One to the Wolves, On the Trail of a Killer by Lois Duncan

exactly,” I said. I read him the message on the card. “He doesn’t give his last
     name or say how to contact him.”
    “What was the name of the flower shop?” Michael asked. “I’ll check and see if they
     remember the order.” A short time later he called back to report that the proprietors
     had no trouble recalling the flower arrangement because they knew the young man who
     bought it.
    “They don’t know his name, but every Friday since Kait’s death he’s come in to buy
     flowers to take to her grave,” Michael said. “It’s gone on so long that he just asks
     for ‘the usual.’ Next Friday I’m going to fly back here and try to intercept him.”
    “Oh, and guess what? Susan left me a message on my voice mail. She won’t give me her
     home address, but she told me what city she’s living in and has agreed to meet me
     at a coffee shop in a shopping mall. I’ve made plane reservations for this evening.”
    “You’re going to fly there!” I exclaimed. “This has to be costing you a fortune! Couldn’t
     you just ask her questions over the phone?”
    “I want to get a look at that dog bite scar,” Michael told me.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Michael sent us a tape of his interview with Susan and then phoned to discuss it.
    “She was pretty convincing,” he said. “But her statements conflict with each other.
     She told you that she left Albuquerque because she was scared. She told me she relocated because of a wonderful job offer.”
    “What was your impression of the scar on her arm?” I asked him.
    “It’s a straight slash about four inches long, and I didn’t see any opposing set of
     tooth marks. Susan says it tore a bunch of tendons and required three hours of surgery,
     which seems like a lot of damage for a nip from your own dog. 1 She told me, ‘The scar looks weird because it got stitched funny.’ I asked if she’d
     be willing to let us look at the ER report. She insisted she has nothing to hide,
     so I’ve mailed her release forms. It’s important to nail this down because an amazing
     number of people suffered suspicious injuries following Kait’s murder.”
    “Dung’s suicide attempt—”
    “It goes far beyond that. Dung’s Hispanic friend, Ray Padilla, and two of Ray’s woman
     friends had their arms and wrists slashed. Ray’s the guy who told police that Dung
     had friends in California who were big time drug dealers. When your book came out,
     Marty Martinez was found lying in his doorway with his wrist slashed, an alleged suicide
     attempt. And after Miguel Garcia got out of jail, he was shot in the stomach, another
     alleged suicide attempt. And Robert Garcia, APD’s false eyewitness, was found dead
     in an alley. That adds up to a lot of injuries to people linked in one way or another
     to Kait’s case.”
    Susan did not sign the forms to release her ER records. She told Michael she hadn’t
     received them. He mailed her a second set, which she didn’t sign either. After that
     she screened all her calls and would not respond to those from Michael.
    I wrote to her, pleading with her to sign the forms so we could get that issue off
     our platter. “The doctor’s description of your wound should clearly indicate that
     it’s a dog bite, and that will be that,” I wrote.
    She did not respond.
    True to his word, Michael flew back to Albuquerque to hang out at the flower shop
     and wait for the mysterious “Rod” to show up the next Friday. Rod came into the shop
     right on schedule, and Michael intercepted him.
    “Rod and Kait went to high school together,” Michael reported. “He has an I.D. bracelet
     she gave him for his birthday. He had to change schools and the two lost track of
     each other, but he ran into her again in 1989 and they started going out for coffee
     or to a movie on nights when Dung was off with his buddies. Rod says Kait was close-mouthed
     about what was going on in her life. He says he didn’t know anything about the car
     wrecks