The Fallen
- Автор: Паркер Т. Джефферсон
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-056238-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Fallen». Краткое содержание книги:
“Let me see what I’ve got here,” he said.
I could hear the tapping of his keyboard, a slow “nope,” then more strokes.
“Well, okay, here it is,” he said. “That Smith nine-millimeter is still here, safe and sound in the newly fortified Property Annex.”
“No, it’s here in San Diego, and it was used to kill a man.”
“My computer says we’ve still got it.”
“You don’t.”
“Let me check before we get our panties in a bunch. I’ll call you right back.”
I sat back and looked out the window. Half of my mind was still upstairs in Sutherland’s conference room and the other half was in New Orleans, where Dale Payne was searching for a weapon he wouldn’t find.
Five minutes later he called back.
“Well, I don’t know why we can’t keep track of that gun,” he said. “But apparently we can’t, because you’re right — it isn’t here. I’ve got the intake forms right here in front of me, the ones we filled out after the guns were recovered and the trial was over. And they say we kept that gun right here. But it isn’t right here. Not unless it changed itself into some other kind of weapon.”
I wondered if we could be off by one numeral or letter on the Smith & Wesson factory serial number.
“Do you have other Model 39s?” I asked.
“Yeah, but the numbers aren’t even close.”
I thought for a moment. “The agencies that wanted their weapons back after the burglary — do you have a record of who took what?”
“Well, yes, that’d be the release forms. Let me see. Okay, one of our sheriff departments figured they could hold on to their own evidence better than we could. Not that they said that in a direct fashion. Then the DEA and ATF — they wanted theirs back, too. We signed out four guns.”
“But you kept the Smith nine that ended up here?”
“This is really damned unacceptable, Detective Brownlaw. I’m going to make some inquiries, you can bet on that.”
“Can you send me copies of the intake and release forms?”
“I’ll fax them right over. Good luck on your case, Detective. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the kind of help you needed.”
“You may have been more help than you think.”
When the faxes came through a few minutes later, I was wondering what I thought I’d find. I don’t know what I was expecting. There was one intake form for each weapon returned to the annex after the trial — a total of eleven forms.
New Orleans Sheriffs had taken back a Taurus .38. The release form was signed by a Sergeant Willis Simms.
DEA agent Bob Cramer had signed out a Colt Python. ATF agent Barbara Keene had reclaimed an M16 and a sawed-off Remington 1100 and signed the release forms.
All three of the release forms were signed by Lieutenant Darron Wight of New Orleans PD.
Clearly it was New Orleans PD that had lost the weapon — or, worse, a Property Annex insider had stolen it for use or sale.
I sat for a moment as something far back in the detail heap of my mind began to stir. New Orleans. New Orleans. I’d been there once with Gina for a brief vacation. It was pretty and hot and I gained weight on the delicious food. I really wanted to take a swamp tour and we saw alligators, cottonmouths, snapping turtles, and nutria, though Gina with her fair skin was uncomfortably hot.
From my duplicate of Garrett’s laptop hard drive, I called up one of his voluminous files of information on the johns that Carrie Ann Martier and her friends had entertained. I used the “edit” icon to search the files for “New Orleans.”
Nothing in the first or second files. Nothing in the third.
But in the fourth I found what I had so dimly remembered. There was in fact a reference to New Orleans.
Officer Ron Mincher had been employed there before coming to SDPD.
I called one of my friends in Personnel and got her to check Mincher’s file for his hire date here and his years of employment at NOPD. It’s nice when department clerks will do you a favor now and then. I’d signed a copy of Fall to Your Life! for her son.
Mincher had been hired here in December of 2002. He had been an officer in good standing with the New Orleans PD until he quit Louisiana in November of 2002 and made his trip to the Golden State.
I checked the New Orleans PD intake forms that Payne had faxed over. The Model 39 had been booked back into the Property Annex two months before Mincher had quit and headed west for the Golden State. It was there for his taking.
I called Captain Villas and asked him if he could find out if Ron Mincher had worked Tuesday night, March 8. If the inquiry came from Villas, it would have weight and little suspicion around it. If the request came from me, it had little weight but tons of suspicion.
He rang me a minute later and said that Mincher had gotten off at five that afternoon.
I called back Dale Payne in New Orleans and asked him if Lieutenant Darron Wight was still in good standing with the NOPD.
“Why, sure,” he said. “Darren’s moved himself up to captain.”
“Did he have help with the release transactions?” I asked.
“What kind of help, Detective Brownlaw?”
“Well, would Darron Wight have been working alone on the weapons releases? Wouldn’t a lieutenant have some help?”
“I see what you’re getting at. Yes, he’d have had some help.”
“Was it Ron Mincher?”
“I remember Ron. He’s out your way now — Oh, damn, I see where you’re going with this.”
A moment of quiet then, as the possibility sank into Dale Payne’s mind. “I’ll find out,” he said.
I tried to picture the release transactions. I asked Payne if the annex was busy or quiet, large or small, windows or none.
“The annex, it’s about fifty thousand square feet,” said Payne. “And the room there where the intakes and releases take place, it’s a big one. Little slots for windows, vertical slots. Lousy light. There’s a counter and holding lockers behind it. There’s a copier right there because the forms always need to be duplicated. There’s chairs to sit and wait if you have to, and a water jug with a stack of paper cups.”
“What about the officers who came to claim their weapons?” I asked. “Did they bring partners?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“But you’d have the names of any partners who were there, right? For instance, if Cramer’s partner was with him, they both would have signed in, right?”
“Sure, yeah, that’s right.”
“Can you get me the full roster for those three release procedures? New Orleans PD, Sheriffs, feds, everybody who signed in. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But somebody out there in New Orleans made off with that Smith and it ended up killing an ex-cop here in San Diego.”
A moment of silence. “Detective, that’s one tall order. We don’t have the sign-in sheet on computer. It’s just a pad on a clipboard, you know, so we have a good handwriting sample if we need it. The professional visitors sign in, and at the end of the day we strip off the sheet so there’s a clean one for the next day.”
“But what do you do with the sheet?”
“We keep it for... I’m not sure how long. I’ll see if we have it. It’s going to take a little time.”
I drove down Broadway and past Petco Park and found a spot on Fourth in the Gaslamp Quarter. It was warm, and some of the restaurants were doing good business. I walked north, feeling betrayed by Sutherland and Bogle. Betrayed because they were more worried about the image of the department than the murder of an apparently good man.
John Van Flyke and a man who looked very much like Garrett Asplundh sat at a sidewalk table of Panchito’s in the pleasant March sun. Van Flyke introduced me to Samuel Asplundh, who rose and shook my hand. Samuel looked somewhat like Samantha, too — his niece and namesake. He had a sharp, unhappy glint in his eyes and a half-finished beer before him. He wore jeans and a white dress shirt, a loose corduroy sport coat and cowboy boots. He said he’d be available to help the investigation in any way he could. I told him I would appreciate an invitation to any memorial service or funeral that Garrett might be given, and I knew a young woman who asked to be included also. He gave me the specifics right then and there and said my partner and I, and the young woman, would be welcome.