Bill Messenger and his area commander Paul Matthews stood on one side of the room. Garrett Metcalf and Brady Cagel were next to the windows in nicely fitted, gabardine suits, easily winning the fashion competition. Tony Filosiani and Mayor MacKenzie looked uncomfortable in the center of the room, while Alexa hovered nearby.
'This is Sergeant Scully,' Tony said. I shook hands with Cole Hatton, who barely looked at me before he turned back to the mayor.
'I don't see any rationale for overturning a federal statute,' he said. 'The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives should be allowed to investigate the death of one of their own. According to your own criminalists, there was C-four residue on the ashes. Illegal C-four is a mandated statute of ATF. That's basically it, unless the FBI deems that its own absence from the case would materially affect the interest of justice. That's the way the statute reads.' His voice was booming in the high-ceilinged room. Everybody winced at the mention of the FBI.
'We've got a dead sheriff's deputy and some very strange circumstances surrounding the service of a warrant given to us by ATF,' Messenger said. 'Their Internal Affairs investigated and found no wrongdoing, but our IAD sees it differently. The county will undoubtedly face lawsuits. Since the mayor ordered the LAPD to reinvestigate, our opinion is that these cases are related, and that gives Sergeant Scully standing to investigate the Greenridge murder.'
'How is the murder of William Greenridge related to Emo Rojas? That's nuts,' Garrett Metcalf said hotly. 'Unless you're suggesting something pretty damn unfriendly.'
'Can we all calm down?' Hatton said, then crossed to his desk. 'I'm going to bifurcate the investigations. LAPD can go ahead and reinvestigate the Hidden Ranch warrant problem, but ATF is going to handle their own agent homicide and the investigation into how the hell this nut got his hands on so much C-four.'
'And if the two investigations overlap?' Alexa asked.
'Try and keep that from happening. Build a Chinese wall,' Hatton instructed.
'Hey, if they overlap, Cole, they overlap.' Now Tony was getting mad. 'How'm I gonna build a Chinese wall? That's total bullshit.'
'Hand over all of your tapes, photographs, forensics, ballistics, and trace evidence from the Mission Street crime scene to the ATF homicide investigators,' Hatton said to Tony. 'Do it before close of business today. That's it.'
We all filed out of his office. The feds looked smug, the cops looked pissed, Mayor Mac, Tony, and Alexa looked dazed.
Technically speaking, the crime scene we had been ordered out of was Greenridge's house on Mission. Nobody had said anything about the apartment across the street. Of course, to be fair, they didn't even know about that yet. But if I played it carefully, and if Nan Chambers didn't blow me in on the pages of the Valley Times tomorrow morning, maybe I could keep us in the game. I had to call her and set up a meeting to make sure she'd play along.
The brass casing from the.308 was burning a hole in my pocket as we walked into the underground garage.
Chapter 17
We need to talk,' I said, stopping the two top cops before they got into their cars. Alexa had stayed upstairs with the feds to work out the details of handing over the evidence from Mission Street. I pulled out the.308 casing and showed it to Tony. He studied the brass in the cellophane evidence bag. 'Looks like it's been fumed.'
'It has.'
I told them about finding the secondary crime scene and how I discovered the cartridge casing with Nan Chambers, then hardened the print in Billy's microwave. I finished by saying, 'I locked up the apartment, but I didn't call it in or bring our crime techs out there yet. I was just about to when I got the forthwith.'
Messenger was now holding the cellophane baggie with his thumb and index finger, glaring at the casing like it was a dead cockroach he'd found in his salad. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going through the sheriff's mind. If that partial print on the shell casing matched one of his SEB SWAT members, then his department was hip high in trouble.
'We got a big problem,' Tony said, his Brooklynese bubbling up. 'You turn this over to ATF, first they're gonna demand you print-check all your guys, then they're gonna wanta test-fire them Tango Fifty-ones and Forty-Xs you got at SEB to see if one matches the breach and ejection striations on this brass. The sheriff's police union is gonna start throwing bricks. They'll say you got no probable cause to test those weapons, and this turns from a petty jurisdictional squabble into a shit sandwich.'
Bill Messenger was still holding my cellophane evidence bag. 'Okay, Tony, how do you wanta do it then?'
'It's your department, Bill. We're only investigating the warrant problem at Hidden Ranch. You wanta take on a U. S. Attorney, have at it.'
'I got a compromise,' Bill said. Tony listened, rocking back slightly on his heels.
'You let me put an investigator next to Shane and I'll get all my SEB long rifles tested. There won't be any union trouble. I'll do it under the radar, have the range officer take them all out for sight adjustments or something, then we'll collect the brass and look for a match. If this casing fits one of those rifles, or this print is from one of my guys, then I'll find a way to get past the union. I got no room in my outfit for killers. I'll bust 'em myself and hand the whole thing over to ATF.'
'I don't want some deputy looking over my shoulder,' I said, seizing only on the first thing he said and ignoring the rest.
'Shut up, Shane,' Tony commanded. Then he looked at Messenger. 'Okay. You get a print run started and have your SEB long guns tested and checked against this brass, and in return, Shane works with one deputy of your choosing.'
'Deal,' Messenger said. 'And as long as all the Hidden Ranch forensic stuff is already at our crime lab, I'd like to suggest we leave it there. My criminalists are as good as yours. It'll save time.'
Tony nodded his agreement. Then Bill Messenger turned to me. 'Your partner is going to be Sergeant Brickhouse, one of my crack IAD investigators. You two can meet over at the sheriff's main building this afternoon at four.'
'No. Your office is too far away, and I have a bunch of stuff to do on this side of the hill. Let's meet at Denny's restaurant at five. The one on Lankershim in the Valley.'
'Done.' Then Messenger turned, and carrying the brass casing, walked to his car.
After he drove out, I looked at Tony. 'How the hell's this gonna work? I'm really supposed to investigate the Rojas shooting with some biased hump from the sheriff's rat squad?'
Tony unlocked his car, took off his coat, and threw it over the seat. 'Yeah, because if I was in Messenger's position I'd feel just like him. I'd want my own investigator looking out for my interests, too. He's in a deep crack.' Tony settled into his Crown Vic and turned to look at me. 'We've gotta turn that secondary crime scene over to ATF,' he said. 'Why don't you get somebody to rediscover it? Then call the feds and give it to them.'
'But we don't give 'em the shell casing I found in there? How's that work?'
'I don't know. I'll think about it and we'll reevaluate all our options as things progress. In the meantime, put this thing down fast, Shane. I don't like where it's going. If SEB and SRT are gunning for each other after work, we're all gonna end up in the bag.' He put his car in gear and drove out.
I still had two hours before my meeting with Sergeant Brick-house. As soon as I was on street level where my cell would work, I needed to make two calls: Lou Ruta and Nan Chambers. The first was going to be Ruta. I finally had a use for that angry asshole. I pulled up the ramp into a smoggy L. A. afternoon and reached for my phone. It rang before I could open it.
'Hello?' I held the unit to my ear as I drove.
'Shane? Sonny Lopez.' He sounded a long way away, or we had a bad connection.
