Vertical Coffin (2004) (9 page)

Ellen was facing her computer as I crossed the office. "Storms blowing. Wear your raincoat," she said without looking up.

Alexa's digs were small. One window, no view. She had portable bookshelves on every wall. Tony Filosiani was a law enforcement junkie and read everything from student doctoral theses on criminology to medical volumes on forensic science. Alexa had picked up the trait. She had books and manuals piled everywhere. It was the new department. The rubber hose was in the Hall of Fame. Now we forced confessions with drops of DNA, luminous light, and blood-spatter evidence.

"Shane, sit down," my wife said, looking harried. She glanced at her watch and I instantly knew we weren't going to dinner.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Big problems. ATF Internal Affairs just sent us over a copy of their findings on the Hidden Ranch shoot-out. They found SRT innocent of any wrongdoing."

"What'd you expect?"

"Sheriff Messenger's in with Tony right now. He's pissed. The mayor is coming over with Enrique Salazar from the Board of Supervisors. The area SAC from ATF is on his way, too."

"Look, Alexa, it's ..."

"No. Stop talking for a minute and listen. We're going into a meeting on this in seconds. The ATF finding claims that they told the sheriff's warrant control office about the automatic weapons in Smiley's garage. Of course, the WCO denies it, and of course, there's no paperwork substantiating what ATF says."

"Of course."

"But Brady Cagel says they never write any paper on stuff like that when they give over a bust to another agency, and the fact is, he's right."

"But what does this have to do with us? It's a sheriff's department-ATF spat."

Her intercom buzzed. She picked up the phone, listened, then said, "Right. Thanks, Ellen." She hung up and said, "Come on. Mayor MacKenzie's here. We're on."

"Alexa, whatta ya mean we're on?"

"We've been ordered by the mayor to reinvestigate it." And she was out of the office and down the hall.

I hurried to catch up, finally grabbing her arm before she got to Chief Filosiani's huge double doors. "You're giving this to me?" Duh . . . Finally getting it.

"Look, Shane, I need you. This is the ultimate red-ball. Either way this goes, nobody is going to come out a winner. The best we can hope for is some kind of mitigating circumstance. But we probably won't get that lucky. The mayor doesn't want ATF to reinvestigate. He's not happy with their current finding and doesn't trust their objectivity. He also can't trust the sheriff to be unbiased. He knows there's going to be multiple lawsuits on the shoot-out from the neighbors and from Emo's family, so he came to us. We're your classic uninvolved third party."

"Why me?"

"Three reasons. One: you're a great cop and you're fair ..."

"Stop it. You'll make me vomit."

"Two: you're the only L
. A
. cop that Sheriff Messenger will accept. He liked the way you handled the Viking case."

"What's the third?"

"You're the only person in this building I can trust not to leak. We're gonna do this together."

The door to the chief's office opened and Tony was standing there. His round Santa Claus face was red, but his cheeks were not ho-ho merry. He motioned us into the outer office.

The chief's waiting room was fronted by a secretarial area. Bea, his battle-ax with a heart of gold, was sitting behind a large desk, a murder-one scowl already on her hawkish face. She nodded at Alexa and me as the chief led us into his office. You had to be very observant to spot the twinkle in her eye.

Mayor Richard MacKenzie, known around town as Mayor Mac, was standing by the window. He was a tall, skinny, hollow-chested man with riveting blue eyes and a ridiculous blond comb-over. His double-breasted suits all fit like hand-me
-
downs. Also in the office, looking like he wanted to throw an ashtray, was Bill Messenger. Half Armenian, half Egyptian, he was a second-generation deputy who had been elected county sheriff two years ago.

Across the room, wearing charcoal stripes and a purple tie, looking exactly like what he was, a slightly overweight politician working on a sound bite, stood Enrique Salazar.

Tony closed the door behind us. "Shane, you know Mayor MacKenzie and Sheriff Messenger," he said.

"Yes," I said, shaking hands.

"And Supervisor Salazar."

Enrique didn't cross the room. He waved a ring-laden hand at me instead.

The office was strangely underfurnished. Chief Filosiani wa
s a
no-nonsense commander, known by his troops as the Day-Glo Dago because of his New York Italian demeanor and his penchant for flashy pinky rings. He had stripped out the expensive antiques and artwork that was the legacy of his predecessor, Burl Brewer, then sold them at auction and used the money to buy new Ultima Tac vests for his SWAT teams. He had installed utilitarian metal office furniture in the room, but there was damn little of it.

"Have you filled Shane in?" Tony was saying.

"A little," Alexa said. "I've explained the--" She stopped when Bea opened the door and admitted a sandy-haired, brown
-
eyed, compact man in a tan suit who looked like a carefully tailored gymnast. Behind him was the ATF ASAC, Brady Cagel.

Tony shook hands with the first man, then introduced him to the room. "Garrett Metcalf is the new SAC area commander. He and Mr. Cagel are here to make sure we don't blackjack ATF. Supervisor Salazar is looking after the county's interests."

"We're already late for a briefing at Justice," Metcalf said. "We can't stay but a minute. What's so important here, you had to demand an emergency meeting?"

Mayor Mac turned away from the window. "We have the IAD shooting review you faxed over," he said. "You guys should scare up a literary agent and start publishing fiction."

"Whatta you want, Mr. Mayor? You want me to lie?" Cagel snapped back. "Want me to fire shots at my own people when they didn't do anything?"

"They sent one of my deputies up to Hidden Ranch without all the pertinent details," Messenger said.

"I'm not going to argue this with you, Bill," Metcalf responded. "Our ASAC told your warrant control office there was a possibility of automatic weapons up there. Your guys didn't act on it or include it in the warrant. What am I supposed to do?"

"You're just whitewashing," Messenger said. He looked like he was on the verge of throwing one of his well-known Egyptian conniptions.

Garrett Metcalf said, "Your warrant guys dropped the ball. We're not gonna pay the freight."

"I'm asking LAPD to reinvestigate," the mayor said. "Detective Scully is a neutral party. I've asked him to rehang the investigation."

"He can investigate all he wants," Metcalf said. "It won't matter. It's closed. This is it as far as ATF and Justice are concerned. Not to get pissy, but a municipal investigation just isn't gonna cut it. This is a federal finding from Justice. It's over."

"Municipal crimes are tried in municipal courts," Salazar said, speaking for the first time. "The federal government can't change that." His words flew across the room like chips of ice.

Metcalf walked to the door and turned: "You people are looking at lawsuits on your dead deputy. Some of those neighbors are probably also gonna file. You turned that block into a fire zone. I sympathize, but it's not our problem."

"You turned it into the fire zone," Salazar said. "Your guys fired the hot gas. The L
. A
. County Supervisors are holding hearings, not only into the death of a Mexican-American sheriff, who looks like he was just sent in there and wasted, but into the entire behavior of the Justice Department on cross-jurisdictional matters."

"We're not gonna be scapegoats," Cagel said. "In case you haven't read your own county codes, an incident commander is responsible for everything that flows down from his scene. Your guy Matthews was in charge, so he's wearing the hat." He threw the LASD Manual onto Tony's desk. "Section thirty-one, paragraph eighteen. Great reading." He turned, and both feds walked out of the office.

"You've got to get this investigation done and a report written in less than two days," Tony said to me.

"I want a deputy on it with you," Messenger said.

"I agree," Salazar added.

"Nothing doin'," Mayor Mac replied. "I want only LAPD. They've got no stake in it. No axe to grind. Enrique, you know better than anybody what the press will do if this looks like a cover-up. We need an independent finding."

"We'll get right on it, sir," Alexa said, and led me out of the office.

Moments later we were standing in the hall.

"Alexa, I'm hardly uninvolved," I said. "I got into a fistfight with that SRT weapons team. There're already rumors about it circulating in the department."

"Shane, I know it's not perfect, but I need you, okay? Something tells me this isn't over yet. Not by a long shot."

Boy, was she ever right about that.

Chapter
9

FOOTBALL

It was 10 p
. M
., and I had been reading crime scene reports for three hours. Alexa was inside going over the ATF shooting review. I needed to get my mind off the Hidden Ranch mess for a while, so I took a break and got together with Chooch. We sat in the backyard talking football.

"I'm not hearing from as many coaches as I thought I would. We're already in our second game, and I'm just standing on the sidelines with a clipboard. I'm gonna lose the chance for a scholarship," Chooch complained. He was sitting next to me on the patio under a quarter moon.

The narrow Venice canals were picturesque, the arched bridges and shimmering water tinged silver in the pale moonlight. Venice was a haven for nonconformists and throwbac
k h
ippies, and I could hear Led Zeppelin leaking from one of the houses on Grand Canal.

Chooch started banging on his cast with the rubber tip of his right crutch, the injured foot his new mortal enemy.

"C'mon. You go back to the doc in a week. Maybe he'll take the cast off. You've still got a chance to get into the last few games, as well as the CIF playoffs."

"College recruiting trips are in December. I'm screwed, Dad."

"You just got another call from Coach Paterno."

"Yeah, I know."

"He saw your video from last year's games. He still seems interested."

"Penn State wants to move me to defensive-back," he said sadly. "I wanta be a quarterback. I know the position."

"You got four recruiting letters. You're gonna have coaches' visits from Arizona, Oregon, Tulane, and Miami of Ohio. The SMU scout wants to talk to you when he comes through next month."

"Dad, I'm not playing. They're not gonna give a full ride to some guy holding a clipboard."

"They understand injuries, son."

"No they don't. I'm missing almost a full year of experience. They're gonna think I'm just some green, two-year high school player. I'll probably do better going to a junior college, where I could at least start as a freshman, then transfer to a D-one school my junior year."

"Chooch--life isn't just about football. What's important is your education."

He sat quietly, looking at his offending foot. He was really in the dumps.

"I had an idea the other day. You know Emo coached a Pop Warner team? The Rams, I think."

"Yeah, you told me." "With him gone, they're probably looking for a new head coach."

He didn't say anything.

"Sonny Lopez is coaching defensive linemen and linebackers. They need someone who knows how to run a Veer Offense."

"I don't know anything about a Veer. We run a Wing-T."

"Not much difference. They're both option offenses."

"There's a lot of difference, Dad."

"Okay, but you know fundamentals. You could teach the quarterbacks the reason for a three-step drop as opposed to five--how to do defensive reads, or look off a defender, stuff like that."