Chapter 19
The moment the gun is in his hand, Edgar Castro’s eyes light up. He uses a serrated folding knife to remove the plastic tie running through the barrel, then eyeballs the breech to make sure there’s not a round in the chamber. When he passes it across the desk, I can sense his reluctance to let go. After double-checking for safety, I release the slide. It slams shut with a familiar metallic snap.
“Everything look right to you?” he asks.
I give the pistol a closer inspection. The blued finish is worn down on the edges, probably from holster wear, and the plastic factory grips have been replaced by checkered cocobolo. Along the front strap, a strip of skateboard tape provides tacky traction. The barrel is stamped .40 S&W, the cartridge our service pistols are chambered for. Thanks to my time clerking in the gun shop as a young man, I have an abiding awe for the trusty .45, but over the years I’ve come to respect the smaller, hotter .40. Apart from the fancy hardwood, this gun is a tool, plain and simple, the same as the one I carry every day.
“The tape’s a little ghetto,” I say, “but otherwise it looks fine.”
Castro’s little corner of csu is dark, packed with computer screens, lit by arc lamps, littered with a recycler’s dream supply of empty Dr. Pepper cans. The workspace, wiped clean apart from the pile of plastic evidence bags, was created by fitting a tabletop over a shoulder-to-shoulder rank of filing cabinets. He scrounged a desk from somewhere, too, a castoff from the dark days before the current cubicle system was installed.
He fishes a loaded magazine from a separate evidence bag, sliding it over.
“This stuff ’s all been checked for prints already?”
He nods. “It’s cool. Now, does that look right?”
The magazine’s weight feels good in my hand. I press down on the uppermost cartridge with my thumb, testing the spring’s resistance.
“I don’t get what you’re asking,” I say. “If there’s something wrong here, you’re going to have to point it out.”
He takes pistol and magazine back, inserts one into the other, then works the slide.
“Is that really necessary?” Even though the muzzle is safely aimed at the ground, I wince a little. Castro doesn’t inspire gun-handling confidence. He seems just the sort for an accidental discharge. Fortunately, the other technicians seem to give him a wide berth. The only other occupant of this particular room – calling it a lab would only dignify what looks like an oversized storage closet for high-tech equipment – vacated as soon as I showed up.
He drops the magazine and ejects the chambered round. It flips through the air, thumping to rest on the gray carpet.
“Just what you’d expect, right?” he says, setting the weapon down between us. “Now take a look at this.”
The next item on his show-and-tell list is a double magazine carrier, nice tan leather from Milt Sparks, the sort of thing you clip to your belt to keep spare ammunition handy. Thomson seems to have been a man after my own heart, judging from the grips and gun leather, splashing out for the good stuff.
“Nice,” I say. “So what?”
“Look at the magazines.”
With a sigh I withdraw the mags. They look the same as the other one. I thumb down the top round again, letting it spring back. Then the difference registers. The shape of the cartridges. Instead of the long, flat plane of a .40 caliber round, these are bottlenecked at the point where the bullet fits into the brass to accommodate a smaller projectile. I slide a round out, inspecting the bottom.
“These are .357 sig,” I say.
“Exactly. And they’re both the same. Now, the spent brass recovered inside Thomson’s vehicle was .40 caliber, and so are the rounds in the clip we found inside the gun. We dug the bullet out of the door pillar, and it’s .40 caliber, too, and a match for the barrel. So the fatal round was fired through that barrel, from that magazine. Everything is how it should be.”
“Except this.” I tap the .357 sig round against the desk.
“Right. So my question is, why was Thomson carrying one kind of ammo on his belt and another kind in his gun? You can load .357s into the same magazine as a .40, but have you ever tried firing one from a .40 caliber pistol? A little hint: don’t even try it. So either this guy Thomson was monumentally brain dead – I mean, really – or he didn’t pay much attention to detail. Or . . .”
“Or what?” I ask, though I already know where he’s going.
Castro picks up the gun and fieldstrips it, removing the entire slide assembly, then pulling the barrel out. He holds it up to his eye like a telescope.
“This is the barrel that fired the bullet that killed Detective Thomson,” he says, “but does that mean this is the gun?” He taps the pile of disassembled metal. “Not necessarily. You know what happened when the .357 sig round first came out? A lot of guys believed the hype, so they went out and bought drop-in barrels to convert their .40s into .357s. It’s as simple as fieldstripping the piece and putting a different barrel inside. Like this.” He opens a drawer, removing a silvered drop-in barrel, which he fits into the slide assembly, putting the pistol back together. When he’s done, he racks the slide a few times. “Now, if you stick one of Thomson’s spare mags in, this baby’s good to go. That’s really all it takes.”
He blossoms his hands like a magician, then sits back looking very satisfied. The theory forming in my head goes something like this. Someone in the passenger seat pulls a gun, pressing it against Thomson’s head. Pulling the trigger creates a contact wound, but to make the ballistics look right, the killer has to improvise. And it could only be improvisation. If he’d planned ahead, he might have found a way to cover his tracks better, but in the moment he just has to make do. He’s shot Thomson – now what? So he switches barrels between his own pistol and Thomson’s. Meaning the killer was armed with a sig Sauer P229, as well. One of us, more than likely.
“So let me get this straight,” I say. “You think someone shot Thomson, then fieldstripped both the murder weapon and Thomson’s gun, swapping the barrels and the magazines? Only why would he switch mags?”
Castro shrugs. “Maybe he’s doing it, and he realizes there’s a difference in the bullets. He wouldn’t be able to chamber a .357 round in a .40 caliber barrel, so that might be what tipped him off. He tries it, gets a jam, and has to switch the mags.”
“Then why leave Thomson’s spares behind?”
“He doesn’t see them,” he says. “Detective Thomson’s sitting down. He was wearing the mag carrier behind his left hip, so they’d be on the opposite side.” He pats his left hip. “Plus everything’s happening so fast. The perp messed up, basically.”
“Any prints on the barrel? What about the rounds in the magazine?”
He shakes his head. “There he didn’t mess up. They were wiped clean. Which is strange when you think about it. Those rounds should have prints all over them, right?”
“Mine would.”
I go through the motions in my mind, stripping the guns, changing the barrels, sorting out the ammunition. It’s complicated, but under stress someone familiar both with handguns and forensics could make it happen. And missing the extra magazines would be an easy mistake. The scene would have been dark, he’d be pumping with adrenaline, a dead man on the seat next to him, the rain hammering on the roof. There’s a problem, though.
“Maybe Thomson was absentminded. Maybe he forgot he’d loaded those mags with .357 sig rounds.”
“And he wiped his own prints off the barrel and cartridges?”
“I hear you,” I say. “I think you’re on to something, Castro, but you have to admit it’s thin.”
“Circumstantial, I know. But here’s another piece of circumstantial evidence. The trajectory of the bullet? If Detective Thomson really shot himself, he held the gun at a strange angle – ”
“That’s what Dr. Bridger said.”
“Look at this.”
He produces a plastic-bound report just like the one he gave me on the Morales shooting, flipping to another one of his 3-D reconstructions. This one has two panels. In the first, a crash-test dummy representing Thomson holds a pistol to his head, canting the gun at a forty-five degree angle. A red line from the barrel penetrates his head, continuing up through the roof of the vehicle.
“That’s not right, is it?” he says. “The bullet didn’t go out the roof. It was in the door pillar. But if he was sitting upright, the trajectory would have sent it through the ceiling. So he was leaning toward the door, like this.” He points to the second panel, where the dummy rests his head against the pillar. Now the red line is flat, running side to side, and the head is at an angle. “But why would he do that? It’s a strange way to shoot yourself, isn’t it?”
Yes, it is. But it makes perfect sense if someone else was in the car. The shooter drew on Thomson, punching the pistol forward into the side of his head. It struck him, pushing his skull against the door pillar, and then the shooter fired.
“You mind?” I ask, snatching the empty pistol.
Not only does Castro not mind my putting the gun to his head, he’s eager to arrange things just so. We set our chairs side by side against the wall, then he sits down and drapes his hands over an imaginary steering wheel. I get beside him, my finger away from the trigger, and slow-motion Thomson’s pistol through the air, from my lap to a point just above his ear. As soon as it touches, he slides toward the wall. When his head taps sheetrock, the angle of the gun is pretty much straight.
“It works.” I put the weapon down. I let out a sigh. “So that’s what happened.”
The sudden grin on Castro’s face, like I’ve just awarded him an A+ on his class project, reminds me again how green the kid is. Green or not, though, he’s sharp. And if there were a mirror in the room, it wouldn’t surprise me to see an equally stupid-looking grin on my own face, because my excitement has to be on par with his, if not higher.
“Good work, Castro. Really. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to do me a favor, and it won’t be easy for you. This information? We need to keep it between the two of us right now.”
His smile fades. “But why?”
“Think about it. If your theory is right, this wasn’t a premeditated thing. Something happened and the killer decided there was no other choice. He pulled his gun and fired.”
“And?”
“And it just so happened his gun matched Thomson’s. So does mine, Castro. So does yours. You see what I’m saying?”
“Anybody could have a sig Sauer.”
“Sure they could,” I say. “But we both know that’s not the deal here, right? For the time being, I need this to look like a suicide investigation, and if you shoot your mouth off about this theory, the wrong people are going to find out I’m on to them. So for now, can we keep it between the two of us?”
“I already told the other guys,” he says quietly.
“But they didn’t listen, did they? Let’s leave it at that.”
The struggle on his face lasts a second or two, then he nods with resignation. Playing along means no immediate recognition for his work, but since his colleagues aren’t backing him, there’s not much risk of professional trouble. This way, at least, he can feel like he’s in the know, keeping secrets for the detective in charge.
“Okay,” he says, sticking a hand out. “Deal.”
There’s no way he’ll let me go without a handshake, so I give in. His palms are damp and warm. I wait until I’m safely hidden behind the elevator door to wipe mine dry.
Get a cop to open up about his personal frustrations, and once you get past the office politics, the slow advancement, and the various fractures in the justice system, he might, assuming he’s the philosophical type, start talking about the gap between knowledge and proof. I’ve been cut by both sides of the blade, knowing things I couldn’t prove and proving things I didn’t really believe. The idea that there’s any connection between what we believe and what we can prove goes out the door early, at least it does if you’re paying attention.
I’ve sent men to prison with no idea whether they did the crime or not. The case was there, so I made it. The ultimate decision belongs to the judge or jury, something I took comfort in once, though not so much anymore. If we had to know – really know – what happened, no one would ever go to jail. Fortunately, you can prove things in court that you can never truly know.
By the same token, you can know things that can’t ever be proven. And that knowledge often has a certainty to it that the evidential sort never does. There are these unproven things about which I have a quasi-religious certainty, things I would act on more readily than anything I could support with mere evidence. I can’t explain this exactly, but anyone who has trodden long enough on the line between fact and truth will tell you the same.
Or not. I can only speak for myself.
When I try imagining Keller’s hand on the murder weapon – or Salazar’s, which is easier somehow – the mental image is absurd, almost laughable. Even so, it’s my new article of faith. Castro’s hunches fit in with Bridger’s qualm, but it can all be explained away. Everything can. Only I know what these men are capable of. I bear the marks on my flesh.
It’s not enough. It won’t convince Hedges or Bascombe. It won’t satisfy Wilcox. And if I go to any of them, I’ll tip my hand. That’s why Castro has to keep quiet. That’s why I have to tread very carefully, planning my next moves for maximum effect.
Back at my desk, I put in another call to Cavallo. She hasn’t returned yesterday’s call, and I’m beginning to think she never will. She’s probably relieved to see the back of me. Vance, the man who’s supposedly holding a box from Thomson, hasn’t called me, either. That’s the lead I want to follow up, and it’s as simple as feeding his phone number into the computer.
While I’m copying down the contact info on Mr. Vance Balinski, a Caucasian male aged thirty-four years, residing in an Uptown condo with a ten-year-old Mercedes coupe registered to his name, Detective Aguilar appears at my elbow, black eyes sparkling in his lobster-red face, a photo lineup clutched in his hands. Thanks to his gang experience, he caught my shooting, and now he perches on my desk and hums a little fanfare.
“What’re you so chipper about?”
He hands over the lineup, along with a well-chewed ballpoint pen. “You know the drill.”
Right away, I recognize the shooter. Looking at his mug shot, I’m surprised my guard wasn’t up from the get-go. A tough customer with the faraway stare of a man who’d gut you just to see whether his knife was sharp.
Aguilar nudges my chair with his foot. “You see him here or not?”
I circle the right man and hand the page back.
He nods in satisfaction, humming another bar. “Dude’s name is Rafael Ortiz, an enforcer for LTC. Which means the cholos in the house with Morales were his boys.” He gives me one of his unreadable stares. “Any reason they’d want to clip you?”
“Something to do with the case, I assume. Beats me what it is.”
We commune silently, aware that I’ve only stated the obvious. Then he starts humming again, like a man whose case is down. He folds the sheet and tucks it into his jacket. “You won’t have to worry about this Ortiz, anyway.”
“Why?” I ask. “You haven’t picked him up already, have you?”
“As we speak, he’s cooling on a slab at the morgue. Most of him is, anyway.”
“He’s dead?” It doesn’t make sense. I replay the shooting in my mind. He put a round in my door, then another in my leg, and I touched up his dental work with my elbow, but nothing rough enough to put him in the ground. Plus, it was after I shot up the truck that he hopped inside, so my bullets didn’t do the work. I can’t figure it out. “It wasn’t . . . I mean, I didn’t do it, did I?”
He gets a kick out of this and slaps my arm in appreciation. “Did you put a shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger?” He flattens his hands against his head, then pops them sideways, the same gesture he might use to exaggerate the size of a fish he’d caught, only in this context it’s meant to be an exploding cranium. “No? Then you can rest easy, March. It wasn’t you.”
“The individual driving the truck,” I say. “He had a shotgun.”
“Yeah, I know.”
As he leaves, patting the lineup in his jacket pocket, I sink back into my chair, wallowing in bewilderment. Not that I’m going to lose much sleep over the buckshot decapitation of a man who tried to make Charlotte a widow. Still, I’d like to know who did the business. And why.
“I’m not avoiding you,” Cavallo says. “Believe it or not, there’s all this work they want me to do. It didn’t stop just because you left.”
“Wanda said you took a personal day.”
“I was sick. I think this case is giving me an ulcer.”
There’s more to it than that, I have no doubt, but I don’t want to press her. Her voice sounds scratchy, like she’s been yelling at someone. I don’t want to make her yell. I want her happy. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s an integral part of my master plan.
“Listen,” I say, “Theresa . . .” If she objects to my use of her first name, she doesn’t verbalize it. “There’s a favor I need to ask you.”
“Fire away. But just so you know, the answer’s gonna be negative.”
“In that case, I’m not going to say it over the phone. Mind if I drop in on you?”
A long pause. “Is it really that important?”
“Life or death.”
“Right. Well, I’m up at Northwest. Lunch is on you. And the answer’s still going to be no.”
“See you in twenty.”
As soon as I hang up, I grab my jacket and take the elevator down, moving on autopilot through the car pool. After lunch I’m going to drop in on Vance Balinski in person and find out why he hasn’t gotten back in touch. First, though, I need to convince Cavallo to do a little moonlighting.
The car clunk-clunks along the Pierce Elevated, static coming in loud and clear over the radio. My phone starts to ring.
“March.”
“What do you want?”
I notice a silver Impala on my tail, edging closer, the driver’s bald dome visible, a phone pressed to his ear.
Keller.
“You wanna pull over a minute?” he says. “I’d like to talk face-to-face.”
I give my car a little gas. “No, thanks. I’ll be in touch to arrange an interview in due course.”
“An interview?”
“You worked closely with my victim. Standard procedure.”
He sighs. In the rearview I can see him kneading his brow. “They’ve still got you working the suicides. If I’d have remembered that . . .”
“What?” I ask. You wouldn’t have shot Thomson? You would’ve made it look gang-related, like my attempted murder, instead of staging a suicide?
“Nothing. Pull over. I want to talk.”
We race past the I-10 exit, switching lanes to avoid a stack-up on the far left. Everything slows down, lights are flashing, shattered glass kicks out across the interstate. A pickup with a dislocated fender hugs the concrete median, and up ahead a little Honda looks like somebody set off a grenade in the trunk.
“Nasty,” Keller says.
I hang up the phone. A second later he calls back.
“What’s the problem, March? You were only too happy to barge in on me the other day. Now you’re running scared. You got a problem with me or something?” Baiting me. He’s too far back for me to make out his expression, but I can imagine the sneer on his lips. “The thing is, I’ve been hearing these rumors about you. They’re saying it won’t be long before you’re out on your ear. Bouncing from one detail to another, that’s what they call terminal velocity. Means you’re about to hit the ground. Hard. I’d hate to see that happen to a guy of your caliber, March.”
“Really.”
“I was thinking . . .” He chuckles. “I’ve got an opening on my team . . .”
I push the end button. We’re coming up on Cavalcade. Near the exit he moves to the right and puts his blinker on. I watch his car until it disappears down the ramp. Just as I begin to breathe easy, the phone rings again.
“One more thing,” he says. “If you don’t want the job, there’s no hard feelings.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
“Fine. Tell that pretty wife of yours I said hello.”
This time it’s Keller who hangs up, leaving me to contemplate the fact that Cavalcade will take him to Studewood, five minutes away from my house. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there. But then, I wouldn’t have thought he was stupid enough to kill a cop, either.