write a warrant on a location just like us. They'd have to get permission to bug a building or a computer or a car phone, and then the warrant made them specify which computer, room, or phone you wanted bugged.'
'Yeah, you can't get warrants to just bug some guy's whole life, and the courts only approve most bugs for short time frames. Then they have to be removed. That's the way it still is. You're telling me that's changed for the FBI?'
'The PATRIOT Act altered everything. Most citizens don't know this, but instead of getting warrants on locations, the feds can now bug a person. It's called a `roving bug.' They listen to a suspect's cell phone and get his pen register-the numbers he's called. According to the act, they aren't supposed to listen to the conversations, but who's not going to listen in once they've got the tap? They find out where the suspect's heading and then, if they want, they can even do a black bag job on the structures he's going to visit. With a roving bug they can tap anything: buildings, restaurants, and in our case, even this old piece-of-shit Fair-lane. I don't know how the feds knew we were working Davide Andrazack's murder, but somehow Virtue must've gotten wind of it. Once he found out, he got Homeland to attach a high threat assessment to us and got the FISA court to issue the warrant.'
I felt like shit. I was the one who told Underwood about Andrazack. Virtue only knew about it because of me.
'If the FISA court gave them permission to rove with us,' Broadway continued, 'that means my house and our office phones, the computers-everything is probably compromised. It's a new world, Shane. Big Brother is definitely watching.'
He shook my hand. 'Nice working with you, even if we did get our water turned off in the end. Stay in touch. We'll go bowling some Saturday.' Then he got into the Fairlane and pulled out of the garage.
I took my time driving home and thought about all these changes in the law. As a cop I wanted to catch dangerous criminals, and I certainly wanted terrorists behind bars, so any expansion of police powers seemed welcome. But as a citizen, I wasn't so sure. In the wrong hands was this unlimited power dangerous? Were the Fourth Amendment rights afforded me by the U. S. Constitution being abridged? This new roving bug, created by the PATRIOT Act, seemed to give the government too much leeway. If abused, would it be at the expense of important constitutional freedoms?
All the agency had to do was get permission from their secret court, which, according to Broadway, was not accountable to any higher power. That raised a lot of questions. For instance, what happens to these roving bugs after the suspect leaves a particular building? Were they deactivated or just left in place? What were the legal guidelines in a completely secret proceeding? What provisions, if any, were there for oversight of the FISA court? If the suspect under surveillance worked in the Glass House as the three of us did, could the feds actually bug the police administration building without getting a municipal warrant?
Worse still, for reasons I couldn't comprehend, the Justice Department and R. A. Virtue seemed to have convinced the FISA court to target the three of us. If Roger was right, we couldn't even petition the court to find out why.
Alexa was at her desk in our bedroom working on more case material when I got home. She'd had a bad COMSTAT meeting yesterday, and was transferring half-a-dozen homicide detectives. Orders to move these guys had to be cut and she needed to approve the protocol. It was a lot of paperwork.
'What took you so long?' she asked as I came into the room. 'I was beginning to wonder if Justice had kidnapped you again.'
'Had to get my car back from the motor pool. Forty-six bucks.'
'Right. I forgot.'
'You want to take a break?' I asked. 'Get a beer?' 'Gimme fifteen minutes.'
I went into our bathroom, stripped off my clothes, took a hot shower, and washed ten hours of confinement off my skin. I put on a pair of frayed jeans and a T-shirt, went into the kitchen for a beer, then headed barefoot out to the backyard and Abbot Kinney's five-block fantasy.
I sat down in time to watch a family of ducks paddle by. I felt just like those ducks, serene and composed on the surface, but underwater, paddling like crazy.
A few minutes later, Alexa joined me. 'Picturesque,' she said, looking at the moon on the canals, or maybe the ducks. I knew she wasn't talking about me.
'Yep.'
'All and all, a pretty wild day.'
I could tell from her tone that her anger had dissipated.
She looked over at me. 'Not knowing where you were made me realize how much I need you. So I guess there's some good that comes from everything.'
I had decided to push ahead regardless of my new jeopardy with the feds.
'I got a cold hit on the bullet we dug out of Andrazack's head,' I said, positioning myself for an argument.
'Send it to Agent Nix.'
'Right.' I took a sip of my beer. 'Problem is, it matches a slug that killed an LAPD officer named Martin Kobb, in 'ninety-five.'
She peered at me in the dark. 'Really.'
'Yep. Unsolved case. Open homicide. This guy Kobb was off-duty and walked into a Russian market on Melrose, interrupted a burg in progress. He pulls his piece, badda-bing, badda-boom, he gets it in the head. Bullet is from the same gun that killed Andrazack.'
'You're sure?'
I'd come prepared. I pulled out the fax pictures of the two bullets and the case write-up that Karen sent me.
Our ballistics lab has a comparison microscope, which is basically two microscopes mounted side by side, connected by an optical bridge. She had retrieved the Kobb bullet from the cold case evidence room and photographed it next to Andrazack's using 40X magnification. The photo lined both slugs up back to back. Bullets can have as few as three, or as many as thirty different land and groove impressions. This one had twelve, and they lined up perfectly.
I handed the photo to Alexa. She held it to the light and studied it for a full minute or more.
'So here's my question,' I said. 'How does the Los Angeles Police Department look the other way on this? This guy was a brother officer. With the addition of this new ballistic evidence, how can we refuse to reopen the Martin Kobb investigation?'
'Shit. You're a tricky bastard,' she said softly.
'A lucky one, too. Just as one mount gets shot out from under me, along comes another horse to ride.' 'And you want. .?'
'This cold case. Assign me, and Detectives Broadway and Perry to investigate.'
'And when you run straight into Agent Nix and his flock of drooling jackals, what do you say?'
'We'll say, 'Nice to see you, Agent Nix. Hope all is going well on the Andrazack hit. We're just over here investigating this poor, dead LAPD officer from 'ninety-five.'
'And you think they won't go right up the wall?'
'Let 'em. You tell me, how can they take Marty Kobb away from us? The fact that it may be the same shooter who killed Andrazack is just one of those things.'
Alexa sat for a long time, thinking about it. She knew I was on solid ground technically. We had standing to work our own police officer's murder. But still, it put us in direct violation of an order from the head of California Homeland Security and the SAC of the local FBI.
This is the kind of wonderful stuff that, when it happens, makes me relish police work.
'I'll need to clear it with Tony. Write everything down so I'll have it for him to review.'
'You don't need to clear it with him. You're the head of the Detective Bureau. All you have to do is reactivate this cold case and give it to me.'
'I'm gonna talk to Tony.'
'Chicken,' I challenged.
'Maybe,' she said softly. 'But a lot is on the table, here. Not the least of which is the safety of a man I love.'
'I like the sentiment, but you're still a wuss.'
