by Steve Gannon
“Yeah.”
Kane skidded across the matches, giving Voss time to light up before launching into his routine. He knew if Voss asked for an attorney at that point, the interrogation would effectively be over, and thanks to Arizona v. Miranda, Kane had to advise him of this—along with the fact that Voss was under no obligation to respond to any question posed. It was an imposing hurdle, but one which Kane had developed his own method of handling.
“I’m not going to bullshit you, Miguel,” he began. “That stunt you pulled tonight could land you in a lot of trouble, so think before you say anything or make any decisions you might regret later.”
“I didn’t do shit.”
“Shut up till I’m done. I may be able to help you, maybe not. It depends on you. But before we continue, there’s a formality we have to go through. I know the cops who brought you in probably already read you your rights, but I want to make absolutely sure you understand. First off, I’ll tell you right here and now that I can’t make you say anything. If you decide to talk, that’s fine, but anything you say can and will be used as evidence against you in court, so don’t lie. You want to keep your mouth shut, that’s fine too. I can’t do anything for you if you do, but it’s your decision. Understand?”
Voss shrugged.
“Speak up,” Kane ordered again.
“Yeah. I understand.”
“Good. Now, the second thing: You can have a lawyer anytime you want. If you don’t have the money, we’ll get you one. We’ll trot a public defender right on up here whenever you say. Of course, as soon as that happens, our conversation’s over, and once again I can’t help you. It’s up to you. You understand what I’m telling you, Miguel? You getting all this?”
“I’m not stupid, cop.”
“I didn’t say you were. I just want to make certain you understand your rights, because next I’m going tell you how we see things from our end. Then you can tell me how you want to play it. Fair enough?”
Voss took a long pull on his Camel. “I get a lawyer anytime I want?”
“Correct. Now, you want to hear what we have on you or not?”
Voss considered. “Can’t hurt to listen, right?”
“Right,” Kane said, sliding across an empty coffee mug for Voss to use as an ashtray. “One thing, though. If you lie to me, all deals are off.”
“There ain’t gonna be no deals, ’cause I didn’t do shit.”
“We’ll see about that. I’ll be talking to a deputy DA first thing tomorrow morning about what charges to file, and he generally goes by what I say. There are a lot of ways of looking at this, Miguel. For instance, right now you’ve been brought in on a charge of felony evading, referring to the bumper-car scene you pulled out there on Wilshire Boulevard. On the other hand, a word in the right place and felony evading turns into reckless driving. You following me?”
Voss nodded suspiciously.
“We’ll be able to prove you were driving the Trans Am. Know how?” Kane went on, continuing to monopolize the conversation but drawing Voss out a little at a time.
“You tell me.”
“One: We’re going to find your prints all over the steering wheel, the car keys, and the driver’s-side door. Two: We have your girlfriend’s testimony. She’s in the next room, singing like a fat Italian.” Actually, Annette Ramos had proved less than cooperative but, confronted with her limited options, had named Voss as the driver. Without divulging the reason for his questions, Kane had also established that Voss had borrowed her car the day of Angelo Martin’s murder.
“Three: Your darling Annette also says you had a gun tonight. A .22-caliber revolver. Why a .22, Miguel? I thought you gangbangers went in for the big stuff—.45s, 9-millimeters, autoloading scatterguns. A .22 is a toy. A woman’s gun.” Despite his question Kane knew that a .22 was the preferred weapon of many professional hit men for close work. It was easily concealed, quiet, and at short distance as lethal as an Uzi.
Voss remained silent.
“Four: We followed you into that burnout. We know you and the kid were the only ones in there, and someone fired a shot. In fact, we’ve already recovered a .22-caliber slug from the scene,” Kane lied. At his insistence a search team was presently looking for it, along with the pistol. So far the results had been negative. “We’re going to do a gunshot-residue test on your hands shortly, and I have a feeling the GSR result will show you’ve recently fired a gun. We’ll find the pistol, too,” he continued. “It’s somewhere between the garage and the bus stop where we picked you up. We have teams out looking for it right now. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Sure you do. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You can claim you were doing some target practice this morning, explaining the positive GSR test. You’re also patting yourself on the back for dumping the piece, right? You’re thinking you wiped it down good, so how can we tie it to you? Lemme ask you something, Miguel. Did you take out the bullets and wipe off the casings, too?”
Voss was sweating now, looking nervous.
“So let’s see, what do we have here? Felony evading, possession of an unregistered firearm, and assault on a police officer with attempt to commit murder.”
Voss stubbed out his butt. He shook a fresh one from the pack, then peered shrewdly across the table. “You wouldn’t be tellin’ me this if you didn’t want somethin’.”
Kane hesitated, pretending to be caught off guard. “You’re a smart kid, Miguel,” he said at last. “Yeah, maybe I have something in mind, something everybody can live with. You want to hear my deal?”
Voss nodded.
“I can’t hear you, Miguel.”
“I said let’s hear your deal, cop.”
“Fine,” said Kane, ready to set the hook. “I already ran this by my lieutenant, so there’s no problem getting it through. You’re a lucky man, you know that?”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. The mayor, the brass, and every police officer involved is going to want this situation with Annette’s kid brother getting shot cleared up as fast as possible. That’s the key here, Miguel. As fast as possible. I’ll tell you how it’s going to go down if I take this case as it stands to the DA tomorrow morning. You’ll be arraigned, plead innocent, get a trial date, won’t make bail, and sit in custody till your date comes up. The whole thing will drag on forever, but in the end you’ll go away for seven, eight years. Meantime, if there’s any question regarding my partner’s returning fire tonight, the press is going to make our life miserable. Nobody’ll be happy.
“Tough.”
“But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way,” Kane went on, deciding the time had come to offer Voss “the out.” “Maybe tonight was all a big mistake. Maybe you didn’t actually shoot at us in that burnout. Maybe you just fired into the ceiling to slow us up, giving yourself time to make it out the back. Hell, maybe the gun went off accidentally. You didn’t hit anyone, right?”
Voss shook his head, looking as though he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Here’s the deal. You admit shooting the .22, plead to accidentally firing an unlicensed gun within city limits, and we forget the attempted-murder charge. Because other officers were involved in the car chase, the best I can do on that is getting the felony evasion charge bumped down to reckless driving. You’re going to lose your license, Miguel.”
Voss smirked. “I ain’t got one,” he said. Then, “What kinda guarantee do I get on this?”
“Guarantee?” Kane exploded. “You want me to notarize something for you? Are you kidding? I’m offering you a traffic ticket and a probationary offense for taking a shot at a cop, and you’re asking for a guarantee?”
Kane glared at Voss, then continued more calmly. “Look, you plead to the lesser charges. We give it to the DA first thing tomorrow all wrapped up neat; he’s glad to get it off the books without a trial; and that’s that. On the other hand, if we find the gun before you cut a d
eal with me, there’s nothing I can do for you. Personally, I don’t care what happens to your sorry ass, but I’ll level with you, Miguel. My partner’s in hot water over shooting that kid. You play it smart and take advantage of the situation, fine. You don’t, you deserve what you get. It’s up to you.”
Voss vacillated. “If I admit accidentally shootin’ the pistol, the .22, that’s it?”
“The unlicensed pistol. We can’t get around that, Miguel. Plus reckless driving—also without a license.”
Voss considered a moment more. “Okay, you got a deal,” he said finally. “It happened just like you said.”
“I didn’t say how it happened, Miguel. I just guessed at how it might have happened. You’re the one who has to say what went down.”
“No problem. You guys chased me, and I pulled my gun ’cause I was scared. I tripped and it accidentally went off. I never tried to shoot nobody.”
“Now we need the gun. Where is it?”
“Why?” Voss demanded, suspicion suddenly gleaming in his eyes.
“You don’t think we’re going to let you keep it, do you?” Kane answered patiently. “We need to match it to the slug we found in the garage and prove things went down like you said. Besides, we’ll find it sooner or later anyway, and it’ll look a lot better for you if you give it up. Where is it?”
Voss hesitated. Then, with a shrug, “I dropped it down a street drain.”
“Where?”
“Uh … a few blocks from the bus stop. A couple streets over near Robertson.”
Kane rose. “You’re doing the smart thing here, Miguel. I’m going to send somebody to pick it up right now before the search team finds it. It better be there.”
“It’s there.”
“Good. I’ll type up a statement for you to sign. One more thing,” Kane said, staring intently across the table. “I’m going way out on a limb for you here. If there’s anything else I should know, anything you want to tell me—about the shot you fired, about the gun, anything—now’s the time.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ else to say, cop. Not a fuckin’ thing.”
Fifteen minutes later Kane picked a sheet from the computer printer, adding it to several others on his desk. He had been working steadily since leaving Voss in the interrogation room, during which time he’d contacted the Beverly Hills search team with the location of the pistol, fielded several calls, and completed a partial draft of Voss’s statement—at least as much as he would need for the next step in his questioning. A moment later the assistant watch commander phoned from downstairs, informing him that one of the search units had recovered the pistol. After establishing that strict forensic and custody procedures would be maintained all the way to the evidence room, Kane got the names and serial numbers of the officers who’d found the weapon. He also made a mental note to have the gun transferred to police headquarters first thing in the morning for printing. He would also need a ballistics comparison with the slug taken from Angelo Martin’s skull.
Deciding to let Voss stew a little longer, Kane grabbed the phone, intending to call home and make sure Catheryn had returned. Certain she must have, he replaced it, electing to put off a discussion of her unscheduled absence until later. Instead, he rocked back in his chair and mulled over the first round of his interrogation.
It had gone pretty much according to plan, not that one could ever precisely forecast how an interrogation would progress. Kane realized he had overstepped acceptable bounds by offering Voss a deal without first clearing it through Lieutenant Long and the DA—not that it would make any difference in the long run. And part of it was true, he thought. Everyone in the courts system would rather see Voss plead to a lesser charge than go to trial. Wanting to clear the cloud over Arnie and get the heat off the department as fast as possible—that was true, too. Just not the way Voss figured.
A few minutes later, having run through a mental blueprint of the second phase of the interrogation, Kane levered himself up from his chair, grabbed Voss’s partially finished statement, and headed back.
This time Voss was awake. Wide-awake. He stubbed out his cigarette, watching as Kane stomped in and disgustedly flipped the typed pages onto the table. “What’s wrong?” Voss asked.
“We have a problem.”
“The gun wasn’t there? I swear I threw it down the sewer.”
“The problem, Miguel, is that you’ve had me wasting my time working on a statement that’s never going to see the light of day.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“I’m talking about your gun. We found it, all right. I just got a call from ballistics. Seems your .22 was used in a murder several weeks back. One of your Sotel buddies named Angelo Martin turned up in an alley with a hole in his head. The slug we dug out of his brain matches your revolver. Big surprise, huh?”
“I just bought that piece last weekend. I don’t know nothin’ about no murder.”
Kane stared at him. “No, I don’t think you do,” he said, gathering his pages and placing them on the corner of the table. “But this is something we definitely need to clear up.”
“How’d you test the gun so fast? That takes time, don’t it?”
“You’ve been watching too much TV, Miguel. Everything’s computerized nowadays,” Kane lied. “We get this kind of test done in minutes.” He took a small notebook from his coat and looked at Voss expectantly. “Well?”
“I told you. I don’t know nothin’.”
“Then where were you three Sundays back? Let’s see …” Kane pretended to refer to his notebook. “That would have made it June 20. Where were you?”
“Who the hell knows?”
“If you want to get clear of this, you had better start remembering.”
Voss squirmed in his seat. “Three Sundays back? Oh, yeah. I was with my old lady. Me and Annette always spend Sundays together.”
Kane scribbled in his notebook. “You were with her all evening?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you do?”
“We went to the movies.”
“What did you see?”
“Uh, some horror flick named Glow. This hot bitch could use her mind to make people do anything she wanted. She could even swap bodies with ’em—that kinda shit. It was playing at the Aero on Montana.”
“Fine. You go to the seven or the nine o’clock show?” asked Kane, continuing to work the edges of Voss’s story.
“Uh … the nine.”
“What did you do afterward?”
“I dunno. Got something to eat.”
“Where?”
“McDonald’s, Jack in the Box—who remembers? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference, Miguel. I’m trying to help you here.”
“Okay, it was McDonald’s. Yeah. We had some Big Macs and a basket of them chicken balls.”
“McNuggets?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone see you, someone who might recall your being there?”
“I didn’t see nobody.”
“Okay, you ate. Then what?”
“We went back to my place and did the deed.”
“Fine. You’re doing great, Miguel. Annette stay the night?”
“No. She hadda be at work the next morning.”
“So she left around …”
“One, one thirty.”
“And you went to sleep.”
“No, I went out and robbed a liquor store. Yeah, I slept. What else am I gonna do?”
Kane closed his notebook, ignoring Voss’s sarcasm. “Okay, that takes care of where you were. Now let’s talk about the gun. As you didn’t use it that night, it must have been someone else—one of your friends, maybe. I know how you feel. It pisses me off when I lend people stuff and they screw it up. Or worse, when they leave me holding the bag like this guy did to you. Whoever used your gun screwed you, Miguel,” Kane said sympathetically, deciding to give the “I know how you feel” approach a shot. I know how yo
u feel—I used to shoplift a little myself; my brother got caught boosting cars; I have a buddy who’s a child molester …
“I don’t know who shot Angelo. It wasn’t me.”
“Then how’d they get your gun?”
“I told you, I just picked it up a couple days ago.”
“Yeah. You told me.” Kane pushed to his feet. “I have to check some things.”
After returning to his desk Kane made a call to the Aero theater, killed several minutes catching up on paperwork, then returned for a third session with Voss. “You screwed up, Miguel,” he announced as he entered the room.
“What’re you talkin’ about?” asked Voss, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.
Kane pulled out his notebook. “First off, you told me you were at the movies. I just called the theater. That horror movie you say you saw, Glow, didn’t start till last Friday. I talked to Annette down the hall, too. She says she wasn’t with you that night. Says she lent you her wheels that afternoon and didn’t get her car back till the next morning.”
“Bitch is lying.”
“Why would she? And what about the movie?”
“Maybe we saw another one. Who can remember that far back?”
Using his thumb, Kane began cracking the knuckles of his right hand. The wet sound of popping cartilage filled the small room. “I’m going to level with you, Miguel,” he said. “I know you were there when your buddy Angelo got whacked. Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger, but you were there.”
“No! I told you—”
“Shut up. I’ve been trying to help you, and you’ve been jerking me around. Know why we were following you tonight? We have a witness who saw two guys dumping Angelo Martin’s body in the alley that night. They were driving a Trans Am with mag wheels, just like your girlfriend’s. We’re going to match grease stains and fibers found on the body to those in the trunk of her car. We also got a description of the guys in the car. Guess what? One of those descriptions matches you. Why did you kill him?”