Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "Wanna get started?"

  She still seemed shaken, but she had a lot of will power, just like Alexa, and I knew she wouldn't break again.

  "Sure. What's this?" I said, pulling the top sheet off the stack.

  She glanced at it and said, "It's a bank payout to Vincent Smiley for four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I'm guessing it's the Firemen's Fund Life Insurance policy for Edna and Stanley Smiley. Stanley had a one-truck plumbing service, Smiley, The Happy Plumber. Both he and Edna died in a car accident in 'ninety-five. Insurance premiums were fifteen thousand a year."

  "So that's where the house came from."

  "Exactly."

  "Fifteen thousand a year?" I said. "Isn't that a pretty big premium?"

  "Why?" she wondered.

  "I don't know. Guy's a plumber with one truck, pays fifteen grand in life insurance premiums? Sounds kinda high. How much life insurance would that buy?"

  She scribbled a note. "I've got a friend who sells insurance. I'll check it out."

  "Can't you just call the broker who handled this policy?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "You don't want to know."

  I frowned. "Don't tell me you hacked this bank's computer to get this."

  "Ve haff our veys," she said, using a corny German accent. "I have a friend in computer sales who doesn't mind skating the edges, and she knows how to write spaghetti codes. I'll get her to hack the insurance company's computer. Because of the medical file, all this life insurance stuff is confidential."

  "Shouldn't we just serve a warrant on Fireman's Fund?"

  "Smiley's dead, so whatever we find now can't hurt him. This isn't going to end up in court, anyway. You want to waste time we don't have getting a no-recourse warrant that we can't file until Vincent is buried?"

  "Probably not. What else?"

  She reached over and picked up more printouts. "Here's everything I could hack and track on Smiley from the county and municipal sites. Most of it's probably useless, but at least it's a start."

  She divided the stack in two. "I've arranged it chronologically by date, starting with county health records, preschool, middle and elementary, his GED in 'ninety-five, on through to the shoot-out statements and death certificate. Couldn't find his birth records. What do you want, Smiley in short pants or Smiley in Kevlar?"

  "Smiley in short pants."

  She handed me one of the stacks. We spent the next hour reading and making notes. At midnight we were both cranking off yawns, but we had a record of his life as far as county and municipal records took it.

  "I'm shot," she said. "Wanta meet first thing for breakfast? Work out a doorbell schedule?"

  "Yeah. My brain is fuzzed." I closed my notebook and got to my feet. She followed me to the door. I was just starting to leave, when she reached out and took my arm, stopping me. It was the first time that she had actually touched me.

  She looked earnestly at me for a moment, then let go of my arm and cleared her throat. "Listen Shane, you say you used to be a loner, that you didn't let people in, but now your personal life is richer. Exactly how did you change that? No matter how hard I try, I'm afraid to trust anyone."

  "It was pretty easy once I got the knack," I said, and she leaned forward as if I was about to give her the secret of life.

  "When you don't like yourself, it's damn hard to have much of a relationship with anybody else. All you've gotta do is start finding things to like about yourself. Once you learn what they are, find somebody you care about and give those feelings away. What it boils down to is: In order to get, you've gotta give."

  "That sounds like New Age bullshit," she replied skeptically.

  "Some of the best answers are the easiest," I said. "But at the same time, the easiest answers can be the hardest to understand."

  Chapter 32

  MATCHES

  Doctor gouda called Jo at 8 a. M., just as she was leaving her house to meet me for breakfast. She called me and we changed our plans. It was a little after nine when we walked into the print bay of the sheriff's old lab. Doctor Chuck E. Cheese was bent over, studying two enlarged blowups of a fingerprint through a magnifying glass the size of a hotel ashtray.

  "I think I got something," he said without turning around. "Enough, at least, to have a serious talk with this guy." He straightened up, hefting his big belly off the table. This morning he was decked out in a tent-sized dashiki large enough to camp under.

  "This is the comparison print we rolled at the sheriff's SWAT house yesterday afternoon." He handed Jo a blowup of a right index finger. "We think it belongs to a guy named Pat Dutton. It more or less matches that partial on the three-oh-eight you guys found. Dutton's one of the long guns on the SEB Red team out there."

  "The Red team?" I looked over at Jo, surprised that it wasn't someone on Scott Cook's Gray team.

  "How sure are you of this match?" Jo asked, holding the blowup and examining it carefully. She had regained her composure from last night, and looked fresh in a crisp white blouse, black slacks, and a blazer.

  "As I told you before, this is not a great latent." Doctor Gouda picked up a second photograph, which was of the partial taken from the casing we'd found across the street from Greenridge's house. He laid it next to the photo of the print they'd rolled yesterday, then started pointing out similarities.

  "These two tented arches are pretty good matches. Here's half a central pocket whorl that's pretty much on the money. This isle ain't a bad match. Would I take it to court? Probably not. Would I make an investigatory judgment based on it? You bet."

  Gouda looked up. "That footprint you plastered was identified by the grunts in soles and holes," referring to the footprint and gunshot lab. "Follow me," he said, and waddled out of the fingerprint bay into the room next door.

  The GSR lab was a windowless room given over to several large electron microscopes, used for breaking down and reading barium and antimony, the chemicals used to determine gunshot residue. There was one long table for identifying footprints. The three young criminalists working on the equipment sat, heads bowed, eyes pressed to various viewfinders.

  "Hey, Ruben, you got that bootprint from Mission Street?" Gouda asked.

  An African-American criminalist rose up from a microscope and handed Gouda a photograph from a stack on the footprint table. Clipped to the back of the footprint photograph was some catalogue material from the Danner Boot Company.

  "Your print came from a Striker CTX Danner Terra Force jump boot, size twelve," Gouda said. "The print was pushed out a little, but it looks like a narrow foot. Maybe a double-A."

  Gouda handed it to Jo, who glanced at it before passing it to me. I knew that Danner boots were big with most cops. They came in a lot of styles. Police officers bought them because they were light, durable high-tops with thick rubber soles and good traction.

  Gouda took the photo back. "This one looks pretty fresh. Right from the box. No nicks, cuts, or flaws. It'll be hard to make a positive match."

  Thirty minutes later Jo and I were standing in the parking lot of the old crime lab watching for Chief Filosiani to arrive. Ten minutes later he pulled his maroon Crown Victoria into the lot. He was talking on his cell phone as he got out, just closing it up as he approached.

  "That was Bill Messenger," he said, holding up the phone. "He got an arrest warrant. We're staying off the scanners to keep the news crews away. Gonna meet our SWAT unit out at South Fetterly in twenty minutes and pick up Pat Dutton."

  "Chief, we only have four identifiers," I said. "The criminalist inside says this print's probably not going to stand up in court. We need to polygraph Dutton, if he'll sit for it."

  "That'll be up to his lawyers," Tony said.

  Just then Sheriff Messenger arrived in the passenger seat of a LASD black-and-white. His face was drawn. He had the arrest warrant in his hand.

  We piled into our separate vehicles and followed Sheriff Messenger out to East L. A.

  An LAPD SWAT
van and a support SUV, along with three black-and-white escort vehicles, were lined up at the curb across from the public library, a block down from the sheriff's SEB building. LAPD SWAT was organized, more or less, the same as SEB, only each LAPD team had ten guys, instead of eight.

  Tony and Bill had elected not to tell the Justice Department about the arrest until after it was over. ATF was the agency investigating William Greenridge's murder, but both chiefs reasoned that emotions were running way too high. If they were notified, SRT would want to serve the warrant. Under these sensitive conditions, that seemed like a really bad idea. Messenger reasoned it would be far easier and less risky for him to arrest his own officer, but to keep the LAPD SWAT in reserve.

  After they briefed the LAPD SWAT team leader on how they wanted to serve the warrant, the four of us got into the Crown Vic. We drove up to the corner and parked next to SEB's long driveway. Sheriff Messenger used a cell phone to call the captain in charge of his SWAT house.

  "This is Sheriff Messenger," he told the switchboard operator. "Who's on the desk this morning?" We waited, then he said, "Put Captain Otto on please."

  A minute later the SWAT commander came on the line and Messenger told him what he wanted.

  I took my Beretta out of my ankle holster and jacked a round into the chamber, then repacked the nine on my belt.

  "Okay, Captain," Sheriff Messenger said, "I want you to take Sergeant Dutton to the side door. Make sure he's not armed. Stand there with him and wait."

  He paused while the captain spoke, then said, "Good. See you in five."

  We drove down the winding drive. There were almost twenty sheriff's black-and-whites of all makes and sizes, along with four big SWAT vans, parked in the lot beside a one-story ranch-style building.

  Tony pulled around to the side door where a middle-aged, dark-haired captain with a Marine's combat bearing was standing next to a freckled, red-haired man about twenty-five who was chewing a wad of tobacco, occasionally spitting juice into a Styrofoam cup. This was Sergeant Patrick Dutton. He had a confused look on his Irish face.

  Tony set the brake and we all got out.

  Sheriff Messenger walked over to his SWAT commander and handed him the arrest warrant, then he turned to the red-haired man.

  "Sergeant Pat Dutton?" he asked.

  "Yes sir," Dutton replied, clearly puzzled.

  I looked down and saw that he was wearing Danner Terra Force jump boots laced up over his tan, SEB Weapons Team jumpsuit. But so did the captain and probably two-thirds of the SWAT guys stationed here.

  "You're under arrest for suspicion of murder," Messenger said as Captain Otto handed Dutton the warrant.

  Dutton's expression barely changed. All that happened was he shifted his tobacco chaw to the other side of his lip, then spit a line of juice into the cup.

  "Whatta you kidding?" he said. "Who'd I kill?"

  "An SRT agent named William Greenridge," Messenger said.

  Dutton looked from me, to Jo, to Chief Filosiani, then back at Sheriff Messenger. An entire new range of emotions now played like a wide-screen movie across his open face: first humor, then disbelief, followed by fear and panic. I knew a split-second before it happened that he was going to bolt.

  He lunged away from Captain Otto and headed across the parking lot. I threw myself at him, low and head first, tackling him with a body block below the knees. The move took his legs out and he tumbled over my back. The cup of tobacco juice went flying, but Dutton was a commando and he hit and rolled, coming up to his feet almost immediately.

  I've seen fast moves in dojos, seen plenty of black belts working out with each other on police mats, but I wasn't prepared for Sergeant Jo Brickhouse. As Pat Dutton regained his footing, he spun and Jo blocked him with her body, then threw three quick blows: A straight-hand finger strike to his neck, followed by a closed fist shot to the solar plexus. The last was a knee to the groin.

  Patrick Dutton went down hard, and seconds later Tony and I had him cuffed and in custody.

  "I want an attorney," Dutton gasped at Captain Otto. He was holding his balls and must have swallowed the chaw, because he suddenly gagged, leaned forward, and puked it up at our feet.

  Chapter 33

  THE OTHER SHOE

  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.