Endangered Species (21 page)

“That word doesn’t mean one damn thing when the public welfare is involved.”

“Liz, there’s nothing definite. So far, it’s all rumor and guesswork. Besides, if King reads in the papers what we think, he’ll take off—I might never get my hands on him.”

“I don’t know what the possibility of that is, do I? I don’t even know what kind of threat to the public welfare you’re talking about, do I?”

“It’s confidential,” he said stubbornly.

“I heard you the first time.” The note of hurt had been replaced by anger. “I know damn well you have a job to do. But so do I—and the heart and soul of my job is the welfare of this city. By God, when that welfare is threatened, I intend to know about it!”

“The mayor’s responsible. It’s his job.”

“It’s a shared responsibility, Gabe. And if I believed hizzoner could do his job, I wouldn’t be worried now. But I don’t, and I am. I want to know what’s going on, and damn it, I intend to find out!”

“You can’t tell anyone you heard it from me. I’ve got to work with the FBI—if they think they can’t trust me, I won’t get another thing out of them.”

“I understand that.” She flopped back on the pillow, and the anger in her voice had been replaced with cold reason. “I’ll just have to find out about it from another source, won’t I?”

The tension had come back into their bodies, and they lay side by side, scarcely aware of their meeting flesh. Elizabeth, angry at him despite what she had said about respecting the demands of each other’s jobs, had moved into her own thoughts and was planning tomorrow’s moves and contacts; Wager, too, had his mind on the coming day. And the night that had been so sheltering now seemed ominous.

9/25

0750

A
BRAND-NEW
notice on the bulletin board said: “Markowsky passed away. Rosener’s condition upgraded to Serious. No other word.” Devereaux’s face was gray from lack of sleep. A chalky film at the corners of his mouth hinted of Rolaids. “No leads, no tips, nothing, Gabe. Maybe we’ll have to offer a reward after all.”

“I heard Floyd bought drinks for everybody after Markowsky died.”

“Yeah. I heard that too. Fucker.” He scratched a thumb along his jaw. “It’s a fact, Gabe—it’s a fact: the people in that bar know something.”

Wager thought a moment about the bartender at the Blue Moon and the man’s flat, unyielding stare. “Maybe we should show Floyd we’re thinking of him.”

Devereaux’s hand moved from his jaw to rub at the red flesh of his eyelids before he went heavily to his desk. “If it’ll smoke out an informant, I’m all for it.”

Wager grabbed the day’s first mug of coffee and the slips in his box and settled at his desk to thumb through them quickly. There was nothing from Mallory, but Archy Douglas had left a message: “Found fingerprints matching Libeus King. Call.” Wager did.

“Yeah.” Archy sounded as if he had something in his mouth. “In the bathroom.” There was the sound of a slurp, and Archy’s voice came back clearer. “Four fingers of the left hand under the lid of the toilet reservoir. Looks like he held it up to repair it or take out his stash or something. Anyway, being in the bathroom and protected like that, they didn’t get screwed up by the fire fighters. And being on tile, they made good impressions. Definite ten-point match on all four fingers.”

“Thanks, Arch. Any prints from King’s known associates?”

“Not yet. There’s a lot of unidentifieds, and I only got the files yesterday. And there’s only one of me. But I’m working on it.”

“Right, Archy—thanks.”

King’s prints would help fill in the picture by establishing his presence, but by themselves they didn’t prove him to be the murderer. Not yet, anyway, and maybe never. And the unidentifieds would have to be screened; you never knew what twists a case could take. One set might turn out to belong to a witness. But it was a long, tedious job, and Wager knew that Archy was putting his first efforts on identifying the cop-killer from the bullets taken out of Markowsky and Rosener and from the pile of items collected in the alley where the sniper had waited. Wager couldn’t blame him for that—Archy, like everybody else, put that case first. But the anxiety Wager had felt the night before and that led him to tell Elizabeth about King was even stronger in the gray light of morning. He couldn’t help the feeling that, somewhere, a clock was running and he was one of the few people who could hear it tick. And he was not doing enough to stop it.

Still, there was Floyd nagging like a thorn in the toe: One less pig and let’s have a round of drinks.

But that wasn’t Wager’s primary assignment. Nor, sore though that issue might be, was it the most dangerous. He tried Sheila Riggs’s California number once more. This time it was answered on the fourth ring, and Wager said who he was and why he had called.

“Oh, I read about it in the paper. Pauline’s obituary. It’s so awful!”

“Have you talked with Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson?”

“I called them, yes. Those poor people. They’re just in absolute shock!”

“Did Pauline tell you she was coming to Denver?”

“I got a letter from her a month or so ago. She said she and Libby might go there, but she didn’t say for how long.”

“You mean they didn’t intend to stay?”

A pause. “Those weren’t her words, exactly. But the way she said it, it didn’t sound like a permanent move. Can you hold on a minute? Maybe I can find the letter.”

“I’ll wait.”

The open line crackled faintly. When Sheila Riggs came back, her voice sounded slightly breathless from hurry. “Here it is: ‘Libby and I might be going up to Denver in a few days—it’ll be nice to have a change of scenery for a while.’”

“That’s all?”

“About Denver, yes. There’s some stuff here about people we both know, friends from college—”

“Was she writing to them too?”

“I think so.”

“Can I have their names and addresses, Miss Riggs?”

“If you think it might help, sure.” She mentioned a Debbie Powell who lived in Ventura, California, and an Alex Saunders of Lake Oswego, Oregon. He had to wait again as she located their telephone numbers from her address book. “I don’t know if she saw much of them. We sort of keep in touch with each other—you know, write two or three times a year. So I don’t know how much help they can be.”

Wager assured her that the information might be helpful. And it might—this was the kind of plodding collection of fact and name that occasionally turned up something important. Mostly, all it turned up was a big phone bill and a sore ear, but it was something detectives got used to damn fast or they got out of the business. “Did Miss Tillotson ever mention the Rocky Mountain Arsenal?”

“The what?”

Wager repeated it.

“No. I don’t think so. She and Libby are—were—into all sorts of environmental things, but they didn’t say much about the army or anything like that.”

“How about the San Diego submarine base? Did she say anything about that?”

“Submarines? God, no. We talked about friends and jobs and, you know, people and places we both know. But submarines …?”

Wager thanked Miss Riggs and hung up, leaving the puzzled query in her voice unanswered. He dialed the Oregon number first; a woman answered, and Wager asked for Alex Saunders.

“He’s not here right now. May I take a message?”

Wager told the woman his name.

“The police? In Denver?”

“Pauline Tillotson has been murdered. I’m contacting all her acquaintances for any help they might be able to give me.”

The voice held no sorrow. “Well, I’m certain Alex won’t be able to tell you anything about her.”

“If you would ask him to call me as soon as possible, please—collect, anytime.”

“Very well.”

His call to Debbie Powell rang unanswered, and Wager leafed through the handful of memos, ignoring another one from Gargan that asked him to get in touch as quick as he could. He was about to call the DA’s office for an interjurisdictional warrant to search Richard Simon’s cabin up in Boulder County, when his phone rang. It was Mallory, voice croaky with weariness.

“I got a read on those diagrams—a kind of read anyway.”

“That was quick.”

“Yes. Well, I told them I wasn’t sure how much time we had to work with. I’m still not. Anyway, I faxed a copy of the drawings back to headquarters and asked them to give the Corps of Army Engineers a call, tell them what we had, and tell them it was damned important. They were quite cooperative, but the diagrams don’t match anything at the arsenal.”

Wager felt something loosen in his chest, and he sighed deeply. “Are you trying any other agencies?”

A slight pause told Wager that the FBI agent was tempted to mention something. “I’m doing that now. So far, no match up.”

“That’s good news.”

“Yes, it is. I’d feel even more sanguine, though, if I knew for certain what building those plans were for.”

As long as it wasn’t the biochemical horror he’d envisioned, Wager could leave that worry to Mallory. He told the FBI agent about King’s prints being found at the burned house.

“Well, that proves what we suspected.”

But it didn’t prove that King had murdered Tillotson or where the man had disappeared to. Wager asked, “When your people went up to Boulder County for that suspect—Richard Simon—did they search his cabin?”

“Not that I know of—no warrant for a search, just for an arrest. The agent only said no one was there.”

“I can get a search warrant. You want to come along?”

Mallory thought twice about it. “I’d better stay with these diagrams. I’ll sleep better when I find out they don’t match anything around here.”

Wager understood that. Despite his weariness, last night’s sleep, in addition to being short, had been restless, with uneasy dreams for both him and Elizabeth. The FBI man said he’d get in touch the minute anything new came up, and Wager hung up as Max loomed in the doorway.

“I can’t get a phone tap on Sol Atilano, Gabe. I tried three damn judges. Every one of them denied it.”

Wager wasn’t all that surprised. Like everybody else, judges bitched about the crime rate, but when it came to stretching a point of law, they sure as hell weren’t willing to do much about it. “So tell Quintana the tap’s in place anyway. Have him call Atilano, set up a meet, and we tail him to Flaco.”

Max wasn’t happy with that; tailing somebody in real life was always trickier than the movies made it seem—especially if that somebody was as nervous as Quintana.

“But, Max, we can’t just sit on the kid. Doyle’s not going to authorize that much overtime with the little we’ve got.” Wager fingered the memos and notes on his desk; the gesture told Max that his partner was trying to work on other cases too.

Still, Max shook his head. “We’d be sticking the kid’s neck out for him, and he wouldn’t even know it.”

“Let’s hear your better idea.”

But Max didn’t have one, and the big man hunched his shoulders into his sport coat and headed out the door to lose his frustration on the street.

Wager called the duty attorney at the DA’s office and had him arrange for a warrant through the Boulder County sheriff. Crossing jurisdictional lines wasn’t something this deputy DA was eager to do—his reluctant voice said it meant additional paperwork for his secretary and even a few minutes of his own time. But as far as Wager was concerned, that was too damned bad. Whether the man liked it or not, providing support for the police was part of his job description. Finally, the deputy DA asked for the probable cause for the warrant, and Wager told him that the residence belonged to the known associate of a murder suspect. He added that the suspect might be hiding there.

“It’ll be a little easier if we have the suspect’s name on the warrant, Detective.”

Wager told him, including the John Marshall alias, and added, “I’d like to collect any evidence that might be there too.”

“You’ll want a search-and-seize, then. All right, Detective Wager. I’ll get it signed and call it up to the Boulder SO.”

Wager figured two hours before he was legal; that gave him an hour here to work and an hour to drive up to Boulder. He turned to his remaining messages and notices. A lab report had finally come in from the arson investigators that positively identified gasoline traces in the fire at the Wyandot address—no legal question, now, of arson, and Wager made a note to himself to take King’s photograph around to the neighboring service stations and see if anyone remembered selling a can of gas to him.

His phone rang. Lieutenant Watterson, the department’s public information officer, wanted to find out if Wager had anything more on the Tillotson homicide that he could tell the press. “I’m under an awful lot of pressure on this one, Gabe. The
Post
keeps calling to find out about the tie-in with the FBI. Can you give me anything at all for them?”

Watterson had politicked for the PIO job—wanted to see his name in the papers as a “police spokesman.” Besides, the man was getting paid more than Wager. “Not a thing new, Lieutenant. Sorry.”

A sigh. “You’ll let me know whenever you do have something, right?”

“Sure. You bet.”

Watterson’s problem with Gargan wasn’t high on Wager’s list of priorities. That was topped by Libeus King. The man had disappeared with the completeness of a stranger who had no ties to the neighborhood, but both Wager and Mallory felt he was still in the area. Wager doubted that a check of motel and hotel registers would turn up anything—if that’s where he was, it would be under still another alias and perhaps even a disguise. But Wager was tempted to ask Chief Doyle for permission to start canvassing with copies of King’s photograph, just so he could feel they were at least doing something, even if it was only wasting somebody’s time besides his own. King’s car should have been a better lead too. Wager at least had a license plate and description to work with there. But the patrol division kept telling him they had no sightings.

Restless, he eyed the large round clock on the wall, with its tail of electric cord dangling down to an outlet near the floor. He could leave now and reach the Boulder sheriff’s office in an hour. It would be a bit early, but at least it would seem as if he was doing something. And maybe the paperwork would be completed by the time he arrived.