“Monday,” Joanna echoed. “Can’t you do better than that?”
“Hey, our ME’s out of town. Went to a class reunion in Ames, Iowa. What do you expect?
Do you think I’m going to do them myself? I tried getting a pinch-hitter in from another county, but that costs money, and the budget doesn’t allow-“
“You don’t have to tell me about budget problems,” Joanna interrupted. “We’re dealing with one of our own. Whenever your ME gets around to doing the autopsies will be fine, but you’re saying there’s no identification?”
“That’s right. None. No purses. No ID. No clothing. No jewelry.”
“What about sexual assault?”
“No sign that we could see offhand, but again, we have to defer to the ME on that.
What’s the situation with your case?” Trotter asked.
Quickly Joanna related what she could about the Carol Mossman case.
“No suspects?” Trotter asked when she had finished.
“Not so far.”
For a moment there was silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m wondering if maybe we’re dealing with a serial killer,” Sheriff Trotter said at last. “Somebody who’s on the move and targeting women. The big question: Is this guy traveling east or west?”
“We’ll know that better when we have an approximate time 131
of death on your victims,” Joanna returned. “Depending on whether your victims died earlier or later than ours, we may be able to tell the general direction the killer’s heading. You haven’t heard about similar cases from any other jurisdictions that might be related, have you?”
“Not yet, but my detectives are checking.”
“I’ll have mine do the same,” Joanna said. “Have your guys work to the east; I’ll have mine work west.”
“Fair enough. No sense in duplication of effort,” Trotter said. Then, after a momentary pause, he added, “Do you think the guy would be be stupid enough to use the same kind of ammo three times in a row?”
“Beats me,” Joanna said. ‘Antique bullets made in 1917 are pretty distinctive.”
“I’ll say,” Trotter agreed. “Where the hell did they come from?”
“Good question. Maybe they were stolen from a firearms museum somewhere or from a collector. Who knows? Maybe the gun and the bullets are all the same age.”
“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Trotter asked.
Hollicker raised his hand. “I’ve already tried checking with Colt,” he said. “They had a warehouse fire years ago. Unfortunately, their records don’t go back this far.”
Joanna relayed that information to Sheriff Trotter. “What do you think about going public with some kind of warning?”
“I think we should,” Randy said.
“But what kind of warning can we give?” Joanna asked. “We’ve got no suspect. No vehicle.
Our victim was shot while standing inside the back door of her own home. Where yours were gunned down is anybody’s guess.”
“Well, then,” Sheriff Trotter replied, “the best we can do is to 132
tell women living or traveling alone to be on the lookout. Since the killer’s presumably already crossed at least one state line, we should be able to ask for help from the feds. If nothing else, they can help us with profiling.”
“But only if we have more to give them,” Joanna cautioned.
“When we have more to give them,” Trotter said. “Tell you what, Sheriff Brady. We have the crime scene photos, and we did pick up a few tire casts and a few footprints.
The casts are from big tires, probably from an SUV or a pickup truck. The footprints look to be about a size eight or so and our CSI says that whoever made them was carrying a pretty heavy load. How about if I package up copies of what we have here and courier all of it over to you with one of my deputies. Your guys can package up whatever you have on your end, and send it back to me. Trading copies back and forth won’t screw up any chains of evidence.”
“Sounds good to me,” Joanna said. “When will your deputy be here?”
“Give me a couple of hours, but it won’t be late. Everybody who can is planning on taking tomorrow off.”
Lucky them, Joanna thought. If a serial killer was on the loose and stalking unsuspecting women in New Mexico and southern Arizona, many of Joanna’s people wouldn’t be enjoying a leisurely Fourth of July holiday.
“This is critical,” Joanna told Dave once she was off the phone. “Whoever this guy is, we’ve got to get him off the streets. I’m putting you in charge of making up the evidence packet we send over to Hidalgo County.”
“All right, Sheriff,” Dave said dubiously, “but I don’t know how much good it’s going to do. The killer never gained access to Carol Mossman’s residence. We have some tire casts and a couple of footprints, too, and Casey picked up one set of prints 133
from the doorknob on Carol Mossman’s front door, but that’s about it. Other than the things I just mentioned, the brass, and the bullets I dug out of the wall paneling, our crime scene stuff is pretty thin.”
“Ours may not be worth much,” Joanna pointed out, “but it’s possible Trotter’s people picked up something important. We’ll be better off sending everything we have, usable or not, in hopes of getting something good back
