Cold Hit (19 page)

"Tell them, Mr. Bryant," Virtue said, turning to our attorney.

"I'll have to check the specifics, but if Andrazack was here illegally and involved in espionage, then it's probably their case," Bryant said.

"I'll sign the case transfer document now if you brought one," Virtue said. "The officers' cars were sent over to the LAPD motor pool on Flower Street." Indicating with this piece of housekeeping, that as far as he was concerned, the issue had been settled and the meeting was over.

Ten minutes later the case was transferred and we were standing in front of the Tishman Building. Filosiani waved to his LAPD driver who pulled the chief's maroon Crown Vic to the curb. Perry, Broadway, Alexa, and I all squeezed into the backseat. Alexa was almost in my lap, it was so crowded. The legal affairs guy, Bryant, was up front with Tony and the driver. It was a full, angry car.

"That was short and sweet," Alexa said once the car doors were closed.

"When I get fucked, I usually get kissed," Tony growled.

"What are we really supposed to do?" I asked.

"We give him the case," Tony said. "I don't like it any better than you do, but it ain't like we don't have enough murders to solve. It's just that arrogant asshole pisses me off, is all." Then he turned to the driver.

"Get us the hell out of here."

In the spirit of the moment, the sergeant behind the wheel floored it and laid an unintentional strip of rubber up Wilshire Boulevard.

Chapter
28

I rode the elevator to the sixth floor with Alexa. She was quiet, still angry. The door opened and w
e w
alked the green carpet to her small office. It was a few minutes past 9 P
. M
. and Ellen was gone. The streetlights below Alexa's window were rimmed with tiny halos of fog.

"That was certainly a thorough mauling," she said as she started dropping things into her briefcase, getting ready to go home. "God,. Shane, when I couldn't reach you on your cell or on your MCT or police radio, I almost died. I couldn't imagine what happened. Ten hours of not knowing . ."

I put my arms around her. "Who does that asshole think he is?" she continued. "I've got half a mind to file charges of illegal detention." She rested her head against my chest.

"It's borderline, babe. Virtue's got too much political juice. It's best to wait till his own sense of self-importance lures him all the way over the line and then hit him."

"I've heard he has his eye on the governorship. That he's arm-twisting Hollywood celebrities and busines
s p
eople into investing in his campaign. He's already got a website. After he's governor, I've heard he even has plans for the presidency." She shuddered. "Just what this country needs, another self-serving power junkie in the White House. God help us."

I held her until she calmed down.

"Listen, Alexa, one thing did come out of all this that we need to pay some attention to."

"If it has to do with this case, forget it. We've been ordered to hand it over to the FBI." She pulled away from me and continued angrily slamming files into her briefcase.

"Someone in foreign intelligence popped Davide Andrazack and made it look like a Fingertip killing. Somehow, that shooter knew to carve the correct symbol on his chest. I find that very troubling."

She stopped packing up and turned to face me. "You're right. How did they know about that?"

I ran through what Broadway and Perry had told me about how there might be a bug, or a computer scan on CTB. I also shared my suspicion that maybe the leak went further than that.

When I finished, Alexa's brow was furrowed and her mouth pulled down into a scowl.

"I think we need to get someone from the Computer Support Division to sweep this place. Start with CTB and move to our main crime computers. Don't forget the ME's office."

She nodded. "Thanks," she said. "I'll get right on it."

"I'm gonna go down and check on my messages. I'l
l m
eet you at home in an hour."

The task force on three was still humming. It had progressed remarkably since this morning. Nobody seemed to miss me much. The detectives were all settled in. A chair with a broken back was pushed up to my desk. The phones were hooked up and I had been assigned extension 86. Someone's idea of a joke?

Word had already reached the cubes that John Doe Number Four was being yanked out of the serial case. It was officially logged as a copycat and was being worked by Justice. I got a few smug looks. I was back in the shallow end with the rest of the kiddies, my early lead eviscerated. Nobody wanted to be my secret partner anymore.

I sat at my desk, picked up the phone and tried the Queen of Angels Hospital. I was told that Dr. Pepper had gone home for the day and that Zack was resting and not receiving calls. I knew that after nine in the evening they had a phone cut-off but the woman on the switchboard made it sound like Zack had made a choice.

I listened to my voice mail. Some were callbacks on old cases, a few were people asking about Zack, and one was from a CSI criminalist in ballistics named Karen Wise who said that she had a report on the 5.45 slug we'd pulled out of Andrazack's head.

Since that wasn't my case anymore, I was tempted to e-mail her to contact Kersey Nix at the FBI, but curiosity got the better of me, and I dialed her number.

"CSI," someone answered at the Raymond Street complex.

"Detective Scully, Homicide," I said. "I'm looking for Karen Wise."

"She went home. If it's about an active case, I can connect you to her residence."

"Please."

I waited, and then a girl with a sexy voice came on the line. She had one of those low, fractured contraltos, that gets your fantasies boiling.

"Shane Scully," I said. "You called about my slug. Get anything?"

"We got a cold hit on an open homicide from the mid-nineties," she said, referring to a situation where a bullet or cartridge from one crime had striations or pin impressions that matched it to a bullet in what seemed like a totally unrelated crime.

My interest picked up at warp speed. "Wait a minute while I get a pencil."

I looked in my battered gray desk. Nothing in my pencil drawer but bent paper clips and dust, so I stole the supplies from a neighbor, then sat down again and snatched up the phone. "Okay, go."

"The striations on the slug from homicide victim HM-fifty-eight-oh-five, line up perfectly with the striations on a bullet that killed a man named Martin Kobb, in June of 'ninety-five. Kobb was shot in the parking lot behind a Russian specialty market on Fairfax in West Hollywood. The case was never solved. What makes this even more provocative is Marty Kobb was an off
-
duty LAPD patrol officer working a basic car in Rampart. He was in plainclothes on his way home when he entered the market and interrupted a burglary in progress. Looks like he just stumbled into it, pulled his off-duty piece, chased the robber into the parking lot, and got shot with the five-point-four-five slug."

"A burglary and not a robbery?" I asked.

"According to the case notes, the peril was rifling through the cash register while the owner was in the back. Since it wasn't a stickup, it was technically classified as a burglary that turned into a one-eightyseven."

"Sounds like you have the case file there with you." "I thought you'd want it, so I had Records send me a copy. I brought it home in case you called."

"Thanks, Karen. Now listen, because this is very important. Tell nobody about this cold hit. I don't care where the request comes from--how high up. If someone asks, just refer them to me."

"Why? What is this?

"Trouble," I said. I gave her the fax number for Homicide Special and asked her to fax the file to me immediately.

"I can e-mail it."

"No computers. Send me a fax."

I raced up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. When I got to the Xerox room the fax was already coming through. I plucked it out of the tray and carried it over to my old desk. The summary was just as Karen Wise reported. In June of '95, Martin Kobb, a
n o
ff-duty patrol officer, walked into a Russian specialty market on the corner of Melrose and Fairfax and interrupted a burglary in progress. There were no witnesses to identify the shooter because the storeowner was in the back supervising a delivery of vegetables, and the robber had simply been emptying the register when Kobb came in. He chased the suspect out to the parking lot and the burglar dumped him with a 5.45 slug. Now, ten years later, the bullet in his death matched up perfectly to the striations on the one we dug out of Davide Andrazack's head five days ago.

The
FBI had called Red's Roadside Towing to haul our cars to the main police garage on Flower. I ran into Roger Broadway as we each forked over forty-five dollars to buy our cars back.

Broadway dug into his wallet and complained. "This rusting piece-a-shit Fairlane ain't worth forty-five bucks." He paid the civilian working the police garage who had fronted the money to the tow operator.

"It's a motor pool car. At least you can expense it. I'm probably stuck 'cause this is my personal vehicle," I said, as I handed over my cash.

He was about to get into the tan Ford, when I stopped him. "Hey, Rog, you don't think maybe there might be a tracking device or something on that old beater?"

He frowned.

"Because I keep wondering how those FBI guys knew where we were to run us off the road this morning."

"Damn good point," he said.

We went over the undercarriages of both vehicles with a mirror on a pole that the police garage used to check for bombs. We found a miniaturized transmitter attached by a magnet to the left rear fender wall of Broadway's Fairlane and pulled it off.

"Satellite tracking device," Broadway said, bouncing the tiny, aspirin tablet sized transmitter in the palm of his hand. "Never seen one this small before. That's probably our tax dollars at work."

"Who planted it?" I asked.

"My money's on the FBI." He put it in his pocket. "Gonna get Electronic Services to trace it."

"I get the feeling that Virtue's guys kinda slipped the leash somewhere," I said. "You need a warrant and a bunch of probable cause to plant one of these. Especially if it's on Los Angeles cops."

"Lemme lay some background on you, friend. Before the Twin Towers went down, them gray cats in Justice had a bunch of legislation sitting around that they didn't know how to get through Congress. After nine-eleven they loaded it all into the USA PATRIOT Act. Once USAPA was enacted, the FBI got handed tremendous new powers. They already had the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA was passed in 'seventy-eight, and as far as federal law enforcement is concerned, it's a kick-ass piece of legislation. Those two acts togethe
r g
ive the Frisbees power we lowly city coppers can only dream about."

"How so?"

"Let's say the feds think a foreign agent is involved in anti-U
. S
. intelligence that might compromise national security and they want to bug him. They go before a secret FISA court. The way Lieutenant Cubio explained it to us, that court has nine federal judges. Maybe now it's up to thirteen. The FBI or Homeland makes their case to this panel of judges and asks permission to plant a bug. The spooky thing is there's no record of any of these requests. It's a completely secret proceeding."

"Like a star chamber?"

"Exactly. Once they get their request approved, they're good to go."

"But this court can say no, right? The FBI still needs the same level of probable cause."

"Technically, yes," he said. "But since 'seventy-eight, according to federal records, there have been over twenty thousand requests and not one denial. After nine-eleven the number shot up. One other nasty thing. The Attorney General of the United States can bypass the court anytime he wants. He has emergency powers that he can invoke at will. After nine-eleven, when John Ashcroft was in office, he used those emergency powers more than any other Attorney General since FISA passed."

"And now they're bugging you and Emdee?" I asked.

"Ain't no fucking AM radio we just pulled off thi
s r
ust bucket." He kicked the fender of the old Fairlane
,
then held up the bug. "This little pastry means we've probably all been targeted for roving bugs."

"And just what the hell is a roving bug?" This was all news to me.

"Used to be, the feds wanted a phone tap, a computer scan, or to bug some guy's pen register, they had to write a warrant on a location just like us. They'd have to get permission to bug a building or a computer or a car phone, and then the warrant made them specify which computer, room, or phone you wanted bugged."

"Yeah, you can't get warrants to just bug some guy's whole life, and the courts only approve most bugs for short time frames. Then they have to be removed. That's the way it still is. You're telling me that's changed for the FBI?"

"The PATRIOT Act altered everything. Most citizens don't know this, but instead of getting warrants on locations, the feds can now bug a person. It's called a `roving bug.' They listen to a suspect's cell phone and get his pen register--the numbers he's called. According to the act, they aren't supposed to listen to the conversations, but who's not going to listen in once they've got the tap? They find out where the suspect's heading and then, if they want, they can even do a black bag job on the structures he's going to visit. With a roving bug they can tap anything: buildings, restaurants, and in our case, even this old piece-of-shit Fair-lane. I don't know how the feds knew we were working Davide Andrazack's murder, but somehow Virtue must've gotten wind of it. Once he found out, he got
Homeland to attach a high threat assessment to us and got the FISA court to issue the warrant."