Cold Hit

Chapter 29

I raced up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. When I got to the Xerox room the fax was already coming through. I plucked it out of the tray and carried it over to my old desk. The summary was just as Karen Wise reported. In June of '95, Martin Kobb, an off-duty patrol officer, walked into a Russian specialty market on the corner of Melrose and Fairfax and interrupted a burglary in progress. There were no witnesses to identify the shooter because the storeowner was in the back supervising a delivery of vegetables, and the robber had simply been emptying the register when Kobb came in. He chased the suspect out to the parking lot and the burglar dumped him with a 5.45 slug. Now, ten years later, the bullet in his death matched up perfectly to the striations on the one we dug out of Davide Andrazack's head five days ago.

The FBI had called Red's Roadside Towing to haul our cars to the main police garage on Flower. I ran into Roger Broadway as we each forked over forty-five dollars to buy our cars back.

Broadway dug into his wallet and complained. "This rusting piece-a-shit Fairlane ain't worth forty-five bucks." He paid the civilian working the police garage who had fronted the money to the tow operator.

"It's a motor pool car. At least you can expense it. I'm probably stuck 'cause this is my personal vehicle," I said, as I handed over my cash.

He was about to get into the tan Ford, when I stopped him. "Hey, Rog, you don't think maybe there might be a tracking device or something on that old beater?"

He frowned.

"Because I keep wondering how those FBI guys knew where we were to run us off the road this morning."

"Damn good point," he said.

We went over the undercarriages of both vehicles with a mirror on a pole that the police garage used to check for bombs. We found a miniaturized transmitter attached by a magnet to the left rear fender wall of Broadway's Fairlane and pulled it off.

"Satellite tracking device," Broadway said, bouncing the tiny, aspirin tablet sized transmitter in the palm of his hand. "Never seen one this small before. That's probably our tax dollars at work."

"Who planted it?" I asked.

"My money's on the FBI." He put it in his pocket. "Gonna get Electronic Services to trace it."

"I get the feeling that Virtue's guys kinda slipped the leash somewhere," I said. "You need a warrant and a bunch of probable cause to plant one of these. Especially if it's on Los Angeles cops."

"Lemme lay some background on you, friend. Before the Twin Towers went down, them gray cats in Justice had a bunch of legislation sitting around that they didn't know how to get through Congress. After nine-eleven they loaded it all into the USA PATRIOT Act. Once USAPA was enacted, the FBI got handed tremendous new powers. They already had the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA was passed in 'seventy-eight, and as far as federal law enforcement is concerned, it's a kick-ass piece of legislation. Those two acts together give the Frisbees power we lowly city coppers can only dream about."

"How so?"

"Let's say the feds think a foreign agent is involved in anti-U. S. intelligence that might compromise national security and they want to bug him. They go before a secret FISA court. The way Lieutenant Cubio explained it to us, that court has nine federal judges. Maybe now it's up to thirteen. The FBI or Homeland makes their case to this panel of judges and asks permission to plant a bug. The spooky thing is there's no record of any of these requests. It's a completely secret proceeding."

"Like a star chamber?"

"Exactly. Once they get their request approved, they're good to go."

"But this court can say no, right? The FBI still needs the same level of probable cause."

"Technically, yes," he said. "But since 'seventy-eight, according to federal records, there have been over twenty thousand requests and not one denial. After nine-eleven the number shot up. One other nasty thing. The Attorney General of the United States can bypass the court anytime he wants. He has emergency powers that he can invoke at will. After nine-eleven, when John Ashcroft was in office, he used those emergency powers more than any other Attorney General since FISA passed."

"And now they're bugging you and Emdee?" I asked.

"Ain't no fucking AM radio we just pulled off this rust bucket." He kicked the fender of the old Fairlane, then held up the bug. "This little pastry means we've probably all been targeted for roving bugs."

"And just what the hell is a roving bug?" This was all news to me.

"Used to be, the feds wanted a phone tap, a computer scan, or to bug some guy's pen register, they had to write a warrant on a location just like us. They'd have to get permission to bug a building or a computer or a car phone, and then the warrant made them specify which computer, room, or phone you wanted bugged."

"Yeah, you can't get warrants to just bug some guy's whole life, and the courts only approve most bugs for short time frames. Then they have to be removed. That's the way it still is. You're telling me that's changed for the FBI?"

"The PATRIOT Act altered everything. Most citizens don't know this, but instead of getting warrants on locations, the feds can now bug a person. It's called a `roving bug.' They listen to a suspect's cell phone and get his pen register-the numbers he's called. According to the act, they aren't supposed to listen to the conversations, but who's not going to listen in once they've got the tap? They find out where the suspect's heading and then, if they want, they can even do a black bag job on the structures he's going to visit. With a roving bug they can tap anything: buildings, restaurants, and in our case, even this old piece-of-shit Fair-lane. I don't know how the feds knew we were working Davide Andrazack's murder, but somehow Virtue must've gotten wind of it. Once he found out, he got Homeland to attach a high threat assessment to us and got the FISA court to issue the warrant."

I felt like shit. I was the one who told Underwood about Andrazack. Virtue only knew about it because of me.

"If the FISA court gave them permission to rove with us," Broadway continued, "that means my house and our office phones, the computers-everything is probably compromised. It's a new world, Shane. Big Brother is definitely watching."

He shook my hand. "Nice working with you, even if we did get our water turned off in the end. Stay in touch. We'll go bowling some Saturday." Then he got into the Fairlane and pulled out of the garage.

I took my time driving home and thought about all these changes in the law. As a cop I wanted to catch dangerous criminals, and I certainly wanted terrorists behind bars, so any expansion of police powers seemed welcome. But as a citizen, I wasn't so sure. In the wrong hands was this unlimited power dangerous? Were the Fourth Amendment rights afforded me by the U. S. Constitution being abridged? This new roving bug, created by the PATRIOT Act, seemed to give the government too much leeway. If abused, would it be at the expense of important constitutional freedoms?

All the agency had to do was get permission from their secret court, which, according to Broadway, was not accountable to any higher power. That raised a lot of questions. For instance, what happens to these roving bugs after the suspect leaves a particular building? Were they deactivated or just left in place? What were the legal guidelines in a completely secret proceeding? What provisions, if any, were there for oversight of the FISA court? If the suspect under surveillance worked in the Glass House as the three of us did, could the feds actually bug the police administration building without getting a municipal warrant?

Worse still, for reasons I couldn't comprehend, the Justice Department and R. A. Virtue seemed to have convinced the FISA court to target the three of us. If Roger was right, we couldn't even petition the court to find out why.

Alexa was at her desk in our bedroom working on more case material when I got home. She'd had a bad COMSTAT meeting yesterday, and was transferring half-a-dozen homicide detectives. Orders to move these guys had to be cut and she needed to approve the protocol. It was a lot of paperwork.

"What took you so long?" she asked as I came into the room. "I was beginning to wonder if Justice had kidnapped you again."

"Had to get my car back from the motor pool. Forty-six bucks."

"Right. I forgot."

"You want to take a break?" I asked. "Get a beer?" "Gimme fifteen minutes."

I went into our bathroom, stripped off my clothes, took a hot shower, and washed ten hours of confinement off my skin. I put on a pair of frayed jeans and a T-shirt, went into the kitchen for a beer, then headed barefoot out to the backyard and Abbot Kinney's five-block fantasy.

I sat down in time to watch a family of ducks paddle by. I felt just like those ducks, serene and composed on the surface, but underwater, paddling like crazy.

A few minutes later, Alexa joined me. "Picturesque," she said, looking at the moon on the canals, or maybe the ducks. I knew she wasn't talking about me.

"Yep."

"All and all, a pretty wild day."

I could tell from her tone that her anger had dissipated.

She looked over at me. "Not knowing where you were made me realize how much I need you. So I guess there's some good that comes from everything."

I had decided to push ahead regardless of my new jeopardy with the feds.

"I got a cold hit on the bullet we dug out of Andrazack's head," I said, positioning myself for an argument.

"Send it to Agent Nix."

"Right." I took a sip of my beer. "Problem is, it matches a slug that killed an LAPD officer named Martin Kobb, in 'ninety-five."

She peered at me in the dark. "Really."

"Yep. Unsolved case. Open homicide. This guy Kobb was off-duty and walked into a Russian market on Melrose, interrupted a burg in progress. He pulls his piece, badda-bing, badda-boom, he gets it in the head. Bullet is from the same gun that killed Andrazack."

"You're sure?"

I'd come prepared. I pulled out the fax pictures of the two bullets and the case write-up that Karen sent me.

Our ballistics lab has a comparison microscope, which is basically two microscopes mounted side by side, connected by an optical bridge. She had retrieved the Kobb bullet from the cold case evidence room and photographed it next to Andrazack's using 40X magnification. The photo lined both slugs up back to back. Bullets can have as few as three, or as many as thirty different land and groove impressions. This one had twelve, and they lined up perfectly.

I handed the photo to Alexa. She held it to the light and studied it for a full minute or more.

"So here's my question," I said. "How does the Los Angeles Police Department look the other way on this? This guy was a brother officer. With the addition of this new ballistic evidence, how can we refuse to reopen the Martin Kobb investigation?"

"Shit. You're a tricky bastard," she said softly.

"A lucky one, too. Just as one mount gets shot out from under me, along comes another horse to ride." "And you want. .?"

"This cold case. Assign me, and Detectives Broadway and Perry to investigate."

"And when you run straight into Agent Nix and his flock of drooling jackals, what do you say?"

"We'll say, 'Nice to see you, Agent Nix. Hope all is going well on the Andrazack hit. We're just over here investigating this poor, dead LAPD officer from 'ninety-five.'

"And you think they won't go right up the wall?"

"Let 'em. You tell me, how can they take Marty Kobb away from us? The fact that it may be the same shooter who killed Andrazack is just one of those things."

Alexa sat for a long time, thinking about it. She knew I was on solid ground technically. We had standing to work our own police officer's murder. But still, it put us in direct violation of an order from the head of California Homeland Security and the SAC of the local FBI.

This is the kind of wonderful stuff that, when it happens, makes me relish police work.

"I'll need to clear it with Tony. Write everything down so I'll have it for him to review."

"You don't need to clear it with him. You're the head of the Detective Bureau. All you have to do is reactivate this cold case and give it to me."

"I'm gonna talk to Tony."

"Chicken," I challenged.

"Maybe," she said softly. "But a lot is on the table, here. Not the least of which is the safety of a man I love."

"I like the sentiment, but you're still a wuss."

She put the ballistics report back into the envelope then smiled and said, "Nice save."