Double Tap

CHAPTER FOUR

“Question is, how did the killer know where to find the gun?”

I’m looking at Harry over the conference table in our office. The contents of two cardboard file boxes, documents and photographs, evidence reports and copies of investigative notes obtained by a notice for discovery served on the cops, are spread out in front of us.

Our office has expanded so that we now occupy an entire wing of low-slung buildings under the jungle canopy of banana trees and palms in the courtyard behind Miguel’s Cantina just off of Orange Grove, across from the Del Coronado.

“It is possible,” says Harry, “the killer just stumbled onto the gun. Could happen.”

“I don’t think so. Look at the photos of the house, the floor plan produced by the cops.” We have several eight-by-tens, interior shots of the victim’s home as well as an overhead aerial shot probably taken from a police helicopter.

“The place is over seven thousand square feet. Nooks and crannies everywhere, drawers galore, to say nothing of all those display cases housing Chapman’s glass menagerie.”

“Your point is?” says Harry.

“My point is nothing else was touched. According to the police report nothing tossed, no open drawers except for the one where the gun was stored, nothing dropped on the floor, no latent prints, nothing. The place was cleaner than your average autoclave. Only the gun and this. . this one piece of art-what was it called?”

Harry thumbs through his notes.

We have each gone through the materials, Harry taking the time for notes. I have scanned the high points, leaving Harry to fill me in on details.

“Here it is: glass artwork, blue in color, called the Orb at the Edge. Got a picture out of a catalog here someplace.”

“It’s all right. I saw it going through the photos. It’s the only item known to be missing from the victim’s house. Is that right?”

“At least according to the cops,” says Harry. “Could be whoever did it just panicked. Think about it: You just get in the place, getting ready to do your burglary. She walks in. You freak out. You pop her. It’s happened before.”

“Hell of a shooter for a panicky burglar.” I am talking about the two shots to the head. “Less than an inch apart.”

“Could just be luck,” says Harry.

According to the state’s ballistics expert, all this fine shooting took place at a distance of at least thirty feet, standing on an interior balcony above the main entrance to the victim’s home.

“So maybe it cooks the theory of a teenage burglary gone awry,” says Harry.

“Unless she’s fifteen and her name is Annie Oakley. And it still doesn’t explain how the killer found the gun.”

Chapman’s house was large, with six bedrooms spread out on two floors, each one with its own adjoining bath.

“Unless you knew your way around, you would need a map,” I tell him.

“Yeah.” Harry is stumped.

“Do they say how the killer got in?”

“According to the cops, he popped a downstairs screen and came in through a window. One of the bedrooms on the bottom floor on the ocean side.”

“Makes sense. Nobody could see him. Was there a security system?”

“Oh, yeah. Top end. All the bells and whistles, window sensors, doors, motion detectors, glass-break sensors, twenty-four-seven monitoring, eye in the sky, cameras front and back, everything wired up the ass. Chapman paid sixty grand for the system. Only problem was she never turned it on. According to Chapman’s secretary, the hired help was always setting it off, the gardeners, the maid, the FedEx man, the hummingbird that ate out of the feeder on her front porch. Apparently during the first two weeks after they installed it, Chapman got called away from work four times, three of ‘em to bail her gardener out of the back of a squad car where they had him cuffed and once to vouch for the hummingbird, which they were unable to catch. Finally she said screw it and turned the system off.”

“You said there were cameras?”

“Front one scanned the entry door and picked up nothing. One in the back somebody took the tape out of it. Could have been the killer. Could have been Chapman or somebody else. Nobody seems to know. All they know is that there was no tape in the recorder on the day of the murder.”

“Great. A sixty-thousand-dollar security system whose only efficient application is to condition the owner not to turn it on.”

“About the size of it,” says Harry.

“Were there security stickers on the windows?” I ask.

Harry looks at me with a blank expression.

“You know, the little decals that say ‘This property is protected by Wile E. Coyote,’ whatever.”

“I don’t know.”

“Better find out. They don’t usually put a system in unless they sticker the strategic openings. If that’s the case it’s bad for us.”

What I am thinking is that the state’s going to say anybody who wasn’t familiar with the house wouldn’t take the chance that popping a screen and opening a downstairs window would set off the alarm and send a signal to some monitoring station somewhere.

Harry makes a note. Who besides Chapman’s own bodyguard would know that the security system was seldom, if ever, on?

“And of course the best candidate for the kind of shooting we’re talking about here is our own client,” says Harry.

“You mean his military background?”

“I wish that’s all it was. It turns out that among his other gifts, like jumping backwards out of handcuffs, is the fact that he qualified three years running for the U.S. Army Pistol Team,” says Harry.

“Wonderful.”

“Yeah, the cops went to great pains to provide us with all the details. Seems Ruiz and his teammates won two of the national shoots back at Fort Benning. Of course, this was a few years ago now, so he might be a little rusty.”

“Great, we can put him on the stand and have him perform a shooting exhibition with the murder weapon for the jury. Keep our fingers crossed he misses. That should be persuasive. Next you’re going to tell me that the pistol of choice he fired during competition was the same one used to kill Chapman.”

“Fortunately, no. It was, however, a forty-five auto, same caliber,” says Harry, “but it wasn’t an HK. It was the old Colt 1911 model.”

“So if we draw a jury composed of gun nuts and armorers, we can make the point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the military go to the nine millimeter for sidearms some years ago?”

Harry nods. “Yeah, Beretta 92F is the piece they use now. But for some reason Ruiz and his team shot with the old Colt.”

“And yet the gun used to kill Chapman, a forty-five auto, was issued to Ruiz and belonged to the military. See if you can find out why.”

Harry makes a note.

“How about the state’s theory of a love interest: murder by jealousy. Anything in their notes on that?”

Harry shakes his head. “You have to figure they aren’t gonna put that in their notes. Theory of their case. If they have witnesses, you can be sure they’ll be well concealed on their list.”

What Harry means is lost in a forest of other names.

What is in the file is the lurid videotape showing Ruiz and Chapman on the couch in her office at Isotenics. While the production values, color, and lighting leave a little to be desired, the action-punctuated as it is by heavy breathing and some audible moans-leaves nothing to the imagination.

“How would you read it?” Harry is talking about the tape. “You think she was the aggressor?”

“If I had to call it on points, I’d say it was a draw.”

Harry nods. “We’re gonna need a good wind at our back if we’re going to sell the jury on the notion that she seduced him.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

“That’s about it. Some details here and there. We have the original pathology report, but the medical examiner is still working on some details they haven’t released yet.”

“What kind of details?”

“They aren’t saying. They say they’re just about done. They’ll ship it over as soon as they’re finished. As soon as it comes I’ll get it to you.”

Harry starts to package up some of the papers on the table. “One thing is clear,” he says. “The cops and the DA are putting all their eggs in Ruiz’s basket. From everything I’ve seen and read, he’s been their only theory of the case from the get-go. Never even looked at the possibility of a burglary. Ruiz is right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He is very convenient,” says Harry. “The man touches every base. Who would have known where the gun was except him? Who else knew the security system was off? He was familiar with the house and the layout. Only thing they might be a little weak on is motive.”

“Give them a few more days and I’m sure they’ll shore that up.”

“You heard him at the jail. He could just be good at covering his emotions, but it sure didn’t sound like he was infatuated with her to me. I suppose the DA can try to make out a case of twisted lust, given the tape,” he says.

“If they show it more than once, the judge is going to have to call a break so the jury can take a cold shower,” I tell him.

“That does not a murder make,” says Harry.

“Let’s hope not.” For the moment I am worried about the tight group to the head, one of the most damaging pieces of evidence, particularly since it came from Ruiz’s gun and given his background in the military as a shooter. “What about the gun?”

“What about it?”

“According to the police report, the firearm was taken from a drawer in a dresser upstairs, off the main floor, a guest room previously used by Ruiz when he was providing security. With all that glass behind glass, with expensive electronics in open view in the living room, why stop to run upstairs and rifle through the drawers of a dresser if your purpose is burglary? Unless of course you already know that what you’re looking for is in that particular drawer.”

“You’re saying that the killer knew where the gun was?”

“I’m saying that the purpose wasn’t burglary or robbery or any other crime involving property. The purpose was murder. And, based on the evidence, that’s what the prosecution is going to say: that gun was the first thing the killer went for.”

“And of course who knew where the gun was kept.”

Harry and I harmonize on this one: “Ruiz.”

“We need to find out who else knew about the firearm. That’s the key. The wider the knowledge, the better off for us. If Ruiz showed it to anyone. If he told anyone where it was. If anyone else in the house knew about it. Put that at the top of your list: things to check out,” I tell him.

He makes a note starting with Ruiz as soon as we can get to him at the jail. They are now in their second day of lock-down. From what we are reading in the paper and hearing at the courthouse, all of this is the result of a stabbing. They are now scouring cells looking for shivs, turning the bedding upside down and tapping the walls, looking for hollowed-out places carved in the concrete, pasted over with watered oatmeal, and colored with acrylic paints used by inmates in art classes: a favored hiding place because it is neutral, not tied to an inmate’s bunk or belongings. Life and death in the lockup.

“Ruiz did tell us he made sure another employee was assigned whenever he slept over at Chapman’s house,” says Harry.

If this is true, it cuts against the theory that he was trying to make time chasing after the victim. It augurs well for the defense that he was trying to keep his distance.

“If we can prove it,” I tell him.

“And maybe,” says Harry, “that other employee knew about the gun, where it was kept.”

“Check it out. Put it on the list.”

“I’m gonna need help if I’m gonna run all this down.” Harry has cases, some dogs barking back in his office. He will have to clear the decks.

“We’ll bring somebody in.”

“Who?”

“Let me work on it,” I tell him.

“One other thing,” he adds. “We need to find out why Ruiz left the gun at her house when the security assignment ended. That’s a pretty expensive firearm to just leave behind when you change jobs.”

“The cops asked him that.”

“I didn’t see it,” says Harry.

“Said he just forgot it was there. According to Ruiz, he never carried it concealed. It was too big. He carried a small, compact Glock, a nine millimeter, when he needed to be armed.”

“So why was it at the house?” Harry wonders aloud.

I shake my head. “Let’s find out.”

Harry makes a note to talk to Ruiz about it just as soon as we can corner him at the jail.

“Anything else?” I ask.

He looks down his list. “Just this Orb thing. I don’t know about you, but I get the sense it was worth a bundle.”

“She had an extensive collection of art glass, according to the reports. I doubt, given her position, her income, that she bought junk.”

“It’s more than that. The cops are playing hide-the-receipt. They won’t say what she paid for it. By now they’ve gotta know. They talked to the owner of the shop where Chapman bought it. They would have seized any bill of sale. Probably found the corresponding copy in her purse or in her car after they found her body.”

Harry is right. It was purchased the afternoon she was murdered.

“So why hide it?” says Harry.

“Motive?”

Harry nods. “That’s what I’m thinking. If somebody saw her buy it, knew what she paid for it. .”

“Let’s find out. Subpoena her bank and credit card statements. All of them. If we have to, get an order for discovery. Force them to cough up the bill of sale. While you’re at it, see if we can get some background on this thing. What was it called?”

“Orb at the Edge,” says Harry.

“This Orb. If she wanted it as part of her collection, it probably has a history. Find out who owned it, where it came from, who might have wanted to own it, when it was made, everything you can regarding its pedigree.”

The building is well past its prime. If I had to guess I would say something from the late forties, put up during the postwar building boom when materials were at a premium. It is a universe away from the opulent government palaces built by dollar-a-day WPA artisans during the Depression: post office buildings with soaring Doric columns of granite and Tennessee marble lining the walls and floors. Today the best of these have all been squatted on by the federal courts and refurbished to within an inch of their original splendor.

What I am looking at from across the street isn’t even a distant relative. Five stories high, it stands ten blocks to the south of the trendy Gaslamp Quarter and maybe a decade from the grasping clutches and wrecking ball of urban renewal.

I skip across the street midblock, dodging cars, and climb the two cement steps leading to the main entrance. Inside is a directory, names and office numbers behind smudged glass with a hodgepodge of block letters of varying sizes and colors, some metal, some plastic. I find the one I’m looking for and take the elevator to the third floor.

The office is on the back side of the building.

The lights are on inside, enough illumination for me to see the hulking shadow of a figure, its outline skipping across the dappled glass every few seconds as it moves. No voices, so I assume he is not on the phone.

As I turn the knob and swing the door open without knocking, I see Herman Diggs, his massive shoulders hunched, neck bowed like a Brahma bull, his eyes trained on a piece of paper. Several piles of papers are neatly stacked across the top of his desk. As Herman looks up, it takes a second before he makes the leap from written word to familiar face, then he smiles. His missing front tooth looks like a gap in a fence.

“Whoa. Look what the wind blew in. Is that Paul Madriani I see?”

“In the flesh,” I tell him.

“Didn’t expect to see you.” Herman pushes his chair back from the desk. It takes him a second to get to his feet. “How you been?”

“I’m fine. But you should learn to keep your door locked if you’re going to do dangerous work.”

“What you talkin’ ‘bout, ‘dangerous work’?” He’s smiling, moving around the desk to greet me.

“I’ve been told you’re doing divorce cases. It doesn’t get any more dangerous than that.”

“Hell, only dangerous work I ever did was workin’ for you.” Herman’s laughing, hobbling a little on a stiff leg, one hand on the furniture to steady himself, evidence of the truth in his last statement. He offers me his hand, big and beefy, the size of a baseball glove.

“I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“Be a sad day when I don’t have time for friends,” says Herman.

“I should have called first, but I was in the area.”

“Hey, don’t be foolish. Actually I’m busy as hell. You know how it is. When you’re good at what you do, your services are always in demand. But I can always make time for a friend. My next appointment’s not till”-he looks at his watch-“let’s see, next Wednesday.” Herman laughs, full of his own version of blarney and bluster. “How ‘bout a cup of coffee so’s we can sit and bullshit a little longer? Keep me from that pile of papers over on my desk there.”

“Not for me. Just had lunch downtown. A meeting with a client.”

I take a seat in one of his client chairs. The chairs, like Herman’s desk, are scarred with someone’s carved initials, grooved and tattooed in assorted colors of ink. “So how’s business?”

“It’s growin’, comin’ along,” he says. “Picking up a few cases here, a few there. It takes time. You know what I mean?”

“I do. I almost didn’t stop in. I thought you might be out working the shoe leather.”

“Fact is, you saved me from a fate worse than death.” He gestures toward the stacks on his desk. “Don’t have a secretary as yet, so I gots to do my own filing. Hate that shit.” Herman moves to a little table by one of the filing cabinets against the wall, a coffeemaker and some cups on top of it. He pours himself a cup.

“How’s the leg?”

“Oh, that. It’s no problem.” He moves his right leg a little, heel and toe tapping-Fred Astaire on one leg-as he rests all his weight on the other foot, a demonstration to show me that the leg still works. “It’s nothin’. Just tends to stiffen up when I sit too long.”

Herman is like the soldier shot in both lungs who told the medic he was okay since it only hurt when he breathed.

“Be fine,” he says. “All I need is to pick up a few more clients so I can get out an’ about. This sittin’ behind a desk is not good. Puttin’ on weight, too.”

“Yeah, I noticed that right off.” Herman is a brick, solid muscle, well over six feet. He probably tips the scale at 250 pounds and claps his hands between his hundred push-ups every morning.

He settles his behind on the edge of his desk, cup in hand as he sips and smiles down at me. I met Herman two years ago while trying to tie up loose ends on a case down in Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula. Herman had been brought in as part of a security team. At the time he was working for a large firm out of Chicago. He ended up taking two bullets, an act that would have ended my life if he hadn’t. I’ve not forgotten it.

“Harry said he heard you were in town. Said he saw an ad in one of the community throwaways. Little yellow tabloid.”

Herman thinks for a second, then slaps his good leg. “Triple Nickel,” he says. “Little gold mine. As I recall, I picked up three clients from that one. Divorcées out in the east county. You know, cowboy country. Good ad. Know, ‘cuz I wrote it myself. How’d it go?” He closes his eyes and traces the words with a finger through air as he recites. “‘Put a tail behind your husband. Put your mind at ease. Make sure he’s got no tail on the side. Discreet Investigations. Herman Diggs and Associates.”’ He opens his eyes, gives me a smile. “Not bad for a guy never finished college, huh? What the man said: ‘You gotta keep ‘em entertained-you gonna put your hand in their pocket.”’

“So how long have you been here?”

“What? This place?”

“In town, I mean.”

“Oh, I dunno. Three, four months.”

“And you didn’t stop by?”

“Been busy,” he says. “All kindsa things to do when you open a business. You know how it is. Gotta get furniture and phones in. Name and number in the yellow pages. My license over there. . ” Herman gestures with an offhand nod and a dip of his shoulder toward a lonely certificate under glass in a black frame hanging high on the wall behind his desk chair. This is as casual as it gets for a man who tips the scales at eighteen stone and was once viewed as budding lineback material by the NFL. Herman went south to work in Mexico after his college scholarship did the same, the result of an early knee injury.

“Been in this office, what, maybe a month. Course, this is just a watering spot, you understand, a kinda way station like they say. Be workin’ my way toward greener pastures shortly.” What Herman means is when he actually catches up with all of those associates he currently has employed only in his ads and on his business card, one of which he plucks from a plastic holder on his desk and hands to me.

Herman is hardworking, energetic, what you would call a natural self-starter. His enthusiasm is such that trying to chill any plan he has ever hatched is doomed to fail, like throwing cold water on a red-hot stove. With Herman, words of caution usually serve only to make steam. In any endeavor Herman is likely to make a fortune-that is, if he isn’t arrested first.

“I needed three years’ experience workin’ in the field before I could even apply for my PI license,” he tells me. “But I got lucky. Just so happened my old employer-You remember them?”

“How could I forget. They owned all those big SUVs we wrecked down on the Yucatán.”

Herman laughs. “That’s the one. They was so nice after I got shot. It’s like I told them: I coulda been on disability the rest of my life. Know what I’m sayin’? You never know what a doctor’s going to say.” He winks at me.

Herman should have been a lawyer.

“Them’s almost my exact words to my employer,” he says. “You never know what a doctor’s gonna say.” Especially if he’s a surgeon and Herman is threatening to shake his hand.

“They heard that and, well, they really got on top of things. That’s why they’re the big company they are.” Herman says this as if he has aspirations. “They’re into the details, know what I mean? Anyway, make a long story short, wouldn’t ya know, one of their personnel people found them employment records. And that’s all I needed. Did the trick.”

“Which records would those be?”

“The ones they forgot to withhold any taxes on,” replies Herman. “Seems I worked for ‘em during summers before college and during the school year.” He puts one finger to the side of his nose and winks at me. “I forgot all about it,” he says. “Why, they even went and paid the back taxes and penalties. Then they gimme the stubs showing everything, so’s I could give the information to the state and get my PI license. Saved me a whole year working for somebody else just so’s I could apply,” he concludes. “Now how lucky is that?”

Luck to Herman is an eternal exercise in self-help.

“Comes from living a clean life,” I tell him.

“Ain’t that the truth.” He takes a sip of coffee, looking over the edge of his cup at me. “So what kinda sinnin’ you up to these days?”

“Actually, I’m up to my ass. Buried in cases, mired in court, investigations I don’t have time for.”

Herman’s eyebrows arch with the scent of opportunity.

“Which is part of the reason I came by,” I tell him.

“What? You mean to tell me you didn’t come by just to say hello?”

“Actually I did, but. .”

“Never mind, I’ll get over it,” he says. “Just tell Uncle Herman what kinda work you got for him. And please don’t go tellin’ me it’s a divorce. Without worker’s comp, I don’t need to be shaggin’ any more bullets right now.”