Vertical Coffin

Chapter 14

I drove across town to the new County Medical Examiner's office located on the southeast corner of the L. A State College campus. They had recently broken ground on a high-tech, state-of-the-art crime lab facility next door and as I pulled in I could see the growling bulldozers working in the adjoining field preparing the site. The coroner's unit was already up and had been in business for about a month. It was a modern three-story building with mirrored glass. I pulled into a slot in student parking, put my handcuffs over the steering wheel-the universal signal to all cruising traffic control officers and parking police that this was a cop car-then I entered the air-conditioned, sterile confines of the new facility.

I was there because I needed some time to pass. I wanted to let things settle down before going back to Billy Greenridge's little house on Mission Street. There was a good chance that the sheriff's black-and-whites and ATF cars would cruise that neighborhood for hours. It was going to be the latest "Whatta-buncha-bullshit" gripe for both agencies.

I didn' t want to get caught standing on the front porch chewing my nails with a dumb look on my face, so I came here to satisfy one little detail that I probably already had the answer to.

I badged my way down to the second subbasement floor and found a county M. E. named Lisa Williams, who had done the DNA match on Smiley. She was a thirty-year-old African-American wearing a blue medical smock, slippers, and hair net. A surgical mask was hanging around her neck.

"Sure," she said after I told her what I wanted. She led me down a hallway into a quarter-acre-sized, windowless room full of fluorescent-lit workstations and cubicles. We arrived at her desk and she turned on her computer and waited for it to boot up. "The DNA sample we got from the Arcadia P. D. was taken by their medical officer in 'oh-two. It's a legally obtained sample, witnessed with double signatures. We matched it to the DNA we got off the corpse at Hidden Ranch."

Her computer had loaded, and now the two DNA strands were side by side in the center of her monitor. She started scrolling.

"On the right is the 'oh-two Arcadia sample. The left is the one we took from the charred body last week. It's a perfect match. No variables, intangibles, or dropouts. These strings of base pairs line up perfectly. That corpse in the morgue is definitely Vincent Smiley."

"Thanks."

I left with nothing new learned. Okay, maybe it was a waste of time, but I'm a stickler about this stuff. I looked at my watch. I'd been gone an hour. Time to head back to the house on Mission.

I parked up the street, then walked back to the wooden Craftsman. Ruta was sure that the shooter had been in a car, but according to the location of the bullet hole in the living room, my trajectory estimate put a shot from a car on the street too low. Of course, the doer could have opened the car door, stepped out, fired from a standing position, then picked up his brass and left. That would have more or less lined him up with the bullet hole. But if he did it that way he was risking exposure and identification by a neighbor.

Ray Tsu had said a down-shot might have knocked Greenridge to his knees and pitched him forward with his head toward the street.

I remembered Billy from the bar fight. He and I had stood toe-to-toe trading body shots. We were about the same height. I had measured the height of the bullet hole in the living room two hours earlier, using my arm. When I pointed at the hole, it was about three inches below my shoulder. So now, facing the opposite direction, centered in the doorway where I thought he had been, I extended my arm to about head high, pointed it straight out and raised it three inches. It was now, more or less, pointed up at an apartment building across the street. If the shot hadn't come from a parked car, then maybe the bullet had come from that building.

I knew it was an outside chance, because most street assassins like to have a set of wheels under them when doing a drive-by. Disregarding that logic, I sighted along my arm at the four-story apartment complex. It was an old, sixties-style building. Concrete boxes. Ugly. In my opinion, the sixties had been a decade of architectural blight. I counted windows and realized that, if the shot came from over there, it would have to be from the third or fourth window at the end of the building, second floor.

I walked up the street so I wouldn't be seen by any of the people living in the apartments, then doubled back and came down the sidewalk, hugging the buildings on the other side. I entered the apartment complex and took the elevator to the second floor. It was a groaning, creaking ride. The door finally wheezed open and I exited into a dark hallway. I knew approximately how far down the hall the window I had sighted would be. When I reached the spot, I looked at the closest door. It was ajar. I pulled out my Beretta, and with my toe, pushed it open a crack and looked in.

The apartment was carpeted but had no furniture or drapes. Standing on the east side of the room, looking inside an empty bookshelf, was a woman. I knew those muscular legs, cut arms, that spiky white hair. I stepped inside. She heard me behind her and turned.

"Aren't you supposed to be riding teacups at Disneyland?" I asked.

"Hi," she smiled at me. The smile really was a dazzler. I'm sure it had gotten her out of a lot of tight spots, but not this one.

"Listen, I can explain," she said.

"How?" I replied. Then I moved forward and snatched her purse off her shoulder and went through it. I found her wallet, opened it.

"Look-okay, I'm not Kimmy Whatever. I'm…"

"Nancy Chambers?" I said, reading her California driver's license. The picture was definitely her: weight lifter's neck, mismatched eyes, white-blonde hair.

"First you're at Hidden Ranch digging through that crime scene, trying to remove evidence, now you're poking around up here. This needs to be an excellent explanation, Nancy."

"I'm a newspaper reporter. My press card is in there. I work for the Valley Times, the crime desk. I'm doing a series of articles on urban violence. The Hidden Ranch thing is this Sunday's Op-Ed piece."

"How's that get you over here?"

"I have a police scanner in my car. I was monitoring federal frequencies. I heard them talking about this. I knew Billy Greenridge was on the ATF SWAT team that was up at Hidden Ranch, so I came over."

By then I had found her press card for the Valley Times. Under her picture it read "Nancy Chambers, Reporter."

"People call me, Nan." She smiled, again giving me the Pepsodent Challenge.

"Whatta you think you're doing here?"

"Investigating my story. Greenridge was hit by a sniper. I think this might be the firing position. Look at this."

She stepped aside and pointed down at something under the window. I looked down and saw a tripod mark, three little indentations in the carpet next to the window.

"He sets up a shooting stand right here," Nan said, really into it now, "and when Greenridge comes out of his house, ka-pow!" She turned to face me. "This could be where the killer shot the rifle," she announced triumphantly. "I was just looking around for his brass."

"I hope you didn't already steal the cartridge casing, like you tried to yesterday."

"I'm a reporter, not a criminal," she said, "but I don't think it's here. I already looked."

I glanced around the room, then turned and faced the window. "Unless they're specifically made for lefties, most rifles port to the right, so when the brass ejects, it should be over here on the right side of the room."

We both started searching, looking up on the empty shelves, in the moldings around the carpet edge. Then I glanced down and saw a floor heating grate. It was a large, old-fashioned, cast-iron number fastened down with brass screws. The opening was big enough for a cartridge case to drop through, and if it had, my hope was that in his haste, the sniper would have left it there. I took out a pen knife and, while she watched, loosened the screws and lifted the heavy metal. I saw it before the grate came off-a spent casing from a.308.1 took out a pen, reached down, and sticking the point in the open end of the case, lifted it out. Sometimes my detective skills astound even me.

"We found it!" she said, beaming.

I was frowning. I knew that now our tool marks section in the ballistics lab would have to go out and test fire all of the long rifles at sheriff's SWAT. Under the circumstances, not an easy request. But if this cartridge casing matched one of their Tango 51s or 40-Xs, we were off on a horrible misadventure.

"I think this could be terrific," she grinned.

"I think it could be terrible," I replied.