Vertical Coffin

Chapter 8

What the hell happened to you?" Alexa asked. It was eight fifteen the next morning. As soon as I stepped out of the shower I put on a baseball cap to cover the six emergency-room stitches in the back of my head. But I guess the shower had opened the edge of the cut, and blood was running down the back of my neck.

"Take off that silly hat," she ordered.

"Oh, I don't think…"

She reached out and snatched the hat off. Then we did a little circle dance where she kept trying to get around behind me. "Shane, have you been fighting?" Sounding now like the horse-faced nun in those old Mickey Rooney movies.

Busted again.

Chooch had just hobbled out the door with Delfina, both of them on the way to school. He dropped her at Venice High each morning, then drove out to Harvard-Westlake in the Valley. We were alone, so I couldn't even use the kids for cover. I brought us both mugs of coffee and handed one to Alexa. She sat at the kitchen table and looked unhappy. I knew she couldn't stick around long, because she had a nine o'clock meeting with Tony Filosiani. They were reviewing some detective crime scene tactics in Vernon, where the department had a big public relations problem pending on a bad arrest.

"Who hit you?" she demanded again.

"What makes you think I got hit? This was a… I fell off a whatever-a thing." Great, Shane. "I was leaning back and tipped over in a chair, hit my head." Better.

"I can spot blunt force trauma. Don't forget who you're dealing with," she said.

She was right. It's pretty hard to BS a trained street detective. When it came to skirting the edges of the truth, this was not your normal marriage.

So I told her about the fight that took place the night before at the Pew and Cue. When I finished she was very quiet.

"Well, say something," I said. I hated it when she went quiet. That was always the worst.

"What do you want me to say, Shane? We've got major problems going down between sheriffs and SRT. Lawsuits are bound to get filed, so how do you help? You and a bunch of sheriffs go out after Emo's funeral, get plastered, then get into a fight with SRT. Let's see… What should I say? How about this: Was it fun?"

"Would it help if I told you I tried hard to break it up before it got started?"

"That might help."

"I tried really, really, really hard to break it up before it got started."

"Y'know, Shane, I love you, but you still have a lotta spots left that need smoothing off."

"And you're slowly sanding them. I want you to know I'm extremely grateful."

"Did the LAPD roll on it? Is this disaster gonna show up on a department green sheet downtown?"

"One of our black-and-whites was called, but Darren talked 'em out of doing anything."

"Darren. Not you."

"I was… in the toilet throwing up."

"Shit." Now she looked worried. "You got knocked out?"

"I don't think I was puking because of a concussion. I think it was bad chicken wings. I feel really good this morning. Tip-top. The E. R. docs didn't even want to hold me."

"Because you didn't tell them you were throwing up."

"A lot of it is kinda vague. I've got blank spots."

"Really." She leaned back, tipping in her chair, still watching me.

"Be careful," I said. "I wouldn't want you to go over and hit your head, like I did."

"Shut up, Shane."

But I'd turned the corner, I could already hear a smile in her voice.

"It was just bad luck. We didn't know they'd be in there."

She heaved a sigh. "Look at me. Right in the eye." She leaned forward and started checking my pupils. "You're okay, I guess."

She got up. I stood with her, but got a little dizzy when I did. To be honest, I might have picked up a mild concussion, but the less said here, the better.

She kissed me without passion; still angry, but she was late. "Be home for dinner?" she asked.

"I think so. I'm trying to wrap up the Paula Beck thing today. Once the D. A. files and Zack comes back from Miami, we can move on to something else. I'll be on the fourth floor. Lunch?"

"I don't break bread with lawless brawlers," she said.

"I was not brawling. I barely hit anybody."

"Noon at the Peking Duck," she snapped.

We left in separate cars. I drove my Acura, following her new blue Lexus until she sped up around the 10 Freeway and lost me in the heavy traffic.

I spent most of the morning on the fourth floor at Parker Center wrapping up the Beck investigation. I didn't think I had come up with enough on Paula for the D. A. to file the double-H. Even though the case was tragic, it really was just involuntary manslaughter. The D. A. could try and run his bluff, but if her public defender wasn't a complete moron he'd know it was a stretch. I finished the investigation report and handed it in to Cal, who glanced it over, then smiled at me.

"What happened at the Pew and Cue?" he said, his black, shiny, chrome-dome glinting purple in the overhead fluorescents.

"I wasn't there," I said.

"It's all over the department. Somebody said you got knocked cold." I kept my six-stitch lace-up turned from his view.

"Me?" I said. "Wasn't there. Bum rumor."

I had lunch with Alexa and we didn't say much. She picked at an avocado plate, which I could have told her was a bad menu choice at the Peking Duck. Stick to the Oriental dishes in that joint, the egg rolls and dim sum.

The rest of the day went slowly. I searched through our files on predicate felons, looking for a new target Zack and I could work when he got back. By six I was getting ready to pack it in, when my phone rang. It was Sergeant Ellen Campbell, who works as Alexa's administrative assistant.

"The skipper wants to see you," she said brightly. The skipper was Alexa.

"On my way."

I closed up my desk, logged off my computer, and rode the elevator up two flights to the sixth floor. I figured Alexa was going to suggest we make up over dinner. There was a Greek restaurant called Acropolis, in the Valley, she'd been wanting to try.

I walked down the thick, sea-foam green carpet that covered the corridors of the command floor, entered Alexa's outer office, and found Ellen, a perennially happy, freckled blonde sitting behind her desk. Most lieutenants aren't staff rank officers and don't have private secretaries, but Alexa was an acting division commander, and head of Detective Services Group. She reported directly to the Office of Operations, which was right below the Chief, so she was way up on the department flowchart.

DSG supervised all the detective bureaus, from Forgery and Missing Persons, to Special Crimes and Robbery-Homicide. Normally the head of DSG would be a captain or a commander, but Alexa had taken over the XO position a year ago as a lieutenant. She was made acting head by Chief Tony Filosiani after her boss, Captain Mark Shephard, had been shot and killed. Chief Filosiani liked her and was willing to leave her as acting head until she made captain, which, the way she was going, would probably be in another year.

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 was 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.