Now it makes a lot of sense. Smiley couldn't tell who fired which casing. He just knew it was all SWAT ordnance that would eventually be matched to one of their sniper rifles.'
Alexa sat looking at me, the hot dog forgotten in her hand. 'Shit,' she said softly, then dropped the uneaten dog in the trash.
'My guess is Vince got the two-twenty-three casings from the SRT range in Moorpark and the three-oh-eights from the sheriff's SWAT range. He set up the phony shooting sites, the secondary crime scenes, left the three-oh- eight casing in the apartment across the street from Greenridge's house and the two-twenty-three behind Nightingale's, along with the Danner boot prints, for us to find. We all thought the shooter was making it too easy, not picking up his brass. That's why! He needed us to find them. He was setting a frame.'
'I'm going to go talk to Tony and Bill. Then we need to take it to Cole.' Alexa stood. 'Where are you going to be?'
'I've gotta find my partner. She's disappeared.'
'Okay, but turn your damn phone on. I got a call from Cal. He said he can't reach you. Who do you think you're fooling with that shit?'
'If I'd answered that call, I'd have spent the morning downtown sorting through SRT folders, and we wouldn't have any of this, so you tell me,' I said.
She nodded, turned to go, then turned back and unexpectedly kissed me. A bright smile suddenly appeared on her face. The first one I'd seen in two weeks.
'You're the best damn detective on the force,' she told me. 'Wanta fuck?' I asked.
'Hold the thought. I'll get right back to you on that.' Then she spun and ran across the park toward Parker Center.
Chapter 38
Jigsaw john was a genius. No wonder the guy cleared 85 percent of his cases. I sat in the park, looking up Union Street at Parker Center, trying to pin down the last pieces of the puzzle. Smiley had used identical weapons from his own armory to shoot Nightingale and Greenridge. Mr. Magoo couldn't remember the correct ages of the twins. He'd guessed too young. They weren't eight or ten, they were twelve. An easy enough mistake for an old grump with no kids. The Smileys moved away in one year because of the fiasco at Midge's school. Changed school districts, left Pasadena, went to Glendale.
My guess was that Jo Brickhouse was still out in Pasadena at the hospital. I called and asked for someone in admitting or records, did my badge number boogie, and was told that nobody from the L. A. Sheriff's Department had been there looking at birth records.
Okay-so, where was my strong-willed partner?
I called the Sheriff's Bureau, reached Jo's office at Internal Affairs, and asked them if they'd heard from her. Nada.
Where are you, kid? Then uneasiness struck. A sense of impending disaster swept down on me. A fluttering of dark wings in my mind, stirring dead air in my empty head.
Why did I tell her to keep her cell off? Stupid.
But I'd solved it. We'd solved it.
From here on it was just a straight-up system bust, put out a BOLO: Be on the lookout. Wait until some passing squad car made the spot, take Mr. Smiley off to jail, or if he wanted to do the dance, plant him right where we find him. Either way, Jo and I were out of it. For us it was over. Nothing bad was headed our way. I tried to ignore my premonition of disaster.
'You got five dollars?' a gruff voice said.
I looked up at a homeless man, about fifty, with matted hair and taped-up sneakers.
'I'm starvin'. Ain't et for a day.'
'I know where you can get a good meal.'
I reached down into the trash and fished out Alexa's uneaten hot dog. It was still warm and wrapped in white paper. I handed it to him.
'What the fuck am I gonna do with that?' he said.
'Eat it. Nothing wrong with it.'
He shook his head. His expression, a symphony of disgust.
'Ain't the way it works, asshole.' He dropped the dog back into the trash, turned, and limped away.
Yeah? So, how does it work? I wondered. I give you the fin, so you can buy more malt liquor? Keep you drinking malt 40s until your leaking kidneys finally rot? That how it works, asshole?
I had a moment of sweeping remorse. I had been so focused on the case for the last ten days, it had completely consumed me. Now that it looked like we had the answers, I was feeling empty and alone, sitting on a bench in a park full of strangers. Again, my case had moved on without me. I needed to clear my head, so I decided to call and see if Chooch was having football practice this afternoon. He'd said he would leave a message on the phone to give me the time and location. I called our answering machine and, sure enough, Chooch's voice greeted me.
'This is for Dad: four o'clock-same place in Agoura. It's looking up. I've got some real animals on this team.'
Just as I was about to hang up I heard another voice.
'Hoss, this is Jo. I found Susan Smiley's address.' She sounded jazzed. 'I had someone in my office go through all the phone books. We found a listing. She lives in Inglewood, off Centinela, near Vincent Park. Three-four-six Hillside. Since we're running out of time, I'm on my way over there now. If you get this message you can meet me there. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and brace her woman-to-woman, see how much I can get. Wish me luck.'
I hit the ground running before the message was complete. Jo didn't know that Susan was Vincent.
I reached the Acura and squealed out, jamming my finger on the GPS to bring up the map screen. The most direct route to Inglewood was straight down La Brea. It was just a little past one in the afternoon, so, with the lunch traffic, I'd probably make better time on surface streets than by trying to get over to the freeway.
I roared down Exposition, breaking lights, then hung a left onto La Brea. I don't have a MCT in my personal car, so, with no computer, I turned on the police scanner under the dash and put out a call for backup.
'This is L-nineteen. Officer requests backup at three-four-six Hillside in Inglewood. One plainclothes female officer with blond hair in a blue jacket is already on the scene. Perp at this address is a possible One-eight-seven P. Request a unit respond Code Three.'
The RTO came back immediately and put out the call division-wide. Unit A-22 was assigned Code-3.
All the way down La Brea I cursed myself for having Jo turn off all her communication equipment, a complete breach of police procedure. How could I have been such a jerk?
I passed Slauson.
I was praying this was another Susan Smiley, but the way my luck had been running, I doubted it. Vincent had been Susan Smiley all the way through seventh grade. Susan was his alter ego. In trouble, hiding from the law, I was pretty sure he'd choose to be Susan again. If he did, then Jo Brickhouse was walking right into another vertical coffin.
After I passed Fairview, I heard a siren converging on my left. In the LAPD, only one unit at a time can go red-light-and-siren. The reason is, if two units both have their sirens on, they can't hear one another. As they both get close to the address, the chance of a high-speed collision grows exponentially. Way too many units crashed before this rule was in place.
I could hear the crosstalk on the scanner. One-Adam-22 was about four blocks to my right as I turned on Hyde Park. I was now inside of Inglewood. All the way down La Brea I had been trying to dial in my GPS. Finally I had the address programmed in. Hillside was about four blocks up, off Field Street.
I saw Field, hung a right, then turned right again. Finally I was on Hillside. I'd beaten the squad cars. Half a
