Avenging Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

coroner: death by gunshot, an exploding bullet of heavy caliber—probably .44 or .45—sometime in the early morning of the day he was found. No FBI record, no military service, no missing-persons report. The Salt Lake City store that sold the victim’s suit did not remember the man’s description. No laundry marks.
    “Possible motive robbery? Maybe a dope deal?”
    “The pathologist found no traces of dope in his organs. The summary says he was very healthy for a man his age.” Wager shrugged. “He was robbed, yes. But robbers don’t usually leave a note on the victim.”
    “So outside of that little drawing, we got a lot of nothing.”
    “Yessir.”
    Doyle pulled the drawing back across his desk, his square fingers tapping it lightly. “The Pueblo victim is unidentified, too. A white male, mid-to-late thirties, shot once in the heart with a large-caliber handgun. Robbery victim, but this was found stuck in his hand. Pueblo sent copies statewide to all agencies to see if it turned up anywhere else.” The Bulldog’s fingers stopped tapping. “Did we send a circular out?”
    “No, sir. I should have.”
    Doyle nodded. “That’s right, Wager. You should have. It was sloppy not to. So do it now. Start working from this angle.” He tapped the drawing again. “It’s the same m.o. and looks like the same kind of drawing. See what the lab can come up with on the picture you found. Get in touch with …” he read from a letter “… Detective Orvis down in Pueblo and see if he has any other replies to his circular.”
    “Yessir.”
    Doyle’s fingers tapped again, holding Wager in the chair a moment longer. “I don’t know how it was in Narcotics, Wager; but in Homicide, routine can be good and it can be bad. It’s good when it makes you work systematically and cover all the bases. It’s bad when it makes you think every murder’s just another day at the office. You understand?”
    “Yessir.”
    Doyle was right: Wager had screwed up, and the anger he felt was at himself. Back at his own desk he called Baird in the lab. “Have you run any tests on that angel drawing yet?”
    “Let’s see. … No, we haven’t got to it. I was hoping we’d get an i.d. to work with before we did any more on that one. We got about eight cases pending with viable suspects.”
    “Doyle wants the tests run as soon as you can.”
    “Crap. Well, the chief gets what he wants, doesn’t he?” Baird added, “I can tell you one thing about it without any tests, though.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s a copy. Xerox, maybe. But a plain-paper copier was used. I took it out of the evidence bag and looked at it in the light. You can see the difference in the embossing.”
    “A Xerox? It looked real to me.”
    “It is real. But it’s not an original. It just looks like an original. Hell, some of these new copiers can photograph a dollar bill close enough to fool a change machine. My son told me some of the kids in his junior high are working that little scam.”
    A copy. There could be tens of copies. Hundreds.
    “I don’t think the paper’s going to tell us much,” said Baird. “We already dusted it for prints, of course, but there weren’t any. I’d have let you know if there were.”
    “Do what you can.”
    “I always do.”
    His next call was through the WATS line to Pueblo, one of the string of growing cities that ran down the east face of the Rockies from Wyoming to New Mexico. All Wager could remember of the town was the wall of towering steel blast furnaces and the mountains of coal piles that lined I-25 as it arced past the small and usually hot and dusty city. After two or three voices he finally reached Detective Orvis.
    “This is Detective Wager, Denver Police, Homicide. I’m calling about that inquiry you sent out—the angel with the sword.”
    “Right! Do you have anything for us?”
    “A similar killing. And a similar drawing.”
    The line clicked somewhere in the muffled distance. “A white male?