Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

With a slightly leering smile, Roth held out the car key Kaplan had given him. “Want to open it up?” he asked in a cavalier, joking tone, as he sidled close to her.

“I’ll let your people do that,” Ramona said as she backed away. She didn’t need Roth wasting her time with any cute moves. She had a boyfriend, an APD vice sergeant, who wasn’t overly hairy, and didn’t leer. Besides that, the inside of the vehicle probably smelled like dead dog.

The car was a high-end, imported sedan that came with an antitheft system and keys with built-in electronic circuits coded to open the doors and start the engine.

“How did the perp get into the vehicle without setting off the alarm?” she asked.

Roth shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. “When Kaplan gave me the key, he said the system was working, and the lot manager said no car alarms have gone off since Kaplan arrived at the lot.”

“You asked him to check the records?”

“Yeah, for the eight days the vehicle has been here.”

“You’d think that somebody parked nearby would have noticed the dog,” Ramona said.

“Depends on when the perp put the pooch in the car,” Roth said.

“Good point. Okay, let’s have the techs dust the outside for prints and then open it up,” Ramona said.

Roth waved at the other police vehicle and two techs, both with surgical masks hanging around their necks, came over and started rummaging through their cases.

Ramona glanced around the lot while Roth tried to chat her up. The eager look in his eye and the absence of a wedding ring made her shut down even more. Except for the entrance and exit lanes by the attendant’s booth, a high chain-link security fence enclosed the property, and the long rows of parking spaces had light poles at each end to illuminate the lot at night. She doubted the perp had scaled the fence or walked onto the lot carrying a thirty-pound, headless dog, no matter how well concealed it might have been.

She ignored Roth and walked fifty yards to the attendant’s booth through heat waves that shimmered up from the hot pavement.

“What’s going on down there?” the female attendant asked, as she waved off a car trying to enter and pointed to a sign that read LOT FULL. “I had to close the lot and we’ve got two people waiting in the manager’s office because you cops won’t let them leave.”

“It shouldn’t be long now,” Ramona said. “I’ll speak to them. When did you start work?”

“Seven this morning.”

“Has anything out of the ordinary occurred?”

“Like what?”

“Somebody leaving without paying, or coming and going in a short period of time.”

“Everybody pays,” the blonde said. “You gotta go through this gate in order to get out. It’s the only way. And this is a long-term lot. People don’t just come and go. Some of these cars are here for three or four weeks.”

“So nobody did a fast turnaround,” Ramona said, “or failed to pay.”

“Not since I’ve been here.”

“How about earlier this week?”

“Same thing, and I’ve been here for five straight days.”

Ramona got the shift-change times from the blonde and asked for the manager. The woman pointed at a small building outside the fence next to a staging area where idling shuttle buses were parked. Inside, Ramona reassured two unhappy customers that they wouldn’t have to wait much longer, and met with the manager, a Hispanic male with nervous black eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a mouth twisted in annoyance. His name, Leon Villa, was embroidered beneath a company patch sewn above the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Villa asked, staring at Ramona’s shield. “The other policeman told me nothing. Is somebody dead?”

“No one’s dead,” Ramona replied. “I need to talk to the booth attendants who worked the afternoon and late-night shifts during the last eight days.”

“They’re not here.”

“Of course not,” Ramona said, wondering whether Villa was rattled by the presence of cops or a bit dimwitted. “Do you have their names, addresses, and phone numbers?”

Villa nodded, paged through a three-ring binder, and read off the information as Ramona wrote it down.

Back at the crime scene, the techs, their faces partially hidden behind surgical masks, were working on the inside of the car. A rancid, maggoty odor wafted out of the vehicle. The dog had been removed from the driver’s seat, bundled in a dark green garbage bag, and left on the pavement. There was no sign of blood on the seat or the floor mat.

Detective Roth handed her the blank envelope from the dashboard of Kaplan’s car and the note it contained. Both were protected by clear plastic sleeves. The note read:

KERNEY THE DOG DOESN’T COUNT STILL TWO TO GO CAN YOU GUESS WHO DIES BEFORE YOU?

“Who’s Kerney?” Roth asked.

“My chief.”

“No shit? What do you know about that? Bet he’s got to be sweating a bit.”

Ramona nodded as she studied the note. “This type looks identical to the message that was tacked to the chief’s front door.”

“It looks like a common font,” Roth said.

“How can you be sure?”

“I do the monthly newsletter for my kid’s soccer league,” Roth said, looking at it again. “In fact, I use this typeface all the time. It’s called Arial Narrow.”

“Did the techs lift any prints?”

“Not from the note or envelope,” Roth replied. “But there are lots of partials from the car.”

“I need to have the carcass examined.”

“Sure thing. We use a vet here in town who does a good job with animal forensics. I’ll have it dropped off after we finish up with the inspection at the lab. But from first look, Fido was probably left outside for a couple of days after he was killed. The techs found some dirt and pine needles matted in the dried blood on his fur.”

“That’s good to know,” Ramona said. “A trace evidence analysis might give us a general idea where the perp stashed the dog. Can you arrange to have the vehicle towed to Santa Fe? I don’t think Kaplan will want to drive it home. Not until it’s fumigated at least.”

“You got it,” Roth said, giving her the once-over for the second time.

Ramona smiled tightly in response, left Roth in the hot sun, went to her unit, cranked up the air conditioning, and started calling the off-duty attendants on her cell phone.

She hit pay dirt on the second call. Yesterday afternoon, a man driving a van had entered the lot only to drive out after a few minutes. As a precaution, the attendant had written down the van’s license plate number on the lot ticket.

Ramona made an appointment to interview the attendant, hung up, and went immediately to the manager’s office to search for the ticket. Wearing gloves, she went through the date and time stamped tickets until she found it. She slipped it into an envelope, and called in the license number from her unit. The plate had been stolen three weeks ago from a car in Socorro, eighty miles south of Albuquerque.

“We’re almost done here,” Roth said with a big smile, as he slid into the passenger seat next to her. “Want to grab some lunch?”

“Not today.”

“You don’t take meal breaks?”

“I’ve got work to do,” Ramona said, hoping Roth would take the hint and go away.

“We still don’t know how the perp got in the car.”

“I’m working on it, Detective,” Ramona said flatly.

Roth got the message and shrugged. “Hey, let me know how it turns out.” He handed Ramona his card. “The vet’s name is on the back. I’ll have our lab get a report up to you by tomorrow.”

“Ask him to rush it,” Ramona said.

“Anything for a fellow officer.”