'Paul, not Vincent?'
'If you'll let me finish, I'm getting to that.'
'Sorry.'
I wrote down paul and susan smiley, underlined paul, then wrote kimble country day-'88.
'Paul was very bright and outgoing. His twin sister, Susan, was extremely shy. Almost never said anything.'
So they were twins, I thought, writing that down.
Midge was saying, 'They didn't get along, which seemed strange for twins, but they were both excellent students.'
'Sixth grade-that made them about twelve.'
'Yes. Twelve.'
'At the end of seventh grade something very extraordinary happened.'
'What was that?'
'Susan Smiley was in the girl's restroom when one of the other little girls happened to open the bathroom stall. Susan had forgotten to lock it and this other girl saw that Susan had a penis. She was standing up in her blonde ringlets and dress, urinating right into the toilet.'
'Susan was a boy.'
'Yes. It turned out that Susan was really Vincent. We took the child into the nurse's office and called his parents in. Stanley Smiley didn't come, but his mother Edna did. We forced an inspection in her presence so we could see for ourselves. Well, I must tell you, nobody was prepared for what happened next. Mrs. Smiley went into a white rage. I think she was a drinker and was maybe a little drunk at that meeting. She started shouting that she didn't care what I or anybody thought. She didn't want twin boys, always wanted a daughter. So she raised Vincent as Susan. She let his hair grow long and had been dressing him as a girl since he was an infant.'
She sat back and looked at me, the sad memory of this rich on her face. 'Once Mrs. Smiley told us that, it explained everything. Vincent's shy behavior when he was being Susan, the fact that the twins seemed to hate each other. It was an impossible situation. All over school the children were talking about it. We had to call a school assembly with everybody's parents to discuss the situation. Twelve is an awkward age, and sexuality becomes a growing concern. I knew that it would be a mistake to try and keep the Smiley boys at school. The school year was almost over, so I made arrangements for them to finish the grade work at home.'
'And then they were homeschooled the following year?' I said.
'Yes. We called in Child Services. There was a major argument about taking the children away from the Smileys. But, since they weren't being physically abused, there was no way to remove them from the home, because, when you came down to it, they had only violated a school dress code. We signed an affidavit and the boys were homeschooled for the eighth grade. We supplied the curriculum, then the boys went off to Glendale High in ninth grade.'
'As boys this time?'
'Yes. Vincent and Paul registered at Glendale High.'
'Do you know about the car accident that killed their parents?' I asked.
'Strange you should mention that. When it happened I think the police suspected Vincent. They came and talked to me. Back then he was still a juvenile, around seventeen I believe.'
'So the results of that investigation would be locked in his juvenile record,' I said, making a note. This explained why the C. A. wouldn't release Vincent's file. She obviously had read all of his juvie records for Pasadena and Glendale and knew it would be used at the SWAT trial. Without a court order mandating its release, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.
'I think the police suspected Vincent of foul play,' Midge was saying. 'I know they picked him up and talked to him. The Smileys had moved to a house off Cliff View in Glendale. There was a steep incline that went down from their house. One evening, Stanley and Edna's brakes failed. They went over the cliff on the last turn. The car burned, so nothing much was left for the police to examine. Eventually, it just went into the records as an accident.'
Fat chance, I thought.
'He was out of high school after that-in junior college.' She went on. 'That was the last I heard of him, until that shoot-out two weeks ago.' She frowned. 'That poor boy probably never had much of a chance, did he?'
'Thank you, Mrs. Kimble. You've been a huge help.' I stood to go. 'If you think of anything else call me at that number.' I put down my card.
'You should try and get in touch with his brother Paul. I think he lives up in San Francisco. He might be able to tell you something.'
'I can't,' I said. 'Paul's dead.'
Chapter 37
I couldn't reach Jo on the phone, but then, like an asshole, I'd told her to keep her cell off to avoid getting called in by the FBI. My next try was Alexa.
She was in Cole Hatton's office and stepped out of a heated debate to take my call. Since the meeting was just breaking up, she agreed to get together with me in Union Park across the street from the Federal Building in thirty minutes.
I hit the gas and cut through traffic, banging on my horn, going Code 2, breaking red lights all the way to the freeway. Then I slammed the pedal down, doing almost ninety on the 110 and took the Chinatown off-ramp to Union Park. It was a little past one o'clock when I grabbed a metered parking place and got out. I saw Alexa in a great-looking black dress I'd bought her for her birthday. She was standing over by a hot dog vendor buying a foot- long, saw me coming, and met me halfway.
'Sit down,' I told her. 'So you don't drip mustard on my favorite outfit.' We settled on a bench nearby.
'What is it that couldn't wait an hour until I got back to the office?' she said. She still looked way too stressed to me.
'If I told you that Vincent Smiley was alive, that he went out that tunnel Jo and I found under his house, what would you say?'
'That it's impossible. His DNA was crossmatched. The man's positively dead.'
'Smiley had an identical twin brother named Paul. Identical twins have identical DNA.'
She sat there taking this in. Then she said, 'Had?'
'My bet is it was the twin who did the flambe in the bathtub. It's a long story why, but Paul and his twin brother Vincent hated each other. My theory is Vince lured his brother down from San Francisco, or maybe even kidnapped him. Either way, he gets Paul out to Hidden Ranch. He ties him up and waits. When Emo shows up he starts a shoot-out, conks his brother, and leaves him in the tub, then crawls out through the tunnel we found.'
'And you think Vincent is the one murdering the SWAT team guys.' She furrowed her brow, trying to fit the pieces.
'That's my guess. He hates cops because they wouldn't accept him so he arranges his death using Paul as a stand-in. Then he crawls out through the tunnel. He pops Greenridge first, then does Nightingale to get a SWAT war going between the sheriff's department and ATF, sits back, and watches it go down on TV. I've been looking at this guy's early life, and we have a very sick puppy here.'
'What about the shell casings? We found shell casings at both crime scenes that match long guns at both SEB and SRT. One of them has a partial print that matches an SEB deputy.'
'I've been thinking about that on the way over here. SRT does their SWAT training out in Moorpark, at a range they have there. Sheriff's do it at Spring Ranch, near Agoura. I've been to Spring Ranch. You can see the firing range from the road. How hard would it be to hide out on the road until an SEB SWAT team shows up for target practice, wait till they leave, and sneak in and pick up the brass from the long guns?
'It never quite worked for me, that Patrick Dutton was on the SEB Red team and not Scott Cook's Gray team.
