Vertical Coffin s-4 Read online

  "People call me, Nan." She smiled, again giving me the Pepsodent Challenge.

  "Whatta you think you're doing here?"

  "Investigating my story. Greenridge was hit by a sniper. I think this might be the firing position. Look at this."

  She stepped aside and pointed down at something under the window. I looked down and saw a tripod mark, three little indentations in the carpet next to the window.

  "He sets up a shooting stand right here," Nan said, really into it now, "and when Greenridge comes out of his house, ka-pow!" She turned to face me. "This could be where the killer shot the rifle," she announced triumphantly. "I was just looking around for his brass."

  "I hope you didn't already steal the cartridge casing, like you tried to yesterday."

  "I'm a reporter, not a criminal," she said, "but I don't think it's here. I already looked."

  I glanced around the room, then turned and faced the window. "Unless they're specifically made for lefties, most rifles port to the right, so when the brass ejects, it should be over here on the right side of the room."

  We both started searching, looking up on the empty shelves, in the moldings around the carpet edge. Then I glanced down and saw a floor heating grate. It was a large, old-fashioned, cast-iron number fastened down with brass screws. The opening was big enough for a cartridge case to drop through, and if it had, my hope was that in his haste, the sniper would have left it there. I took out a pen knife and, while she watched, loosened the screws and lifted the heavy metal. I saw it before the grate came off-a spent casing from a.308.1 took out a pen, reached down, and sticking the point in the open end of the case, lifted it out. Sometimes my detective skills astound even me.

  "We found it!" she said, beaming.

  I was frowning. I knew that now our tool marks section in the ballistics lab would have to go out and test fire all of the long rifles at sheriff's SWAT. Under the circumstances, not an easy request. But if this cartridge casing matched one of their Tango 51s or 40-Xs, we were off on a horrible misadventure.

  "I think this could be terrific," she grinned.

  "I think it could be terrible," I replied.

  Chapter 15

  FUMING

  I closed up the apartment using the button lock, wondering how many prints Nan smudged on the way in. I had been careful not to touch anything, but I was pretty sure she had left prints everywhere.

  "Whatta you doing?" she asked, as we walked across the street. I still had the cartridge casing upside down on my pen tip. I fished out the key to my Acura and opened the trunk, withdrew a small crime scene evidence kit, then headed toward the back door of Billy Greenridge's house where I knew Beverly King had found the hide-a-key under a pot.

  "Aren't you supposed to put that in a bag or something?" she said, dogging my footsteps.

  "Latent prints typically fall into two categories," I told her, showing off a little, "porous and nonporous."

  "You mind if I get this down?" She fished a notebook and pen out of her purse, flipped to a clean page, and started writing. "I might be able to use some of it." She was scribbling: "Nonporous-okay, go on."

  "Porous prints appear on soft surfaces like paper or cardboard, unfinished wood. You can bag a porous print because the finger oil has sunk into the material, basically setting it. If this shooter wasn't wearing gloves when he loaded this cartridge, then any prints he left on here will be nonporous. Nonporous is any hard surface. Nonporous prints are fragile. Anything can wipe them off, even the evidence bag, so I have to fume it first, to set the print before I transport it."

  "This is fascinating. Fume it. Okay…" She was scribbling in her notebook. "So our bullet is nonporous."

  Suddenly it was our bullet-of course it wasn't a bullet, it was a cartridge case.

  I unlocked the back door of Billy Greenridge's house and walked into his kitchen. She was hot on my heels, writing as she went. I handed her "our bullet."

  "Hold the pen like that, don't touch the brass," I instructed.

  I removed a pair of latex gloves from the kit and snapped them on, then moved around the kitchen, taking what I needed. I took a coffee cup out of a cupboard, filled it, and put it in the microwave, setting it to boil. Next, I found some aluminum foil in a drawer.

  I reached into my evidence kit, removed a tube of superglue, and dabbed about a nickel-sized glob on a square of foil. Then, I shut off the microwave and put the foil inside, next to the steaming cup of water, took the pen with the bullet casing out of Nan's hand, and carefully placed it tail down in the microwave. The microwave was acting only as an enclosed space to hold the superglue fumes and the steam from the cup of boiling water. I closed the door and looked at my watch.

  "This is amazing," Nan gushed. "But what on earth are you trying to do?"

  "Harden the print. Superglue is basically a chemical called cyanoacrylate. The fumes get heated slightly by the cup of boiling-hot water. They float around in there-attach themselves to the amino and lactic acids, the glucose, sweat, and peptides that are the print residue. You can see the white ridges from the fumes starting to form on the cartridge already. Looks like maybe we got something."

  She leaned down and looked through the glass of the microwave door, smiling. "This is so cool," she said. "You're like Bill Nye the Science Guy with a badge."

  I groaned at that, then looked at my watch. Long enough. I opened the door, and with my gloved hand removed the cartridge case and held it up to the light. We had a slightly smudged partial print. It looked like an index or middle finger. Besides the print were some striated action marks, which had been left when the casing ported. They could also prove helpful.

  "Not a clean print," I said, "but maybe the lab can raise it some more. At least now it's hardened." I took out an evidence baggie and dropped the casing with its preserved print inside.

  "I never knew you could do that."

  "Easier than getting a crime tech out here, waiting for an hour, and getting the same result. Let's go."

  I cleaned up the mess in the microwave, placed the coffee cup back in the cupboard, then took everything else with me as I exited the house and locked the door. I walked Nan Chambers over to her green Suburban parked on a side street and watched while she unlocked the car and opened the door.

  "What was your name, again?" she asked, turning back and smiling. "Scully or something?"

  She started to write it down, but I took the notebook out of her hands. "Don't bother. It won't be good if we see each other again, or if my name shows up in your paper."

  I started thumbing through her notes. Aside from my lecture on latent prints, she had a page on each of the ATF SWAT members.

  Date of birth, education, time in service-with background information: married, how many kids, etc. She also had a few other statements from the neighbors at Hidden Ranch-and notes from an interview with William Palmer. We had covered a lot of the same terrain. I finished flipping through the book. It looked legit.

  "Isn't this illegal search and seizure?" she said, interrupting my thoughts.

  "Probably, but it doesn't matter unless I arrest you for this crime and try to get your book submitted as evidence in court. But since I'm in a charitable mood, I'm gonna let you take a pass. Unless you ignore my warning, we should have no problem."

  She was pinning me with those strange mismatched eyes. Her expression had hardened. "I haven't committed any crime."

  "The crime is interfering with a police investigation, breaking into that apartment without permission, and the possible destruction of evidence."

  "What crime scene?"

  "That apartment. If it's the shooting position, it's a secondary crime scene."

  She didn't look handsome now. She looked pissed and a little frightening. "I went to the manager, got his permission to look inside," she said. "He opened up for me. I didn't see any crime scene tape and I don't need your permission to go inside an" a place I'm thinking about renting when I have the manager's permission."

&n
bsp; "Ms. Chambers-"

  "It's Miss. I'm not much on feminism. I do okay without it."

  "You are not an uninformed bystander who is interested in renting an apartment, you're a newspaper reporter. You pushed into a room that you knew might be connected to a homicide, possibly disturbing fingerprints or trace evidence. Now I'm going to have CSI contact you and get a set of elimination prints. I'm not going to put up with any more of this from you. If I ever see you again, I'm filing those charges." I handed her notebook back. "Good-bye."

  She got into her Suburban and drove out of my life-I hoped. On my way back to the Glass House, I got a radio call instructing me to switch to TAC-2 for a message from my C. O. Cal came on and told me that I had a "forthwith" from the chief to meet him and Alexa at the U. S. Attorney's office. "What's cookin'?"

  "Your ass. Twelfth floor, Office twelve eighty-nine."

  Chapter 16

  FORTHWITH

  It took a full forty minutes to get there. Two of L. A.'s enduring myths are that it's a tropical paradise and that you can get anywhere in the Basin in twenty minutes.

  The U. S. Federal Annex is on Spring Street. It's a large, turn-of-the-century Greek monstrosity with a roof fresco decorated with frolicking satyrs. The winds had died down and the flags out front hung like dead pelts. I parked in the underground garage, stowed my gun in the trunk, and cleared security in the basement. Then I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor.

  Federal buildings always feel musty to me. Maybe it's all that in-line thinking. The tile halls were polished, the doors dark mahogany or oiled maple, I'm not sure which. The only woods I'm good at identifying are peckerwoods.

  I found Suite 1289. When I entered the reception area I heard arguing coming from the inner office. A vanilla-flavored male secretary looked at my credentials and pointed at the door. He didn't speak. Why waste your breath on lower lifeforms like city cops?

  Inside the high-ceilinged room was a crowd of angry, misguided people. It was Cole Hatton's office, the U. S. Attorney for the Central District of California. He was a good-looking, dark-haired fifty-year-old with a country club tan who wore his clothes so well that I instantly distrusted him.

  Bill Messenger and his area commander Paul Matthews stood on one side of the room. Garrett Metcalf and Brady Cagel were next to the windows in nicely fitted, gabardine suits, easily winning the fashion competition. Tony Filosiani and Mayor MacKenzie looked uncomfortable in the center of the room, while Alexa hovered nearby.

  "This is Sergeant Scully," Tony said. I shook hands with Cole Hatton, who barely looked at me before he turned back to the mayor.

  "I don't see any rationale for overturning a federal statute," he said. "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives should be allowed to investigate the death of one of their own. According to your own criminalists, there was C-four residue on the ashes. Illegal C-four is a mandated statute of ATF. That's basically it, unless the FBI deems that its own absence from the case would materially affect the interest of justice. That's the way the statute reads." His voice was booming in the high-ceilinged room. Everybody winced at the mention of the FBI.

  "We've got a dead sheriff's deputy and some very strange circumstances surrounding the service of a warrant given to us by ATF," Messenger said. "Their Internal Affairs investigated and found no wrongdoing, but our IAD sees it differently. The county will undoubtedly face lawsuits. Since the mayor ordered the LAPD to reinvestigate, our opinion is that these cases are related, and that gives Sergeant Scully standing to investigate the Greenridge murder."

  "How is the murder of William Greenridge related to Emo Rojas? That's nuts," Garrett Metcalf said hotly. "Unless you're suggesting something pretty damn unfriendly."

  "Can we all calm down?" Hatton said, then crossed to his desk. "I'm going to bifurcate the investigations. LAPD can go ahead and reinvestigate the Hidden Ranch warrant problem, but ATF is going to handle their own agent homicide and the investigation into how the hell this nut got his hands on so much C-four."

  "And if the two investigations overlap?" Alexa asked.

  "Try and keep that from happening. Build a Chinese wall," Hatton instructed.

  "Hey, if they overlap, Cole, they overlap." Now Tony was getting mad. "How'm I gonna build a Chinese wall? That's total bullshit."

  "Hand over all of your tapes, photographs, forensics, ballistics, and trace evidence from the Mission Street crime scene to the ATF homicide investigators," Hatton said to Tony. "Do it before close of business today. That's it."

  We all filed out of his office. The feds looked smug, the cops looked pissed, Mayor Mac, Tony, and Alexa looked dazed.

  Technically speaking, the crime scene we had been ordered out of was Greenridge's house on Mission. Nobody had said anything about the apartment across the street. Of course, to be fair, they didn't even know about that yet. But if I played it carefully, and if Nan Chambers didn't blow me in on the pages of the Valley Times tomorrow morning, maybe I could keep us in the game. I had to call her and set up a meeting to make sure she'd play along.

  The brass casing from the.308 was burning a hole in my pocket as we walked into the underground garage.

  Chapter 17

  DRINK!

  We need to talk," I said, stopping the two top cops before they got into their cars. Alexa had stayed upstairs with the feds to work out the details of handing over the evidence from Mission Street. I pulled out the.308 casing and showed it to Tony. He studied the brass in the cellophane evidence bag. "Looks like it's been fumed."

  "It has."

  I told them about finding the secondary crime scene and how I discovered the cartridge casing with Nan Chambers, then hardened the print in Billy's microwave. I finished by saying, "I locked up the apartment, but I didn't call it in or bring our crime techs out there yet. I was just about to when I got the forthwith."

  Messenger was now holding the cellophane baggie with his thumb and index finger, glaring at the casing like it was a dead cockroach he'd found in his salad. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going through the sheriff's mind. If that partial print on the shell casing matched one of his SEB SWAT members, then his department was hip high in trouble.

  "We got a big problem," Tony said, his Brooklynese bubbling up. "You turn this over to ATF, first they're gonna demand you print-check all your guys, then they're gonna wanta test-fire them Tango Fifty-ones and Forty-Xs you got at SEB to see if one matches the breach and ejection striations on this brass. The sheriff's police union is gonna start throwing bricks. They'll say you got no probable cause to test those weapons, and this turns from a petty jurisdictional squabble into a shit sandwich."

  Bill Messenger was still holding my cellophane evidence bag. "Okay, Tony, how do you wanta do it then?"

  "It's your department, Bill. We're only investigating the warrant problem at Hidden Ranch. You wanta take on a U. S. Attorney, have at it."

  "I got a compromise," Bill said. Tony listened, rocking back slightly on his heels.

  "You let me put an investigator next to Shane and I'll get all my SEB long rifles tested. There won't be any union trouble. I'll do it under the radar, have the range officer take them all out for sight adjustments or something, then we'll collect the brass and look for a match. If this casing fits one of those rifles, or this print is from one of my guys, then I'll find a way to get past the union. I got no room in my outfit for killers. I'll bust 'em myself and hand the whole thing over to ATF."

  "I don't want some deputy looking over my shoulder," I said, seizing only on the first thing he said and ignoring the rest.

  "Shut up, Shane," Tony commanded. Then he looked at Messenger. "Okay. You get a print run started and have your SEB long guns tested and checked against this brass, and in return, Shane works with one deputy of your choosing."

  "Deal," Messenger said. "And as long as all the Hidden Ranch forensic stuff is already at our crime lab, I'd like to suggest we leave it there. My criminalists are as good as yours. It'll save t
ime."

  Tony nodded his agreement. Then Bill Messenger turned to me. "Your partner is going to be Sergeant Brickhouse, one of my crack IAD investigators. You two can meet over at the sheriff's main building this afternoon at four."

  "No. Your office is too far away, and I have a bunch of stuff to do on this side of the hill. Let's meet at Denny's restaurant at five. The one on Lankershim in the Valley."

  "Done." Then Messenger turned, and carrying the brass casing, walked to his car.

  After he drove out, I looked at Tony. "How the hell's this gonna work? I'm really supposed to investigate the Rojas shooting with some biased hump from the sheriff's rat squad?"

  Tony unlocked his car, took off his coat, and threw it over the seat. "Yeah, because if I was in Messenger's position I'd feel just like him. I'd want my own investigator looking out for my interests, too. He's in a deep crack." Tony settled into his Crown Vic and turned to look at me. "We've gotta turn that secondary crime scene over to ATF," he said. "Why don't you get somebody to rediscover it? Then call the feds and give it to them."

  "But we don't give 'em the shell casing I found in there? How's that work?"

  "I don't know. I'll think about it and we'll reevaluate all our options as things progress. In the meantime, put this thing down fast, Shane. I don't like where it's going. If SEB and SRT are gunning for each other after work, we're all gonna end up in the bag." He put his car in gear and drove out.

  I still had two hours before my meeting with Sergeant Brick-house. As soon as I was on street level where my cell would work, I needed to make two calls: Lou Ruta and Nan Chambers. The first was going to be Ruta. I finally had a use for that angry asshole. I pulled up the ramp into a smoggy L. A. afternoon and reached for my phone. It rang before I could open it.

  "Hello?" I held the unit to my ear as I drove.

  "Shane? Sonny Lopez." He sounded a long way away, or we had a bad connection.