Blood Hunt

7

He missed Harry at the Westin and arrived back in Homicide to find Harry starting reports. After a rundown of Garreth’s day, he sighed. “So we both came up empty.”

“Except for identifying our bodega gunman and the odd results of the autopsy.” Garreth rolled a report form into his typewriter. “Did I miss anything interesting at the Moscone?”

“Just Susan Pegans fainting dead away when we told her about Mossman…and here I thought women swooning went out with whalebone corsets. No one I talked to, conventioneers or other exhibitors around Kitco’s booth, saw him last night or knew where he was going.”

Garreth began his report. “Find anything useful in his room?”

“Nothing telling us where he went. He had clothes, a couple of paperbacks, a return plane ticket to Denver. He left his exhibitor’s badge…and did go out light, like Verneau said. Personal keys, several other credit cards, two hundred in cash, and another two hundred in traveler’s checks were under a false bottom of his shaving kit. No billfold, so he must have had that on him when he was killed. He made two calls, one Monday and one last night, both a little after seven in the evening and both to his home phone in Denver.”

“Tomorrow why don’t I check the cab companies to see if one of them took a fare of Mossman’s description anywhere last night?”

“Do that.”

Garreth remembered then that he needed to talk to the lieutenant. He knocked on Serruto’s door. “Got a minute?”

“If it’s about the warrant on O’Hare, we have it. There’s an APB out on him, too.”

“I’d like to stake out his mother’s and girlfriend’s apartments. He’s bound to get in touch with one or the other.”

Serruto leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t we see if the APB and your street contacts locate him first? Two stakeouts use a lot of men.” He did not say it, but Garreth heard, nonetheless: We can’t spend that much manpower on one small-time crook.

Garreth nodded, sighing inwardly — all were not equal in the eyes of the law — and went back to his typewriter.

An hour later he and Harry checked out for the night.