by Ken Goddard
“One of those pistols was taken from Jane Smith at the scene; the other was removed from the cab of the subject’s pickup truck,” Grissom said. “Both weapons have been fired recently, but only one of them—the one we took from Smith—bears any latent fingerprints at all: on the weapon itself and the cartridges. And, curiously enough, the two pistols happen to have serial numbers with the last digit only three numbers apart.”
“Interesting,” Fairfax said noncommittally.
“Even more interesting,” Brass added, “those two weapons have been identified by ATF as being stolen from a gun shop in Yuma, Arizona, approximately eight months ago.”
“Excellent,” Fairfax said, nodding in visible satisfaction. “Exactly the kind of confirming evidence we’ve been looking for.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?” Brass inquired.
“Because Jane told Russell that the hammerless Smith she was carrying was a gift from Ricardo Paz Lamos,” Fairfax replied matter-of-factly. “Obviously, from what you’ve just said, that pistol was one of a matched pair that was ripped off from that gun shop in Yuma, which is exactly where we’re told he likes to cross the border into Mexico. And that tells me the guy in the truck has to be either Paz Lamos or one of his associates.”
“That’s certainly one interpretation,” Brass said, nodding his head slowly.
“But you knew Jane Smith was carrying a concealed weapon, one that she’d gotten from a drug dealer…and that didn’t bother you?” Grissom asked.
“She’s an informant who—for reasons we won’t go into here—is more or less willing to testify against active members of a very dangerous Mexican drug cartel, specifically and including Ricardo Paz Lamos,” Fairfax said with a shrug. “That means her life expectancy out on her own is essentially zilch.”
“Nice to hear that you’re concerned,” Brass commented dryly.
“Hey, I’m just trying to keep her alive until we can get Paz Lamos and a few of his main guys behind bars. What happens after that depends on her degree of cooperation,” Fairfax responded firmly. “You know how the system works.”
“Yes, I do,” Brass said. “Go on.”
“When Russell told me about the gun gift angle,” Fairfax continued, shifting with seemingly little or no mental effort back into his relaxed and confident demeanor, “I had him issue her a Glock and a temporary permit. The idea has always been to keep her alive, and useful, as long as we possibly can; but I figured it probably wouldn’t look too good in court if she ended up shooting a major drug dealer in self-defense with one of his own guns.”
“No, I suppose not,” Grissom said, “but there’s one more problem.”
“What would that be?” Fairfax asked calmly.
“These.” Grissom reached under the table, brought out a pair of speed-loaders—each fully loaded with six .38 special cartridges—and set them gently on the exam table surface. “As you may recall, we removed them from Jane’s left and right jacket pockets at the scene.”
“Yeah, so?”
“It just so happens that the cartridges in these two speed-loaders—Federal thirty-eight specials—correspond with the cartridges in both of those pistols.”
“I’m assuming that can’t mean much,” Fairfax said. “Federal is a very widely available brand of ammunition.”
“That’s true,” Grissom agreed. “We would have to consider it circumstantial evidence at best.”
“Much in the way we would view the fact that we found no similar speed-loaders, or any other supply of extra thirty-eight special ammo, in the truck,” Brass added.
Fairfax started to say something, and then hesitated. “You’re suggesting Jane might have been in possession of both hammerless Smiths at the campsite, and dumped one of them into the truck cab to cover the shooting?”
“It’s a thought,” Brass said, “either to cover the shooting, or her own actions at the scene. It’s hard to understand why she would be carrying two speed-loaders in different pockets, while the truck driver—supposedly a very dangerous drug dealer who likes to shoot at cops—is carrying nothing in the way of backup ammo for a weapon he’s wiped completely clean of prints.”
“What about the rifle in the truck?” Fairfax asked.
“One expended casing in the chamber and two live rounds in the magazine,” Grissom replied. “There was no other ammo of any kind in the truck or on his person.”
“Okay, I see your point,” Fairfax said, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.
“And, as I recall, every one of the UCs at the campsite agreed they heard Jane yell ‘Oh shit, he’s here!’ the moment the truck came into view…which may well turn out to be the instigating act for the entire shooting incident,” Brass said. “So she could have been in a position of believing she had to protect herself—especially if getting into some kind of witness protection program was contingent on her ‘cooperating’ with the DEA. As you said, her chances of surviving on her own, without you guys, is probably close to zero.”
“But being the instigator of the shooting wouldn’t necessarily be her fault, if she truly believed Paz Lamos was driving that truck,” Fairfax said. “That’s just her survival instincts kicking in—perfectly understandable with a guy like Paz Lamos.”
“That’s true, an instinctive scream on her part would be understandable…and justifiable,” Brass said, “but not necessarily the barrage of shooting that followed, depending on—”
A sharp knock on the door interrupted them. Before the three could say or do anything, lab tech David Hodges opened the door wide enough to stick his head in.
“Pardon the interruption, Gil, but you said you wanted to know about the GSR results on the subject in the truck as soon as they were available.”
Grissom started to say something that would have undoubtedly matched the exasperated look in his eyes, but the ever-aggressive lab tech went on quickly.
“I just wanted you to know that I did find gunshot residues on the subject’s right hand that were definitely deposited within moments of his being shot.” David then smiled brightly, as if waiting for the applause that would surely follow.
“And how would you know the time of deposition?” Grissom asked curiously.
“Actually, it was pretty obvious under the microscope that the GSR spheres were still forming and solidifying when they got hit with the blood splatters,” David explained, the self-satisfied smile growing—if possible—even wider. “When you got right down at the surface, you could see where—”
“Thank you, David,” Grissom said as he got up and walked over to the door. “I’ll want to see your photo documentation as soon as we’re done here,” he added as he started to close the door on Hodges.
“One more thing,” Hodges said quickly, seemingly reluctant to give up his place on stage until he was physically yanked off. “Wendy just finished working the tissue trapped under the edges of that mushroomed bullet Doc Robbins dug out of the mob boss, and it definitely turned out to be, uh, mule deer.”
“Really?”
Hodges nodded. “I was right there when she got the results off the MALDI. What a great technique—using mass spec analysis of hemoglobin to identify species. I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of doing it myself. Oh, and Bobby confirmed that the casing you found up on the mountain doesn’t match the rifle in the victim’s truck,” Hodges added as he realized Grissom was gently moving him through the doorway. “And I almost forgot: I found unburned powder grains from the tape-liftings of the subject’s hands that were visually and chemically identical to unburned grains on the pistol you and Catherine found in the truck. I guess that pretty much settles things…about the subject shooting at the UCs, I mean.”
Grissom blinked and then paused to consider this last bit of information.
“Thank you, David,” he finally said as he closed the door firmly on the lab tech and turned back to the two men in his office—who had clearly listened to the verbal lab analysis report from very different perspectives.
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“Well, I must say, that’s exactly what I expected to hear from your crack lab team: scientific proof that the man in that pickup was shooting at our UCs…and that our snitch didn’t plant a weapon on our suspect,” Fairfax said with a pleasant smile on his face as he walked up beside Grissom and casually grasped the door handle. “I’m looking forward to receiving a copy of your final report: the one that justifies the shooting and completely exoneratesmy team.” Fairfax opened the door and walked out of the office.
“Well, that certainly wasn’t whatI expected to hear at all,” Brass remarked from his chair. He was staring morosely at the pair of hammerless Smith & Wesson pistols on the exam table that no longer seemed to be of much significance.
“No, it wasn’t,” Grissom agreed, looking decidedly unpleased.
“If I understand things correctly,” Brass went on gloomily, “it would appear, from the initial evidence exams, that Enrico Toledano was, in fact, killed in a hunting accident; the subject in the truck did shoot at the UCs; and the two scenes are not related. It seems my gut instincts were wrong. Dammit. Maybe I’m getting too old for this job.”
“I’m sure you’re right—the evidence is definitely trying to tell us something. But I don’t think we’re paying close enough attention to what it’s actually saying. Not just yet. You might want to hold off for a few hours before you start filling out those retirement papers.”
Grissom and Brass were even less pleased fifteen minutes later, as they listened to Catherine finish her case status report.
“So, do you think the distance determinations on the pellet patterns are doablewithout the trace metal analysis to categorize the holes in the grill and radiator?” Grissom asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Catherine said. “Sara’s trying her best, but it looks like at least five of the shotgun patterns hit the grill and radiator directly. And the guys with the shotguns—the two state agents—were both going for the carburetor and spark-plug wires, to shut the engine down completely, just like they’d been taught; so those five patterns pretty much overlapped. Also, one of the state guys—I’m pretty sure it was Mace—fired two more rounds, one on either side of the engine block, going for the engine compartment firewall and anybody on the floor of the cab. So you’ve got to figure that at least a few of those pellets hit the grill and radiator. And that doesn’t even count the Glock rounds and the bullets from that M-4 assault rifle that punched through the front of the truck, ricocheted off the engine block, and ripped right back into the radiator.”
“How many rounds are we talking about?” Grissom asked.
“According to Agent Tallfeather’s statement, he fired two three-round bursts at the front tires, and then at least two more into the engine compartment—and possibly three, he’s not really sure—before he opened up on the left side of the cab with the rest of the magazine. I’m guessing that maybe a third of the incoming engine compartment bullets in total—the nine-mil and the five-five-sixes—ricocheted back into the radiator. It’s kind of hard to tell the holes apart at this point. And without the ability to distinguish lead versus copper smearing at the edges, I think it’s going to be impossible.”
“Were they using ball ammo?”
“Yes, and the nine-mils were all jacketed hollow-points.”
“How bad was the radiator torn up?”
“Pretty bad,” Catherine said. “I didn’t get a real close look, but there’s an awful lot of damage that looks like mushrooming hollow-points or tumbling ricochet effects—mostly a lot of torn-up metal. If those heat-disseminating plates were as badly compressed or distorted as they appeared, we’re going to have a real hard time isolating those individual shotgun patterns.”
“No doubt,” Grissom said, seemingly distracted by something.
“But if we don’t isolate at least two or three of those patterns, and determine that absolute reference point, I don’t think we can position the truck at each shooting point…which means we can’t reconstruct the shooting,” Catherine went on.
“So you’d recommend we reprioritize our resources, put the Toledano shooting on the back burner, and focus our efforts on the trajectory-distance determinations at the campsite? Grissom asked.
Catherine hesitated, and then said firmly: “Yes, I would.”
“And I agree,” Brass added.
Grissom turned and stared curiously at the still-gloomy LVPD captain.
“Really? Since when?”
“A hunteror a poacheror an assassin aims at a deer, kills it, and with the same bullet manages to hit and kill a local mob boss—a guy who has a whole lot more enemies than friends, and who happens to be wandering around a mountaintop, in the middle of the night, with a night-scoped and silenced rifle,” Brass replied. “I told you earlier that the chances of something like that actually happening in real life seemed extremely unlikely, to put it mildly.”
“Yes, you did,” Grissom said.
“Well, I haven’t changed my opinion on that,” Brass said. “But the problem is, the odds of anassassin waiting around for a jumpy little deer to put itself in the line of fire of his target—just so he can make the hit look accidental, have to be astronomical, mostly because it doesn’t even begin to make sense. What kind of idiot would even think about trying to make something like that work?”
“No shooter I’ve ever heard of,” Catherine agreed, “and God knows we’ve run across some really dumb ones.”
Grissom nodded silently in agreement.
“And we know the bullet that killed Toledano hit a deer first, and that deer was lying right in the line of fire, relative to that casing location, so what can I say?” Brass shrugged. “Given all that, it seems to me a hunting accident makes a whole lot more sense than some kind of miracle-working assassin.”
“What are you doing, Jim?” Grissom asked. “Standing up for the evidence now, instead of your cop gut?”
“I’m listening to what the evidence is telling me,” Brass grudgingly replied. “You have a problem with that?”
“Yes, I do,” Grissom said evenly, “because my forensic gut is telling me that there’s something very wrong going on around here.”
10
VIKTORMIALKOVSKY WATCHED THE WATERpour off the narrow overhead ledge a few inches in front of his eyes with a sense of vague curiosity that might have led a casual observer to think he didn’t care how long it would take for the rain to stop—which wasn’t true at all.
He certainly did care, for reasons that had everything to do with the dwindling number of hours before daybreak, when his chances of being observed during his escape down the mountain would increase dramatically.
But the weather was something a man like Mialkovsky had long ago learned to accept for what it was: an independent variable that he could do little or nothing to change.
What he could change, however, was his capacity to adapt his surroundings to maximize his chances of success. In this particular case, change had necessitated two separate trips in the raging downpour to retrieve the portion of equipment and supplies he’d earlier deemed expendable to his escape.
Forced to rely on his own biological night vision, such as it was, to negotiate the rugged pathway back to his cache points, Mialkovsky had gotten lost twice, and had to resort to his compass and the distant—and barely visible—glow of the Las Vegas lights to realign himself. But that had turned out to be a good thing, because in working his way back to his ledge hideout, he’d located a small cave that had obviously once served as a den for a presumably very small bear.
The width ranged from three to five feet, the height barely two at the entrance, but rising up to as much as six at the visibly clawed out hollow in the back that was a good twelve feet from the entrance. All told, the irregular doglegged space—really more an expansive crevice created by some long-ago landslide of granite slabs and boulders than an actual cave—served the hunter-killer’s needs perfectly.
It allowed him to strip down in the chilled night air, dry of
f, change into his one set of dry clothes, and then build a small fire with a handful of the Special Ops fuel sticks that produced a maximum of heat with a minimum of CO2discharge…which, in turn, allowed him to prepare a perfectly satisfying meal with the packs of freeze-dried trail food he’d brought along in his supply kit.
An hour later, he was back into his somewhat drier desert-camouflage Ghillie suit—with a full stomach and all of his gear and supplies repacked for a hasty recaching and escape—stretched out across the irregular crevice floor on some moderately comfortable pine branches, watching for approaching lights, and waiting for the rain to stop so he could begin his descent.
All things considered, Mialkovsky was reasonably satisfied with his situation. The only thing that bothered him was a lack of answers to some very basic questions, such as:
Who was the Hispanic male who had shown up at his scene at such a goddamned inopportune moment?
What was that unknown element doing on this mountaintop with an old Vietnam War–era nightscope?
When would the storm break?
Where would the helicopters go when it did?
Why had the cops at the campsite opened up on the Hispanic with such a massive barrage of gunfire?
Finally, how would the investigation of that crime scene impact the evaluation of his own carefully rigged scene?
But the thing that Mialkovsky wanted to know more than anything else was what Gil Grissom and his team were up to, right now, with God-only-knew what collected evidence, down at the LVPD crime lab.
11
FIREARMS EXAMINERBOBBYDAWSONand DNA expert Wendy Simms both looked up when Gil Grissom walked purposefully into the traditionally misnamed ballistics comparison lab.
“Hi, boss,” Bobby said, pulling his stool aside from the comparison scope so that Grissom could get a good view of the evidence. Two expended brass cartridge cases were brightly visible under the reflecting lights of the dual stage mounts. “I was just getting ready to set the bullet from the Toledano shooting up on the scope. Sorry it’s taking so long, but we had to be real careful in peeling back those mushroomed edges to get at the tissue; and I wanted to do that first, with Wendy here, so that she could get working on the ID.”
