I wondered about Trevor’s situation. He’d gone from being an elite Special Forces non commissioned officer to being an unemployed civilian who was living off his girlfriend. He didn’t even own a car or have a credit card.
Mathew Andrews, Trevor Joyce, and Joe Banning – I had reason to suspect each of them. The strongest evidence was clearly against Mathew. The Winchester was found at his house, albeit in a place that was easy to reach by someone wanting to frame him. He had lied about being in Flagstaff when we met at his lawyer’s office. He had motive, an obsession with Dr. Cantor, and he had opportunity since he was in town that weekend. However, I was skeptical that he was a good enough shot to pull it off.
Joe Banning had run after assaulting two law enforcement officers. He lied about his whereabouts at the time of the killing, using a cousin as a phony hunting client. He knew exactly where Dr. Cantor was going to hunt at dawn on Sunday, and he had the skill to kill both the elk and Dr. Cantor with perfect shots. When he fled, I was completely convinced that his motive was the loss of his hunting guide status, but he had admitted to having twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. That was an astonishing amount to pay for help in illegally harvesting an elk.
If the $25,000 Banning earned was for killing Dr. Cantor, who hired him for the murder? It could have been some drug contact that I was unaware of, but how would the two have gotten together in the first place. It was more likely that he was hired by whoever recommended Joe Banning as a hunting guide. If Joe did it, it was a setup from the beginning.
As a contract killer, Joe fit the circumstances better than some out-of-state gun for hire. He was local, so he was still around to provide his employer with the murder weapon to plant at Mathew’s house. He knew how to get to Doyle Saddle in the dark. He would have known how to start the elk moving over the pass earlier than normal by firing shots to spook them. He should be the prime suspect, but my gut told me he wasn’t involved.
I had to keep Trevor Joyce high on my list. Perhaps he got addicted to pain medication during his recovery in Germany. The addiction might be why he left the service. If Oxycodone prescriptions were for him, his addiction might have made it difficult to find a civilian job. Sean had asked why he had not tried for a job in law enforcement, but those jobs require drug tests. I had difficulty believing that Trevor would protect his girlfriend by killing the man who could point the finger at her, but I don’t pretend to have any extraordinary skill at judging someone on one brief meeting.
Margaret considered Amanda and Trevor the prime suspects. She’d reacted strongly to Amanda’s web site, but I had no specific evidence to connect them to the murder even though Amanda was in a good position to have forged the prescriptions. Like Joe, Trevor probably had the skill with firearms to pull off the killing, and his alibi was shaky.
Graham arrived at 4:00 after his training class and said he would wait in the break room until I was ready to leave. At 5:00, Sean returned. He had been to fifteen motels. There was one possible ID of Trevor as a man who had paid cash for a room on Saturday. The man had registered as Adam Smith. However, the man was driving a Ford Taurus rather than Alexis’s Lexus. Without a driver’s license and credit card, Trevor could not have rented a car. Sean would run the plates on the Taurus tomorrow and work on more motels.
Graham and I headed back to Sedona at 5:15. It was earlier than usual for me, but he had already waited more than an hour. We talked some more about starting pay. I thought that the adjustments we had decided on would help a lot to keep fine young deputies like him. Of course, I didn’t mention the possible pay adjustment to Graham. The proposal still had to make it through the county commissioners’ budget process. I felt good about the day’s work. I’d taken a pain pill at 4:00 and slept during part of the drive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“If Trevor taught marksmanship at Fort Hood, he must be a great shot,” Margaret said at breakfast the next morning.
“I need to prove he was in Flagstaff as a first step in connecting him to the murder. We had one possible ID at a motel, but it’s far from conclusive. Sean is checking other motels today.”
“What about a lineup to ID him?” she asked.
“I really have nothing to use to arrest him and bring him to Flagstaff for a lineup. We haven’t even finished passing his photo around town. Trevor is a difficult guy to trace because he doesn’t use credit or debit cards.”
“I’m not sure how he functions without plastic; in fact, I doubt if he does.”
“Our research department checked his credit records. They’re unlikely to have missed a card or account in his name.”
“The only thing it takes to use a debit card is the pin code. The account doesn’t need to be in his name. Amanda Brandt might have given him access to one of her accounts. Have you checked those records?” she asked.
“I don’t have evidence sufficient to subpoena her bank and credit card records. Since I have a suspect in custody, it is even more difficult to get a subpoena for records of an unconnected person in the same homicide investigation.” Margaret is brilliant and usually right, but she often wants to ignore the rules of evidence and get directly to the solution. I can’t let our evidence be thrown out of court.
“What about the drug case? Maybe you can get Amanda’s bank records as part of that investigation.”
“It’s not our jurisdiction, but the DEA could get the records and share them with us. Mrs. Cantor believes that Amanda Brandt was the only person that Dr. Cantor would have trusted enough to give blank but signed prescription forms. That might be enough. Good idea, I’ll call the DEA as soon as I get to my office.”
“You should take your pills now so that they have time to work before Graham picks you up. Would it help to take the small pillow from the couch to support your back on the bumpy ride?”
The pillow helped, but I was getting better every day. Graham was in a good mood as we drove to Flagstaff through Oak Creek Canyon. The cool morning had produced a light ground fog along the creek, and the drifting white clouds accented the autumn foliage that was now at the height of its color in the West Fork area. The dawn light turned the cumulus clouds pink against the cobalt sky.
We talked about the poor start for the Cardinal’s season and about our disappointment in the Diamondbacks. Graham seemed to have learned a lot from Jimmy Hendrix, and he enjoyed describing the class. Yesterday had been fun for the whole group.
Jimmy had kept things lively. He had described his trek to the Zackary Cantor crime scene at Doyle Saddle, including self-deprecating humor about not being able to keep up with an old guy like Captain Damson. He also described the mishap that caused Dr. Cantor’s corpse to tumble down the mountain and land in a tree. The class had been so noisy with laughter at his recounting of that story that Sheriff Taylor had come to the room to inquire what was so funny.
I would soon be teaching new deputies, and I needed to learn something from Jimmy’s approach. Keep their interest with tangible stories and not spend all my time on theoretical stuff and procedural details.
Graham was the kind of young man who would be a credit to the Sheriff’s Department, and I was pleased that Sheriff Taylor was going to be able to make a pay adjustment that would help keep deputies like him.
I spent the rest of the drive telling funny stories about my career in law enforcement as practice for when I would be teaching new deputies. After thirty years, there were a lot of stories to tell, and I tried to pick ones that would teach new deputies to avoid the mistakes that I’d made. Graham laughed heartily and told a couple of stories of his own about life in Cornville. I was glad that the pills hadn’t put me to sleep this morning. I really enjoyed the ride.
Sean was waiting in my office for today’s assignment when I arrived at 8:00. He would continue to check the motels, and I would go to see the motel owner who had indicated there was a chance that a patron who had signed as Adam Smith was actually Trevor. If the prospects for identifying him were good, I would work on
getting Trevor to Flagstaff for a line-up.
We also talked about Joe Banning. The Flagstaff Police Department had stopped their investigation after interviewing twenty-two relatives of the fugitive. They remained convinced Joe left Flagstaff the day of our confrontation after buying an old Mazda from a cousin. A local cop had described Joe’s juvenile problems to Sean. He was arrested a dozen times before he was eighteen for minor crimes usually related to alcohol abuse. Even though Joe had been a real hell raiser as a teenager, he settled down after high school. The consensus was that he was a rather strange loner but not a killer. One local cop described him as the best shot with a rifle he’d ever known.
I called Grant Emerson of the DEA in Phoenix at 8:30. He was willing to help get Amanda Brandt’s banking and credit card records. He had always wondered why a man like Zackary Cantor would have been involved in a prescription drug scam, and he thought the chance was good that the murdered physician was unaware of the amount of Oxycodone being dispensed using his name. He would fax me a copy of Amanda Brandt’s records as soon as he received them.
I rechecked the information that Sean had gathered from motels yesterday. A man had registered as Adam Smith at a cheap motel in west Flagstaff and paid $62 dollars in cash for Saturday night before the murder. The North Carolina license tag that Smith had put on the registration was an invalid number.
I drove to the Mountain View Motel on Old Highway 66 to interview Mr. J. S. Patel. He was a slight man with a pleasantly accented English of his native Calcutta. The motel office smelled of curry and other exotic aromas that reminded me it was getting close to lunchtime. Mr. Patel seemed anxious to help, but his willingness to please might cloud his identification. The registration indicated that Mr. Smith had driven a 2015 Ford Taurus.
“We have never had a problem with unlawful parking. I don’t check car tags versus the guest’s registration information unless there is some difficulty; therefore, I cannot confirm his vehicle make or tag. Mr. Smith was a polite gentleman with short light brown or blond hair and a two or three day beard. I assumed he was driving across country and had been on the road for several days. Checkin was the only time I saw him; he was gone in the morning. He had dropped the key through the early checkout slot. There was nothing unusual about the gentleman. Quite a few people pay cash. It saves on the credit car fees so I encourage it.”
“If I brought him to Flagstaff, do you think you could identify him, Mr. Patel?”
“Oh yes sir. I am good at that kind of thing; remembering names and faces is important in keeping customers happy and getting repeat business. I could certainly identify your associate, Deputy Sean Mark, if he ever returns in the future. If you were to come back in one or two years, I will still remember that you are Captain Mike Damson of the Sheriff’s Department. It’s difficult to tell from that photo, but I’m certain I could identify the young man if I saw him again.”
I felt much better about the identification after talking with Mr. Patel and decided to try and get Trevor to come to Flagstaff voluntarily. I would call and ask him to come to my office tomorrow afternoon. He would have a chance to meet Mr. Patel if he came.
I drove across town to the India Palace in the Bashas’ Shopping center. I took a couple of pain pills with my tandoori chicken; they go down better on a full stomach. I was a little groggy from the pills and heavy meal by the time I got back to the office, but I felt I was on the right track in the investigation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I heard boisterous laughter as I walked by the conference room where Jimmy Hendrix was instructing the new deputies in crime scene procedures. I smiled in appreciation; I was anxious to hear Graham’s account of today’s class.
In my office there were four notes about calls to return. One was from the DEA in Phoenix. When I returned that call, an administrative assistant told me she had sent a fax to my attention at 12:30. I walked down the hall and retrieved it. It was the bank and credit card statements for Amanda Brandt. I glanced over them as I returned to my office. There were plenty of cash withdrawals and payments at grocery stores, but none of the cards had been used in the Flagstaff area in the past few months. I set the information aside to review in detail later and phoned Trevor Joyce.
“Good afternoon Trevor; this is Mike Damson of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department. We met on Saturday.”
“Yes sir. I remember you.” His voice showed annoyance but not apprehension.
“There are some additional questions that I’d like to ask you about Dr. Cantor’s murder. I wonder if you could come to my office in Flagstaff tomorrow afternoon at 1:00.”
There was a long pause. “Amanda said you arrested a guy named Mathew Andrews for the murder. I’ve never even met him. There’s nothing I can say that would help your investigation.”
“One of the reasons that I need to speak with you in person is that you have consistently lied to me. I think we need to clear things up,” I said.
“You’re mistaken sir; I never lie.”
“Bullshit Trevor. I direct your attention to photo 67 in the RED LIGHT NIGHT web site. It is difficult to deny meeting Mathew since the photo shows you nude in bed together.”
Now there was an even longer pause. I had challenged his manhood by not mentioning that Amanda was also in the photo. I waited for the click of him hanging up, but it didn’t come. I said, “We need to talk.”
“Where’s your office?”
I gave him directions, asking him to wait for me in the reception area. I wasn’t confident he would show, but if he did, we would have our chance to identify him. I called five Flagstaff deputies in the same age and size range as Trevor and asked them to be in the reception area of the Law Enforcement Building by 12:45 wearing civilian clothes. It wasn’t exactly a line up, but it should do the job. Next I called Mr. Patel. He agreed to come to the reception area exactly at 1:10 and see if he recognized anyone.
I spent over an hour looking at Amanda’s financial records. She was taking in good money in her porno business account. She made regular $2,000 a month transfers from RED LIGHT NIGHT to her personal account. There were also weekly cash withdrawals of $200 in the business account. In spite of the regular transfers, the business account had accumulated a $27,000 balance. The only checks were to a web hosting company and to a Scottsdale investment company where she transferred $25,000 three months ago.
There was no indication that Amanda was paying anyone for the use of their photos, and no large cash withdrawals had been made that might have been used to pay a professional killer. The revenue came from several companies whose names I didn’t recognize. I assumed they collected the credit card charges of people who paid for access and from the advertising revenues for the pop ups and other trash promoted by RED LIGHT NIGHT.
It took a long time before I even began to compare the details of her personal account to her business account. When I saw it, the implication was obvious. Amanda had paid $17.00 for lunch at an Italian restaurant near her office using the debit card for her personal account at 12:44 on Friday before last. At 12:47, $200 was taken from an ATM at a Bank of America branch off I-10 in far west Phoenix, more than a forty-five minute drive from Amanda’s home. Someone, most likely Trevor, had a debit card for the business account. Amanda seemed to have him on a $200 a week cash allowance.
At 3:30 Sean returned. He had no luck finding anyone else who thought Trevor had checked into a motel here the night before Dr. Cantor’s murder. If Mr. Patel couldn’t identify him, we were out of luck. Sean had also checked with the guards at Forest Highlands; none of them recognized Trevor.
I showed him the records of Amanda’s accounts and asked, “Why do you think Trevor was out in west Phoenix?”
“I’m clueless Mike. That’s so far west it’s almost out of town. Maybe he was going to California for the weekend. There is certainly nothing out there that you couldn’t find closer to Scottsdale,” he said.
“Trevor has an army buddy who lives in Buckeye. T
his is probably the closest branch to the Buckeye exit on I-10.”
“Do you think that’s important?” Sean asked.
“Probably not, but when I called his army friend, John Nordstrom, he claimed he hadn’t seen Trevor recently. He said he hadn’t kept up with him even though they were high school friends and spent ten years together in the Special Forces.”
“So what do you suspect they’re up to?” Sean asked.
“Probably nothing, but if I wanted to distribute Oxycodone, it would be handy to have a friend I trusted who works for a delivery company. Having a regular parcel delivery company handle things would be a great cover for my drug distribution. The same friend appears in a number of porno photos on Amanda Brandt’s web site.”
“You’re a very suspicious man Mike,” Sean said with a smile.
Graham joined us when his class was over. I introduced the two young men. It struck me that Graham and Sean were quite similar in age and looks. They both had the same tall lanky frame and short hair. They shared the same earnestness and commitment. I liked both men and hoped we could keep them in the department with next year’s pay adjustment.
We laughed at Graham’s account of his class and Jimmy Hendrix’s storytelling. Sean described his unfortunate encounter with Joe Banning, and I explained that Graham was driving because my back had not recovered from the same confrontation. I described shooting the attacking dogs while trying to make certain I didn’t hit Sean. I had completely emptied my pistol when the last one was dead.
The Dead Man at Doyle Saddle Page 14