cell phone to call the captain in charge of his SWAT house.
'This is Sheriff Messenger,' he told the switchboard operator. 'Who's on the desk this morning?' We waited, then he said, 'Put Captain Otto on please.'
A minute later the SWAT commander came on the line and Messenger told him what he wanted.
I took my Beretta out of my ankle holster and jacked a round into the chamber, then repacked the nine on my belt.
'Okay, Captain,' Sheriff Messenger said, 'I want you to take Sergeant Dutton to the side door. Make sure he's not armed. Stand there with him and wait.'
He paused while the captain spoke, then said, 'Good. See you in five.'
We drove down the winding drive. There were almost twenty sheriff's black-and-whites of all makes and sizes, along with four big SWAT vans, parked in the lot beside a one-story ranch-style building.
Tony pulled around to the side door where a middle-aged, dark-haired captain with a Marine's combat bearing was standing next to a freckled, red-haired man about twenty-five who was chewing a wad of tobacco, occasionally spitting juice into a Styrofoam cup. This was Sergeant Patrick Dutton. He had a confused look on his Irish face.
Tony set the brake and we all got out.
Sheriff Messenger walked over to his SWAT commander and handed him the arrest warrant, then he turned to the red-haired man.
'Sergeant Pat Dutton?' he asked.
'Yes sir,' Dutton replied, clearly puzzled.
I looked down and saw that he was wearing Danner Terra Force jump boots laced up over his tan, SEB Weapons Team jumpsuit. But so did the captain and probably two-thirds of the SWAT guys stationed here.
'You're under arrest for suspicion of murder,' Messenger said as Captain Otto handed Dutton the warrant.
Dutton's expression barely changed. All that happened was he shifted his tobacco chaw to the other side of his lip, then spit a line of juice into the cup.
'Whatta you kidding?' he said. 'Who'd I kill?'
'An SRT agent named William Greenridge,' Messenger said.
Dutton looked from me, to Jo, to Chief Filosiani, then back at Sheriff Messenger. An entire new range of emotions now played like a wide-screen movie across his open face: first humor, then disbelief, followed by fear and panic. I knew a split-second before it happened that he was going to bolt.
He lunged away from Captain Otto and headed across the parking lot. I threw myself at him, low and head first, tackling him with a body block below the knees. The move took his legs out and he tumbled over my back. The cup of tobacco juice went flying, but Dutton was a commando and he hit and rolled, coming up to his feet almost immediately.
I've seen fast moves in dojos, seen plenty of black belts working out with each other on police mats, but I wasn't prepared for Sergeant Jo Brickhouse. As Pat Dutton regained his footing, he spun and Jo blocked him with her body, then threw three quick blows: A straight-hand finger strike to his neck, followed by a closed fist shot to the solar plexus. The last was a knee to the groin.
Patrick Dutton went down hard, and seconds later Tony and I had him cuffed and in custody.
'I want an attorney,' Dutton gasped at Captain Otto. He was holding his balls and must have swallowed the chaw, because he suddenly gagged, leaned forward, and puked it up at our feet.
Chapter 33
The next morning Jo and I were unceremoniously shifted to the backwater of our own investigation.
The ABC news desk had gotten wind of Pat Dutton's arrest. Somebody at SEB or Parker Center had leaked it, along with all of the evidence we had against him. The story about two L. A. SWAT teams gone wild broke nationally on Good Morning America.
Alexa called me into her office at 9 a. M. and told me that, for political reasons, the U. S. Attorney was taking charge of the investigation. Jo and I could stay on background, but Cole Hatton had strong-armed the city council and Mayor Mac off the case and was using his own investigating officers. Starting this afternoon, we would report to a couple of GS-12s from the local bureau of the FBI.
There was a press conference scheduled on the fifth floor of Parker Center at 10 a. M. Jo and I were told it was not necessary for us to attend.
We were two blocks away, sitting in a back booth of the Peking Duck restaurant while keeping one eye on the TV that was on in the bar. Half a dozen off-duty dicks from the Robbery-Homicide p. M. watch were sitting in there having a 10 a. M. after-work beer and watching KTLA's field reporter, Stan Chambers, do a pre-event standup in front of an empty podium. The volume was just loud enough to hear from our booth in the next room.
'Sources inside the department indicate that these two SWAT team murders might be connected to the fiery shoot-out that occurred on Hidden Ranch Road ten days ago,' Chambers announced. 'We'll be waiting right here at Parker Center for this all-important press conference to convene. Back to you, Hal.'
I kept one ear on the TV, but turned back to Jo while weather and sports drifted in from the bar.
Jo was saying, 'This insurance guy I called says a fifteen-thousand-dollar premium on a universal life policy would pay out almost a million dollars in benefits if it was whole life, which, according to this printout my friend hacked, it was.'
A Chinese waiter came over to bring us coffee. Jo asked him for some Equal and he recovered a dish from another table. She immediately began tearing open little blue packets while I sat back and took a sip from my cup. Unfortunately, the blend at the Peking Duck was watery, just like their tea. I guess it's okay when green tea is weak, but weak coffee really sucks. I'd forgotten how bad it could get in here.
I set my cup down and said, 'So if Smiley buys a house in Hidden Ranch for five hundred K, where's the other half mil?'
'Don't know. Here's the exact financial picture.' She looked down at her notebook. 'I went through his tax returns. He deposited four hundred eighty thousand in Glendale S and L at five percent when the policy paid out in 'ninety-six. The house didn't cost five hundred K. He paid three hundred thirty thousand for it in 'ninety-nine, all cash, leaving him with one hundred fifty grand in the S and L. He's been drawing down on that to live. He still has a little under eighty thousand left.'
'So, if there's eighty grand in his estate, and nobody is stepping up to collect his body, we gotta figure there's nobody left in his immediate family to claim it.'
'Would seem that way. I checked all his bank accounts. No safety deposit box. So, if he did have the missing five hundred thou, maybe it burned up in the fire.' She started making her gruel, mixing in the six packets. She was going to end up with brown sugar water. 'Or maybe the other half mil's in a fruit jar buried in the backyard,' she added as she stirred.
'I can hardly wait to ask Robyn De Young to head back out there with a metal detector and her trusty cadet shovel squad.'
'I wouldn't do that. There's too many better ways to hide cash these days.'
'So, where's the rest of it, then?'
'Don't know,' she said. 'Boat? Foreign investments? Unlisted house in the Bahamas? Money isn't the motive anyway. Neither was suicide. Pure, kick-ass anger got this done. Vincent was a wannabe cop and a cop-hater with deep psychological problems. He goes fruitcake and barricades himself in his house and starts shooting our troops. He was just killing cops. That was his whole program.'
'So you're buying that now?' I said, looking up.
'It took me a while to get there, but yeah, I think that's the reason this all started. But we're just jerking off with all this background. The U. S. Attorney doesn't want to hear it. The case went that-a-way.' She jerked a thumb at the TV in the bar.
