Vertical Coffin (2004) (31 page)
Read Vertical Coffin (2004) Online
Authors: Stephen - Scully 04 Cannell
They began filtering in one by one, some in uniform, others in civvies, off-duty officers and civilian personnel. I wondered if they were sorry now that they had been dogging her all week for just doing her job. As more of them arrived, I was pushed to the side and ended up sitting alone on a vinyl sofa trying to keep my chin up.
If only I hadn't told her to turn off her cell.
Why didn't I go out there with her?
Ifs and whys. Questions that never get answered.
Twenty minutes later Bridget arrived looking drawn and nervous. I saw her come off the elevator and I went to intercept her.
"I'm Shane," I said.
"Thank you for calling me." Her voice was faint, almost a whisper.
I didn't respond. I was all out of pleasantries.
"Is she . . ."
"In trouble."
You can generally tell how bad it is by the way people move in the hall outside the operating theatre. Too many nurses were running to suit me.
Bridget looked like she was about to break.
"We were having--she and I. . ."
"Look, Bridget, that's between you guys."
"No--I mean--I walked out. I've wanted to call her half a dozen times since then. It's just--Jo can be so definite. She's not someone who lets you get too close."
She sank down onto the sofa. Her face crumpled, her eyes brimmed with tears. I reached over and took her hand.
"You're wrong. She's not definite, and she wants to let you in. She's just scared. It's how she covers it."
"She thinks I don't care, but that's not the problem. The problem is I care too much."
"Bridget, she needs you now. She needs somebody to sit with her. I can't stay. I've got to catch the guy who did this. But somebody needs to protect her from the mistakes that can happen in big medical factories like this one."
"I can do that," she said valiantly.
"And she needs somebody to hold her hand. Somebody to pray for her and--"
I stopped because suddenly I was on the verge of tears, myself.
"You really care for her, don't you?" Bridget said.
"Yes," I said. "I really do." Then I thought for a minute before I went on.
"Jo is one of a kind. She makes her own rules. You gotta love someone who walks their own trail, no matter the consequences."
"I do," Bridget said softly, and from the sound of her voice, she meant it.
Ten minutes later the surgeon came out and told us that Jo was critical and had been moved to ICU.
"The next forty-eight hours will tell the story," he said.
I decided to put them to good use. I couldn't help Jo sitting around here. I was going to even the score, get some payback for Josephine Brickhouse. I'd failed Jo just at the moment I realized how special she really was.
I was going to catch this son-of-a-bitch or die trying.
Chapter
40
CLIMBING
At three-forty-five I was back at Smiley's hideout house in Inglewood. Since I'd left two hours ago it had become a full-fledged LASD crime scene. CSI had chalked the spot where Jo fell. She was facing the back door when he shot her. The techies from soles and holes were searching the backyard with metal detectors, looking for bullet fragments. I found the man in charge. Deputy Douglas Hennings was a fifty-year-old plainclothes drone with a vanilla personality and hair the color of poured concrete.
"You were working this thing with her?" Hennings said, after I had shown my creds and explained who I was. He started motioning to his second, another deputy sheriff in a suit, who wandered over and stood behind me, blocking my exit as if I was the problem.
"How come an LAPD Special Crimes dick is working with one of our IAD advocates?" Hennings said. "That sounds screwy."
"Look, Deputy Hennings, if you want to call Sheriff Messenger . . ."
"No, I don't wanta call the sheriff. I'd like you to answer my question."
"We were working a joint reinvestigation of the Hidden Ranch Road shooting at the request of Mayor MacKenzie and Supervisor Salazar." I saw a little shadow pass across his eyes at the mention of the politicos. "Sergeant Brickhouse left me a message that she was coming over here to conduct an interview. I arrived right after Vincent Smiley shot her. He blew out of here dressed in women's clothing, driving a new black Dodge Ram twenty-five hundred, license number Ida-May-Victor-five-eight
-
seven. Surely, you must already have all this." My frustration was mounting.
"Let's get this on tape from the beginning," Hennings said, motioning again to his partner, who moved in and cracked his knuckles like a gunfighter about to upholster a six-gun. Instead, he reached for a Sony minitape and placed it under my nose.
For the next twenty minutes Hennings took my statement. What I wanted to do is get past this guy and search the house before the sheriff's department criminalists bagged everything for evidence and hauled it out of there.
After I finished my statement, I asked Hennings if I could take a look around. He regarded me skeptically.
"I know how to work a crime scene," I assured him. Then, to show him I meant business, I pulled out my latex gloves. See? He finally nodded, so I snapped them on and went down the hall into the master bedroom.
It was immediately obvious that Smiley had been living here as Susan. The clothes in the closet were all large-sized dresses and skirts. In the bureau, women's blouses and underwear, extra large. The cosmetics in the bathroom were pancake and rouge.
His preferred shade of lipstick was Bozo-the-Clown red, something called Torche. Pinned up over the mirror were several Polaroids of Vincent in drag--close-ups of his face in full makeup. Janet Reno on steroids. I broke my promise to Hennings, and filched one, putting it in my side coat pocket. Then I stood surveying the bathroom, trying to get a grip on the methodology here. Was this just a place to run after he shot Emo and barbecued his brother Paul, or did he actually live here as Susan half the time? How long had he owned this house, or did he just rent? I made a mental note to check the local Realtors.
I left the house twenty minutes later and walked out to the driveway. I wondered if anybody had gone through his garbage yet. Not wanting to let this normally important crime-scene treasure trove get away, I moved behind the garage and opened his cans. Both empty. The sheriff's crime techs had beat me to it. Then I noticed some sheets of paper on the ground, partially hidden behind some bushes. One was an old market list, but the other was some kind of computer printout that had "YUMA TACTS" on the top. Under that was a series of columns and boxes:
.
7S | MECH INFANTRY REIN |
PG783783
N 33 13 57.1
W 115 05 16.6
LIVE ORD
MECH INFANTRY REIN
PG726796
N 33 14 39.9
W 115 08 58.2
LIVE ORD
SA-6 Site
PG771820
N 33 15 56.5
W 11506 01.1
LIVE ORD
ARMORED COLUMN
PG773815
N 33 15 38.1
W 115 05 54.3
LIVE ORD
SAM SITE
PG735806
N 33 15 12
W 115 08 18.5
LIVE ORD
MECH INFANTRY
PG718803
N 33 15 02.9
W 115 09 27.5
LIVE ORD
MECH INFANTRY REIN
PG771772
N 33 13 14.5
W 115 05 57.4
LIVE ORD
NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM, AAA, RADAR SITES
PG736809
N 33 15 23.6
W 115 08 17
LIVE ORD
MT. BARROW
NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM SITES
PG895707
N 33 09 42.1
W 114 58 10.8
LIVE ORD
.
Tad Palmer told me he'd seen this site on Smiley's computer out at Hidden Ranch, and I had tried unsuccessfully to access Cactus West on my PC. With words like INFANTRY and LIVE ORD, I knew it was some kind of military site.
I put the paper in my jacket pocket with the Polaroid and headed back toward the driveway. As I passed the garage, I noticed that the side door was ajar, so I pushed it open with my toe and walked in.
Nothing much was inside. A few recent oil stains on the pavement, but nothing was piled up against or hung on the walls. I noticed some old cardboard boxes up in the rafters that looked like they'd been broken down, folded and stored up there. Probably nothing, but most people don't go to the trouble to store broken-down boxes, so I found a ladder and dragged it over, climbed up, and started pulling at the edges. They cascaded down and landed on the floor.
I climbed down and started opening them up. The shipping labels indicated they had come from a mail order catalogue called The Mountaineer. The UPS dates indicated they were all delivered within the last week. I started to pull out the manufacturer's packing lists that had been left behind.
The first box I went into had contained a GPS--a miniunit for exact global satellite positioning. I reached into another box and found the printed instructions for installing something called "crampon metal spikes." They attached to the bottom of boots and were used for ice climbs. There was a box for an ascender and one for fifi hooks, which had a complicated set of instructions for a hanging belay. There was a box for an SLCD. The instructions indicated that it was a spring-loaded camming device, used to improve handholds on a cliff face.
What it all came down to was Vincent had recently ordered one hell of a lot of expensive mountain-climbing equipment. The boxes had been opened here, but since the gear wasn't in the house or garage, it was probably in the back of that bigfoot
Dodge 2500 that had roared out of here, almost hitting me. Detective logic at its tip-top best.
I left the garage by the side door, walked down the drive, and climbed into a slick-back D-car that I'd picked up at the motor pool downtown after leaving the hospital. I drove slowly up the block, trying to figure my most effective next move. Jo's purse was on the seat beside me. Nobody had asked me for it at the hospital, so I just held onto it. I drove up the street and found a quiet place to park, then pulled over and turned off the engine.
I opened the purse and pulled out Jo's crime book, then began flipping pages until I found what I was looking for.
Chapter
41
IF IT'S A BELL
,
RING IT
I pulled into the parking lot of a one-story showroom office in Sunland a few minutes past five in the afternoon. The window art advertised Sprint contracts and the latest in digital communications. The company's name and slogan were in big white letters:
bell communication
s i
f it's a bell . . . ring it
I got out and walked inside. Most places that sell computer and phone equipment keep the air-conditioning on way too low. This was no exception. They hadn't wasted much thought on decor either. Like a lot of yuppie businesses these days, the trend was toward open space and hard surfaces. The colo
r s
cheme was overpoweringly gray. The showroom had concrete floors and the ceilings were crisscrossed with exposed aluminum air ducts. Every kind of cell phone imaginable was displayed in glass cases.
I asked for Marion Bell and was told by a sneering pair of pleated pants that I couldn't see Mr. Bell without an appointment. I showed this arrogant dweeb my badge and cocked a suspicious eyebrow, which is the cop equivalent of "Wanta bet, asshole?"
He had an immediate change of attitude and led me into the back where the sales offices were. After a whispered conversation on the phone, I was shown into the boss's corner office. Decoratively, more of the same.
Marion Bell was one of those compact, thirtyish, yuppie packages whose stiff body language suggested a lack of grace, despite an athletic appearance. The best word to describe him was "severe." His physicality screamed no-nonsense, from the half-inch buzz cut to his ugly, Velcro-fastened shoes. His eyes were so blue, I suspected contacts.
"Police?" he asked as I entered. "I talked to Sergeant Brickhouse yesterday. She said she was going to set up a meeting, but she never called me back."
"She's my partner," I said. "This won't take long."
"About Vincent Smiley?" From his expression and tone, I could tell that Jo was right. Smiley was not a favorite.
"The cops are spending a lot of time on that guy, considering the fact that he's dead," he said.
"There are potential lawsuits surrounding that Hidden Ranch Road shoot-out," I said, electing not to tell him that Smiley was still alive. People are generally not all that anxious to rat out paramilitary psychopaths.
"Go ahead, ask away." Marion said, lowering himself behin
d h
is gray metal desk.
I took the uncomfortable gray chair across from him an
d o
pened my casebook. "Just tell me a little about Vincent. I understand he joined your mountain-climbing club, the Rock Stars, sometime last year. What month was that?"
"June," Marion said.
I wrote it down, thinking that was about the same time Smiley started digging the escape tunnel at his house in Hidden Ranch. Important? I wasn't sure.
Marion went on. "He wanted to do some organized mountain climbing. We're an outdoor club."
"As opposed to what?" I asked him.
"That means that our climbs are on real mountains. Some clubs are strictly gym climbing clubs. They scale indoor, artificial walls, that sort of thing."
"What was your take on him? What kind of guy was he?"
"Well, on a personal level he was a jerk. Frightening, if you want to put a better word on it."
"How so?"
"He was always right on the edge of going off on you. Even when he was laughing, it could turn ugly in a second. You said the wrong thing and you'd set him off. He had real anger
-
management problems. We took him in originally because he said he was YDS fifth-class qualified. YDS stands for Yosemite Decimal System. It rates climbing ability. To be fifth-class rated, you have to have expertise in all forms of technical free
-
climbing and be proficient with specialized techniques and equipment. Once he became a member of the Rock Stars, and we took him on his first climb, we realized it was all BS."
"So he lied."
"Big time. He was basically a Gumby. His equipment was a mess, mostly second-hand stuff. His haul bag was a disaster, full of the kinda stuff mountain shops sell to newbies, but nobody ever uses. Since we do outdoor climbs, not gym climbs, we have to travel to our sites. Sometimes it's a two
-
or three
-
hour drive, so I like to get an alpine start."
"A what?" I was writing all this down.
He smiled. "Alpine start--early, like three a
. M
. We'd meet in a market parking lot, or some agreed-upon place, and take off from there. You go early, especially if it's a snow climb, because the hard pack starts to melt after noon and you want to be off the mountain by then. Once the snow starts melting, all your protection starts pulling loose and it can get treacherous."
"Protection?" I was still scribbling like mad trying to keep up.
"Anything you pound into a rock face, or screw into ice to tie you off, is called protection."
I nodded.
"He always escalated any disagreement past the place you were willing to go. It's how he won arguments. There was something about Vincent. You never knew what he was capable of, and you didn't want to find out."
I nodded. Pretty much exactly what Tad Palmer had said.
"On the first climb he went on, we saw how dangerous he was, so we made him a belay monkey. That's basically somebody who stays at the belay station and minds the anchors."
"I'm sorry, I'm afraid ..."
"Somebody who stays below and holds the end of the climbing rope, keeps it from getting tangled. It's a job anybody can do. If a guy brings his nonclimbing girlfriend, we always give her the job. Make her our 'Belay Betty', so to speak, okay?"
"Right."
"But after the first time he didn't want to do that, so the next time we went, we had to take him up as a rope man. He was long on nerve and short on skill. Basically, a screamer in training."
I raised my eyebrow again.
"A screamer is somebody taking the big drop. A screamer is dangerous to everybody, because he can zipper out all the protection and kill everyone on the line with him."
"Got it."
"So we asked him, basically, to stop climbing with us an
d r
esign from the club. As president, that was my job. I actually considered putting a gun in my belt when I talked to him. He was that unstable."
"Sergeant Brickhouse told me you'd mentioned that he belonged to some kind of survivalist club."
"That's what he said. He was always talking like some ex
-
military, antigovernment fanatic. But if you want my take on it, he was just mouthing off. He didn't have any tats on him, no swastikas, or any of that other antigovernment nonsense those survivalist guys like. I think it was just talk."
"Anything else?"
He thought for a moment, then said: "Well, one thing. He was always wanting us to climb the Chocolate Mountains."
"Where's that?"
"Way the hell on the other side of the Salton Sea. It's a mountain range between California and Arizona, which is, to be honest, not all that challenging. But he wanted to go up there anyway. Said there was a high altitude SEAL training camp he wanted to see. Even had maps."
"When was this?"
"All the time. He never stopped talking about it, until we threw him out. Most of the club members like the big face at Pinnacle National Monument, or, if we're going to overnight, we like Yosemite National Park. There's hundreds of great V-five climbs up there, some as high as thirty pitches, that require two or three days to complete."
I didn't know exactly what pitches or V-5 climbs were, but I more or less had the idea, so I didn't ask. "If he was going to make a climb somewhere, you think it would be in these Chocolate Mountains?" I asked.
"If he was still alive, yeah, I'm sure that's where he woulda gone. To the SEAL camp up there. It's almost four thousand feet up."
"Do you have a map?" I asked.
"Yeah, I think I have the Chocolate Mountains in a book-- right here."
He crossed to a bookshelf where he had a library of climbing books. He pulled down a volume labeled Bradshaw Trail Climbs.
"The Bradshaw Trail is out past Indio by the Salton Sea in Riverside County," he explained as he started flipping pages. "It runs between the Chukwalla Mountains and the Chocolate Mountains. There's some spectacular views from the Chukwalla Bench of the Palos Verdes Valley."
Then he found the page he wanted. "There's a Navy SEAL camp known as Camp Billy Machen down here at the base camp. They used to use it for desert training. It's closed now. The other SEAL camp, the one he wanted to visit, is at altitude." He pointed at a spot on the map. " 'Bout here, above Silver Pass."
"Could I make a copy of this?" I asked him.
"You can take it, if you bring it back."
He gave me the book and I pulled out the sheet of paper that I'd found by Smiley's trash. "You recognize anything here?" I asked him. He scanned it for a moment.
"YUMA TACTS," he read aloud. "Looks like some kind of military operation."
"Yeah, but for what?" I wondered out loud.
He shrugged and handed it back. "Beats me."
I thanked Marion and walked back out to the car, wondering how to go about this.
If Smiley wanted to go to the Chocolate Mountains, then that's where I wanted to go.
My problem was, I didn't know the first thing about mountain climbing.
Chapter
42
THE DEAL
By six fifteen the Rams were halfway through practice. I pulled the borrowed D-car into the upper parking lot at Agoura High School and walked through the campus. It was Friday afternoon, and the school sign announced that the Agoura football team was playing at San Marino High that night at eight, so the high school team wasn't out on the field. I stood for a minute on the top steps, looking down to where Chooch and thirty or so kids in their practice uniforms were running plays on the main field. There was still almost an hour of fall sunlight left.
Chooch was with the offense. Across the field, working on breakdown drills with the defense, was Sonny Lopez, the man I'd come to see. He was coaching the boys to come to a partia
l b
alanced stop, setting their feet, running in place before making an open-field tackle.
Chooch saw me and waved. "Hey," he yelled. "This is a closed practice."