Vertical Coffin

Chapter 13

ATF didn't work many homicides. Their beat was illegal party favors-guns, booze, and stogies. Because we worked hundreds of murders a year, normally on homicides that fell in their jurisdiction, they'd send us an agent to help out, but would leave us on point. After the Hidden Ranch shoot-out, that obviously wasn't going to happen.

Ruta was pacing in the living room shooting off orders at everybody. "Get me a phone dump on this hard line and don't forget his cell calls," he barked at Beverly King.

She nodded, her face pinched tight with stress, her body language a concert of uncertainty. She took off through the living room toward the phone.

"Not through the crime scene, you idiot!" Ruta yelled. "Go out the front door, around to the back porch. After it's dusted, use the phone in the kitchen. Who the fuck taught you crime scene tactics, Katie Couric?"

Beverly King muttered an apology and scooted out the front door on her errand.

I walked over to Ruta. "Why don't you cut her some slack?"

"Why don't you suck my dick? Or can I say that to the husband of our division commander?"

"Hey, Lou, you can say anything you want, just don't piss me off, or I'll drag your sorry ass outside and disconnect your dome light." I smiled benignly. "Besides, how would I ever find your dick in all that blubber?" He reddened but didn't respond.

All around us, CSIs were doing their thing. They were getting ready to flip Billy Greenridge, after bagging his hands. In my opinion, there wasn't going to be any DNA under his nails. This didn't look like it was done from up close. He looked like he was shot from a distance with a high-powered round, probably from a sniper's rifle.

Everybody was more or less thinking that someone from the sheriff's enforcement bureau had done this, but nobody wanted to say it because of where that would take us.

Beverly King found the bullet hole in the living room wall. It had punched through a copy of that corny painting of dogs playing poker. The picture hung opposite the front door, the bullet passing right through the head of a fox terrier holding five spades in his paw. Apparently not a winning hand. Then the slug went through the laundry room and back porch, blasting out into the backyard, where it was lost somewhere in the open field beyond. It had to have been a big round, like a.308, to go through Billy's head, three walls, and keep going. Hunting for it in the field behind the house was going to be an iffy project. The bullet would probably never be found.

When the M. E. S were finally ready to transport the body I went over and watched them load Billy onto the gurney, his bloody remains now all zipped up neatly in a rubber coroner's bag. I walked out with the M. E.'s assistant, an Asian man named Ray Tsu, helping him push the gurney. Tsu had a pipe-cleaner build and long hair parted in the middle and pushed behind his ears like black tieback curtains.

We struggled, pushing the load up to the coroner's van. The front wheels of the gurney folded under and we slid the body into the back. Before he shut the van doors, I stopped him.

"Can I take one last look, Ray?"

"Sure." He unzipped the bag and Billy's pasty, white face came into view. I examined the bullet hole in the center of his forehead. An ugly red cyclops.

"Up or down?" I asked, referring to the trajectory.

"Ruta says up," Tsu dodged.

"Yeah, but whatta you say?"

"Depends on the attitude of his head when he got hit," he hedged again. "I'm just a tech. You should get all that from the M. E."

Just to keep the conversation rolling, I said, "Bullet fired from some shooter sitting in a car parked out front would be slightly up, right? An upshot would knock his head back. The head's responsible for what? A little over a tenth of a person's gross weight?"

"Eighteen percent."

"Right, eighteen. So it's like a fulcrum, whichever way the head goes, so goes the body. An upshot should blow him back, but he fell forward, head toward the street. How come?"

"There's no rules on this stuff, Shane," Ray said, smiling now, despite our ghoulish subject matter.

"Take a guess," I said. "You see a lot of this. I won't hold you to it."

"Well, two ways it happens, maybe. One, if he was shot up close, like from a few feet away with a big round. The muzzle velocity on a three-oh-eight or a two-twenty-three is so great coming out of the barrel, it maybe blows out the back of his skull without much recoil. So he doesn't fall back, but his head rebounds slightly from the exit kick and that throws him forward. Or it was a down-shot from a ways away, and the shot takes him to his knees. From there, depending how he hit, he could fall anywhere."

"Any other way it happens?"

"I've seen hundreds of drive-bys the last few years. Sometimes there's no reason why a body lands the way it does. Bullets ricochet off bones, change directions. The rules of physics on this can get skewed. He could have even bounced off the door frame and got knocked forward."

Ray Tsu rezipped the bag and closed the van door, then paused before leaving. "Ruta's got his full, fair share of mean, don't he?"

"In our business, it's real easy to go sour. It's something to watch out for."

Tsu nodded, then got into the van and pulled out. The rest of the preliminary crime scene investigation went right down departmental guidelines. We drew a grid of the place, graphed everything, vacuumed for trace evidence, hair, and fiber, in case the shooter had been in the house before he pulled the trigger. A long shot, but you never know. We looked for brass out front. Didn't find any. Photographed and dusted, taped up and backed out. Textbook.

Out on the street Ruta was hovering. I wanted some time alone to run my theories and thoughts, so I told him I was done. He grunted, walked to his car, and pulled away. I saw Beverly King sitting on the curb having a cigarette, trying to get rid of some anger. I walked up to her. Her hands were shaking as she took a drag.

"Good going in there," I said, referring to the fact that she had found the bullet hole in the painting. It wasn't a huge victory, but she needed something.

"Right. Mrs. Columbo saves the case." Her tone was bitter. Angry.

"Detective King, some things we can change, some things we can't. The secret is knowing the difference."

"I guess," she said, looking up and snapping the butt away. It scattered sparks in the street where it landed. "The guy just gets me froggy. Once he starts selling his wolf tickets, I end up getting tentative and start making mistakes."

"Ruta can't define you. Only you can do that. You let him get into your head, you're finished. The trick is to ignore his flack and stay focused. You're in charge of your game; he's in charge of his. Don't get the two mixed up, just because he's got two extra stripes and some attitude."

"Easy to say."

"Think of it this way. You're a homicide dick. A specialist. A lot's at stake when you get a call. You're the last hope the vie has for justice. Billy Greenridge is your client now. Don't let exposure to negativity cheat your client out of the best you have."

She frowned. "Who are you supposed to be, Deepak Chopra?"

"I'm just a guy who's done it wrong too many times and had to pay for it."

Finally her look softened and she smiled. "Thanks, Shane," she said softly.