Alexa finally spoke: 'Let's low-key it. Do it with a warrant control team; but we should recognize the risk and keep SWAT in reserve.'
'No.' Tony overruled sharply. 'That's nuts. We do it by the book.'
Alexa stiffened slightly, but she put up no further argument.
'If we serve our people, you gotta serve yours,' Salazar finally spoke.
Brady Cagel and Garrett Metcalf, with their tan gabardine suits and styled hair, stood stone-faced, looking like window mannequins, or an ad for genetic engineering.
'We don't have time to argue about this.' Cole Hatton stepped up, grasping the gravity of the problem.
'I can convince a friendly federal judge across the street to paper the warrant on our guys. Tony, you get the municipal judge for the sheriffs.'
Metcalf and Cagel didn't like it, but what could they say? Their own U. S. Attorney had just jumped the fence.
The meeting broke up. A lot of unhappy faces crowded into the elevator for the ride down. I walked with Alexa back to her office. She was quiet most of the way. Once she was behind her desk she picked up a folder and handed it to me.
'What's this?' I asked.
'You were right about Vincent Smiley applying to the LAPD before Arcadia,' she said stiffly. 'We turned him down in April of 'ninety-nine. He flunked the preliminary psych interview. I made a copy of the written denial by the academy, but I haven't had a chance to read anything, except the summary. He looks like damaged goods.' She seemed distracted, tense-wrapped tighter than the inside of a baseball. I was about to say something when her phone rang, so I waved good-bye and left.
When I reached the lobby I was paged. The LCD readout said: Jo Brickhouse. I found her number and called back. She was still out at the sheriff's crime lab when she answered.
'Me,' I said. 'What's up?'
'The crime techs have done both casings. Good striation marks and pin impressions on both. If we can get comparison casings, our lab says they have enough here to make a match.'
'Good. Sheriff Messenger just covered his ass with a search warrant. He can't use the first batch-illegally obtained. He'll have to stick with the cover story, say the range captain was just adjusting sights, and do it all over again. Get in touch with Messenger's office and have him send the second batch of brass over to the lab as soon as he gets them. I'll let you know when the SRT long guns have been tested.'
'One more thing…' she said.
'Go.'
'Robyn DeYoung, the CSI for Hidden Ranch, just rolled out of here with an evidence team and two vans full of academy cadets. She's on her way back up there to search for a dog and a bomb shelter. What's all that about?' She sounded suspicious.
'Try to reach Messenger and make arrangements to get his brass out to your lab, then meet me out there as soon as you can. I'll fill you in when I see you.'
Chapter 25
When I got back to Hidden Ranch Road there were two parked sheriff's academy vans and at least two dozen academy cadets up by the burned-out house, dressed in grubbies and yellow fire slickers, leaning on shovels. They seemed glad to be working on an actual case, instead of running laps and doing pull-ups at the Academy. They were eagerly looking at the large dig site, anxious to begin.
I spotted a slightly plump female criminalist with wire-rimmed glasses and red, curly, Orphan Annie-styled hair. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and was wearing a crime tech windbreaker, sweatpants, and a white T- shirt that said: Get Off My Fucking Crime Scene. Had to be Robyn DeYoung.
Jo hadn't arrived yet, so I walked up to Robyn, who was standing a few feet past where the front porch had once been, just about on the exact spot where Emo Rojas had bled to death. She was holding an open set of builder's plans and was issuing instructions, dividing the cadets into four teams and assigning them to separate quadrants of the dig site. When she finished, she turned to me.
'Don't tell me. You're Scully,' she said.
'Guilty,' I replied. 'DeYoung?'
She nodded. Aside from the curly red hair, she also had freckles across the bridge of her nose and was attempting a disapproving scowl. But she possessed an instant likability, an infectious demeanor. She was mad at me for sending her back out here in all this damp ash and rubble, but for her anger wasn't a durable emotion, and it was already burning off like predawn mist.
'Sorry to put you through this again,' I said, trying to soften her up.
'If you wanna grab a shovel, I have a fire slicker in my trunk that might fit you.'
'Gee-me with a shovel. Now there's a heady concept.'
'Didn't think so,' she said. 'Okay. Always good to have another supervisor.' She opened the plans and studied them.
'Building department?' I asked.
'Yep. Pulled 'em this morning. No architect on these homes. Builder contracted. They all run between three and five hundred K. They seem nice, but when you look close they're just two-story, hollow-wall deals. Probably why it flashed over so fast.'
'Right,' I said. 'The hot gas grenades and all that ammo in the garage probably didn't hurt either.'
She let it pass, then asked, 'What am I looking for again?'
'Rottweiler.'
'Okay, have a seat and get started on your ice cream. If he's here, we'll dig him up.'
I returned to the car, then opened the manila envelope containing Smiley's LAPD academy records and started to read.
The person who did the psychological profile was Doctor Hammond Emerson IV. I always love it when people put Roman numerals after their names, like inbred New England dilettante French royalty. Doctor Emerson had conducted three interviews with Smiley in 1999. He found the subject to be evasive and secretive. He felt that Smiley clearly had parental issues, particularly with his mother, which the doctor surmised could have stemmed from child abuse. Emerson noted in his summary that Vincent exhibited some gender confusion and a sense of hostility toward women that most probably also stemmed from the deep-seated problems with his mother, Edna Smiley-currently deceased.
Doctor Emerson concluded that Vincent Smiley demonstrated sado-sexual tendencies combined with latent rage. Emerson also surmised that these problems would create great stress when interrelating with females, both in the department as well as in society.
The LAPD academy employed a point system for applicants. Out of a possible one hundred points Smiley had scored forty, well below the seventy required to be considered for admission. Not even a close miss.
I closed the file, tapping it with my thumb. Was the AK-47 a deadly penis substitute? Was Smiley trying to make up for his sexual confusion by going postal and shooting up his neighborhood?
Just then Jo Brickhouse pulled to the curb in a sheriff's black-and-white. We both got out of our cars and met halfway. I handed her the file. 'What's this?' she said. She still seemed angry, but maybe it was me, and I was just projecting.
'Smiley's LAPD academy app. He applied to us before Arcadia. Probably took a shot at your department, too. You might see if they turned him down and if they have a psych profile on him.'
She took the file, opened it, and skimmed it while I watched the cadets moving ash and charred lumber off the site.
'Gay?' she said raising an eyebrow.
'Hey, come on, take it easy. That doesn't necessarily make him a bad person.'
