincoln Mercury would take care of them the next morning.

  I was jotting in a log notation before I left the hospital parking lot when one of the county Broncos pulled up beside me. I hadn’t seen the vehicle turn in off the street, and it stopped with a jolt after circling to approach head on, driver to driver.

  “Evening, sir,” Bob Torrez greeted. “You all set here?”

  I nodded. “Nothing serious except a totaled car. The family is going to spend the night at the Inn. Did you see the sheriff?”

  “For a little bit. He headed home. He said the doctor wanted to admit him, and he refused.”

  “That’s smart,” I scoffed, feeling a sympathetic twinge. “What did you find out?”

  “Mears and me worked on the computer and the case match.” He managed a small grin—hysterics by his standards. “The firing pin and bolt face of Arnett’s .32 Winchester Special matched the impressions on the base of the blown out .30-30 casing.” Torrez sounded as if he were reading a prepared statement. “It’s all packed up to go to the FBI tomorrow morning for confirmation.”

  “Of course it matched,” I grumbled. “It was Arnett’s gun, and Arnett’s shell casing. The kid was careless and grabs either the wrong rifle or the wrong ammo. It’s a long shot that Mark would make the mistake himself.” I thumped the steering wheel. It was one of those things that we needed to know for sure, but I would have been astonished and flummoxed and stuffed in a quandry if it hadn’t matched. “A cartridge taken from Arnett’s ammo box, fired in some other gun, and then returned to the box? Not damn likely, Bobby. What else do you have?”

  “Nothin’ on the computer. I mean nothin’ we need to know.” Torrez pulled two large black and white photos from an envelope. He handed them across to me, and it took a while for me to recognize what I was looking at. Enlarge something umpty-ump times, and it loses some focus. The cannalure—that criss-cross
ed channel around the circumference of the bullet into which the shell casing crimps—showed clearly enough. The body of the bullet was a mass of fine scratches, dings, and dents—almost microscopic marks most of which could be explained by the manufacturing process.

  “That’s the slug from Zipoli’s brain,” Torrez said.

  “I see that.” The hugely distorted tip ran off the right side of the photo margin. I held the second photo just above the first. The second photo was a different bullet, one that still showed some distortion from firing. “Where’d you do this?”

  “They got a water tank over at maintenance,” Torrez said. “Kinda messy, but it works to trap the bullet.”

  “Nice photos.” I lined up cannalure to cannalure. “What am I supposed to see?” I held the photos so Estelle could see them, although the car’s lame dome light made it difficult.

  “The scuffs where the shell casing crimps the bullet are in exactly the same place,” the deputy said. Sure enough, they were.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that in all likelihood the same reloading die reloaded both bullets. What are the odds that two different people set two different reloading dies so that the crimps are identical?”

  “I have no idea. And in all likelihood, that’s what a defense attorney is going to question.” I looked across at Torrez. “What do you think?”

  “I think the bullet in Zip’s head came from one of Arnett’s cartridges, sir. I think that’s obvious.”

  “We think it did. What did the sheriff say? You told him all this?”

  “Yes, sir. He said to keep after it.”

  “And that’s what we’ll do. Somebody somewhere knows where Mo Arnett might have gone. His parents say that he has a credit card that he’s not supposed to use. If he’s smart, he won’t.”

  Torrez looked disgusted. “If they don’t want him usin’ it, what’s he got it for?”

  “They say he got it as part of a school civics project. How about that?” I shook my head. “Times have changed, that’s for sure. And I wouldn’t presume to understand his folks,” I said. “And they’re not missing any cash, so he’s not flush in that respect. He might have been able to scrape together a couple hundred bucks. He had time to visit the bank. You want to work on Tom’s brother?”