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Back A Small Town Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Thomas Perry
  3. THOMAS PERRY
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
  16. 11
  17. 12
  18. 13
  19. 14
  20. 15
  21. 16
  22. 17
  23. 18
  24. 19
  25. 20
  26. 21
  27. 22
  28. 23
  29. 24
  30. 25
  31. 26
  32. 27
  33. 28
  34. 29
  35. 30
  36. 31
  37. 32
  38. 33
  39. 34
  40. 35
  41. 36
  42. 37
  43. 38
  44. Back Cover

About six weeks after that, the police department received a report from the FBI that the bullet that killed Mark Ballard had been found and identified by ballistics analysis and blood DNA found on and around the bullet. The bullet had gone through the victim’s head and lodged in a maple tree on Main Street. The bullet had been matched to a rifle stolen from the prison by an inmate named Earl Detweiler. His fingerprints and DNA were found on the foregrip and the lower receiver. Detweiler had been killed by a bullet from an M4 owned by the Weldonville, Colorado, Police Department and issued to Lieutenant Leah Anne Hawkins. Leah made a copy of the report and sent it to Marcia Ballard.

13

Leah had reviewed the various photographs of Viktor Panko, read his interviews with the Buffalo Police Department when he was young and the FBI when he was older, and read the court transcripts from his four trials and the police reports going back to his first adult arrest at age eighteen. She had searched for nuance, for small, seemingly unimportant details about him. She had looked at the way he dressed, his preference in cars, his use of figures of speech—any peculiarity that would direct her to some particular place or group of people. After the prison break, the FBI had done interviews with inmates who had known him.

They learned from the inmate transcripts that Panko’s conversations were filled with nostalgia about women he had seduced, paid for sex, or raped. Two of them noted that the women in the stories often sounded very young.

The stories emerged again about how Panko had told other inmates that he could help them after they were released by obtaining new identities for them with no criminal histories. He said he had contacts he could talk to from inside the prison who had remained in business after he’d been caught.

All telephone calls inmates made from Weldonville prison were taped and monitored, so that could not have been his way of placing orders for identity documents. He had to be using a messenger or go-between who visited him in prison. The people on his visitor list were the only ones who could come and go, so they would have been the only possible messengers. She began to spend more of her time pursuing this possibility.