Vertical Coffin

Chapter 37

I couldn't reach Jo on the phone, but then, like an asshole, I'd told her to keep her cell off to avoid getting called in by the FBI. My next try was Alexa.

She was in Cole Hatton's office and stepped out of a heated debate to take my call. Since the meeting was just breaking up, she agreed to get together with me in Union Park across the street from the Federal Building in thirty minutes.

I hit the gas and cut through traffic, banging on my horn, going Code 2, breaking red lights all the way to the freeway. Then I slammed the pedal down, doing almost ninety on the 110 and took the Chinatown off-ramp to Union Park. It was a little past one o'clock when I grabbed a metered parking place and got out. I saw Alexa in a great-looking black dress I'd bought her for her birthday. She was standing over by a hot dog vendor buying a foot-long, saw me coming, and met me halfway.

"Sit down," I told her. "So you don't drip mustard on my favorite outfit." We settled on a bench nearby.

"What is it that couldn't wait an hour until I got back to the office?" she said. She still looked way too stressed to me.

"If I told you that Vincent Smiley was alive, that he went out that tunnel Jo and I found under his house, what would you say?"

"That it's impossible. His DNA was crossmatched. The man's positively dead."

"Smiley had an identical twin brother named Paul. Identical twins have identical DNA."

She sat there taking this in. Then she said, "Had?"

"My bet is it was the twin who did the flambe in the bathtub. It's a long story why, but Paul and his twin brother Vincent hated each other. My theory is Vince lured his brother down from San Francisco, or maybe even kidnapped him. Either way, he gets Paul out to Hidden Ranch. He ties him up and waits. When Emo shows up he starts a shoot-out, conks his brother, and leaves him in the tub, then crawls out through the tunnel we found."

"And you think Vincent is the one murdering the SWAT team guys." She furrowed her brow, trying to fit the pieces.

"That's my guess. He hates cops because they wouldn't accept him so he arranges his death using Paul as a stand-in. Then he crawls out through the tunnel. He pops Greenridge first, then does Nightingale to get a SWAT war going between the sheriff's department and ATF, sits back, and watches it go down on TV. I've been looking at this guy's early life, and we have a very sick puppy here."

"What about the shell casings? We found shell casings at both crime scenes that match long guns at both SEB and SRT. One of them has a partial print that matches an SEB deputy."

"I've been thinking about that on the way over here. SRT does their SWAT training out in Moorpark, at a range they have there. Sheriff's do it at Spring Ranch, near Agoura. I've been to Spring Ranch. You can see the firing range from the road. How hard would it be to hide out on the road until an SEB SWAT team shows up for target practice, wait till they leave, and sneak in and pick up the brass from the long guns?

"It never quite worked for me, that Patrick Dutton was on the SEB Red team and not Scott Cook's Gray team. Now it makes a lot of sense. Smiley couldn't tell who fired which casing. He just knew it was all SWAT ordnance that would eventually be matched to one of their sniper rifles."

Alexa sat looking at me, the hot dog forgotten in her hand. "Shit," she said softly, then dropped the uneaten dog in the trash.

"My guess is Vince got the two-twenty-three casings from the SRT range in Moorpark and the three-oh-eights from the sheriff's SWAT range. He set up the phony shooting sites, the secondary crime scenes, left the three-oh-eight casing in the apartment across the street from Greenridge's house and the two-twenty-three behind Nightingale's, along with the Danner boot prints, for us to find. We all thought the shooter was making it too easy, not picking up his brass. That's why! He needed us to find them. He was setting a frame."

"I'm going to go talk to Tony and Bill. Then we need to take it to Cole." Alexa stood. "Where are you going to be?"

"I've gotta find my partner. She's disappeared."

"Okay, but turn your damn phone on. I got a call from Cal. He said he can't reach you. Who do you think you're fooling with that shit?"

"If I'd answered that call, I'd have spent the morning downtown sorting through SRT folders, and we wouldn't have any of this, so you tell me," I said.

She nodded, turned to go, then turned back and unexpectedly kissed me. A bright smile suddenly appeared on her face. The first one I'd seen in two weeks.

"You're the best damn detective on the force," she told me. "Wanta fuck?" I asked.

"Hold the thought. I'll get right back to you on that." Then she spun and ran across the park toward Parker Center.