Vertical Coffin

Chapter 33

The next morning Jo and I were unceremoniously shifted to the backwater of our own investigation.

The ABC news desk had gotten wind of Pat Dutton's arrest. Somebody at SEB or Parker Center had leaked it, along with all of the evidence we had against him. The story about two L. A. SWAT teams gone wild broke nationally on Good Morning America.

Alexa called me into her office at 9 a. M. and told me that, for political reasons, the U. S. Attorney was taking charge of the investigation. Jo and I could stay on background, but Cole Hatton had strong-armed the city council and Mayor Mac off the case and was using his own investigating officers. Starting this afternoon, we would report to a couple of GS-12s from the local bureau of the FBI.

There was a press conference scheduled on the fifth floor of Parker Center at 10 a. M. Jo and I were told it was not necessary for us to attend.

We were two blocks away, sitting in a back booth of the Peking Duck restaurant while keeping one eye on the TV that was on in the bar. Half a dozen off-duty dicks from the Robbery-Homicide p. M. watch were sitting in there having a 10 a. M. after-work beer and watching KTLA's field reporter, Stan Chambers, do a pre-event standup in front of an empty podium. The volume was just loud enough to hear from our booth in the next room.

"Sources inside the department indicate that these two SWAT team murders might be connected to the fiery shoot-out that occurred on Hidden Ranch Road ten days ago," Chambers announced. "We'll be waiting right here at Parker Center for this all-important press conference to convene. Back to you, Hal."

I kept one ear on the TV, but turned back to Jo while weather and sports drifted in from the bar.

Jo was saying, "This insurance guy I called says a fifteen-thousand-dollar premium on a universal life policy would pay out almost a million dollars in benefits if it was whole life, which, according to this printout my friend hacked, it was."

A Chinese waiter came over to bring us coffee. Jo asked him for some Equal and he recovered a dish from another table. She immediately began tearing open little blue packets while I sat back and took a sip from my cup. Unfortunately, the blend at the Peking Duck was watery, just like their tea. I guess it's okay when green tea is weak, but weak coffee really sucks. I'd forgotten how bad it could get in here.

I set my cup down and said, "So if Smiley buys a house in Hidden Ranch for five hundred K, where's the other half mil?"

"Don't know. Here's the exact financial picture." She looked down at her notebook. "I went through his tax returns. He deposited four hundred eighty thousand in Glendale S and L at five percent when the policy paid out in 'ninety-six. The house didn't cost five hundred K. He paid three hundred thirty thousand for it in 'ninety-nine, all cash, leaving him with one hundred fifty grand in the S and L. He's been drawing down on that to live. He still has a little under eighty thousand left."

"So, if there's eighty grand in his estate, and nobody is stepping up to collect his body, we gotta figure there's nobody left in his immediate family to claim it."

"Would seem that way. I checked all his bank accounts. No safety deposit box. So, if he did have the missing five hundred thou, maybe it burned up in the fire." She started making her gruel, mixing in the six packets. She was going to end up with brown sugar water. "Or maybe the other half mil's in a fruit jar buried in the backyard," she added as she stirred.

"I can hardly wait to ask Robyn De Young to head back out there with a metal detector and her trusty cadet shovel squad."

"I wouldn't do that. There's too many better ways to hide cash these days."

"So, where's the rest of it, then?"

"Don't know," she said. "Boat? Foreign investments? Unlisted house in the Bahamas? Money isn't the motive anyway. Neither was suicide. Pure, kick-ass anger got this done. Vincent was a wannabe cop and a cop-hater with deep psychological problems. He goes fruitcake and barricades himself in his house and starts shooting our troops. He was just killing cops. That was his whole program."

"So you're buying that now?" I said, looking up.

"It took me a while to get there, but yeah, I think that's the reason this all started. But we're just jerking off with all this background. The U. S. Attorney doesn't want to hear it. The case went that-a-way." She jerked a thumb at the TV in the bar.

"I'd still like to know what happened to the five hundred thousand dollars. I get nervous when half a mil is missing."

"Maybe he didn't inherit all of the insurance benefits," she said. "Maybe someone else got some of it."

"Who else is there?"

"His parents could have had debts that needed to be paid off before the insurance could be disbursed."

"Half-a-million-dollar's worth?" I asked skeptically.

She took her first sip of coffee and swallowed it. A faraway look spread across her face, followed by a slow grimace. "That is truly shitty," she said softly, looking down at her cup in disbelief.

"Welcome to the culinary environs of Parker Center. What else did you find?"

She flipped a few more pages in her notebook. "He applied to the L. A. Sheriff's Department in two thousand, like you figured, but was turned down. Nothing in here about why. Our academy doesn't include a psych package in their A-elevens. I called, but nobody there remembers him. They burned me a copy of his file app. Nothing on it looks too different. He was blown out on his preliminary interviews, same as at LAPD."

"Two for two. He must have been a pretty twitchy guy even back then."

She mimicked a high voice. "Mr. Smiley, why do you want to be a deputy sheriff?" Then, in a deep voice, " 'So I can carry a big gun and kick the shit out of people.'… Wrong!"

She closed her notebook and looked at me, then added, "No military service, which seems strange. They have guns, grenades, armor-piercing ordnance. Sounds like Smiley's kinda deal. In the mid-nineties enlistment had fallen off so badly that the military would take anybody who had a heartbeat and a temperature above ninety-six degrees. I'm doing a follow up to see if I can get an answer.

"Oh yeah-he also belongs to a mountain climbing club. The Rock Stars. I put a call into their president, Marion Bell. Marion's a guy, by the way. We don't need any more gender confusion on this case."

She looked up, waited for my grin, and got it. "He agreed to meet me this afternoon. Didn't sound like a big Smiley fan. Said Vince wanted to learn rock climbing as part of his survivalist training. Apparently he told some of the other members of the club that he was part of some survivalist group, but he was very secretive about which one, or where they hung out. The Rock Stars is a sports club, so Smiley didn't really fit in. Marion said he wasn't surprised when he saw the shoot-out on the news."

She took another tentative sip of her coffee, then pushed it away. "That's Smiley in Kevlar. Let's hear about his roller skate days."

I looked down at my notes. "Went to Glendale Elementary School K to fifth grade, then through Mrs. Kimble's Country Day Middle School in Eagle Rock in sixth and seventh. Then he was in high school for a year, but got pulled out and homeschooled through twelfth grade. GED in 'ninety-five. I'm still looking for his birth records, just in case there's something missing-medical problem from birth, like maybe he was born with a tail and horns and nobody thought to tell Geraldo. I put a wire out to all the county hospitals in Southern California, most should get back to me sometime today or tomorrow."

"Juvie record?" she asked.

"He's got one. But, as you know, according to California State law it was sealed when he turned eighteen."

"Man, I'd like to get my hands on that."

"I'm working on it."

"You little devil," she said. "How?"

"Ve haff our veys."

She smiled at that, so I added, "His doctor retired professionally as well as physically, so we can't get anything there, unless you wanta dig him up and try to restart his heart. That's all I could find by nine thirty this morning."

"We're really sucking wind on this thing!" She was looking at her coffee, twirling her spoon in the cup. "Now that the U. S. Attorney is in charge, we're just doing busywork." She frowned. "But to be honest, you know I never thought the answer was gonna come out of his past. Now they're just using that to keep us out of the way."

There was certainly something to what she was saying. With the murder of Michael Nightingale this case had turned into a hot grounder. I was pretty sure Alexa was looking out for my career and had put me and Jo on background checks to keep me out of the line of fire.

"Even if we come up with more questions to ask, Hatton's IOs aren't gonna be interested. They're focused on those two SWAT units. We might as well spend the day at the beach," Jo said bitterly.

"Look, we're still officially on the Hidden Ranch investigation. Let the U. S. Attorney's investigators run the Greenridge and Nightingale murders, but for the next four to eight hours, while they're all doing press conferences and organizing evidence, we can still work our case. Nobody is even thinking about that anymore.

We probably have less than a day before we're gonna be assigned to do grunt work for the FBI. Let's put the time to good use."

She dropped her spoon into her cup and looked over at me. "One thing you said doesn't track," she said, and held my gaze with those incredible mismatched eyes.

"What?"

"This is a nitpick, and it's definitely in the who-gives-a-damn column, but middle school is sixth through eighth grade, not just sixth and seventh."

"So there's a year missing," I said, waving it off. "He drops out of eighth grade, home-schools, then goes back into the ninth grade at Glendale High, drops out in tenth, homeschools again, gets his GED two years later…"

"That's a lot of dropping in and out. Whatta you think happened to cause that?"

"Who knows?" I said. But since she mentioned it, I guess it was a little strange. "So you think something is wrong there?"

"Look, Shane, as far as I'm concerned, we're on the sidelines. I'm just saying it sounds screwy."

I thought about it some more. I had to agree.

I glanced over at the bar TV. Tony and Bill Messenger were just stepping up to the podium, along with Brady Cagel and Cole Hatton. Mayor Mac and Supervisor Salazar, politicians that they were, knew a no-win when they saw it and elected not to attend. The press conference was starting. "Wanta see this?" I asked.

"Nope," she said. "My bullshit meter is already red-lined."

I slid out of the booth and drifted into the bar. The Robbery-Homicide detectives made room for me. One of them was a big street monster named Griff Hover, who I'd worked with way back when I was in Valley Patrol. He looked over and smiled.

"Hey, Shane. That's a good-looking pile a bones you got sitting over there." He glanced back at Jo, who had her head down, again going over her notes.

"Yep," I agreed and turned to watch Sheriff Messenger at the microphone.

"We've arrested an L. A. sheriff's deputy named Patrick Dutton and are holding him as a material witness in connection with the murder of ATF Agent William Greenridge. We have identified a shell casing that appears to have been fired from a sniper rifle belonging to the Sheriff's Special Enforcement Bureau. A partial print from that same casing appears to match Deputy Dutton's."

Then Sheriff Messenger stepped aside and made room for Brady Cagel, who was dressed in his tan gab, with his tan face and tan, freshly barbered hair. Everything tan and perfect. A fed.

"Good morning," he said. "I am sorry to have to also confirm that one of the AR-fifteen sniper rifles belonging to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Situation Response Team appears to have been involved in the shooting death of Deputy Sheriff Michael Nightingale. At this time we have not determined which ATF agent, if any, might be involved. The weapon could have been obtained by anyone with access to our armory, even civilian personnel. We are currently requesting that all agents and civilians with access to that particular SRT armory remain in the SWAT house under voluntary curfew. It is our hope that they will also cooperate with polygraph examinations."

He quickly gave way to Cole Hatton, who looked like ten million bucks in a tailored black pinstripe. Hatton cleared his throat, then spoke in his booming baritone.

"There is currently no evidence tying these two murders together. Sheriff Messenger, Agent Cagel, and I are all appalled at the suggestion that members of the ATF Special Weapons units and Sheriff's SEB Special Weapons Team might be gunning for each other after hours. However, until this investigation is complete, I urge the news media and the individual members of both the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and ATF to please stand down and cooperate with us in every way possible. I promise that, in the end, justice will be served."

"Serve this, dickhead," Griff Hover said as he grabbed his crotch. "These humps at ATF are dirty."

"What about the sheriffs?" one of the other detectives said.

"Hey, the sheriffs might be square badges, but at least they back us up when we need 'em, and they roll on our calls," Griff said.

I went back into the restaurant and paid our bill.

"Dare I ask?" Jo said.

"Come on, don't put me through it. I saw you listening." "This is about to get a lot messier," she said. What happened was it got a lot deadlier.