On a Killer's Trail (10 page)

Steven grimaced and looked at the floor.

“Put your hands on your head, then.”

Stephen looked at him as if he were nuts.

“This is for real,” Neil said. “You’re under arrest. Put your hands on your head.”

Neil booked Stephen Burton and then took fingerprints off the ammunition boxes and holster while the young man stewed in the lockup downstairs. His next task was to obtain a copy of Jim Burton’s prints. He contacted the police department in the New Jersey city where Burton had lived and got codes for access into their arrest records from the time Burton lived there. Sure enough, Jim had been arrested four years earlier for operating under the influence. Neil wondered if the Animal Protection Agency had done a background check on him before hiring him.

“Got anything?” Connor asked as he returned from a meeting with the police chief.

“Jim Burton’s prints are all over the ammo boxes and the holster,” Neil reported, “but his son Steve’s were on the holster, too, and the partially used box of ammo.”

“Did you check the serial number of the guns?”

“Yeah. The serial number I found in Jim Burton’s desk matches the gun that was found in the Dumpster.”

“Perfect. Go log the gun out of Evidence. I’ll bring Stephen up here for a little chat.”

When Neil returned with the weapon a few minutes later, Kate Richards was seated beside his desk.

“Hey, what brings you here?” He couldn’t control the smile that broke across his face. Seeing Kate on a Monday morning was as good as getting an unexpected day off.

“God works in mysterious ways,” she said. “In addition to updating the murder story, I’ve also been assigned to cover the scandal at the animal shelter.”

“Then we’re working on the same cases. I can live with that.”

“Me, too.”

Funny how Kate’s smile could send him into a tailspin. Focus, Neil!

“It may be a little while before I can talk to you. Connor’s bringing a prisoner up here for questioning. Do you want to come back later, or would you like to wait?”

“May I?”

Neil hesitated. They didn’t usually conduct questioning with civilians in the office. “I guess so. You can’t listen to the session. Privacy rights and all that. But there’s a pot of coffee in our break room. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour, and I may have something hot for you after we talk to this guy.”

Her blue eyes glittered. “Sure. I’ll disappear, and you come tell me when the coast is clear.”

Seconds after she went through the door to the break room, Connor and Stephen got off the elevator. The Priority Unit didn’t have a cell, but it did have a small interrogation room in its office area, and the detectives found it much less hectic than trying to
do business downstairs. Neil went inside and started the video recorder, and Connor brought young Burton in and sat opposite him at the table. Connor stated his name and the date of the interview and had Stephen give his name.

“All right, Steve,” Connor said pleasantly, “let’s talk. Tell me about the gun.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

Connor smiled. “But I do. It’s right here.” He produced the gun in an evidence bag and laid it on the table. Stephen’s eyes bulged.

“Don’t you read the paper?” Connor asked. “We found the gun in a Dumpster three blocks from where the cat was attacked.”

“What cat?”

“Mrs. Sargent’s tiger cat. You shot at it last Thursday. Was that just target practice, or what?”

Stephen eyed him belligerently. “Don’t I get a phone call or something?”

“Look,” Connor said, “if you want, you can make a call. But I’ll warn you, we’re not going to set bail. This is a double homicide case. You’re not going anywhere today.”

Stephen’s hands shook, and he clasped them together on the table. “Murder? I didn’t shoot anybody!”

“Oh, not even the cat?” Connor’s penetrating gray eyes drilled him.

“Fine, I did shoot at the cat,” Stephen mumbled.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Connor. “Tell me about it.”

Steve sighed and sat back. “I saw my dad cleaning his gun one night.” Connor was silent. Stephen rubbed his eyes. “After he went downstairs to eat breakfast Thursday, I just went and got it.”

“You took it out of the closet?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He hesitated, then said, “I thought maybe I could sell it.”

Connor raised his eyebrows.

Stephen said quickly, “I thought I’d just try it to see if I could make it work first.”

“So you got some shells out of the box?” Connor asked.

“Yes. Then I went for a walk. I had it in my pocket.”

Connor just waited.

“I went over to Hayner Woods. I thought maybe I’d go down behind there, where there’s some woods, and I could take a shot or two. And then…this cat just came walking out in front of me on the sidewalk.” He looked up, as though trying to make the detectives see that it was reasonable. “There weren’t many houses, and there were no people around, no cars. I just aimed at it and shot. I don’t think I hit it.”

“You did,” Connor said.

“I don’t remember. I just know that this lady came running out of the house yelling, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ And I took off.”

“And you threw the gun in the Dumpster.”

“Not then,” Steve said. “I went home, and I was scared she had called the police.”

“She had.”

Steve lowered his chin onto his chest. “I hid the gun. I wanted to put it back in my dad’s room, but my mother was in there, and I had to go to my job that afternoon.”

“Where do you work?”

“A pizza place on Market Street.”

“Then what?”

“Friday a friend of mine told me two policemen had been to his house with a drawing, asking people if they knew this guy. He said it looked a little like me, but not really. I got scared, and I went home and got the gun and rubbed it all over with a towel.” He looked up. “I wasn’t sure that would work. But anyway, I took it back over near Hayner Woods where there’s apartments, and I tossed it in a Dumpster.”

“Tell me again when you took the gun out of your father’s room,” Connor said patiently.

“Thursday morning.”

“Now, Steve, this is important. You took the gun before your father left the house Thursday.”

“Y-yes.”

“Did he go back upstairs?”

“I think so, just for a minute. To get his briefcase or something.”

“And that’s the last time you saw him?”

“Yes.” He looked down at his hands. “He didn’t come home that day.”

Connor tapped his fingers on the table for a few seconds. “And to whom did you think you could sell this gun?”

Stephen’s mouth took on a stubborn set.

“Tell me,” said Connor. “I’ll find out anyway, and if you don’t tell me yourself it will go a lot tougher on you.”

Sometimes kids bought that line. Stephen did. “This guy I work with, Anthony, he says he knows someone who will buy guns anytime.”

“You got a name?”

“No, I was going to ask Anthony.”

“And what do you need the money for so badly?”

Stephen closed his lips in a tight line.

“All right, we’re going to take you downstairs,” said Connor. “The patrol sergeant down there will help you with your phone call. If you want to call your mother, that would probably be best. She can call a lawyer.”

If she’s sober enough to call one, Neil thought.

He took Stephen down in the elevator, and the patrol sergeant met them and took custody of Stephen. When Neil got back upstairs, Connor was on the phone and Kate was sitting near his desk, listening.

“Right, we can keep him if you think we ought to. Cruelty to animals. We could charge him with stealing his father’s gun, I suppose. Well, if you let him bail out, just impress on him and his mother that he needs to stick around and be cooperative.” He
hung up and said, “That was Crawford, from the D.A.’s office. He’s sending someone over. You hungry?”

The question included both Neil and Kate. Neil realized it was almost noon.

“Sure. Maybe Kate would join us at the diner, and you can decide how much we can tell our friendly representative of the
Press Herald
.”

A
n hour later, Kate drove back to the newspaper office. A cold rain was falling, and she shivered as she ran across the parking lot to the door. But nothing could dampen her excitement as she wrote up the story.

Stephen Burton, son of the man who had embezzled the animal shelter’s building fund money, had confessed to shooting a woman’s cat. It was good copy. The detectives were not yet ready to reveal that the gun Stephen used to wound the cat was also the murder weapon in the two recent homicides, but it would raise all sorts of questions in the readers’ minds. Friday night she’d written up the story saying they’d found the gun used in the murders. If they wanted to continue to keep the link to the cat’s wounding quiet, that was all right with Kate. Of course, other reporters would pester Connor and Neil, wanting more information. But she felt she was one step ahead of her peers, and with God’s blessing.

When she left work at five o’clock, the temperature had dropped below freezing and the streets were slippery. She drove slowly to Gray Goose Lane in the early darkness, giving herself extra room to stop at each traffic light.

Adrienne had meat loaf, baked potatoes and green beans waiting. As they ate in the kitchen, the drumming of rain on the roof of the breezeway changed to pattering sleet.

“I’m glad you’re staying with us now, Kate,” Adrienne said. “I know you’re home safe.”

After supper, Kate went to look out the living room window.
The street was a sheet of ice. Power lines glittered like Christmas garlands, and tree limbs were bowed down everywhere in shimmering arches.

“So, today we try to track Jim Burton down?” Neil asked Connor the next morning.

“I think so. Gonna be tough.”

“He’s already made some mistakes.”

It rained and froze, rained and froze all day. The dispatcher called in reserve officers to help with all the collisions. Power lines started snapping that morning, and some companies put the word out for their employees to stay home. The rural areas were hit hardest, with trees going down on the wires. Thousands of people to the north of Portland were without power.

At the station, Neil opened the report Joey Bolduc had made the first day he investigated the embezzlement. He had interviewed the bank manager and obtained a copy of the Animal Protection Society’s bank statements. The other detectives reported in for the day while he perused them. A few minutes after eight, Neil and Connor went up to the chief’s office.

Mike’s secretary, Judith, eyed them solemnly when Connor opened the security door. She was sixtyish and gray-haired, Mike’s legacy from the former chief.

“Good morning.” She buzzed Mike on the phone. “Captain Larson and Detective Alexander are here.” She nodded at them. “Go right in, gentlemen.”

Both Police Chief Mike Crowley and Deputy Chief Jack Plourde waited for them. Neil felt a little out of place. They were all wearing suits, even Connor. Neil had on a striped cotton shirt and gray slacks. He kept a jacket and tie in his locker, but avoided wearing them when possible. He mostly kept them handy for when he had to appear in court.

Plourde was younger than Mike, in his late forties, and had curly, light brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses. Connor let Neil fill the brass in on the progress the unit had made on their cases.

“So we’ve got the son, Stephen Burton, in custody, but he’ll probably walk this morning,” Neil concluded. “We’ve got the weapon that was used in the two homicides. I’m pretty sure Jim Burton did it, but we need proof.”

“You say he left his passport behind?” asked Mike.

“Yes. His last trip abroad was three years ago, to England. I’ll check with Washington to see if he’s applied for any visas, but I think it will be a waste of time.”

“Joey Bolduc and Emily Rood checked the airport and bus terminal right away, before we got the case,” Connor added. “If Burton used public transportation, it was under an assumed name.”

Neil gave him a wry smile. “Maybe his wife is right and somebody bumped him off.”

Connor shook his head. “I don’t believe that. He planned this for months. He was going to carry through and take the proceeds from the fund-raiser next week.”

“I agree,” Neil said. “But the shelter volunteers were onto him, or at least Ted Hepburn was. Burton got rid of Ted and Edna, and thought he could hang in there until the money came in from the big dance. Then he got spooked and knew he had to run early, without the extra cash.”

“What spooked him?” asked the deputy chief.

“The gun,” Neil said. “He kept it after the murders. He was probably going to take it with him. Then his idiot son took the gun out of his closet. Burton went back to his bedroom before he left Thursday morning, and the gun was gone. That would scare a two-time murderer who hadn’t ditched the weapon.”

“He probably thought someone in the family suspected him,” said Deputy Chief Plourde.

“Oh, incidentally,” said Connor, “Stephen spun a story about a friend of his at the pizza joint, Anthony, with a gun buyer connection. Wouldn’t hurt to have one of Ron’s detectives check out that little tale.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Chief Crowley, writing in his pocket notebook. “What’s your strategy on finding Jim Burton?”

“The way I see it, there are three possibilities,” Connor said. “He either left in a private car with an accomplice who picked him up at the restaurant, he left town some other way under a phony ID or he never left town.”

Neil stirred, and Mike Crowley nodded at him.

“If he planned this out so far in advance, couldn’t he have left another car at the restaurant?” Neil asked.

Connor looked at the city map on the wall. “Yes. My gut tells me there’s a woman involved in this.”

“Why?” asked Mike.

“A forty-seven-year-old man with a good-looking wife, three kids and a nice house wouldn’t leave all that if it meant he’d be on the run alone the rest of his life.”

“No previous criminal record?” Jack asked.

“All we found was an old O.U.I. arrest,” Neil said.

“You think he built another identity?” Mike asked.

“Had to. At least to get away.”

Connor nodded. “I’m going to send my men out this morning to shake down a couple of lowlifes who might have made false IDs for him.”

“All right, so you’ll try to find out if Burton had false documents. What else?” Mike asked.

“We’ll go over his desk at the shelter again,” Neil said. “I know Joey and Emily did already, but I like to go through things again when I take over a case. Nothing against those two.”

The chief nodded.

“And then I guess we’ll plaster his picture everywhere,” Connor said, “and I’ll immerse myself in Burton data.”

Neil knew that meant Connor would go over and over the information they had until something jumped out at him or he went berserk. Neil squinted down at Burton’s bank statement in the file he held. “If there was just a way we could keep Burton from getting at that money he transferred.”

Connor rubbed his chin. “Maybe we can. If it’s not already too late.”

“Con, if anyone can do it, you can,” Mike said. “Best computer geek I know.” He slapped Connor on the shoulder. “All right, you fellows get to work. Keep me posted.”

Neil and Connor headed downstairs.

“You think we can find where he had that money sent?” Neil asked.

Connor cracked his knuckles. “I’m sure going to try.”

“For what it’s worth, I’ve got an address on that Smith guy you busted for forgery last year. He’s got an apartment in the East End.”

Connor nodded. “Take Tony and head over there and have a chat with him. I’ll see what I can do about these outsourced bank accounts. I used to be pretty good at that stuff.”

Smith was definitely nervous when Neil and Tony flashed their badges. He’d been out of prison only three months, and the beads of sweat on his upper lip told Neil he didn’t want to go back there. He insisted he was straight now and was holding down a job in a tire warehouse. Neil showed him Jim Burton’s picture.

“I heard about that,” Smith said. “I didn’t do anything for him, believe me. I don’t do that stuff anymore, but if I did, I’d remember.”

Without a warrant, there wasn’t much more the detectives could do. When they returned to the office, Connor stood up and stretched. “I haven’t been able to trace the money yet. Neil, I want you and Tony to get to the animal shelter and go over Burton’s office with a microscope. Bring me anything that will help me understand him. Jimmy and Lance can go back to the Burton house and go through his desk there. I know you did that, but you were looking for the gun. I need information now.”

He sat down at his computer again. Neil and Tony each grabbed a cup of coffee and headed for the stairs.

At noon when they came back, Neil dropped a manila envelope on the captain’s desk. “Don’t know if it will do any good. Contacts, business associates, appointments he meant to keep this week.”

“Great,” said Connor. He looked as if he hadn’t moved for
two hours, except his tie was loosened and his jacket hung over the back of his chair. “I may be getting closer to finding that million bucks. The good news is, I don’t think Burton’s actually gotten hold of it yet. That means he probably is still in the U.S. and can’t withdraw it until he’s on foreign soil.”

“So he could still be here in Portland?” Tony’s voice held an edge of excitement.

Connor smiled grimly. “Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake? After you get lunch, I’ll give you a list of people to interview.” He pulled the papers out of the envelope and started scanning them. Neil knew the captain wasn’t going to eat.

“I’ll bring you a sandwich,” he said.

He spent the afternoon chasing down people who knew Burton, but everyone claimed they hadn’t known him well. Neil tried discreetly to ask people if Burton had had an extramarital love interest. They were either offended or blasé in their ignorance.

Connor was still at his desk when Tony and Neil returned at the end of the day to start writing their reports.

“Whatcha got?” he called.

“Zilch,” Neil replied. “Is Stephen Burton still here?”

“Mrs. Burton bailed him out.”

Lance and Jimmy came in from showing Burton’s picture to car dealers and car rental agents all afternoon with nothing to show for it. When Neil was ready to leave, he went over to Connor’s desk.

“Do you need anything else before I leave?”

Connor looked up from his monitor and blinked. “I’ve got tomorrow’s assignment for you.”

Neil looked at him expectantly.

“Think about it tonight, Neil. Burton needs to leave the country, for two reasons. So we won’t find him, and so he can withdraw that money. But he can’t use his legitimate passport. So, if you were going to make yourself a fake ID, where would you start?”

“Either have a fake driver’s license made, or go get someone else’s birth certificate to start building a new ID with a real name.” That was pretty standard.

“Okay, whose?” Connor looked at him with those stormy gray eyes.

Neil nodded, knowing he didn’t want an answer yet. “Go home and cuddle up to your wife and new baby, Connor.”

Connor stretched. “Sounds good.” He shut his computer down and headed for the locker room.

The next morning Neil took Connor a list of options. He’d thought hard about it the night before. He suggested that the detectives search the homes of the two potential forgers, go undercover on the street to try to locate someone else in the business and check old obituaries for babies who died about the time Burton was born. That last one was a long shot, but sometimes people who wanted a new identity looked up a person their age who had died a long time ago. Anyone could get a birth certificate from Human Services. People doing family histories did it all the time.

Connor read his list, nodding. “Run a check on his family. It would make it a lot easier for him if he could use the identification of someone related to him.” He called the other detectives over. “Lance, you’re going undercover. Go to this guy Neil spoke to yesterday. His name’s Smith, or at least that’s one of his names. Tell him you need a new driver’s license.”

“Am I desperate?” Lance asked. “My license got pulled? How much will I pay to get a new one?”

“We’ll go two hundred dollars if we have to,” said Connor. “More if you don’t have to actually pay him in the end. Don’t lie if you can help it.”

“Oh, come on, boss. How am I going to do this without lying?”

“You’re a very creative person,” said Connor. “If he says he’ll do it, just tell him you want a license with your picture and another name, and you have cash. I think he’ll go for it.”

Lance was out the door.

“Tony, you go to Patrick, the guy Lance and Jimmy went to yesterday. Same routine.”

“Got it.”

“Jimmy, you’re going to the courthouse for warrants.” Connor wrote orders as he spoke.

It was thirty degrees, and everything shimmered. Roads were slick, and Neil drove carefully around to the Burtons’ house. Claire Burton was not happy to see him again.

“Your boss said yesterday you just wanted to talk to Stephen.”