Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  The rest was a blur. I wandered around in the backyard trying to keep my wits about me as they loaded her on a gurney and set up an IV bag. I felt weak and nauseous. I was shaking, beginning to come unstrapped.

  They lifted Jo into the ambulance and I hitched a ride, sitting in the front seat of the rescue unit with Jo's black leather purse in my lap.

  "Get this thing moving," I snapped at the driver who was slowly edging the big ambulance out onto the street.

  Then we were speeding out of Inglewood on the way to the L. A. County King/Drew Medical Center, which was only five miles away. The siren heehawed, clearing traffic all the way down Crenshaw Boulevard to the hospital.

  I found a spot in the E. R. waiting room as anxious surgeons ran down from the O. R. upstairs. Finally, I opened Jo's purse and used her cell phone to call her office. I told her lieutenant supervisor what happened, then hung up and scrolled through the numbers. I found a listing for bollinger, br. Bridget? I pushed dial and in a moment I had Sheedy, Long, and Bollinger Advertising.

  "Is Bridget Bollinger there?"

  "Ms. Bollinger? Just a minute," the operator said. Then I was connected with some guy in New Accounts.

  "I'm trying to speak with Bridget Bollinger," I told him.

  "Who may I say is calling?"

  "I'm a friend of Josephine Brickhouse's."

  "Moment, please," he said and put me on hold. I was listening to an inane muffler shop jingle.

  He came back on a minute later.

  "Ms. Bollinger cannot be disturbed. She's with an account," he said.

  "Hey, Sonny-this is Sergeant Scully, LAPD, and it's a police matter. You tell Ms. Bollinger to get her ass on the phone right now or I'll come down there and put the whole building in cuffs."

  I was shaking, my nerves and emotions in a boil. Calm down, I lectured myself. This isn't the way you get results. I was back on hold. Then a minute later I heard a female voice that was smooth and coldly inquisitive.

  "What's this concerning?" she asked.

  I pictured the pretty, black-haired woman with the high cheekbones and structured face.

  "Ms. Bollinger, I'm Sergeant Scully, LAPD. Jo Brickhouse and I have been working a case together. She was shot this afternoon. She's in critical condition in L. A. County King/Drew Hospital. I thought you might like to know."

  "Oh, my God!" Bridget said, attitude replaced by anguish. "Where is the hospital?"

  "Wilmington Avenue, south of the one-oh-five."

  "Is she… is she going to be…"

  "I don't know. She was hit in the chest, lost a lot of blood. She's in a coma. To be honest, it doesn't look too good. If you want to see her, you'd better get here quick." I hung up.

  They moved Jo upstairs to an O. R.

  I waited on the surgical floor while the docs opened her chest and started picking out bullet fragments. The asshole had shot her at point-blank range, using a hollow point, which broke up on impact. They were desperately trying to tie off the bleeders and fix the mess inside her.

  I called Alexa and told her what happened.

  "Oh my God, Shane. I'm sorry," she said.

  "I tried to get there to warn her. She didn't know about Vincent. She thought she was going to see his sister Susan. He came to the door in a wig, shot her, and took off in a black Dodge truck. I don't know what happened after that, whether they caught him or not. Two blues crashed their unit, so they borrowed my car and went after him.

  "I'll find out. Keep your phone on." She hung up.

  Ten minutes later she called back.

  "You won't believe it," she said, "but the two guys from A-twenty-two tried to bust through an intersection against a red light and got broadsided by a city bus. Both of them are in Baldwin Hills Emergency. Your car is totaled."

  "And Smiley got away?"

  "Looks like it," she said.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later people from the Sheriff's Department started showing up. Among them was Jo's boss at IAD and the undersheriff, a nice looking guy with silver hair, named Bert Clausen.

  They began filtering in one by one, some in uniform, others in civvies, off-duty officers and civilian personnel. I wondered if they were sorry now that they had been dogging her all week for just doing her job. As more of them arrived, I was pushed to the side and ended up sitting alone on a vinyl sofa trying to keep my chin up.

  If only I hadn't told her to turn off her cell.

  Why didn't I go out there with her?

  Ifs and whys. Questions that never get answered.

  Twenty minutes later Bridget arrived looking drawn and nervous. I saw her come off the elevator and I went to intercept her.

  "I'm Shane," I said.

  "Thank you for calling me." Her voice was faint, almost a whisper.

  I didn't respond. I was all out of pleasantries.

  "Is she…"

  "In trouble."

  You can generally tell how bad it is by the way people move in the hall outside the operating theatre. Too many nurses were running to suit me.

  Bridget looked like she was about to break.

  "We were having-she and I…"

  "Look, Bridget, that's between you guys."

  "No-I mean-I walked out. I've wanted to call her half a dozen times since then. It's just-Jo can be so definite. She's not someone who lets you get too close."

  She sank down onto the sofa. Her face crumpled, her eyes brimmed with tears. I reached over and took her hand.

  "You're wrong. She's not definite, and she wants to let you in. She's just scared. It's how she covers it."

  "She thinks I don't care, but that's not the problem. The problem is I care too much."

  "Bridget, she needs you now. She needs somebody to sit with her. I can't stay. I've got to catch the guy who did this. But somebody needs to protect her from the mistakes that can happen in big medical factories like this one."

  "I can do that," she said valiantly.

  "And she needs somebody to hold her hand. Somebody to pray for her and-"

  I stopped because suddenly I was on the verge of tears, myself.

  "You really care for her, don't you?" Bridget said.

  "Yes," I said. "I really do." Then I thought for a minute before I went on.

  "Jo is one of a kind. She makes her own rules. You gotta love someone who walks their own trail, no matter the consequences."

  "I do," Bridget said softly, and from the sound of her voice, she meant it.

  Ten minutes later the surgeon came out and told us that Jo was critical and had been moved to ICU.

  "The next forty-eight hours will tell the story," he said.

  I decided to put them to good use. I couldn't help Jo sitting around here. I was going to even the score, get some payback for Josephine Brickhouse. I'd failed Jo just at the moment I realized how special she really was.

  I was going to catch this son-of-a-bitch or die trying.

  Chapter 40

  CLIMBING

  At three-forty-five I was back at Smiley's hideout house in Inglewood. Since I'd left two hours ago it had become a full-fledged LASD crime scene. CSI had chalked the spot where Jo fell. She was facing the back door when he shot her. The techies from soles and holes were searching the backyard with metal detectors, looking for bullet fragments. I found the man in charge. Deputy Douglas Hennings was a fifty-year-old plainclothes drone with a vanilla personality and hair the color of poured concrete.

  "You were working this thing with her?" Hennings said, after I had shown my creds and explained who I was. He started motioning to his second, another deputy sheriff in a suit, who wandered over and stood behind me, blocking my exit as if I was the problem.

  "How come an LAPD Special Crimes dick is working with one of our IAD advocates?" Hennings said. "That sounds screwy."

  "Look, Deputy Hennings, if you want to call Sheriff Messenger…"

  "No, I don't wanta call the sheriff. I'd like you to answer my question."

  "We were working a joint reinv
estigation of the Hidden Ranch Road shooting at the request of Mayor MacKenzie and Supervisor Salazar." I saw a little shadow pass across his eyes at the mention of the politicos. "Sergeant Brickhouse left me a message that she was coming over here to conduct an interview. I arrived right after Vincent Smiley shot her. He blew out of here dressed in women's clothing, driving a new black Dodge Ram twenty-five hundred, license number Ida-May-Victor-five-eight-seven. Surely, you must already have all this." My frustration was mounting.

  "Let's get this on tape from the beginning," Hennings said, motioning again to his partner, who moved in and cracked his knuckles like a gunfighter about to upholster a six-gun. Instead, he reached for a Sony minitape and placed it under my nose.

  For the next twenty minutes Hennings took my statement. What I wanted to do is get past this guy and search the house before the sheriff's department criminalists bagged everything for evidence and hauled it out of there.

  After I finished my statement, I asked Hennings if I could take a look around. He regarded me skeptically.

  "I know how to work a crime scene," I assured him. Then, to show him I meant business, I pulled out my latex gloves. See? He finally nodded, so I snapped them on and went down the hall into the master bedroom.

  It was immediately obvious that Smiley had been living here as Susan. The clothes in the closet were all large-sized dresses and skirts. In the bureau, women's blouses and underwear, extra large. The cosmetics in the bathroom were pancake and rouge.

  His preferred shade of lipstick was Bozo-the-Clown red, something called Torche. Pinned up over the mirror were several Polaroids of Vincent in drag-close-ups of his face in full makeup. Janet Reno on steroids. I broke my promise to Hennings, and filched one, putting it in my side coat pocket. Then I stood surveying the bathroom, trying to get a grip on the methodology here. Was this just a place to run after he shot Emo and barbecued his brother Paul, or did he actually live here as Susan half the time? How long had he owned this house, or did he just rent? I made a mental note to check the local Realtors.

  I left the house twenty minutes later and walked out to the driveway. I wondered if anybody had gone through his garbage yet. Not wanting to let this normally important crime-scene treasure trove get away, I moved behind the garage and opened his cans. Both empty. The sheriff's crime techs had beat me to it. Then I noticed some sheets of paper on the ground, partially hidden behind some bushes. One was an old market list, but the other was some kind of computer printout that had "YUMA TACTS" on the top. Under that was a series of columns and boxes:

  7S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN 1335

  PG783783

  N 33 13 57.1

  W 115 05 16.6

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  8S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN 1539

  PG726796

  N 33 14 39.9

  W 115 08 58.2

  LIVE ORD 1, 2

  10S

  SA-6 Site

  2240

  PG771820

  N 33 15 56.5

  W 11506 01.1

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  11S

  ARMORED COLUMN 2203

  PG773815

  N 33 15 38.1

  W 115 05 54.3

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  12S

  SAM SITE 1348

  PG735806

  N 33 15 12

  W 115 08 18.5

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  13S

  MECH INFANTRY 1444

  PG718803

  N 33 15 02.9

  W 115 09 27.5

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  14S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN

  2350

  PG771772

  N 33 13 14.5

  W 115 05 57.4

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  15S

  NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM, AAA, RADAR SITES

  0205

  PG736809

  N 33 15 23.6

  W 115 08 17

  LIVE ORD 1,2

  MT. BARROW

  NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM SITES

  0545

  PG895707

  N 33 09 42.1

  W 114 58 10.8

  LIVE ORD

  1,2,5.

  Tad Palmer told me he'd seen this site on Smiley's computer out at Hidden Ranch, and I had tried unsuccessfully to access Cactus West on my PC. With words like INFANTRY and LIVE ORD, I knew it was some kind of military site.

  I put the paper in my jacket pocket with the Polaroid and headed back toward the driveway. As I passed the garage, I noticed that the side door was ajar, so I pushed it open with my toe and walked in.

  Nothing much was inside. A few recent oil stains on the pavement, but nothing was piled up against or hung on the walls. I noticed some old cardboard boxes up in the rafters that looked like they'd been broken down, folded and stored up there. Probably nothing, but most people don't go to the trouble to store broken-down boxes, so I found a ladder and dragged it over, climbed up, and started pulling at the edges. They cascaded down and landed on the floor.

  I climbed down and started opening them up. The shipping labels indicated they had come from a mail order catalogue called The Mountaineer. The UPS dates indicated they were all delivered within the last week. I started to pull out the manufacturer's packing lists that had been left behind.

  The first box I went into had contained a GPS-a miniunit for exact global satellite positioning. I reached into another box and found the printed instructions for installing something called "crampon metal spikes." They attached to the bottom of boots and were used for ice climbs. There was a box for an ascender and one for fifi hooks, which had a complicated set of instructions for a hanging belay. There was a box for an SLCD. The instructions indicated that it was a spring-loaded camming device, used to improve handholds on a cliff face.

  What it all came down to was Vincent had recently ordered one hell of a lot of expensive mountain-climbing equipment. The boxes had been opened here, but since the gear wasn't in the house or garage, it was probably in the back of that bigfoot Dodge 2500 that had roared out of here, almost hitting me. Detective logic at its tip-top best.

  I left the garage by the side door, walked down the drive, and climbed into a slick-back D-car that I'd picked up at the motor pool downtown after leaving the hospital. I drove slowly up the block, trying to figure my most effective next move. Jo's purse was on the seat beside me. Nobody had asked me for it at the hospital, so I just held onto it. I drove up the street and found a quiet place to park, then pulled over and turned off the engine.

  I opened the purse and pulled out Jo's crime book, then began flipping pages until I found what I was looking for.

  Chapter 41

  IF IT'S A BELL, RING IT

  I pulled into the parking lot of a one-story showroom office in Sunland a few minutes past five in the afternoon. The window art advertised Sprint contracts and the latest in digital communications. The company's name and slogan were in big white letters:

  bell communications if it's a bell… ring it

  I got out and walked inside. Most places that sell computer and phone equipment keep the air-conditioning on way too low. This was no exception. They hadn't wasted much thought on decor either. Like a lot of yuppie businesses these days, the trend was toward open space and hard surfaces. The color scheme was overpoweringly gray. The showroom had concrete floors and the ceilings were crisscrossed with exposed aluminum air ducts. Every kind of cell phone imaginable was displayed in glass cases.

  I asked for Marion Bell and was told by a sneering pair of pleated pants that I couldn't see Mr. Bell without an appointment. I showed this arrogant dweeb my badge and cocked a suspicious eyebrow, which is the cop equivalent of "Wanta bet, asshole?"

  He had an immediate change of attitude and led me into the back where the sales offices were. After a whispered conversation on the phone, I was shown into the boss's corner office. Decoratively, more of the same.

  Marion Bell was one of those compact, thirtyish, yuppie packages whose s
tiff body language suggested a lack of grace, despite an athletic appearance. The best word to describe him was "severe." His physicality screamed no-nonsense, from the half-inch buzz cut to his ugly, Velcro-fastened shoes. His eyes were so blue, I suspected contacts.

  "Police?" he asked as I entered. "I talked to Sergeant Brickhouse yesterday. She said she was going to set up a meeting, but she never called me back."

  "She's my partner," I said. "This won't take long."

  "About Vincent Smiley?" From his expression and tone, I could tell that Jo was right. Smiley was not a favorite.

  "The cops are spending a lot of time on that guy, considering the fact that he's dead," he said.

  "There are potential lawsuits surrounding that Hidden Ranch Road shoot-out," I said, electing not to tell him that Smiley was still alive. People are generally not all that anxious to rat out paramilitary psychopaths.

  "Go ahead, ask away." Marion said, lowering himself behind his gray metal desk.

  I took the uncomfortable gray chair across from him and opened my casebook. "Just tell me a little about Vincent. I understand he joined your mountain-climbing club, the Rock Stars, sometime last year. What month was that?"

  "June," Marion said.

  I wrote it down, thinking that was about the same time Smiley started digging the escape tunnel at his house in Hidden Ranch. Important? I wasn't sure.

  Marion went on. "He wanted to do some organized mountain climbing. We're an outdoor club."

  "As opposed to what?" I asked him.

  "That means that our climbs are on real mountains. Some clubs are strictly gym climbing clubs. They scale indoor, artificial walls, that sort of thing."

  "What was your take on him? What kind of guy was he?"

  "Well, on a personal level he was a jerk. Frightening, if you want to put a better word on it."

  "How so?"

  "He was always right on the edge of going off on you. Even when he was laughing, it could turn ugly in a second. You said the wrong thing and you'd set him off. He had real anger-management problems. We took him in originally because he said he was YDS fifth-class qualified. YDS stands for Yosemite Decimal System. It rates climbing ability. To be fifth-class rated, you have to have expertise in all forms of technical free-climbing and be proficient with specialized techniques and equipment. Once he became a member of the Rock Stars, and we took him on his first climb, we realized it was all BS."