On a Killer's Trail

by Susan Page Davis

  Neil followed, leaving the poor teller alone to face Sharpe’s wrath. He heard her say, “Mrs. Palmer came in and said they—”

  “She won’t be there,” Neil said to Connor as they got in the truck.

  “Where will she be?”

  “Heading for Burton.”

  Connor pulled out the radio handpiece and called the dispatcher. “APB on Roberta Palmer, alias Rena or Doreen Parlin. Check the DMV info on her vehicle.” Next he called Tony on his cell phone. “Tony, get on the computer. If Lance and Jimmy are there, have them help you. We need information on any and all vehicles registered to Roberta Palmer from the animal shelter, and also the fictional Joseph and Doreen or Rena Parlin.” He rattled off Roberta Palmer’s address. “Got it?”

  Apparently Wonder Boy got it, because Connor put the phone away and sat fuming. Neil could almost see smoke coming out his ears.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Connor.”

  His friend pounded the armrest with his fist. “Why didn’t I recognize her immediately?”

  “Because it was a good disguise. I’ve been over there three or four times now, and I couldn’t see it.”

  Connor sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

  When they got to the duplex, there was still no car in Roberta’s driveway. They pounded on the door, but got no response. The neighbor in the other side of the house opened her door.

  “You looking for Roberta again?”

  “Yes!” Connor cried.

  “She was here just a minute ago. I told her you were here. She ran in the house for a minute and came right back out and left. Had a suitcase.”

  “Was anyone else in the car?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  They raced back to the truck. “Now where?” Neil asked.

  Connor looked utterly lost. “Airport, I guess.” He took out his phone again and called the chief, filling Mike in as Neil drove with the blue light flashing.

  “They’ve got a description of Roberta’s car. Mike’s going to put roadblocks out right away,” he told Neil. “But if she stays off the interstate, there’s not a lot of hope.”

  It took Neil almost fifteen minutes to get to the airport. He parked in the unloading zone. Connor jumped out and ran inside. Neil called the dispatcher with their location and asked for as many units as the department could send. Then he got out, locked the truck and followed.

  Inside the terminal, he looked around for Connor. When he looked up, he saw the captain disappear into the airport manager’s office on the upper level. Neil quickly scanned the ticket lines and waiting areas on the lower level, then went up the escalator. He cased the café area, then the newsstand, looking for Roberta Palmer. When he came out of the newsstand, Connor and the manager were approaching with a uniformed officer.

  “Three units on the way,” Neil said.

  “Good,” said Connor. “Put two of them on the garage and parking areas to look for her car.” The manager went through a metal detector, into the passengers-only area.

  “He’s going to hold every plane until it’s searched. Nothing takes off until we search it. Airport security will help, and we’ll close the entry doors until we know if she’s here. Let me know immediately if you find her car.” Connor went through the gate after the manager, showing his badge.

  Neil hurried downstairs and out to the driveway. Two units were pulling up. He gave the four officers the license plate number and description of the vehicle, and they headed for the parking garage. Neil went to the exit gate, where people leaving the airport paid for their parking time, and asked the attendant if he’d seen the car. He didn’t think he had. Neil impressed on him that he needed to watch carefully for it and call the manager on his cell phone immediately if he saw it.

  Back at the front of the terminal, security guards were at the doors, telling irate passengers they would have to wait, and assuring them that their planes would not leave without them. A third squad car came in with shrieking siren. Neil put the patrol officers in the outside parking areas, looking for Roberta’s car. He scanned the burgeoning crowd on the sidewalk.

  Patrolman Ray Oliver came running from the parking garage. “Her car’s on the second level. It’s locked up. What do you want us to do?”

  “Just watch it for now,” Neil said. He called Connor on his cell phone.

  “Her car’s in the garage, Connor. You were right.”

  “Okay, we’re about to board a plane that’s holding for takeoff. Show the ticket agents at U.S. Air the pictures and see if they recognize her.”

  Neil went inside and approached the airline counter. When the agent shook her head over the photos, Neil described Roberta without the disguise—forty, red hair, attractive. His cell phone rang. Connor.

  “Tell security to open the doors, and meet me in the manager’s office. We’ve got her!”

  TWELVE

  Neil relayed the message, then went up to the airport manager’s office on the mezzanine. Roberta was mad. Very mad. She sat in a steel and vinyl chair with her hands cuffed in front of her. She wore a dark, short wig and the unflattering glasses.

  “Where is it?” Connor was asking her.

  She looked balefully at him, but said nothing.

  “Let’s go,” he said. They took her down a service elevator and out to one of the squad cars.

  Ray Oliver stepped up and said to Connor, “Do you want us to tow the car, sir?”

  Connor gave instructions and dismissed the other units. They took Roberta back to the station, and Connor assigned Tony to book her.

  While Neil waited, Connor paced from the window, past his desk, to the corner of Neil’s and back.

  “She dropped the money somewhere,” he said. “They pulled her luggage off the plane, and it wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe she checked another bag,” Neil suggested.

  “No, they looked into that. I left them tearing that airplane apart. The passengers are probably still on the runway, furious at us.”

  “She went home after she left the bank,” Neil reminded him.

  Connor called Ron Legere and asked for a search team to go immediately to Roberta Palmer’s house. “Make sure they ask the neighbor if anyone else has been there besides me,” he told Ron. When he had hung up, he sighed, scratching his head. “Why did she pick today?”

  “Yesterday was the last day for the advance tickets for the ball,” Neil said. “All the money was in by five o’clock yesterday.”

  “Guess we should have thought of that.”

  “That’s what they were waiting for. But where was she headed?”

  “JFK,” Connor said. “Then who knows where? She didn’t have a connecting flight booked.”

  “Maybe she was going to stay in New York a week, then use the reservation on the Paris flight.”

  “Or maybe…” Connor stopped by the window.

  “What are you thinking?” Neil asked.

  “A third ID. She’d booked this ticket under the name Roberta Jones. She had another phony driver’s license that got her past security and onto the plane. Maybe she’s got a passport under that name, too. Still, if she does, she didn’t have it with her.”

  “It’s really hard to get one bogus passport, let alone two,” Neil said.

  “Maybe she had to get it quickly and bought a phony one, instead of applying for a legitimate one this time. Forgers make passports.”

  “They usually don’t get by customs,” Neil replied.

  “Have we still got Patrick in the lockup?”

  Neil called downstairs. “He went to the county jail.”

  Mike came into the room from the stairway. “You got her! Good work.”

  “Pulled her out of the bathroom on a plane they stopped on the runway. One more minute…” Connor shook his head. “She stashed the money somewhere. I honestly don’t think she took it on the plane.”

  “She could have asked someone else to carry it,” said Mike.

  “They warn people about t
hat now,” said Connor. “But they’ll question all the other passengers anyway.”

  “Well, they don’t have lockers at the airport,” Neil said. “It’s got to be somewhere.”

  “The real question is, where’s Burton?” Mike said.

  Connor shrugged. “He wasn’t on that plane.”

  “She was going to meet him somewhere,” said Mike.

  “She was flying to New York,” Neil told him. “Maybe he was picking her up there.”

  Mike nodded. “Call JFK. Send the photos of Burton with and without his disguise. Ask them to check all the people meeting that plane.”

  Neil went to his desk and began the process of trying to get through to the right people in time. He sent the photos as e-mail attachments. He heard Connor telling Lance and Jimmy to go to the county jail and take copies of Roberta’s forged documents to show Patrick. “If he didn’t make them, ask him who did. He might recognize the work of another artist. And we want to know if she had anything else made.”

  Connor said to Mike, “If Burton was meeting her, he could have been holding more documents for her. Like a passport with the name Jones.”

  The chief of security at the JFK terminal came on the line, and Neil told him what was needed. He promised quick action.

  Neil swiveled his chair so that his back was to Connor’s desk and put a quick call through to Kate’s cell phone. The pleasure in her voice when she greeted him sent his pulse galloping and made him realize how badly he wanted their relationship to work. “Kate, big news. We’re holding a press conference at four-thirty. Can you come?”

  “Absolutely. But can’t you give me a little hint what it’s about?”

  He smiled. She always pressed her advantage. Well, he could do that, too. “Sure, but first tell me we’re still on for tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “You know. My Oma. I set it up with her for tomorrow afternoon. She can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Excellent! I can’t wait to meet her, either.”

  Neil grinned. “And…I was thinking…dinner afterward? And the show at the Civic Center?”

  “You mean…”

  “They’ve got the Lipizzaner stallions this weekend.”

  “I know, I know. Barry did a story about them. But the tickets are exorbitant.”

  “Is it a deal?”

  “Yes, of course. But you don’t have to spend all that money.”

  “Hush. Just make sure you get to the press conference on time. We arrested Roberta Palmer about an hour ago.”

  “Roberta Palmer? That nice woman at the animal shelter?”

  “Uh-huh. Up to her neck in this with Jim Burton.”

  She exhaled audibly. “Wow.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Tony got off with Roberta.

  “I’ve got to go,” Neil said.

  He and Connor took the prisoner into the interrogation room. Mike stuck around, and Neil figured he’d be in Observation with Tony.

  “All right, Roberta,” said Connor, when the tape was rolling, “do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll wish you had.”

  “I’d rather wait until I see my lawyer.”

  “Did you ask for a lawyer downstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s probably on his way. Miss Palmer, I don’t understand your thinking in this whole business.”

  “So formal now, Captain?”

  Connor bowed his head slightly.

  “You thought he’d never be interested in me,” she said. “It never even occurred to you. You thought he was after one of those college girls.” She laughed bitterly.

  “Whose idea was this, anyway?” Connor asked. “You thought it out months in advance, laid your plans together.”

  “I suppose we both did. We just thought of it one night. It was simple, getting hold of the money. It was stacking up fast, and we made sure at least half of it stayed in accounts we could access quickly. Jim had the authority to manage the accounts. Later, when he left, I managed them.”

  “But you planned to go the fifteenth, after the Fur Ball,” said Connor.

  “That was a bit of a miscalculation,” she said. “We should have planned it earlier. When I realized all of the receipts would be in a week early, it was a bit of a letdown. We’d have to stick around the extra week, acting innocent.”

  Neil stood under the video camera, at the side of the room nearest the door, watching her. She was attractive, now that she had shed the wig and glasses.

  “We have your false documents, under the name Parlin,” Connor said. “We know Burton assumed the identity of his dead cousin. You would never have been able to leave the country.”

  She said nothing.

  “So Jim found himself in a spot, and he had to leave early. He was looking at two murder charges. You, of course, will be charged as an accessory. You were probably the one who heard Ted Hepburn talking to Edna Riley about his apprehension. Something wasn’t right at the shelter, and Ted knew it. You told Jim.” Connor waited.

  “I told you, I’d like to speak to my attorney,” Roberta said.

  Connor said to Neil, “Take her downstairs.” To her, he added, “We’ll talk again later.”

  When Neil returned to the office, Connor was hunched before his computer again. Neil shoved his hands in his pockets and walked over to the captain’s corner desk.

  “What do we do now?”

  Connor grinned without looking away from his screen. “Hang in there, buddy. It’s almost time for the press conference. Go ahead down there. I think I’ve found the bank where the shelter’s money ended up. If we can get authority to freeze that account and keep Burton from accessing it…”

  Neil eyed him thoughtfully. “You’ll be taking his million away from him. Then he’ll be desperate.”

  “He sure will. And that’s when he’s most likely to make a mistake.”

  The tall young man seated himself across from Kate in a booth at the fast food restaurant down the street from the pizza place.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me on short notice, Stephen.”

  He shrugged, not quite meeting her gaze. “Well, it’s better than where I work. I wouldn’t want my boss hearing me talk about this.”

  “I understand.”

  Stephen Burton brushed the hair out of his eyes. “I’m not sure why you want to talk to me. I mean…if you put something more in the paper about me, my mother would probably die. First she’d kill me, then she’d die.”

  Kate smiled and cocked her head to one side. “It’s not my intention to embarrass your family. I know this last week has been very difficult for you.”

  “Yeah. Especially Mom. When she told me and Sean that Dad was gone, it was…” He glanced up for a moment. “She was miserable. Please don’t make her feel that way again.”

  “What did she say when your father took off?” Kate asked.

  “She said at first that he probably had to leave on business in a hurry and would call us that day. But he didn’t. She started making calls to see if he’d checked in at his office or the shelter, but he hadn’t. So finally she reported him missing. She hated to. I guess we all wanted to believe he’d walk in the door any minute.”

  “And when the detectives found that his gun had been used in a couple of murders?”

  He drew a quick breath and looked out the window. “She said it was a mistake, and he wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “The police have asked the newspaper not to publicize the fact that the murder weapon belonged to your father, even though we know it.”

  He eyed her cautiously, his brows drawn together in a frown. “Why would you hold something back like that? I mean, could they arrest you if you published it? I thought reporters were all for exposure and getting the truth out, no matter who it hurt.”

  Kate felt her color rising. It stung to know people thought that, and she felt a modicum of shame on behalf of all journalists, because there
was probably some truth to what he said.

  “To be honest, I agreed not to publish it because I want to help the police if I can. They think holding back certain information may help them catch the killer. I’m not saying that was your father, Stephen. Someone else could have used his gun to do that.”

  “Someone else did, if his gun really was the murder weapon. I’m not convinced that’s true.”

  “You think the police are wrong about that? Because the tests they use to match bullets to the weapons that fired them are highly accurate.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe they lied about it.”

  Kate frowned. “Why would the detectives do that?”

  “To scare us into spilling something. To make us say something incriminating about my father.”

  She swallowed hard. “Stephen, I can assure you that those men wouldn’t do that. I know Detective Alexander and Captain Larson personally, and they wouldn’t lie to anyone to try to trick them. They have to ask painful questions sometimes. That’s part of their job. But if they told you those people were killed with your father’s handgun, then it’s true.”

  He scowled. “Whatever. Anyway, I was stupid to take the gun, and to shoot at that cat. But I went to court, and it’s over. That has nothing to do with my father. I don’t know what’s going on with him. You make it sound like he’s out there reading the paper, and you’re being careful not to tell him what the cops know about the gun. Why?”

  Kate hesitated. Had she made a huge blunder in asking Stephen for an interview? Maybe she should have asked Connor’s opinion first.

  “You think Dad killed those people,” Stephen said.

  “The ballistics tests are foolproof. It was the same gun.” She fished her small notebook from her purse and flipped through it to the notes she’d made when she’d talked to Neil about Stephen’s interrogation at the police station. “You told the detectives that you saw your father holding it last Tuesday night. Cleaning it. And someone had used it just a few days before to shoot two old people.”

  He coldly met her stare. “Not my dad.”

  “But if someone stole it and used it to commit the murders, how did your dad get it back in time to clean it Tuesday evening?”