In Extremis

by Ken Goddard

  That was not a good thing.

  The drug agents would undoubtedly be searching the general area for other suspects, thereby severely limiting his tactical options.

  And the arrival of six CSIs on the scene, rather than the normal two or three, suggested the shooting situation was complicated, and that they would probably be working all night to reconstruct the events, trying to resolve whatever developments had brought the larger-than-normal team there in the first place.

  That could turn out to be avery bad thing indeed.

  4

  GRISSOM ANDCATHERINE CAUTIOUSLYapproached the hastily rigged perimeter line with big bundles of bright, wire-mounted evidence locator flags tucked into their vests and high-intensity flashlights and strobe-mounted digital cameras in their gloved hands. As they moved forward, they continuously swept the beams of their flashlights across the ground in front of their feet, a routine double check to make certain the initially responding officers had set the perimeter far enough out to contain all of the relevant evidence.

  They were stopped at the perimeter edge, examining the multitude of boot prints, churned sand, and expended casings on the ground between the truck and the bright yellow tape, when Jim Brass came up beside them.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Bad time to be doing this,” Grissom commented as he paused to take a broader look at the scene. “We don’t have enough lights to illuminate the entire scene properly, so we’re going to have to work it in sections.”

  “Do you want to wait until daylight?” Brass inquired uneasily.

  Somewhere in the dark sky that was rapidly becoming overcast and clouded, the threatening ripple of a distant lightning bolt offered a whimsical answer.

  “I’d love to,” Grissom said, gesturing up at the sky with his head, “but I don’t think we’d have much of a scene left by morning. If you want us to reconstruct the shooting sequence with any degree of accuracy, we’d better get at it right now.”

  “I need this scene worked as quickly and as thoroughly as humanly possible,” Brass replied.

  “Getting pressure from the boss?” Catherine queried.

  “The sheriff called in to let me know that he’s definitely expecting ‘quick and thorough’ on this one,” Brass responded, “but he’s not the problem.”

  Grissom raised his right eyebrow quizzically.

  “Mostly because he’s out of town and won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon,” Brass explained, a pained expression crossing his face. “Mace, Boyington, and Tallfeather are the problems. Mace is the son of a Nevada state senator, Boyington’s parents are wealthy and tightly connected to the governor’s campaign staff, and Tallfeather is the youngest son of the chief of a Paiute Indian tribe living on the Moapa River Indian reservation.”

  “Oh,” Grissom finally said. His interest in local politics was infamously and invariably limited to the degree that such nonsense might impact his crime scene investigations. “Well, it looks like you hit the trifecta then.”

  Brass gave a tight-lipped grin before responding.

  “It would be nice if the body in that truck belongs to a drug smuggler named Ricardo Paz Lamos, we find ten kilos of coke, and the shooting turns out to be clean; but—”

  “You don’t think so,” Grissom suggested.

  “No, I think there’s something wrong with their story—possibly several things. I just don’t know what.”

  “I’m surprised Jackson’s not one of the problems,” Catherine commented. “He was pretty aggressive during the initial questioning. I got the impression he might have something to hide.”

  “Jacksonis his own problem,” Brass said. “According to Fairfax, he’s been involved in three previously questioned shootings, and is technically still on probation, whatever that means.”

  “Probably means he shouldn’t have been out here involved in a shooting tonight, which presumably makes thatFairfax’s problem,” Catherine said with a knowing grimace, nodding her head in understanding.

  “Jackson was the assigned team leader on this deal, but I gather he was supposed to have run the operation from their field command center,” Brass said. “That being the case, it would be nice, for Fairfax and the DEA’s sake, if Jackson was the last one to fire his weapon, and only fired to stop the truck; but that doesn’t seem to fit his M.O.”

  “So what do we think we know?” Grissom asked.

  Brass pulled out his field notebook. “We think we know that Ricardo Paz Lamos called Jackson twice on his cell phone to explain he was running late, which was why the buy-bust team was relaxed and not set up for his arrival. Everyone agrees they heard occasional engine sounds coming from the base of the Sheep Range, roughly west to northwest of this site, but it was hard to tell directions because of all the echoing effects. No one saw any headlights, but Grayson said that wasn’t unusual because poachers frequent the area, trying to shoot one of the last Desert Bighorns on the planet. So no one got real concerned about the engine-noise situation except for Grayson, who wanted to go check the area, but got talked out of it by Jackson and Mace.”

  “They probably didn’t want to blow their big drug bust over a couple of endangered sheep,” Grissom said disapprovingly.

  “Exactly,” Brass said with a nod. “So everyone’s sitting around talking, and the informant—our dear Jane Smith—is acting increasingly paranoid about something, when all of a sudden, maybe fifteen minutes before the truck arrives here, they hear what sounds like automatic gunfire coming from somewhere in the general direction of the Sheep Range, again roughly west to northwest of here.”

  “Automatic gunfire? That doesn’t sound like poachers,” said Catherine. “I’d think they’d want to be a little more subtle than that, especially with wildlife refuge officers like Grayson on the lookout. Maybe Ricardo Paz Lamos was taking care of some side business before he made his deal with Jackson and his team.”

  “Possibly, but don’t forget, the Army does test and train on the west side of the Sheep Range,” Grissom pointed out. “I would imagine they have a considerable number of very loud automatic weapons that need to be test-fired on a fairly regular basis. Maybe the sound carried?”

  “But why would they test-fire them in the middle of the night?” Catherine asked.

  Grissom shrugged—he didn’t have the slightest idea of what the Army might or might not do, much less why.

  “Grayson said night firing does occur at the test and training range on occasion, but the sound rarely carries this far,” Brass said. “Anyway, after the shooting stops, they hear a car engine revving up in the same general location, the noise gets louder—like a vehicle was coming down the dirt road from the base of the mountains—and then, all of a sudden, this red truck appears, turns on its headlights at the road intersection, makes a sharp left, heading straight toward this campsite, and then accelerates right at the UCs.”

  “And that was when all the shooting started?” Grissom asked.

  “Apparently,” Brass acknowledged. “And there was a second vehicle that made a mad dash down the same road a few seconds after the shooting started, with its lights on; but that one didn’t make the turn toward the campsite. It just kept on barreling down the road toward Las Vegas.”

  “Trying to escape a barrage of automatic gunfire?” Grissom asked.

  “Very possible,” Brass agreed. “Everyone at the campsite saw the second vehicle drive by; but the only one who got a good look at it was Boyington, and that was for a split second. He thinks it was a dark-painted SUV, possibly an Escalade, definitely a late model, and big; but he admits that’s mostly a guess because dust was flying everywhere and they were all still concentrating on the truck. We put in a call to the local hospitals, just in case.”

  “Could have been Ricardo Paz Lamos, making his getaway with the coke?” Catherine suggested.

  “Another reasonable possibility, I suppose,” Brass said, “except it’s hard to believe that he’d make a run like that—especially wit
h his headlights on—right past the road intersection where the deal was supposed to take place. Grayson said there are several dirt roads leading out of the refuge that he could have easily taken without being observed. And Jackson and Smith both describe Ricardo as the kind who isn’t the least bit reluctant to get into gun-fights with Mexican or American cops. With a rep like that, I’d have expected him to at least fire off a few rounds during the drive-by, for self-respect if nothing else.”

  “Speaking of shooting, has anyone claimed they actually saw the suspect in the truck firing a weapon?” Catherine asked.

  “Smith, Tallfeather, Jackson, and Grayson are all insisting that they saw gunfire coming from the cab of the truck before they returned fire at the suspect,” Brass replied after consulting his notebook. “And both Smith and Mace are certain that they were shot at—Smith because of her head wound, and Mace because he heard at least one bullet whizzing close by his head. All six UCs admit to firing their weapons at either the truck tires or the engine compartment, trying to stop it. But the five who say they shot at the cab—that would be Smith, Tallfeather, Jackson, Boyington, and Mace—all insist they only did so when they started getting shot at by someone in the truck.”

  “Did anybody open one of the truck doors or get inside the cab after the shooting?” Grissom asked.

  “Jackson ordered Tallfeather to call for backup while he, Mace, Boyington, and Smith approached the truck,” Brass said. “They all looked into the cab through the shattered windows, but, supposedly, no one actually touched the doors or got into the cab.”

  “Jackson let Jane Smith approach the truck with a loaded weapon?” Catherine said, her eyebrows furrowing in concern. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”

  “Jackson said she’s the only one of the group who’s actually met Ricardo Paz Lamos face-to-face,” Brass explained. “That’s why they had her at the scene in the first place. She’s terrified of the guy; claims he put a price on her head—which is why Jackson let her stay armed on site. They wanted her to make a positive ID of the body in the truck, but she couldn’t because the guy’s face was blown apart.”

  “What about Grayson?” Catherine asked, looking up from her notes.

  “He’s pretty sure he was the first one to fire at the tires of the truck, trying to stop it when it first arrived on site,” Brass said. “He also says he didn’t fire at the cab because he didn’t have a clear view of the suspect; and after the truck headlights were blown out, he couldn’t tell where the other UCs and Smith were positioned. Immediately after the shooting stopped, he got on his radio and called Metro for backup.”

  “I thought you said Tallfeather called for backup,” said Grissom.

  “That’s what Jackson said, but I confirmed that with the dispatcher that it was definitely Officer Grayson who made the call.”

  “So who do you think Tallfeather was calling? Fairfax?” asked Catherine.

  “Probably,” Brass said. “It would explain why he and Holland got here so fast. But if I wanted immediate backup on a buy-bust shooting in the middle of the night, I don’t think calling my boss would be my first choice—even if he was riding around nearby in a Black Hawk.”

  “So, basically, you’d like some answers to all of these questions before the sheriff stands you up in front of the proud parents to hand out commendations for a job well done?” Grissom said with a smile.

  “Be tough to put out a recall on the plaques if the D.A. starts handing out indictments,” Brass agreed. “So what can I do to help?”

  Grissom gestured with his gloved hand in the direction of the parked CSI vehicles. “In the back of Warrick’s vehicle, you’re going to find two stacks of weighted traffic cones—an ‘A’ stack and a ‘B’ stack—with large black-and-white alpha-numeric identifiers and circular photo-alignment markers on the outside surfaces.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “Once we’re finished swabbing and collecting firearms, we’re going to want to place paired sets of those cones—‘A-one,’ ‘A-two,’ ‘B-one,’ ‘B-two,’ and so on—in the precise locations where the shooters were standing or sitting or squatting when the truck arrived on scene…and where they ended up at the actual time of the shooting. ‘A’ cone set for Shooter Number One, ‘B’ cones for Shooter Number Two, etc; the ‘dash-one’ cones for the truck-arrival locations, and ‘dash-two’ cones for the shooting locations.”

  “And I assume you’d like those locations based on an individual interrogation of each shooter—one that takes place out of hearing range of all of the others—and includes their general sense of where all the other shooters were located?”

  “That would be ideal,” Grissom replied. “And while you’re asking questions, we’re going to need to know how tall each of these shooters are, and if they were standing, kneeling, or prone when they fired their weapons.”

  “And if they shot right- or left-handed,” Catherine added.

  Brass made the appropriate entries in his field notebook.

  “Okay,” he said, looking up from the notebook, “so, while you guys are poking around the truck, we’ll handle those interrogations. After that, I’ll have a little heart-to-heart with Miss Jane Smith while the rest of you do your thing.”

  “Sounds like a fair division of labor to me,” Grissom said, then turned to Catherine. “What do you think?”

  “Give me a difficult crime scene and a shredded corpse over a bunch of arrogant and pissed-off undercovers anytime,” she replied with a glacial-eyed shrug.

  “Deal,” Brass said with a satisfied smile as he turned and headed back to the parked Denalis, where the four CSIs were still engaged in their initial collection of evidence.

  “Nice to know that our good captain still remembers the basic protocols,” Grissom commented as he and Catherine turned their attention back to the shattered truck. “You think he’s been one of those closet forensic types all this time?”

  “I doubt it,” Catherine said, shaking her head as she put her notebook back into her vest pocket. “I think he just likes to confront the bad guys, whoever and whatever they might be; and he doesn’t seem to mind if he has to get a little dirty in the process.”

  During the next twenty minutes, which Grissom and Catherine spent carefully working their way around the perimeter of the scene in opposite directions—each taking a series of inward-facing overall scene photos and placing some of their locator flags next to potential evidence items or areas of interest as they progressed—Viktor Mialkovsky sat crouched beneath his protective canopy, carefully dividing his gear into two piles for what would probably end up being a strategic retreat down the western slope of the Sheep Range.

  It was not a task that pleased him, but it had to be done.

  The issue was weight and volume versus speed.

  Mialkovsky was very much aware—because he’d reconnoitered the area a few days earlier—that a withdrawal down the back side of the Sheep Range, in the middle of the night, would involve two difficult elements: first, a strenuous climb over and around slick rocks and loose gravel; and then a hazardous descent through narrow, slippery, and often plunging gaps in the mountain’s massive granite ledges, crags, and boulders, where a careless move could easily result in a hundred-foot drop and a potentially crippling—or even fatal—accident.

  He’d included the route in his plans as a last resort, in spite of these obvious difficulties, because the detailed map he’d obtained from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Refuge Office had highlighted it as one of several paths on the high mountain range used by generations of mule deer and Desert Bighorns to escape their human and nonhuman predators. And the physically demanding aspects of the trail—those close-knit ledges, crags, and boulders—appealed to him in terms of concealment and egress from searching helicopters.

  And that was the crucial thing—to successfully escape what was rapidly becoming a potential trap, Mialkovsky simply could not allow himself to be seen.

  But in selecting this path as his emerge
ncy escape route, he’d been careful to account for the fact that a large, muscular human, encased in thick winter clothing, with a nightscoped and silenced rifle in one hand, a folded thermal canopy in the other, night-vision goggles strapped to his head, and eighty pounds of equipment and supplies slung on his back would be a far different creature among those narrow rocky gaps than a slender mule deer or agile Bighorn.

  From the first moment he’d stood at the summit of the Sheep Range and stared down into the pathway marked on his map, Mialkovsky knew it would be impossible to descend the route quickly and evasively with all the equipment and supplies he’d be taking on the mission.

  And that didn’t even count the added problem of avoiding the night-vision and thermal sights of two helicopters conducting random search patterns overhead.

  The only solution was to bury all of his nonessential equipment and supplies under some nearby boulders—and then abandon the dune buggy where it was now hidden, knowing that the night-camouflaged vehicle would be easily discovered by a daytime search team.

  This was not how he had wanted to leave his carefully rigged scene.

  But the unexpected arrival of the young Hispanic, the subsequent shooting at the campsite, and the rapid response of the Metro backup units had forced him to progressively alter his initial withdrawal plans. And now, the ever-expanding sweeps of the circling helicopters were forcing him to resort to an emergency escape route that he’d never intended to use unless his life was actually in danger, a possibility that had seemed so unlikely, that he’d actually chuckled to himself as he’d finalized his plans.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  It wasn’t because he minded caching the equipment items and supplies at the scene. The likelihood of their discovery was remote, at best, even if the CSIs made a determined search of the area. He knew he could always retrieve the more expensive and difficult-to-replace items at a later date.

  Nor was he concerned about abandoning the dune buggy at the kill site. He’d hot-wired and stolen the titanium-tube vehicle for this mission from a local auto mechanic—who’d been foolish enough to use a cheap and thus easily picked lock to secure his back storage lot—with the expectation that it would be found.