Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "Sorry."

  I wrote down paul and susan smiley, underlined paul, then wrote kimble country day-'88.

  "Paul was very bright and outgoing. His twin sister, Susan, was extremely shy. Almost never said anything."

  So they were twins, I thought, writing that down.

  Midge was saying, "They didn't get along, which seemed strange for twins, but they were both excellent students."

  "Sixth grade-that made them about twelve."

  "Yes. Twelve."

  "At the end of seventh grade something very extraordinary happened."

  "What was that?"

  "Susan Smiley was in the girl's restroom when one of the other little girls happened to open the bathroom stall. Susan had forgotten to lock it and this other girl saw that Susan had a penis. She was standing up in her blonde ringlets and dress, urinating right into the toilet."

  "Susan was a boy."

  "Yes. It turned out that Susan was really Vincent. We took the child into the nurse's office and called his parents in. Stanley Smiley didn't come, but his mother Edna did. We forced an inspection in her presence so we could see for ourselves. Well, I must tell you, nobody was prepared for what happened next. Mrs. Smiley went into a white rage. I think she was a drinker and was maybe a little drunk at that meeting. She started shouting that she didn't care what I or anybody thought. She didn't want twin boys, always wanted a daughter. So she raised Vincent as Susan. She let his hair grow long and had been dressing him as a girl since he was an infant."

  She sat back and looked at me, the sad memory of this rich on her face. "Once Mrs. Smiley told us that, it explained everything. Vincent's shy behavior when he was being Susan, the fact that the twins seemed to hate each other. It was an impossible situation. All over school the children were talking about it. We had to call a school assembly with everybody's parents to discuss the situation. Twelve is an awkward age, and sexuality becomes a growing concern. I knew that it would be a mistake to try and keep the Smiley boys at school. The school year was almost over, so I made arrangements for them to finish the grade work at home."

  "And then they were homeschooled the following year?" I said.

  "Yes. We called in Child Services. There was a major argument about taking the children away from the Smileys. But, since they weren't being physically abused, there was no way to remove them from the home, because, when you came down to it, they had only violated a school dress code. We signed an affidavit and the boys were homeschooled for the eighth grade. We supplied the curriculum, then the boys went off to Glendale High in ninth grade."

  "As boys this time?"

  "Yes. Vincent and Paul registered at Glendale High."

  "Do you know about the car accident that killed their parents?" I asked.

  "Strange you should mention that. When it happened I think the police suspected Vincent. They came and talked to me. Back then he was still a juvenile, around seventeen I believe."

  "So the results of that investigation would be locked in his juvenile record," I said, making a note. This explained why the C. A. wouldn't release Vincent's file. She obviously had read all of his juvie records for Pasadena and Glendale and knew it would be used at the SWAT trial. Without a court order mandating its release, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

  "I think the police suspected Vincent of foul play," Midge was saying. "I know they picked him up and talked to him. The Smileys had moved to a house off Cliff View in Glendale. There was a steep incline that went down from their house. One evening, Stanley and Edna's brakes failed. They went over the cliff on the last turn. The car burned, so nothing much was left for the police to examine. Eventually, it just went into the records as an accident."

  Fat chance, I thought.

  "He was out of high school after that-in junior college." She went on. "That was the last I heard of him, until that shoot-out two weeks ago." She frowned. "That poor boy probably never had much of a chance, did he?"

  "Thank you, Mrs. Kimble. You've been a huge help." I stood to go. "If you think of anything else call me at that number." I put down my card.

  "You should try and get in touch with his brother Paul. I think he lives up in San Francisco. He might be able to tell you something."

  "I can't," I said. "Paul's dead."

  Chapter 37

  UNION PARK

  I couldn't reach Jo on the phone, but then, like an asshole, I'd told her to keep her cell off to avoid getting called in by the FBI. My next try was Alexa.

  She was in Cole Hatton's office and stepped out of a heated debate to take my call. Since the meeting was just breaking up, she agreed to get together with me in Union Park across the street from the Federal Building in thirty minutes.

  I hit the gas and cut through traffic, banging on my horn, going Code 2, breaking red lights all the way to the freeway. Then I slammed the pedal down, doing almost ninety on the 110 and took the Chinatown off-ramp to Union Park. It was a little past one o'clock when I grabbed a metered parking place and got out. I saw Alexa in a great-looking black dress I'd bought her for her birthday. She was standing over by a hot dog vendor buying a foot-long, saw me coming, and met me halfway.

  "Sit down," I told her. "So you don't drip mustard on my favorite outfit." We settled on a bench nearby.

  "What is it that couldn't wait an hour until I got back to the office?" she said. She still looked way too stressed to me.

  "If I told you that Vincent Smiley was alive, that he went out that tunnel Jo and I found under his house, what would you say?"

  "That it's impossible. His DNA was crossmatched. The man's positively dead."

  "Smiley had an identical twin brother named Paul. Identical twins have identical DNA."

  She sat there taking this in. Then she said, "Had?"

  "My bet is it was the twin who did the flambe in the bathtub. It's a long story why, but Paul and his twin brother Vincent hated each other. My theory is Vince lured his brother down from San Francisco, or maybe even kidnapped him. Either way, he gets Paul out to Hidden Ranch. He ties him up and waits. When Emo shows up he starts a shoot-out, conks his brother, and leaves him in the tub, then crawls out through the tunnel we found."

  "And you think Vincent is the one murdering the SWAT team guys." She furrowed her brow, trying to fit the pieces.

  "That's my guess. He hates cops because they wouldn't accept him so he arranges his death using Paul as a stand-in. Then he crawls out through the tunnel. He pops Greenridge first, then does Nightingale to get a SWAT war going between the sheriff's department and ATF, sits back, and watches it go down on TV. I've been looking at this guy's early life, and we have a very sick puppy here."

  "What about the shell casings? We found shell casings at both crime scenes that match long guns at both SEB and SRT. One of them has a partial print that matches an SEB deputy."

  "I've been thinking about that on the way over here. SRT does their SWAT training out in Moorpark, at a range they have there. Sheriff's do it at Spring Ranch, near Agoura. I've been to Spring Ranch. You can see the firing range from the road. How hard would it be to hide out on the road until an SEB SWAT team shows up for target practice, wait till they leave, and sneak in and pick up the brass from the long guns?

  "It never quite worked for me, that Patrick Dutton was on the SEB Red team and not Scott Cook's Gray team. Now it makes a lot of sense. Smiley couldn't tell who fired which casing. He just knew it was all SWAT ordnance that would eventually be matched to one of their sniper rifles."

  Alexa sat looking at me, the hot dog forgotten in her hand. "Shit," she said softly, then dropped the uneaten dog in the trash.

  "My guess is Vince got the two-twenty-three casings from the SRT range in Moorpark and the three-oh-eights from the sheriff's SWAT range. He set up the phony shooting sites, the secondary crime scenes, left the three-oh-eight casing in the apartment across the street from Greenridge's house and the two-twenty-three behind Nightingale's, along with the Danner boot prints, for us to find. We all
thought the shooter was making it too easy, not picking up his brass. That's why! He needed us to find them. He was setting a frame."

  "I'm going to go talk to Tony and Bill. Then we need to take it to Cole." Alexa stood. "Where are you going to be?"

  "I've gotta find my partner. She's disappeared."

  "Okay, but turn your damn phone on. I got a call from Cal. He said he can't reach you. Who do you think you're fooling with that shit?"

  "If I'd answered that call, I'd have spent the morning downtown sorting through SRT folders, and we wouldn't have any of this, so you tell me," I said.

  She nodded, turned to go, then turned back and unexpectedly kissed me. A bright smile suddenly appeared on her face. The first one I'd seen in two weeks.

  "You're the best damn detective on the force," she told me. "Wanta fuck?" I asked.

  "Hold the thought. I'll get right back to you on that." Then she spun and ran across the park toward Parker Center.

  Chapter 38

  WHERE'S BRICKHOUSE

  Jigsaw john was a genius. No wonder the guy cleared 85 percent of his cases. I sat in the park, looking up Union Street at Parker Center, trying to pin down the last pieces of the puzzle. Smiley had used identical weapons from his own armory to shoot Nightingale and Greenridge. Mr. Magoo couldn't remember the correct ages of the twins. He'd guessed too young. They weren't eight or ten, they were twelve. An easy enough mistake for an old grump with no kids. The Smileys moved away in one year because of the fiasco at Midge's school. Changed school districts, left Pasadena, went to Glendale.

  My guess was that Jo Brickhouse was still out in Pasadena at the hospital. I called and asked for someone in admitting or records, did my badge number boogie, and was told that nobody from the L. A. Sheriff's Department had been there looking at birth records.

  Okay-so, where was my strong-willed partner?

  I called the Sheriff's Bureau, reached Jo's office at Internal Affairs, and asked them if they'd heard from her. Nada.

  Where are you, kid? Then uneasiness struck. A sense of impending disaster swept down on me. A fluttering of dark wings in my mind, stirring dead air in my empty head.

  Why did I tell her to keep her cell off? Stupid.

  But I'd solved it. We'd solved it.

  From here on it was just a straight-up system bust, put out a BOLO: Be on the lookout. Wait until some passing squad car made the spot, take Mr. Smiley off to jail, or if he wanted to do the dance, plant him right where we find him. Either way, Jo and I were out of it. For us it was over. Nothing bad was headed our way. I tried to ignore my premonition of disaster.

  "You got five dollars?" a gruff voice said.

  I looked up at a homeless man, about fifty, with matted hair and taped-up sneakers.

  "I'm starvin'. Ain't et for a day."

  "I know where you can get a good meal."

  I reached down into the trash and fished out Alexa's uneaten hot dog. It was still warm and wrapped in white paper. I handed it to him.

  "What the fuck am I gonna do with that?" he said.

  "Eat it. Nothing wrong with it."

  He shook his head. His expression, a symphony of disgust.

  "Ain't the way it works, asshole." He dropped the dog back into the trash, turned, and limped away.

  Yeah? So, how does it work? I wondered. I give you the fin, so you can buy more malt liquor? Keep you drinking malt 40s until your leaking kidneys finally rot? That how it works, asshole?

  I had a moment of sweeping remorse. I had been so focused on the case for the last ten days, it had completely consumed me. Now that it looked like we had the answers, I was feeling empty and alone, sitting on a bench in a park full of strangers. Again, my case had moved on without me. I needed to clear my head, so I decided to call and see if Chooch was having football practice this afternoon. He'd said he would leave a message on the phone to give me the time and location. I called our answering machine and, sure enough, Chooch's voice greeted me.

  "This is for Dad: four o'clock-same place in Agoura. It's looking up. I've got some real animals on this team."

  Just as I was about to hang up I heard another voice.

  "Hoss, this is Jo. I found Susan Smiley's address." She sounded jazzed. "I had someone in my office go through all the phone books. We found a listing. She lives in Inglewood, off Centinela, near Vincent Park. Three-four-six Hillside. Since we're running out of time, I'm on my way over there now. If you get this message you can meet me there. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and brace her woman-to-woman, see how much I can get. Wish me luck."

  I hit the ground running before the message was complete. Jo didn't know that Susan was Vincent.

  I reached the Acura and squealed out, jamming my finger on the GPS to bring up the map screen. The most direct route to Inglewood was straight down La Brea. It was just a little past one in the afternoon, so, with the lunch traffic, I'd probably make better time on surface streets than by trying to get over to the freeway.

  I roared down Exposition, breaking lights, then hung a left onto La Brea. I don't have a MCT in my personal car, so, with no computer, I turned on the police scanner under the dash and put out a call for backup.

  "This is L-nineteen. Officer requests backup at three-four-six Hillside in Inglewood. One plainclothes female officer with blond hair in a blue jacket is already on the scene. Perp at this address is a possible One-eight-seven P. Request a unit respond Code Three."

  The RTO came back immediately and put out the call division-wide. Unit A-22 was assigned Code-3.

  All the way down La Brea I cursed myself for having Jo turn off all her communication equipment, a complete breach of police procedure. How could I have been such a jerk?

  I passed Slauson.

  I was praying this was another Susan Smiley, but the way my luck had been running, I doubted it. Vincent had been Susan Smiley all the way through seventh grade. Susan was his alter ego. In trouble, hiding from the law, I was pretty sure he'd choose to be Susan again. If he did, then Jo Brickhouse was walking right into another vertical coffin.

  After I passed Fairview, I heard a siren converging on my left. In the LAPD, only one unit at a time can go red-light-and-siren. The reason is, if two units both have their sirens on, they can't hear one another. As they both get close to the address, the chance of a high-speed collision grows exponentially. Way too many units crashed before this rule was in place.

  I could hear the crosstalk on the scanner. One-Adam-22 was about four blocks to my right as I turned on Hyde Park. I was now inside of Inglewood. All the way down La Brea I had been trying to dial in my GPS. Finally I had the address programmed in. Hillside was about four blocks up, off Field Street.

  I saw Field, hung a right, then turned right again. Finally I was on Hillside. I'd beaten the squad cars. Half a block away I saw Jo's green Suburban parked at the curb. I didn't want to come sliding in hot, squealing rubber because I didn't know what kind of a situation I had and didn't want to announce myself with a high-speed, tire-smoking stop. I pulled over half a block up, unholstered my Beretta, then made a low run across the street and up the grass onto the front porch at 346.

  Nobody seemed to be home. The house was a small one-story, wood-sided number, badly in need of paint. The yard was overgrown. It looked deserted, but if Vincent had bought it as a place to hide out after the shoot-out, I didn't see him wasting a lot of time on maintenance.

  Then I heard a gun shot.

  Seconds later I heard a car start in the back of the house. I ran to the corner of the porch and peeked down the driveway. A huge black Ram 2500 truck, with high-suspension and dual tires on the rear, came flying right at me. Smiley was behind the wheel. At least I think it was him. He was wearing a woman's blonde wig, lipstick, and hoop earrings. Man-sized muscular forearms gripped the wheel. I jumped back as he roared past. Then I fired three shots at the fleeing truck. I broke some glass, but that was about it.

  The black-and-white patrol car was just screaming up Hillsid
e, going Code-3. Smiley steered the bigfoot Dodge right at it. In this deadly game of chicken, the huge, high-centered, pipe-grilled truck was bound to win. At the last moment Adam-22 swerved, hit the curb, and blew out its suspension skiding up on somebody's front lawn, tearing deep furrows in the grass. The Dodge disappeared up the street, smoking rubber around the corner. I knew Jo had to be in big trouble, but my first duty was to get Adam-22 back into the pursuit. I ran toward the squad car holding my badge out in front of me.

  "LAPD! Take the black Acura. Go after him." I threw my keys at them. "He's a cop killer! Get it on the radio! Ida-May-Victor, five-eight-seven." I yelled the truck's plate number and immediately one of the cops was putting it out on the air while the other ran to my car. He got in my Acura, his partner finished his broadcast and dove in beside him. They squealed away up the street after the Dodge truck.

  I ran back to the house with my gun drawn, heading up the driveway, moving fast, but carefully.

  Jo was lying up on the back patio, a messy hole, high in her chest. I ran to her and kneeled down, put my hand on her throat to check for a heartbeat. The bullet had entered just above her heart and had gone through her lung, blowing out a large exit hole in her back.

  After a minute, Jo opened her eyes, looked up at me and started to speak.

  "Save your strength," I said. Then I took off my jacket and slid it underneath her, putting it over the larger exit wound in her back making a compress, pushing it tight.

  She started to cough.

  I grabbed my cell, dialed 911, ordered an ambulance, and put out an officer down. Then I prayed they'd get there in time.

  Jo's face was turning pale and slick, her eyes were losing focus. I stroked her forehead and held her hand.

  "This still ain't gonna get you laid, Hoss," she whispered softly.

  Chapter 39

  E. R.

  Jo didn't speak again and lapsed into unconsciousness. I was holding her in my lap, watching the life leak out of her. Finally I heard the ambulance siren arrive out front, and the EMTs pulled into the drive. I yelled out and they quickly found us in the back.