Vertical Coffin

Chapter 16

It took a full forty minutes to get there. Two of L. A.'s enduring myths are that it's a tropical paradise and that you can get anywhere in the Basin in twenty minutes.

The U. S. Federal Annex is on Spring Street. It's a large, turn-of-the-century Greek monstrosity with a roof fresco decorated with frolicking satyrs. The winds had died down and the flags out front hung like dead pelts. I parked in the underground garage, stowed my gun in the trunk, and cleared security in the basement. Then I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor.

Federal buildings always feel musty to me. Maybe it's all that in-line thinking. The tile halls were polished, the doors dark mahogany or oiled maple, I'm not sure which. The only woods I'm good at identifying are peckerwoods.

I found Suite 1289. When I entered the reception area I heard arguing coming from the inner office. A vanilla-flavored male secretary looked at my credentials and pointed at the door. He didn't speak. Why waste your breath on lower lifeforms like city cops?

Inside the high-ceilinged room was a crowd of angry, misguided people. It was Cole Hatton's office, the U. S. Attorney for the Central District of California. He was a good-looking, dark-haired fifty-year-old with a country club tan who wore his clothes so well that I instantly distrusted him.

Bill Messenger and his area commander Paul Matthews stood on one side of the room. Garrett Metcalf and Brady Cagel were next to the windows in nicely fitted, gabardine suits, easily winning the fashion competition. Tony Filosiani and Mayor MacKenzie looked uncomfortable in the center of the room, while Alexa hovered nearby.

"This is Sergeant Scully," Tony said. I shook hands with Cole Hatton, who barely looked at me before he turned back to the mayor.

"I don't see any rationale for overturning a federal statute," he said. "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives should be allowed to investigate the death of one of their own. According to your own criminalists, there was C-four residue on the ashes. Illegal C-four is a mandated statute of ATF. That's basically it, unless the FBI deems that its own absence from the case would materially affect the interest of justice. That's the way the statute reads." His voice was booming in the high-ceilinged room. Everybody winced at the mention of the FBI.

"We've got a dead sheriff's deputy and some very strange circumstances surrounding the service of a warrant given to us by ATF," Messenger said. "Their Internal Affairs investigated and found no wrongdoing, but our IAD sees it differently. The county will undoubtedly face lawsuits. Since the mayor ordered the LAPD to reinvestigate, our opinion is that these cases are related, and that gives Sergeant Scully standing to investigate the Greenridge murder."

"How is the murder of William Greenridge related to Emo Rojas? That's nuts," Garrett Metcalf said hotly. "Unless you're suggesting something pretty damn unfriendly."

"Can we all calm down?" Hatton said, then crossed to his desk. "I'm going to bifurcate the investigations. LAPD can go ahead and reinvestigate the Hidden Ranch warrant problem, but ATF is going to handle their own agent homicide and the investigation into how the hell this nut got his hands on so much C-four."

"And if the two investigations overlap?" Alexa asked.

"Try and keep that from happening. Build a Chinese wall," Hatton instructed.

"Hey, if they overlap, Cole, they overlap." Now Tony was getting mad. "How'm I gonna build a Chinese wall? That's total bullshit."

"Hand over all of your tapes, photographs, forensics, ballistics, and trace evidence from the Mission Street crime scene to the ATF homicide investigators," Hatton said to Tony. "Do it before close of business today. That's it."

We all filed out of his office. The feds looked smug, the cops looked pissed, Mayor Mac, Tony, and Alexa looked dazed.

Technically speaking, the crime scene we had been ordered out of was Greenridge's house on Mission. Nobody had said anything about the apartment across the street. Of course, to be fair, they didn't even know about that yet. But if I played it carefully, and if Nan Chambers didn't blow me in on the pages of the Valley Times tomorrow morning, maybe I could keep us in the game. I had to call her and set up a meeting to make sure she'd play along.

The brass casing from the.308 was burning a hole in my pocket as we walked into the underground garage.