Vertical Coffin (2004) (19 page)

She turned and walked off, leaving me standing there.

The truth was, I always stretched the edge of the crime scene to the farthest point out, and walked that area first, marking anything that looked out of place. After I had the immediate scene under control and the body was secure, experience had taught me that it's extremely hard to keep people from prowling the edges of the site. Neighbors, and even other cops, patrol the border, and if it's a large area it's easy for some well-intentioned schlub to pick something up or leave a footprint. We could find some cop's bootprint, plaster it, then start running off in the completely wrong direction of looking for a killer wearing size
-
ten combat boots.

Once I spent two weeks working a hair follicle our CSI techs found at a murder scene. The lab reported that the hair had undergone an amber tint dye job. It also had traces of an expensive French shampoo and a special French conditioner. A good potential lead. I put it out on the news that we were looking for an upscale killer with tinted amber hair who uses an expensive, French shampoo and conditioner.

A week later, I'm looking in Alexa's bathroom cabinet and I see all those same products in there. It turned out that the hai
r h
ad fallen off my own coat and belonged to my wife. It's very hard to protect a crime scene, so I always start at the far edges first, and work in toward the body.

I walked the perimeter carefully, examining the ground, looking down, shining my police flashlight. The sun would be up in a few hours, but I couldn't wait, because I had seen the anger and pain in Gary Nightingale, the deadly resolve and violence in Rick Manos. I had also promised Alexa I wouldn't let this investigation drift.

The projectile had entered Michael's head from the front, the same as Billy Greenridge. The slug caught him square in the forehead, right between the running lights. He had fallen where he was shot and since the bullet had not hit the house or the door behind him, that meant it probably came from the side. To miss the house completely, the shooter had to have been firing from either the far right or the far left portion of the back yard.

I started walking around out there, searching for the shooting location. About forty yards away, behind an old lemon tree, I saw footprints. Boots. Big ones; size thirteen at least. The lowest limb of the tree had a fork about five feet up from the ground. A perfect place to cradle a rifle barrel. I called the crime techs over and showed them the footprints and the tree limb. They started photographing and getting ready to plaster the impressions.

I kept looking around on the ground on the right side of the tree. About forty feet away, lying under a small hedge, I spotted the casing.

I called Jo Brickhouse over and pointed it out to her. Beverly King followed. It was an ArmaLite .223, the kind of ordnance common to AR-15 assault rifles.

It didn't escape my notice that the long guns SRT had been using up at Hidden Ranch were AR-15s. The .223s were very fast rounds, with a muzzle velocity of over three thousand feet per second. The projectile is designed to tumble and break into smaller pieces on impact. After we photographed it, I leane
d d
own and retrieved the brass, again using my pen tip. I held it up and we all stared at it.

The casing was a deadly calling card, and all three of us were thinking the same thing. Finally, Beverly King put our thoughts into words: "This seems way too easy."

Chapter
24

WARR
ANTS

The strong santa Ana winds whipped September leaves off the elm trees that lined Sherman Way, driving the temperature up further, scattering trash from overflowing garbage cans, and blowing down our yellow crime scene tape.

Michael Nightingale's body rolled out in a coroner's van at eight-thirty that morning. Barbara Nightingale left ten minutes later in the back seat of her sister's yellow station wagon. I caught a glimpse of two children with her, young boys, little, towheaded versions of their father. Their faces tight, blank with confusion.

"The only good thing that's happened here so far is SRT hasn't shown," Jo Brickhouse said.

"No need to come out and watch, if you already know what happened," I answered.

The thought scored. I saw a silent curse cross her face. Anger followed. She hated not coming up with that herself.

Before we took off, Beverly, Jo, and I huddled on the back porch and divided up responsibilities. "We need to have that two-twenty-three casing checked and matched for tool marks and possible fingerprints. Not to jump to conclusions, but SRT's long guns are AR-fifteens, so we need to test fire all their carbines."

"The feds are never gonna cooperate," Jo said. She was probably right.

"The three of us can't make it happen, but maybe your chief and mine can talk some sense into ATF. Failing that, maybe the mayor or Supervisor Salazar can force it down. We have to play this straight up, with no favorites. Test fire and match the brass from both SWAT teams--"

I stopped because both Jo and Beverly had wrinkled their noses. My idea obviously stunk. "Let's just hope for the best," I added. "Hope they don't put agency loyalty above common sense."

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 gun
s w
ithout 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 seemed 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.