Vertical Coffin

Chapter 20

The sheriff's seventy-five-year-old crime lab is just east of Hollywood in a run-down three-story building near Elysian Park. The place is on its last legs. Since the department has already broken ground on its new, $96 million forensics facility next to the M. E.'s building on the L. A. State campus, this pile of bricks was not getting much attention. When I pulled into the parking lot I spotted deferred maintenance everywhere I looked. The cream-color paint was peeling off brick siding. Cracked asphalt and faded, white hash marks lined the parking lot. Weeds grew in the landscaping.

But this was still where most crimes were solved. The ultimate revenge of the nerds, where geeks caught cheats. It encompassed all the major crime sections: firearms, biology, DNA, trace evidence, and identifications. In this high-volume facility, LASD criminalists juggled seventy-five thousand pieces of evidence each year, as the criminal justice system chugged merrily along. Getting moved to the head of the line was normally a futile exercise in this overworked battleground of egos and priorities, but our shell casing had been personally hand delivered by the big boss, Bill Messenger, so my guess was, under these circumstances, we'd be first up.

Jo and I had not spoken for almost half the ride over. She sat beside me, looking out the side window, content to say nothing. Silence can be a weapon in the front seat of a police car. I wasn't sure what game we were playing yet.

I parked in a visitor's space. We got out and she pushed ahead of me through the double glass doors into the crime lab.

"You have an evidence number?" she demanded.

"No, but it came in here through Bill Messenger."

"That oughta have Doctor Chuck E. Cheese sitting up pretty straight," she said, then went to a visitor phone in the empty lobby and dialed a number.

I looked around while she talked to somebody in the back. The place really needed help. The linoleum had turned black and was peeling up across the room, exposing the wood flooring underneath. It looked like somebody delivering a gallon of acid base had dropped the load. But I guess it's hard to spend money on a building that you know is going to be bulldozed in twelve months.

"Scully, you're with me," Jo barked, sounding like my old Marine Corps drill sergeant. A security lock buzzed and she held the door open as we entered.

"Latents got a four-point hit," she said. "They already sent the brass up to tool marks to graph the striations and impressed action marks. When we found that casing yesterday it looked to me like it also had some pretty good breech and pin impressions."

She was showing off now. I was tempted to say "Fuck you," but, gentleman that I am, I only muttered, "Bite me."

She smiled, pushed past, and led the way. "Latent Prints is down here."

We walked down a narrow corridor, past the weapons library and lab. Through the glass doors, I could see thousands of rifles and handguns of every known manufacturer locked behind metal bars in the armory. These guns could be used to match firing patterns on weapons seized or placed in evidence. They could also be shown to witnesses for the purpose of firearm identification.

We continued past the GSR and footprint lab, a notorious grunt station for newbies. The youngest criminalists were stuck in there doing footprint analysis or using the electron microscope to perform gunshot residue tests. Then we passed a room housing the protein base analyzer that charted DNA profiles, also known as electropherograms. Next, down the hall was a trace evidence lab devoted to hair and fiber. There was a lot of state-of-the-art equipment in this crumbling facility.

At the end of the corridor Sergeant Brickhouse swept into the fingerprint bay. The room was empty. Blown-up photographs of fingerprints were pinned up everywhere. Two long benches containing print photographs in labled boxes were pushed against the walls. There was a large, overstuffed chair in the corner. Jo turned around and glanced out into the hall, looking for the criminalist.

"Chuck oughta be down in a minute. On the phone a minute ago, he told me he was just going to check on our print upstairs. They ran our latent through the federal print index."

We stood in the lab with the silence between us growing painfully.

"Answer me one thing," I said to break the awkward spell.

"Shoot."

"Did Bill Messenger instruct you to investigate the Hidden Ranch thing? Is that why you were up at Smiley's burned-out house poking around, and over in the apartment on Mission Street?"

"I've been sworn to secrecy," she deadpanned.

"Only, when I partner up with somebody there can be no secrets."

"Scully, grow up. I'm not telling you what I've been ordered not to, but use your imagination."

"Okay. So Messenger had you up there even after he promised the mayor and Tony he'd leave it in my hands?"

"I don't wanta talk about this. Let's just move on, okay?"

I was about to tear her a new asshole, when into the room waddled the fattest, baldest, young man I had ever seen. He even made Ruta look svelte. His appearance was made even worse by his wardrobe. He had on an oversized, bilious, lime-colored Hawaiian shirt that flapped around the thighs of his frayed, tent-like jeans. The effect was startling. His head looked like a pale, medicine ball sitting atop a mountain of green Jell-O.

Jo said hi and introduced me. "Shane Scully, meet Doctor Charles Gouda."

Charles Gouda-Dr. Chuck E. Cheese. Got it.

He lowered himself carefully into the overstuffed chair, letting out a long sigh as he dropped.

"Just got back the run from the federal print index," he said. "Nada. But it was pretty thin to begin with. Only four identifiers."

He leaned over and picked up a photograph of the print, then showed it to us. "Whoever fumed this thing saved the print, but with round surfaces like shell casings we rarely get a full ten point match anyway." Chuck pointed to the photograph with his pen. "What it comes down to is, you got two pretty good typicals here, a good core and an okay whorl, half an isle up here. This tent arch ain't too bad. Basically, it's pretty low-yield. Call it four and a half points to be generous. Since it's a sole index finger, there's not enough here for the federal computer. If I had a comparison print to put next to it I could get some eyeballs on it and give you an opinion, but nothing you'd want to take in front of our awesome denizens of justice. In court, you need at least six out of ten identifiers or the defense is gonna feed it to you."

Then, to make that gastronomic point absolutely clear, he belched.

"How long till tool marks is finished?" I asked.

Doctor Gouda belched again, this time more delicately, catching the burp in his baseball mitt of a hand. He opened his desk drawer and took out a half-eaten sandwich. It looked like tomatoes and anchovies, which, in my opinion, ranks right up there with shit on a bun. He took a bite, frowned, then threw it in the trash.

After all that I really wasn't expecting an answer, but I got one anyway.

"Beats me," Doctor Chuck E. Cheese said through an ugly mouthful of chewed fish.