Vertical Coffin s-4 Read online

  Beverly and Jo remained skeptical. To be fair, so was I, but a little positive thinking never hurts.

  "Jo," I said, "could you walk that casing and the footprint cast through your lab, get us squared away down there as fast as possible?"

  She glanced at Beverly checking out her reaction to having me give the orders. Detective King seemed to have no problem. Finally, Jo nodded and said, "Okay."

  "Beverly, you stay with the body, go to the autopsy. Hopefully, that slug broke on impact and we can retrieve a bullet fragment for lead content comparisons. Also get us a full blood panel. I'd like to know if Mike was drinking last night. If he was at a bar we need to find out. Tell the M. E. to get us a liver temp ASAP. We need a close time of death to start our pre-and peri-mortem timelines."

  Jo made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

  I ignored her. "Check with the vic's SEB team leader," I continued saying to Beverly. "The guy's name is Scott Cook. See when Mike left work, if there were any unusual circumstances."

  "I'll call Sergeant Cook," Jo interrupted, "If we keep it inside the sheriff's department we'll get more." It was a good suggestion.

  Beverly offered, "Why don't I get a team of cadets from the academy to start hunting around this neighborhood, looking for what's left of the bullet?"

  "What're the odds of ever finding that? A two-twenty-three? It's probably in a zillion pieces," Jo said.

  "But we gotta try."

  "What're you gonna do?" Jo asked me.

  The question rang with accusatory overtones, as if, while they were out doing all the real police work, I was going to be in Beverly Hills enjoying a Turkish steam and a hot oil massage.

  "I'm gonna see if I can get these warring agencies on the same side." I bowed my head in sarcastic theatricality. "May justice be served. Amen."

  We broke our huddle like college athletes and headed to our cars.

  I called Alexa on the way back to the office and told her what I wanted. She said the chief was way ahead of me. Everybody was meeting in his office at ten. My presence was required.

  "Brady Cagel gonna be there?" I asked.

  "Brady, Cole Hatton, Garrett Metcalf, Supervisor Salazar- the whole mishpucha, but this time everybody's gonna have a chief legal counsel in tow."

  "Don't you love this?" I muttered.

  "Sucks," she said.

  I found out later that the meeting was being held at the Glass House because Tony had a budget meeting at eleven. Always nice to know who's picking the playing field.

  There were enough lawyers in Filosiani's big office to set a quorum for the local bar association. Tony and Bill had just informed Cole Hatton that LAPD had found a.308 casing across the street from Greenridge's house. His reaction to that wasn't friendly.

  After a heated argument over withholding evidence from the primary agency investigating the homicide and half a dozen threatened lawsuits, that problem was put on hold and the argument quickly came down to whether there was enough probable cause for searching both SEB's and SRT's armories. The different agency lawyers were all circling that scrap like hungry reef sharks.

  Then the door opened and Enrique Salazar entered, arriving late. He waved off the formal handshakes and took up a position next to his cops. Sheriff Messenger leaned over and whispered in his ear, filling him in.

  "Look," Tom Neil, the mouthpiece from the sheriff's union said, "any way you cut this, everybody knows you're not asking these SWAT officers for their help. You're looking for a murder suspect. This is an active homicide investigation, so you've got to follow the normal rules of evidence. If you want to search our armory you're gonna need a warrant. That means you better come up with adequate probable cause for the search. You've got nothing that ties either of these casings to SEB or SRT."

  I looked at Enrique Salazar. He was staying quiet. No good politics could come from this. Bill Messenger was rocking back on his heels, a worried look on his face. The police unions didn't care about his need to wrap this up quickly. They were only interested in the legal rights of the rank-and-file deputies and agents. I suspected he'd already tested SEB's long guns without a warrant, and now, if we couldn't shoot his police union lawyer down, he couldn't use anything he'd found without risking the court case later.

  Tony didn't want to let the meeting degenerate into legal haggling, so he cut it off fast. "I have a municipal judge on standby. He already agreed to sign the search warrant, on the grounds that these cops are officers of the court and, as such, have a sworn duty to provide evidence and enforce the law."

  "Reversible error." Neil said. "When you pin on a badge you don't give up your rights as a U. S. citizen under the Constitution."

  "Who's gonna work up the search warrant preparation list?" Cole Hatton asked. "Is this warrant going to be delivered by LAPD SWAT?"

  The warrant prep list uses a number scale to determine the level of risk assigned to the warrant's delivery. The warrant control officer checks twelve categories. A total of five risk points or more out of twelve mandates that the warrant be served by a SWAT team.

  Normally warrants were served on criminals, but as I mentally ran through the warrant prep list, I saw the dilemma that serving SEB and SRT presented.

  Was it a barricaded location? — Yes.

  Were automatic weapons believed to be on the premises? — Yes.

  Are the perps suspected of committing an assault on a peace officer? — Yes.

  Were hostages believed to be at the location? — No.

  Were assault weapons, body armor, or ballistic protection present? — Yes.

  Were there barred doors or windows? — Yes.

  Was there countersurveillance, closed circuit TV, intrusion devices? — Yes.

  Guard dogs? — Yes.

  Third strike candidates? — No.

  Did the suspects have violent criminal histories? — No, but SWAT officers were certainly accustomed to violence.

  Did handguns exist at the location? — Yes

  Had there been threats by suspects against police officers? — More or less.

  By my math, nine out of twelve points were present here, which technically put the serving of this warrant at the highest risk possible and mandated a SWAT team.

  You could see the indecision in the room. Everyone was asking themselves: Isn't this different? These are cops, not criminals. Should a strict adherence to the prep list be observed? Isn't it unnecessarily provocative to serve a SWAT team with a SWAT team?

  Nobody said anything.

  Alexa finally spoke: "Let's low-key it. Do it with a warrant control team; but we should recognize the risk and keep SWAT in reserve."

  "No." Tony overruled sharply. "That's nuts. We do it by the book."

  Alexa stiffened slightly, but she put up no further argument.

  "If we serve our people, you gotta serve yours," Salazar finally spoke.

  Brady Cagel and Garrett Metcalf, with their tan gabardine suits and styled hair, stood stone-faced, looking like window mannequins, or an ad for genetic engineering.

  "We don't have time to argue about this." Cole Hatton stepped up, grasping the gravity of the problem.

  "I can convince a friendly federal judge across the street to paper the warrant on our guys. Tony, you get the municipal judge for the sheriffs."

  Metcalf and Cagel didn't like it, but what could they say? Their own U. S. Attorney had just jumped the fence.

  The meeting broke up. A lot of unhappy faces crowded into the elevator for the ride down. I walked with Alexa back to her office. She was quiet most of the way. Once she was behind her desk she picked up a folder and handed it to me.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "You were right about Vincent Smiley applying to the LAPD before Arcadia," she said stiffly. "We turned him down in April of 'ninety-nine. He flunked the preliminary psych interview. I made a copy of the written denial by the academy, but I haven't had a chance to read anything, except the summary. He looks like damaged goods." She se
emed distracted, tense-wrapped tighter than the inside of a baseball. I was about to say something when her phone rang, so I waved good-bye and left.

  When I reached the lobby I was paged. The LCD readout said: Jo Brickhouse. I found her number and called back. She was still out at the sheriff's crime lab when she answered.

  "Me," I said. "What's up?"

  "The crime techs have done both casings. Good striation marks and pin impressions on both. If we can get comparison casings, our lab says they have enough here to make a match."

  "Good. Sheriff Messenger just covered his ass with a search warrant. He can't use the first batch-illegally obtained. He'll have to stick with the cover story, say the range captain was just adjusting sights, and do it all over again. Get in touch with Messenger's office and have him send the second batch of brass over to the lab as soon as he gets them. I'll let you know when the SRT long guns have been tested."

  "One more thing…" she said.

  "Go."

  "Robyn DeYoung, the CSI for Hidden Ranch, just rolled out of here with an evidence team and two vans full of academy cadets. She's on her way back up there to search for a dog and a bomb shelter. What's all that about?" She sounded suspicious.

  "Try to reach Messenger and make arrangements to get his brass out to your lab, then meet me out there as soon as you can. I'll fill you in when I see you."

  Chapter 25

  DIGGING

  When I got back to Hidden Ranch Road there were two parked sheriff's academy vans and at least two dozen academy cadets up by the burned-out house, dressed in grubbies and yellow fire slickers, leaning on shovels. They seemed glad to be working on an actual case, instead of running laps and doing pull-ups at the Academy. They were eagerly looking at the large dig site, anxious to begin.

  I spotted a slightly plump female criminalist with wire-rimmed glasses and red, curly, Orphan Annie-styled hair. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and was wearing a crime tech windbreaker, sweatpants, and a white T-shirt that said: Get Off My Fucking Crime Scene. Had to be Robyn DeYoung.

  Jo hadn't arrived yet, so I walked up to Robyn, who was standing a few feet past where the front porch had once been, just about on the exact spot where Emo Rojas had bled to death. She was holding an open set of builder's plans and was issuing instructions, dividing the cadets into four teams and assigning them to separate quadrants of the dig site. When she finished, she turned to me.

  "Don't tell me. You're Scully," she said.

  "Guilty," I replied. "DeYoung?"

  She nodded. Aside from the curly red hair, she also had freckles across the bridge of her nose and was attempting a disapproving scowl. But she possessed an instant likability, an infectious demeanor. She was mad at me for sending her back out here in all this damp ash and rubble, but for her anger wasn't a durable emotion, and it was already burning off like predawn mist.

  "Sorry to put you through this again," I said, trying to soften her up.

  "If you wanna grab a shovel, I have a fire slicker in my trunk that might fit you."

  "Gee-me with a shovel. Now there's a heady concept."

  "Didn't think so," she said. "Okay. Always good to have another supervisor." She opened the plans and studied them.

  "Building department?" I asked.

  "Yep. Pulled 'em this morning. No architect on these homes. Builder contracted. They all run between three and five hundred K. They seem nice, but when you look close they're just two-story, hollow-wall deals. Probably why it flashed over so fast."

  "Right," I said. "The hot gas grenades and all that ammo in the garage probably didn't hurt either."

  She let it pass, then asked, "What am I looking for again?"

  "Rottweiler."

  "Okay, have a seat and get started on your ice cream. If he's here, we'll dig him up."

  I returned to the car, then opened the manila envelope containing Smiley's LAPD academy records and started to read.

  The person who did the psychological profile was Doctor Hammond Emerson IV. I always love it when people put Roman numerals after their names, like inbred New England dilettante French royalty. Doctor Emerson had conducted three interviews with Smiley in 1999. He found the subject to be evasive and secretive. He felt that Smiley clearly had parental issues, particularly with his mother, which the doctor surmised could have stemmed from child abuse. Emerson noted in his summary that Vincent exhibited some gender confusion and a sense of hostility toward women that most probably also stemmed from the deep-seated problems with his mother, Edna Smiley-currently deceased.

  Doctor Emerson concluded that Vincent Smiley demonstrated sado-sexual tendencies combined with latent rage. Emerson also surmised that these problems would create great stress when interrelating with females, both in the department as well as in society.

  The LAPD academy employed a point system for applicants. Out of a possible one hundred points Smiley had scored forty, well below the seventy required to be considered for admission. Not even a close miss.

  I closed the file, tapping it with my thumb. Was the AK-47 a deadly penis substitute? Was Smiley trying to make up for his sexual confusion by going postal and shooting up his neighborhood?

  Just then Jo Brickhouse pulled to the curb in a sheriff's black-and-white. We both got out of our cars and met halfway. I handed her the file. "What's this?" she said. She still seemed angry, but maybe it was me, and I was just projecting.

  "Smiley's LAPD academy app. He applied to us before Arcadia. Probably took a shot at your department, too. You might see if they turned him down and if they have a psych profile on him."

  She took the file, opened it, and skimmed it while I watched the cadets moving ash and charred lumber off the site.

  "Gay?" she said raising an eyebrow.

  "Hey, come on, take it easy. That doesn't necessarily make him a bad person."

  There was a moment while two conflicting emotions, anger and amusement, fought for control of her strong face. Finally, the dazzling smile won out. "You're not gonna stop busting my balls, are you Scully?"

  "When you stop busting mine, I'll stop busting yours."

  She considered that for a second, then waved it off.

  "Okay, look-the sheriff's department doesn't spike an application on the grounds of homosexuality alone. You guys don't either."

  "Not now, but what was it like in the mid-or late nineties?" I asked.

  "Not sure." She tapped the folder on her thumb, exactly the same way I had. "Most likely, Doctor Emerson dinged him for all this other stuff. The sado-sexual rage, the mother problem- add that to the gender confusion, and who wants an asshole like that on the job?"

  "Right. But I don't think gender confusion is necessarily homosexuality."

  She thought about that and nodded, so I went on.

  "And there's nothing in there about depression or suicidal tendencies either."

  "It's just a quick psychological scan. This doc could've missed a lotta stuff." "Still…"

  Just then we heard yelling up at the site. I walked across the grass again with Jo Brickhouse at my side. The Academy cadets had found a charred lump of meat about the size of a large dog. They had scraped the ash away from the mound and were all standing around, looking happily at the object like puppies who had found a ball.

  I kneeled down. The smell of cooked, decaying flesh made my throat constrict. Then I saw something glistening in the ash near the corpse. Using the tip of my pen, I pulled it away from the burnt carcass. A round piece of metal.

  "Dog tag," Robyn DeYoung said. "You can touch it if you want. No prints survived the heat of this fire."

  I picked it up and rubbed it with my thumb, clearing the ash. "Eichmann," I said, reading the name. "Guy named his dog Eichmann."

  "Hitler was probably already taken," Jo said from behind me.

  "I wonder if he really was some kinda white supremacist?"

  "Goes with the survivalist training Tad Palmer mentioned," Jo answered.

  I handed the tag to Robyn
and stood. "Okay, that probably answers the question of what happened to the Rottweiler. Can you get us a DNA scan to match the breed, just to be sure?"

  Robyn nodded. She gave an order and two cadets ran to the crime van, returning with a plastic sheet and a rubber coroner's bag. Then they loaded the charred remains onto the sheet and Robyn wrapped him up like a burrito. She instructed them on how she wanted the remains loaded into the coroner's bag, then two cadets carried him down and left him in the back of her black-and-white Suburban.

  Jo and I walked back and leaned against the hood of my car, watching while the cadets again started digging where the plans indicated the basement staircase would be.

  "What are we really doing out here?" Jo asked.

  "Loose ends," I said.

  "Look, Scully, you were right. I never worked in homicide, but in IAD I've put down a pile of officer-involved shootings. So far, this doesn't stack up as a bad shooting. Smiley brought this on himself. Death by cop. I don't see how checking this guy's background adds anything to Emo Rojas's death, or Billy Greenridge's and Michael Nightingale's."

  "I'm not sure it does either," I admitted, annoyed again, but trying to stay frosty.

  "Not to state the obvious here," she continued, "but you and I are at ground zero in a jurisdictional hurricane. I'm starting to get a lot of cold shoulders from my fellow deputies. They don't like it that we're investigating this. We've got heavy metal blowing around over our heads and you're out here looking for a dead dog and a bomb shelter."

  "I gotta get it off my mind."

  "What? Get what off your mind?" Frustration again.

  "What Smiley was really doing."

  "Committing suicide."

  "Not according to Doctor Emerson."

  "Fuck Doctor Emerson. He's just a guy in a tweed coat who never dealt face-to-face with a gun-toting psychopath. For him it's all theory and book work."

  "Smiley was in Kevlar," I said for the umpteenth time, speaking slowly so somebody might finally get it. "He was building a bomb shelter. That doesn't sound like a guy contemplating suicide."