In Extremis

by Ken Goddard

  “Don’t let David leave with the body yet,” Grissom said quickly.

  “Why not?” Catherine asked, immediately thinking,Oh no.

  “What about the truck?” Grissom asked. “Any leads on it?”

  “Not much. It looks like the license plates were removed recently, and the VIN number comes back as a vehicle last registered to a local rancher, but he reported it stolen six months ago. There’s a lot of dust and cobwebs in the cab and under the hood, so we’re guessing it’s probably been stashed away in some shed all this time and not taken out often.”

  “So our subject just appears, out of the blue without a discernible trail—a regular will-o’-the-wisp,” Gil said.

  “Wasn’t that what Fairfax said about Ricardo Paz Lamos?”

  “Yes, it was,” Gil acknowledged. “Do you have anything on the make, model, and caliber of the rifle in the truck?”

  Catherine quickly referenced her notebook. “It’s an old bolt-action, Winchester Model Seventy, three-oh-eight caliber. We found an expended round in the chamber and two live rounds in the magazine.”

  “Excellent,” Grissom replied. “That may help resolve things up here.”

  “Don’t tell me—”

  “We have what looks like an unrelated hunting accident, involving a well-known local. At leastI think it’s a hunting accident; but Jim isn’t convinced, so I need the morgue guys to come up here in the DEA helicopter and pick up two more bodies before they leave. I’ve already contacted the DEA pilots and they’re headed back your way now.”

  “Did you saytwo more—?”

  “I’ll come back to the campsite with the helicopter and explain it all when I get there,” Grissom said. “Suffice it to say that our hunting victim may have been shot with a three-oh-eight rifle bullet.”

  “Oh” was all she could finally manage to get out at first. Then, after a couple of moments, she added: “Does that simplify things down here, or make everything a lot more complicated?”

  “When you figure that out, please let me know.”

  Thirty minutes later, Grissom, Brass, Fairfax, and Holland were helping Assistant Coroner David Phillips and his morgue technician haul the heavy body of Enrico Toledano toward the distant DEA helicopter, each of the men struggling to hang on to one of the six looped straps sewn into the midsection and four corners of the extra-large rubberized body bag as they tried to move forward in some sort of coordinated manner without snapping their ankles on the now-very-slippery rocks.

  It had started raining ten minutes ago, and the chilled drops were now coming down hard and fast, aided by a swirling wind that was starting to make the helicopter pilots—not to mention Fairfax and Holland—increasingly uneasy as they waited for the forensic team to hurry up and collect their bodies.

  The two commanders hadn’t been pleased when they learned the first smaller body bag contained the carcass of a small deer, but Brass had been in no mood to discuss the matter politely. He simply informed the pissed-off commanders and the storm-wary pilots that he had no intention of leaving the deer carcass or the body of Enrico Toledano up here to be chewed on by the local fauna; they were both coming off the mountain if he had to drag them down by himself.

  As expected, mentioning the name of Enrico Toledano produced the desired effect: the two narcotics unit commanders had immediately scrambled out of the helicopter to lend a hand.

  “Christ, how much does this guy weigh?” Fairfax demanded, gasping for breath as the six men took advantage of a sudden lull in the rainstorm to stop and recover their strength for their final run to the waiting helicopter. They still had another thirty yards to go, and it was all uphill.

  “As a guess, I’d say at least three hundred and fifty pounds,” Phillips said, looking decidedly pale in the light from the LVPD chopper high overhead. “Maybe closer to four hundred.”

  “We should have winched him up to the Black Hawk with the harness,” Fairfax muttered as he shook the rain off his dripping head. “So what does all this mean, Brass? Are you telling me that Paz Lamos came up here and shot Enrico Toledano before he went after my team? God, if word of that gets out, we’re going to have a mob-cartel war along the entire southern border.”

  “Ask Gil, I’m too tired to talk right now,” Brass replied, looking around for something other than the body-bagged Toledano to use as a chair.

  “Everything about this scene tells me that it was a hunting accident,” Grissom offered, working to catch his breath. “And based on what we’ve found so far, it’s easy to believe that Toledano was up here with his expensive gear trying to poach a Desert Bighorn—mostly because the evidence seems to fit, and the arrogance of it sounds in character for someone like him. We’ll know a lot more once we get these bodies and everything else to the lab.”

  “So you really don’t have any evidence that Paz Lamos was up here?” Holland pressed in a slightly wheezing voice. The state commander looked as pale as Phillips, but nowhere near as fit.

  “We may be able to show that the subject in the car was up here, especially if the casing I found matches the rifle in the truck,” Grissom said, amazed that his lungs were no longer burning in the cold, thin air. “But as for Paz Lamos himself, you’re asking the wrong guy. At the moment, I don’t have any evidence that he even exists. It’s like trying to ID evidence on a Bigfoot case: we really need to start with a known comparison standard.”

  “Believe me, this guy exists,” Fairfax growled. “I’ve got three dead snitches and two agents in a hospital recovering from near-fatal gunshot wounds who will vouch for that.”

  “And I’ve got a dead state officer who tried to help two Arizona troopers make a vehicle stop on the guy,” Holland added, starting to look a little less pale now in the overhead chopper’s sweeping search beam. “We found all three of them beside their vehicles, each shot in the head. And that was after he beat the crap out of a federal refuge officer who caught him crossing the border at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge with a load of coke. For whatever reason, he seems to like to make his big deals on federal refuges.”

  “So that’s why you guys arranged the buy-bust out here,” Brass said, nodding in understanding.

  “Exactly.”

  “But do you have any kind of known specimen from this guy?” Grissom asked. “Blood, hair, saliva, fingerprints, footprints? Anything at all?”

  “Nothing except for that one blurry photo. We took that off a videotape from one of the Arizona patrol cars,” Holland replied. “According to everyone who’s dealt with him, and survived, he always shows up separately at the drug deals, in dark clothes, mask, gloves, and hat, looking like a cross between Zorro and a ninja. He never goes near the drugs or the money, and he’s always the first one to start shooting when things go wrong.”

  “Oh yeah, one other thing,” Fairfax added. “Rumor has it that he used to be a much-sought-after contract killer…and that he’s still perfectly willing to make a hit on anyone—Mexican and American cops definitely included—for the right price.”

  “Even a mob boss?” Grissom asked.

  Fairfax shrugged. “You tell us.”

  “So, if Paz Lamos did shoot Enrico Toledano, it probably wasn’t an accident,” Brass concluded. “He doesn’t sound like the type to waste his ammo on deer.”

  “There’s always the possibility that one of Toledano’s underbosses hired Paz Lamos to make the hit,” Holland said. “We’ve heard word for months that his people are unhappy about their cuts of a declining revenue base, and that he’s increasingly ‘disengaged’ from the daily operations, whatever that means.”

  “If that’s what really happened up here, then the shit is definitely going to hit the fan, big-time, because none of the other mob bosses want more federal attention on Las Vegas gambling; it’s too lucrative,” Fairfax said. “They all know the focus of federal law enforcement has dramatically shifted to homeland security issues these last few years, but a mob hit in Vegas could turn things around dramatically w
ithin twenty-four hours, especially if the more or less independent families start going at each other again.”

  “Which would probably reduce state and federal emphasis on drugs coming in from Mexico even more than it is right now,” Holland added.

  “Meaning Ricardo Paz Lamos and the cartels win big-time—motiveand opportunity—as long as he isn’t linked to the shooting,” Fairfax said, looking up as the rain started falling again, and then taking in a deep steadying breath. “Oh man, it’s starting to come down again. Ready to make the last push, guys?”

  No one looked especially enthused about the idea, but all six men bent down and picked up the body bag again in a symphony of grunts and groans.

  “Just one more question,” Grissom said as he staggered forward under his share of the load. “If what you said is true, and a clever fellow like Paz Lamos knows he and the cartels will only gain from Toledano’s death if they’re not connected to it, then why would he schedule the hit at the same time—and pretty much at the same place—he was supposed to be selling ten kilos of cocaine to a bunch of bikers?”

  “That’s the trouble with you linear-thinking forensic types,” Fairfax said half-jokingly as the six men began to lug the body bag uphill again toward the impatiently waiting helicopter crew. “You really don’t appreciate the intricate and twisted workings of the devious criminal mind.”

  “Or the devious cop mind either,” Grissom agreed amiably. “But that’s okay; we really don’t need to understand any of our adversaries, just so long as they keep on making helpful mistakes when it really counts.”

  From the shelter of a cavelike crevice in the rocks overlooking the helicopter landing site, Viktor Mialkovsky watched the six men load the second body bag into the Black Hawk with a mixture of unease and irritation.

  He was uneasy because he didn’t like the fact that Grissom and Brass had insisted on bringing the carcass of the deer down the mountain in an evidence-preserving body bag along with his target. It suggested Grissom might have spotted something that he’d overlooked when he was hurrying to set up the scene before the helicopters came back on another sweep.

  Mialkovsky really didn’t think he’d missed anything significant; but the shifting winds had carried Grissom’s mildly sarcastic barb about “helpful mistakes” at the scene back to his hideout, and the words had rankled. He didn’t like being reminded that luck invariably played a role in all cover-ups, and that mistakes—ideally small and inconsequential—were almost impossible to avoid.

  These were principles that Mialkovsky had depended upon in his earlier career to track down and expose deliberate violations of engagement rules by military combat teams.

  But they were also the principles that Grissom and law enforcement would use to track him down if one of those inevitable mistakes turned out to be consequential.

  Just have to hope that isn’t the case,the hunter-killer mused, still thinking about the deer carcass as he stared glumly up at the sky.

  He was irritated because, by hanging around the scene as long as they did before calling in the transport helicopter, Grissom and his companion (obviously a detective) had unwittingly managed to delay his retreat back down the mountain until the storm arrived.

  And now that it was here, and growing rapidly, he was stuck in place until it abated, because the rain and cloud cover had the dual effect of making his planned escape route even more slippery and reducing the effectiveness of his night-vision goggles to almost zero.

  That along with the wind and the near-total darkness virtually guaranteed that it would end very badly—at least one out-of-control fall or something far worse. He simply could not afford to risk it at this late stage of the operation, especially when he desperately needed to be skipping town—ideally in a completely inconspicuous manner—as quickly as possible.

  The only saving grace was the likelihood that the storm would soon ground the two helicopters—or, at least, prevent them from flying too low—and thereby keep Grissom and his CSI team off the mountain until dawn.

  He would need to remain hidden until the storm broke; quickly work his way down to the motorcycle before everyone returned to the scene; and everything would work out fine.

  Mialkovsky couldn’t do much to influence the timing and luck factors at this point in his mission. But he did possess complete confidence in his military and survival expertise. Beyond that, he considered himself a very patient man.

  8

  DR. ALBERTROBBINSand David Phillips both looked up from their work as Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows walked into the morgue wearing white lab coats.

  “Gil, Catherine,” the gruff pathologist said, briefly raising a bloodied scalpel in greeting. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a very good idea to start sending David out to your scenes. He’s always coming back with something…different.”

  “I take it you’re referring to the deer?” Grissom asked as he glanced over at the small mammal sprawled out on the third autopsy table. It was a different image indeed for the Clark County coroner’s morgue: the thin and fragile-looking creature appearing very much out of place next to the shattered body of the truck driver on table two—where David was busily engaged with the contents of a GSR kit—and the much larger and visibly fat-laden body of Enrico Toledano on table one, where Robbins was finishing up his autopsy.

  “Not your normal crime scene victim,” Robbins said, his attention focused on the opened chest and partially dissected throat of Toledano, “unless the CSI teams have started working poaching cases in their spare time…and I didn’t think you folks had any of that worth talking about.”

  “Actually, you might be working on a poacher right now,” Catherine said as she came up beside Robbins and stared at the opened-up wound.

  “Really?” Robbins looked at her in surprise. “I was under the impression that Mr. Toledano here was a—” He turned his head to stare over at Phillips for a moment, and then blinked in realization. “Well, yes,” he said with a shrug as he went back to work with the scalpel, “I suppose you could always be both.”

  “Finding anything interesting, Al?” Grissom inquired.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Robbins said as he gestured at a small stainless steel pan next to Enrico Toledano’s opened skull. “What do you think of that?”

  Grissom and Catherine leaned forward and eyed the single object lying in a blooded piece of gauze in the middle of the pan.

  “I’d say it appears to be a mushroomed rifle bullet, approximately thirty-caliber, with bits of tissue embedded under the peeled-back jacketing,” Grissom responded.

  “And?” Robbins prompted.

  “There’s more?” Grissom pulled a pair of plastic forceps out of his white lab coat and used them to carefully lift the bullet up to a point where he and Catherine could both see it clearly.

  “It looks like the base of the bullet is slightly deformed on one side…like it hit some dense object a glancing blow?” Catherine suggested.

  “Indeed, it did,” Robbins said. “And the dense object it hit was the third cervical vertebra of our victim here.”

  Grissom and Catherine looked at each other in confusion, and then stood in thoughtful silence for a few moments.

  “How does that work?” Catherine finally asked. “Don’t rifle bullets usually hit their targets nose first?”

  “They do if they don’t tumble,” Robbins replied. “For example, the relatively small and light 5.56-millimeter bullets used in our military assault rifles and several civilian knockoffs are infamous for deflecting off of relatively light objects and tumbling upon impact, thereby causing far more grievous wounds than expected.”

  “But this is a relatively large bullet, specifically designed for a high-powered rifle, so it shouldn’t tumble at all,” Grissom pointed out, pressing the pathologist to help flesh out his own theory about the single blood-splatter pattern he and Brass had observed around Toledano’s rifle.

  “No, it should not,” Robbins agreed. “In
fact, a high-powered rifle bullet like this really should have produced a fairly massive wound more like that”—the pathologist gestured with his scalpel over at the shattered head of the truck driver on table two—“instead of a relatively minor, albeit fatal, wound like this.” He gestured down at Enrico Toledano’s partially dissected neck. “Unless, of course, the bullet deflected against something fairly solid first, such as a Kevlar vest with a ceramic or composite plate.”

  “Did it?” Catherine asked.

  “Not as far as I can tell,” Robbins said. “Our victim here was wearing that exceptionally large and undoubtedly tailored Kevlar vest over there on the table”—he nodded with his head over at a stainless steel table in the corner of the morgue—“which, according to the label, is a first-stage protection model designed to stop bullets up to and including .375 magnums.”

  “But not thirty-caliber, high-powered rifle bullets,” Catherine said as she walked over and briefly examined the blood-splattered vest.

  “No, I’m sure a bullet like the one we have here would have ripped right through that particular vest, or any other similar vest that lacked a protective frontal plate,” Robbins said. “But that wasn’t even an issue in our victim’s case, because that bullet missed his vest entirely.”

  “You’d think Mr. Toledano’s upper body and vest would be fairly easy targets to hit—especially with a rifle—if that was the shooter’s intent,” Grissom commented.

  “Undoubtedly true,” Robbins said, “as demonstrated by the numerous bullet-wound scars we found on his torso. It can’t be much fun being an exceptionally large mob boss with a long list of enemies.”

  “But this bullet had to hit something substantial to mushroom like this, so what did it hit?” Catherine asked as she came back to the table.

  “I have no idea,” Robbins replied.

  “What about a deer?” Grissom asked.