BONNETT owns Neck Deep Leather in Laguna Beach. They sell clothing and accessories made in Laguna Beach and Tijuana. We believe that BONNETT funnels drug profits through the shop, giving the money the appearance of legitimacy.

He is 6'4" tall and weighs 245 lbs. His Stanford-Binet IQ is 126. He is known to carry a gun in his waistband and a white-handled Mexican switchblade knife in his left front pant pocket. Although he lives in Laguna Beach, BONNETT is contemptuous of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and disdainful of “hippie” culture in general. He dislikes homosexuals. BONNETT appears to be motivated by money and by a taste for danger and violence. According to witnesses and informants, BONNETT does not use the contraband drugs he smuggles into this country.

Due to BONNETT’s violent nature, JANELLE and other OCSD informants are discouraged from initiating contact or being alone with him. JANELLE is aware of this man’s behavior but shows no fear of him. JANELLE has joked about BONNETT being “like a cool older brother” and that he “watches out for me.” We have learned from JANELLE that she and BONNETT have a sexual relationship. They have traveled to Mexico together once and BONNETT has been to the yellow cottage several times.

DEPUTIES SHOULD CONSIDER BONNETT ARMED AND DANGEROUS AT ALL TIMES. According to several witnesses, including JANELLE, BONNETT has made numerous death threats against law enforcement, Brotherhood of Eternal Love members, and homosexuals. OCSD undercover narcotics deputy TROY GANT, who has established a relationship with BONNETT, believes that BONNETT is the most dangerous man in the county.

APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

An IQ of 126, thought Nick. A cool older brother. Cut the growers’ throats? Cut Janelle’s? He remembered the initials CB from the scribbled numbers by her telephone-the guy who’d told him to kiss his ass on the phone. And Bonnett hadn’t been seen since the day after her body was discovered.

Nick flipped through the juvenile court transcripts and looked at the photographs of Cory Bonnett. Good face. Big features, something offhand and hopeful in his expression. Chipped teeth, sun-bleached eyebrows, and a crooked nose. Blond wavy hair to his shoulders. The hippie affectation made him look more like a deranged Round Table knight than a love child. He has been to the yellow cottage. Nick didn’t like the idea of tracking down a criminal with the same IQ as his own.

And he knew that none of these drug world contacts was the Sears, Roebuck customer who bought the Trim-Quick.

Though any of them could have bought or stolen one there or anywhere else.

And any of them could have been the one who raped and murdered Janelle and carried her into the SunBlesst packinghouse on his back.

He thought of large, violent Bonnett and Janelle flying down to Mexico. Being together in her little yellow cottage by the ocean.

He has been to the yellow cottage.

The yellow cottage, thought Nick. Not her yellow cottage. The.

An idea came to him. He went to Captain Frank del Gado’s office. The captain was at his desk reading the Journal.

“Becker. What gives?”

“Did we rent Janelle Vonn’s cottage for her?”

“More or less.”

“And we had a wiretap on the phone?” asked Nick.

“Sure. Court order. She knew. So.”

“Was the cottage miked for surveillance?”

“Yeah. So,” said del Gado.

“I want to hear the tapes.”

“We got hundreds of hours.”

“Good.”

Del Gado dropped the paper and looked at Nick. “I’ll have the dupes on your desk by end of day.”

Harloff came in a minute later, said he talked to Special Agent Hambly over at the bureau. FBI was interested in Janelle’s friends Tim Leary and Roger Stoltz. Leary was high on President Johnson’s new COINTELPRO New Left list. Stoltz was on Johnson’s new COINTELPRO white hate list. Hambly wasn’t working her murder at all.

A Fed working two counterintelligence programs, thought Nick. Glad we got to her place first.

“What’s the Stoltz-Janelle connection?” asked Harloff.

“He helped her get straightened out after the molestations. Off the drugs.”

“Then these Laguna guys got her back on them.”

NICK SPENT an hour watching the ID fingerprint examiners trying to match the partial fingerprint from the packinghouse lock to those of Leary, Fowler, Herald, and Bonnett. The print was only big enough to contain one, maybe two, comparison points. California courts would accept ten points and nothing less.

But two good comparison points was a start. You couldn’t bring them to court, but you could eliminate.

Nick looked at the lock print with his magnifying glass. A nice bifurcation. Clear and unambiguous. Almost certainly a thumb. The criminalists had done a good job on the lift.

Leary was a bust. He had the wrong basic pattern: a loop instead of a whorl. Leary the loop, thought Nick. It figured.

The ID examiner pointed out that Fowler’s booking deputy had used a little too much ink. Some of the spaces were muddy and confused. Nick wondered why they’d let something like that pass. On Fowler’s thumb, Nick couldn’t really tell if he was looking at a ridge ending or a bifurcation or an ink bridge. It looked like a bifurcation more than an ink bridge. The pore pattern was totally obliterated.

Price Herald was a bust, too. A whorl, but a much tighter pattern than the lock print.

The examiner showed Nick that Bonnett had a similar bifurcation on his right thumb whorls, but Nick remembered that Bonnett was left-handed. His left thumb, on the hand he’d logically use to pull off a lock, contained not a bi- but a trifurcation. Still, they had found a comparison point. The distribution of sweat pores was similar but most examiners wouldn’t bring the pore patterns into court.

So Bonnett, maybe. But he hadn’t been seen since the day after Nick had stood in the SunBlesst packinghouse and looked down through the slanting sunlight at Janelle Vonn. Maybe the Laguna cops could give a hand finding him.

Nick had already eliminated the Talon Security guards, Terry Neemal, Jonas Dessinger-who’d been printed on a DUI arrest ten years ago, and brothers Casey and Lenny Vonn.

Jesse Black had never been fingerprinted but his alibi was good.

The trouble was, Janelle’s killer may never have even touched that lock. Nick had no solid connection between the print and what happened that night. Someone could have pulled open that lock hours earlier. Days earlier. Someone with reasons unrelated to Janelle Vonn.

Nick sighed and sat back. Tapped the magnifying glass on the palm of one hand. Thought they should put all the prints on a big computer someday and let it match them up.

Two weeks into my first case, Nick thought. And no suspect.