Heat Wave, page 17
Caine frowned. “Either of you find any boots in the car or the garage?”
“No,” Calleigh said, exchanging glances with Delko.
“No,” Delko said, “why?”
Caine said, “Something’s…not…right.”
Calleigh asked, “What isn’t?”
“I don’t know yet. Our vics definitely killed Wallace and Joanna Burnett, but the peace-talk powwow at the Archer…I’m still not sure.”
“Why not?” Delko asked.
Caine twitched half a smile. “You two find any guns?”
“No.”
“No.”
“Then,” their supervisor said, “tell me…how did our two late lowlifes get guns out of that federal building, and then get ’em back in?”
His team looked at him, and each other, with wide eyes. Nobody seemed to have an answer.
“And where,” Caine said measuredly, “are the guns that killed Chevalier, Calisto, and Shakespeare?”
Again the CSIs had no answers.
“Also, I might point out that Santoya and his companion did not exactly die of natural causes.”
Nods all around; raised eyebrows, too.
“So,” their boss said. “Let’s get back to the lab and start going over this stuff. Calleigh, you IDd Santoya, so after you work the shells, he’s all yours.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
“Get me any background material on him and find out who the other dead man is. Maybe that’ll lead us to Mendoza and whoever’s supplying them with guns.”
Glancing at the parked Lexus, Caine happened to notice the vehicle’s license plate—name of the state at the top and an orange that resembled a peach in the center; number P14 398. Something about that nagged him, but he filed it away and joined in with his crew, packing up their gear.
Back at the lab, Delko was the first to come up with anything.
“AFIS came through on the guy in the bathtub,” Delko said. “His name was Santoya, too—Manola.”
“Brothers?”
“Cousins. Both originally from Colombia.”
“Then how did they get hooked up with Mendoza?”
“They were from Bogota. They weren’t affiliated with the Mitus, so they started freelancing. Though DEA could never prove it, they think the cousins worked for the Mitus, the Trenches, the Faucones, and even Las Culebras. One report even had them doing out-of-town stuff for Peter Venici before he got whacked.”
“So we can probably connect them to Mendoza, but—”
“We can also connect ’em to everybody else, probably including the Boy Scouts.”
Caine sighed. “All-around, all-purpose bad boys.”
Delko nodded. “But I think they’ll behave themselves from now on, H.”
“I would say. Good work, Eric.”
Calleigh showed up soon after.
“The casings we found in Santoya’s car match the ones fired at the Archer Hotel and at Burnett’s house. These are our guys, all right.”
Caine nodded, once. “Good. But again that brings the question: How did they get the guns in and out of LaRussa’s house?”
“Not by themselves,” she said, flicking a raise of eyebrows.
Caine thought for a moment, then asked her, “Has anybody started doing background checks on those King Building guards?”
“Not yet—should I?”
“Yeah. Please. We’re still missing something.”
Coming in, Speedle almost bumped into Calleigh going out.
“CODIS was no help on the two guys,” Speedle told his boss.
“That’s all right, Tim,” Caine said. “We’ve identified both of them with fingerprints.”
He filled Speedle in on the Santoyas and what they’d done over the years.
“Well,” Speed said with a shrug, “at least we know who they are. Were.”
Caine frowned in thought. “Tim, start working on the videotape from the King Building. See if you can figure out how those guns got out.”
“I’m all over it.”
“Calleigh’s going to start doing background checks on the guards. Let me know as soon as you’ve got something.”
After Speed went out, Caine’s cell phone rang. He answered with his usual “Horatio.”
“Hi, it’s Yelina.”
“What did you find out about Mr. Garner?” he asked.
“Thanks for providing that second-shift CSI, Horatio. We served the warrant on young Mr. Garner.”
“And?”
“Regular Eddie Haskell—sweet as he could be to me, doesn’t know what his old ‘high school bud’ Jimmy could be talking about.”
“Do tell.”
“Only, while I talked to him outside, the CSI searched the house. Guess what? Mike kept the purse as a souvenir.”
Caine smiled; now and then, the bad guys were stupid, and that was as helpful as good police work.
Yelina was saying, “Garner changed his tune, copped to being there, but he said he just happened to be with Hamilton when it went down. Claimed he never touched the gun and that Hamilton made him take the purse.”
“Well, he’s got a problem. His prints are likely the other ones on the gun.”
“That’s how I see it, too…and we’ll have him in a sweet inconsistency.”
Caine allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Jimmy Hamilton was in trouble, no doubt about that, but Jimmy’s testimony and the mitigating circumstances would help see to it that the young man wouldn’t be bullied by Mike Garner again.
“Good work, Yelina.”
“How are you doing on your case?”
He filled her in on what had happened today. “But,” he concluded, “finding whoever hired these guys isn’t going to be a slam dunk.”
“You’ll figure it, Horatio,” she said warmly. “I have faith in you.”
“Thanks.”
Her belief in him felt good.
Alone in his office again, his team back to work, Caine would start by feeding the footprints from the Santoya house into the computer. Once that was done, he could separate them and maybe find a clue among all the smudges and dust.
He hoped so.
The clock was running, and their chance to solve this thing would be gone in twenty-four hours. Once the governor got involved, Caine knew the investigation would likely leave his hands….
He forced himself not to think about that. They still had one day, and that could be a lifetime.
Just ask the Santoyas.
His cell phone rang, and he answered it to find a tightly irritated Len Matthers on the line.
“What the hell is the idea of getting Jeremy involved in this investigation?” the DEA honcho demanded.
“It’s strictly on a consulting basis, Len.”
“Do I have to tell you how many conflicts of interest are involved?”
“That’s why—”
“I’m telling you right now, Caine—drop it.”
“Drop what?”
“Involving Jeremy! His wife was one of the victims—how will it look if a DEA agent is out playing Dirty Harry, looking for his wife’s killer? He’s already technically a suspect in the Calisto slaying!”
“I’m well aware, Len. But I don’t have to tell you this is a citywide crisis and that I need to tap into the expertise of the town’s top gang expert.”
“Well, end it now. Or I’ll take steps to take over this entire investigation on the federal level.”
“I’ll give your request consideration, Len.”
“It’s not a request! You promised cooperation, Horatio.”
“Hasn’t Detective Tripp been updating you?”
“He has…but it’s been damn vague, and he failed to mention you involving Jeremy.”
“A question, Len—”
“What?”
“Any weapons your agents confiscate as evidence…where are they kept?”
“Well—in the evidence lock-up at the King Building. Same’s true of the FBI and the ATF, and…why?”
“Just wondering,” Caine said. “Thanks for the input, Len.”
And clicked off.
10
Internal Affairs
THE TEAM WAS running on fumes now.
They’d all caught short naps here and there throughout the night while they’d waited for a program to run or a lab result to come in, but as the Sunday morning sun slanted in through window blinds, the interminable nature of the shift from hell made itself clear.
Horatio Caine tried to make up for the unjust effort he was demanding of his people by pushing himself the hardest. But even the normally effervescent Calleigh was fraying around the edges.
When Caine stopped by to check Calleigh’s progress with the background checks on the guards at the King Federal Building, he found her bent over a pile of papers, her eyes home to a filigree of red, her silver-yellow hair (usually so carefully coifed) haphazardly pinned up out of her way.
“Any luck?” he asked.
At least her smile hadn’t dimmed. “Morning, Horatio. I consider it ‘luck’ I haven’t passed out yet.”
He forced a smile. “Staying conscious is a plus, in this work.”
“Really? And when did you last catch some sleep?”
“If we don’t crack this in the next twenty-four, we’ll all have plenty of time to nap.”
“When they bust us all back to traffic,” she asked innocently, “will you still be in charge?”
He did a rare thing for Horatio Caine, particularly at work: He laughed out loud.
“Thanks, Calleigh. I needed that.”
“I’m glad. But I’m afraid that’s about all the help I have for you right now—these guards are squeaky clean.”
He sighed. “Not surprising. A federal facility has clearances of the highest order.”
A half-smirk dimpled the lovely face. “Not high enough to keep its gun lockup from turning into a lending library.”
“I hear you.” He thought for a moment. Then he said, “It’s time to take a hard look at a couple of federal higher-ups.”
“Ken LaRussa?”
“Yeah. And after you finish with him, try Leonard Matthers, at the DEA.”
“We’re fishing, aren’t we?” she said, still smiling but glum.
“Afraid so. But the waters around Miami are perfect for that. Start with LaRussa.”
“He’s been awfully cooperative.”
“What choice did he have?” Caine tilted his head. “It’s his evidence lockup that’s our lending library.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, and got back to work.
Caine found Speedle in an office, seated with his back to the door, a still from a videotape on the TV in front of him. Studying the picture for a moment, Caine tried to figure out why Speed seemed so fixated on this one frame.
Then a sound emerged from the young CSI—snoring.
Caine, smiling, was debating waking Speed when the CSI suddenly sat up, as if in fright, a sheaf of papers on his lap spilling onto the floor. Apparently, even asleep, Speed had sensed his boss’s presence.
“Rise and shine, Tim,” Caine said, moving next to him.
“Just resting my eyes, H,” Speedle said.
Caine put a hand on the young CSI’s shoulder. “Hey—we’ve all been working long hours. A nap here and there won’t hurt.”
Speedle was already picking up the papers he’d pitched. “I was watching the tape and started taking some detailed notes, and making some comparisons with records….”
“And?”
Speed swivelled to the side to face his supervisor. “And there’s something outta whack here. I started going through LaRussa’s inventory list, and something doesn’t add up.”
“Are we talking the AK-47?”
“Not the guns—other evidence kept in that lockup.”
“What kind?”
“The controlled-substance kind, H—drugs.”
Caine pulled up a chair and sat next to Speedle, who explained, “They confiscate drugs on the street and bring them into the evidence room; then someone checks out some to take to the lab for testing. All standard operating procedure. But”—he pointed with one hand to a sign-out sheet he held up with the other—“they’re checking out way more weight than’s necessary. And then it’s impossible to tell, on the video, whether they’re bringing back the same amount, or even the same stuff.”
“Just how much is being removed—for ‘testing’?”
The normally unflappable Speed definitely looked flapped. “How about, three and four keys at a time? We’d never send that much to the lab all at once.”
“And you think they’re bringing back less than they checked out.”
“Yeah, or making a switch.”
“So who signed the stuff back in?”
Speedle held out the sheet for Caine to read. The signature and quantity lines were unreadable.
With a half-smirk, Speed said, “Looks like a drunken dyslexic guy…or any doctor writing a prescription.”
“So they were signing in just for cosmetic purposes.”
“For the video camera, right.”
“These dates—they always returned the drugs over the weekend, when there was no guard on duty.”
Nodding, Speedle said, “When there was no one watching but the camera. No one ever seemed to notice that.”
“Speed…this a good catch. A really good catch.”
“Thanks, H,” Speedle said. But he wasn’t smiling. “How does it tie in with our gang war?”
“Hard to say, exactly.” Caine shrugged. “Certainly our gangs all deal dope, so this might indicate whichever gang had entry to check out a gun was also helping itself to contraband.”
“But what gang would have access to the evidence lockup?”
“Quite a list, Speed—gangs called the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA, among others.”
“The whole federal alphabet soup,” Speed said, looking sick.
“Troubled waters, my friend. Watch where you swim.”
“And look out for fins.”
Caine’s attention turned toward the monitor. “What have you found on the videotapes? About the feds checking out the dope, I mean?”
With a frustrated shrug, Speedle said, “Not a hell of a lot—these guys are very careful. You never see their faces on camera. They know where it is and they look away or duck around it.”
“But they look like agents, or at least federal employees.”
Speed shrugged. “They’re wearing suits.”
“Do we see anything? Enough of the back of a head to identify ears? Or hair, or lack of it? Find something, Speed.”
Speedle swivelled back toward the monitor. “That’s why you pay me the medium-size bucks, H.”
Caine was on his feet now. “And Speed? Soon would be good.”
As he passed the morgue, Caine paused, wondering if he should disturb Alexx; more than anyone on Caine’s beleaguered team, the coroner had seen her workload expand in the gang-war crisis. He was about to step away when the door swung open and an exhausted Alexx slipped into the hall.
“Well, Horatio,” she said. “Dropping by to see me? Somebody with a pulse makes a pleasant change of pace.”
He gave her a small, embarrassed smile. “I was going to give you a pass. I figured another body, even one with a pulse, was not what you needed right now.”
She waved that off. “Which of us isn’t too busy? I should be in church…and not my cathedral of the dead, in there.” Shaking her head, displaying an atypical weariness, Alexx added, “My friend, this week has been like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“We’ve worked hurricanes.”
“That comes closest. But hurricane victims haven’t been shot up by automatic weapons…. I have the preliminary lab results on Joanna Burnett’s autopsy, by the way.”
“Anything interesting?” Caine asked.
“Possibly. Would you be surprised to hear she had sex the day she died?”
“Not really.”
“What if the DNA of the male didn’t belong to her husband?”
Caine took the question like the sucker punch it was. After a moment, he managed, “Is that what you’re telling me?”
Gravely, Alexx nodded.
“Why would you check that?” he asked.
“It was a murder, Horatio. With a female victim, I always run that down. Shouldn’t I have?”
Chagrined, Caine said, “Of course you should. I didn’t mean that to sound—where did you get Jeremy’s DNA to cross-check?”
“From his blood on her clothing, night of the shooting at their home. I ran it twice.”
Caine’s hands settled on his hips. “Joanna Burnett was having an affair.”
“Or at least a one-night stand. Or an afternoon delight.”
People kept secrets—as a CSI he knew that better than most—but the Burnetts had always seemed to have a happy marriage, the proverbial perfect couple.
“Good job,” he said.
But she had a mournful expression. “I’m sorry. She was your friend. But she was human, Horatio. We all are.”
“I know,” he said and found a semblance of a smile. “That’s what keeps CSI in business, right?”
She laughed in her worldly-wise way. “Right.”
“Alexx, you get something, let me know. Don’t wait for me to come knocking.”
“I will,” Alexx said. She took a deep breath, let it out, and reentered her cathedral of the dead.
Still processing this troubling news, Caine found Delko in the break room nursing a donut and an iced tea.
Sitting next to the CSI, Caine asked, “Morning, Eric—and what have you been up to?”
“Working on footprints.”
Caine frowned. “I hope we haven’t duplicated efforts.”
“I don’t think so, H. I was looking for the boots that the Santoyas wore in the hotel room.”
“If,” Caine reminded him, “it was them at the Archer.”
“If it was them.”
“And?”
Delko smirked humorlessly. “Nothing. I took an electrostatic lift from both the brake and gas pedal of the car, garage floor, basement floor in the house…. Anywhere they might have been that wasn’t all tromped over.”
“And you didn’t find anything that matched.”
“Not a thing. How about you, H?”
