Vertical Coffin (2004) (29 page)

"Excuse me, are you Midge Kimble?" I asked the woman in the blue dress.

"I am." Her voice was strong and didn't even resemble her shouted message on the answering machine. She was close to eighty, but there had been a time when she would have stopped traffic. The remnants of beauty still clung stubbornly to her strong, wrinkled face.

"I hate to interrupt your game, but I have a few questions."

"In that case, you have excellent timing," she said a bit too loudly.

"I do?"

"I'm the dummy."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's a bridge term," she said, smiling. "After the bid on the next hand I lay my cards down. Don't have to do anything after that. It's called being the dummy."

"Oh--I never played bridge."

I watched as the cards were dealt and a round of bidding started.

"Three spades," one of the women said.

"Four hearts," another answered.

"Four spades," a third said. It went on like that for a while until finally Midge said:

"Trump." Then she laid down her hand face up, rose, and accompanied me to an alcove in the adjoining room.

Midge Kimble was spry and athletic. She moved with authority and purpose. We sat down and she fixed a polite smile on her face, waiting for me to begin. She had inbred grace and refined social bearing.

"This is nice out here," I started, apropos of absolutely nothing. I hate to admit this, but, sometimes when I'm in the presence of money or culture my normal self-confidence can suddenly desert me. Another curse visited on me by my childhood. I had a sudden revealing thought: Did I become a co
p s
o Yd have social authority and could use my badge to gain emotional status, and to build a wall between me and my insecurities?

"My husband was a developer," she was saying. "He actually put up two of these buildings when we moved out here. The Kimble Rec Center across from B unit was his. You can see it on the right when you drive out."

"So the school was just a hobby?" I said, putting the pieces together thinking, her husband had the gelt and she ran the country day school for kicks.

"Not a hobby--a treasured vocation," she said, fixing me with a stern look.

My smile felt hot on my face. I immediately pulled out my badge and showed it to her.

"Oh my goodness," she said. "I knew I shouldn't have borrowed Lillian's jewelry and not returned it."I'm sorry.''

She smiled. "I'm just fooling, Sergeant. When you get to my state in life, you need to take your laughs where you can find them." The same argument the humps in Devonshire had used.

But I liked her. Instantly I felt more at ease.

"This is about a young boy who I believe went to your school, named Vincent Smiley. It was around 'eighty-eight or 'eighty
-
nine. Do you remember him?"

"Yes." Her expression softened slightly, or maybe it saddened. "Vividly," she added.

"I was wondering if you could tell me a little about him?"

"It was one of the strangest things that ever happened during all the years I ran that school."

"Start at the beginning," I said, and whipped out my trusty notebook, clicked down my pen, then poised over a fresh page, all business now. Sergeant Scully on the case.

"The Smiley children first came to school in the sixth grade. Paul and Susan."

"Paul, not Vincent?"

"If you'll let me finish, I'm getting to that."

"Sorry."

I wrote down paul and susan smiley, underlined paul, then wrote kimble country day--'88.

"Paul was very bright and outgoing. His twin sister, Susan, was extremely shy. Almost never said anything."

So they were twins, I thought, writing that down.

Midge was saying, "They didn't get along, which seemed strange for twins, but they were both excellent students."

"Sixth grade--that made them about twelve."

"Yes. Twelve."

"At the end of seventh grade something very extraordinary happened."

"What was that?"

"Susan Smiley was in the girl's restroom when one of the other little girls happened to open the bathroom stall. Susan had forgotten to lock it and this other girl saw that Susan had a penis. She was standing up in her blonde ringlets and dress, urinating right into the toilet."

"Susan was a boy."

"Yes. It turned out that Susan was really Vincent. We took the child into the nurse's office and called his parents in. Stanley Smiley didn't come, but his mother Edna did. We forced an inspection in her presence so we could see for ourselves. Well, I must tell you, nobody was prepared for what happened next. Mrs. Smiley went into a white rage. I think she was a drinker and was maybe a little drunk at that meeting. She started shouting that she didn't care what I or anybody thought. She didn't want twin boys, always wanted a daughter. So she raised Vincent as Susan. She let his hair grow long and had been dressing him as a girl since he was an infant."

She sat back and looked at me, the sad memory of this rich on her face. "Once Mrs. Smiley told us that, it explained everything. Vincent's shy behavior when he was being Susan, the fact that the twins seemed to hate each other. It was an impossible situation. All over school the children were talking about it. We had to call a school assembly with everybody's parents to discuss the situation. Twelve is an awkward age, and sexuality becomes a growing concern. I knew that it would be a mistake to try and keep the Smiley boys at school. The school year was almost over, so I made arrangements for them to finish the grade work at home."

"And then they were homeschooled the following year?" I said.

"Yes. We called in Child Services. There was a major argument about taking the children away from the Smileys. But, since they weren't being physically abused, there was no way to remove them from the home, because, when you came down to it, they had only violated a school dress code. We signed an affidavit and the boys were homeschooled for the eighth grade. We supplied the curriculum, then the boys went off to Glendale High in ninth grade."

"As boys this time?"

"Yes. Vincent and Paul registered at Glendale High."

"Do you know about the car accident that killed their parents?" I asked.

"Strange you should mention that. When it happened I think the police suspected Vincent. They came and talked to me. Back then he was still a juvenile, around seventeen I believe."

"So the results of that investigation would be locked in his juvenile record," I said, making a note. This explained why the C
. A
. wouldn't release Vincent's file. She obviously had read all of his juvie records for Pasadena and Glendale and knew it would be used at the SWAT trial. Without a court order mandating its release, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

"I think the police suspected Vincent of foul play," Midge was saying. "I know they picked him up and talked to him. The
Smileys had moved to a house off Cliff View in Glendale. There was a steep incline that went down from their house. One evening, Stanley and Edna's brakes failed. They went over the cliff on the last turn. The car burned, so nothing much was left for the police to examine. Eventually, it just went into the records as an accident."

Fat chance, I thought.

"He was out of high school after that--in junior college." She went on. "That was the last I heard of him, until that shoot-out two weeks ago." She frowned. "That poor boy probably never had much of a chance, did he?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Kimble. You've been a huge help." I stood to go. "If you think of anything else call me at that number." I put down my card.

"You should try and get in touch with his brother Paul. I think he lives up in San Francisco. He might be able to tell you something."

"I can't," I said. "Paul's dead."

Chapter
37

UNION PARK

I couldn't reach Jo on the phone, but then, like an asshole, I'd told her to keep her cell off to avoid getting called in by the FBI. My next try was Alexa.

She was in Cole Hatton's office and stepped out of a heated debate to take my call. Since the meeting was just breaking up, she agreed to get together with me in Union Park across the street from the Federal Building in thirty minutes.

I hit the gas and cut through traffic, banging on my horn, going Code 2, breaking red lights all the way to the freeway. Then I slammed the pedal down, doing almost ninety on the 110 and took the Chinatown off-ramp to Union Park. It was a little past one o'clock when I grabbed a metered parking place and got out. I saw Alexa in a great-looking black dress I'd bought her fo
r h
er birthday. She was standing over by a hot dog vendor buying a foot-long, saw me coming, and met me halfway.

"Sit down," I told her. "So you don't drip mustard on my favorite outfit." We settled on a bench nearby.

"What is it that couldn't wait an hour until I got back to the office?" she said. She still looked way too stressed to me.

"If I told you that Vincent Smiley was alive, that he went out that tunnel Jo and I found under his house, what would you say?"

"That it's impossible. His DNA was crossmatched. The man's positively dead."

"Smiley had an identical twin brother named Paul. Identical twins have identical DNA."

She sat there taking this in. Then she said, "Had?"

"My bet is it was the twin who did the flambe in the bathtub. It's a long story why, but Paul and his twin brother Vincent hated each other. My theory is Vince lured his brother down from San Francisco, or maybe even kidnapped him. Either way, he gets Paul out to Hidden Ranch. He ties him up and waits. When Emo shows up he starts a shoot-out, conks his brother, and leaves him in the tub, then crawls out through the tunnel we found."

"And you think Vincent is the one murdering the SWAT team guys." She furrowed her brow, trying to fit the pieces.

"That's my guess. He hates cops because they wouldn't accept him so he arranges his death using Paul as a stand-in. Then he crawls out through the tunnel. He pops Greenridge first, then does Nightingale to get a SWAT war going between the sheriff's department and ATF, sits back, and watches it go down on TV. I've been looking at this guy's early life, and we have a very sick puppy here."

"What about the shell casings? We found shell casings at both crime scenes that match long guns at both SEB and SRT. One of them has a partial print that matches an SEB deputy."

"I've been thinking about that on the way over here. SRT does their SWAT training out in Moorpark, at a range they have there. Sheriff's do it at Spring Ranch, near Agoura. I've been to Spring Ranch. You can see the firing range from the road. How hard would it be to hide out on the road until an SEB SWAT team shows up for target practice, wait till they leave, and sneak in and pick up the brass from the long guns?

"It never quite worked for me, that Patrick Dutton was on the SEB Red team and not Scott Cook's Gray team. Now it makes a lot of sense. Smiley couldn't tell who fired which casing. He just knew it was all SWAT ordnance that would eventually be matched to one of their sniper rifles."

Alexa sat looking at me, the hot dog forgotten in her hand. "Shit," she said softly, then dropped the uneaten dog in the trash.

"My guess is Vince got the two-twenty-three casings from the SRT range in Moorpark and the three-oh-eights from the sheriff's SWAT range. He set up the phony shooting sites, the secondary crime scenes, left the three-oh-eight casing in the apartment across the street from Greenridge's house and the two-twenty-three behind Nightingale's, along with the Danner boot prints, for us to find. We all thought the shooter was making it too easy, not picking up his brass. That's why! He needed us to find them. He was setting a frame."

"I'm going to go talk to Tony and Bill. Then we need to take it to Cole." Alexa stood. "Where are you going to be?"

"I've gotta find my partner. She's disappeared."

"Okay, but turn your damn phone on. I got a call from Cal. He said he can't reach you. Who do you think you're fooling with that shit?"

"If I'd answered that call, I'd have spent the morning downtown sorting through SRT folders, and we wouldn't have any of this, so you tell me," I said.

She nodded, turned to go, then turned back and unexpectedl
y k
issed me. A bright smile suddenly appeared on her face. The first one I'd seen in two weeks.

"You're the best damn detective on the force," she told me. "Wanta fuck?" I asked.

"Hold the thought. I'll get right back to you on that." Then she spun and ran across the park toward Parker Center.

Chapter
38

WHERE'S BRICKHOUSE

Jigsaw john was a genius. No wonder the guy cleared 85 percent of his cases. I sat in the park, looking up Union Street at Parker Center, trying to pin down the last pieces of the puzzle. Smiley had used identical weapons from his own armory to shoot Nightingale and Greenridge. Mr. Magoo couldn't remember the correct ages of the twins. He'd guessed too young. They weren't eight or ten, they were twelve. An easy enough mistake for an old grump with no kids. The Smileys moved away in one year because of the fiasco at Midge's school. Changed school districts, left Pasadena, went to Glendale.