by Jim Riley
The introduction went on, laying out all of the specifics of known information—the stuff that no one really disputes but that makes it clear who was in the room, for what reason, and what part all the major players had. Eventually, it was time to get to the meat of the interview. She froze. After about twenty seconds of dead air, which is a very long time under those circumstances, I reached over and turned off the recorder. She looked at me like I had touched her inappropriately.
“Are you okay to do this?” It was an obvious and fair question to be asking, considering this young, inexperienced detective had my life and career in her hands. An officer-involved shooting investigation is a fact-finding investigation to determine if any—and if so, what—crimes were committed by anyone. The report is then sent to the District Attorney’s Office for a determination regarding any criminal charges. The information the investigating officer gathers during the interviews are tantamount to explaining a clear picture of what took place and why. And that goes for whether it was a good shoot or not. I knew that this was a good shoot. I certainly didn’t want this detective’s inexperience to put some kind of bad spin on it, even if it wasn’t on purpose.
You would have thought I had accused her of stealing from the petty cash. She was angry, indignant, and assured me that she was more than capable of handling an interview with me. I sat back in my chair again and just stared at her. I had used this same technique with many perps in the past, and more often than not it works. It worked this time as well. People with a normal conscience have a hard time lying and holding it together. As long as they can throw excuses it gives them some cover, but awkward silence is like a bright, shining light. It’s intense and often illuminates what’s lying just beneath the surface. The truth.
She hung her head and sighed. I had her. “I’m nervous.”
“I can see that. But can you do this interview?” I didn’t mean it as a slight. I just needed to know.
She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. I’m sorry. Let’s start over.”
“Have you ever worked an officer-involved shooting before?”
“No.”
“Any kind of shooting?” Now I was starting to get nervous myself.
“No. But I have worked a few death cases.”
“What kind?”
“Mainly natural death cases. And I did work one skier death when he crashed into a tree.”
I blew a sigh. She wasn’t just wet behind the ears, she still had placenta hanging off of her. “Okay, look. Your job is to determine if any crimes were committed tonight, and by whom.” She was nodding and following what I was saying. That was a good thing. I stopped right there. “Have you noticed any so far?” It was a trick question, but it would show me something.
She slowly shook her head and searched her thoughts. Finally she said, “No. No crimes.”
“Yes, there were.” She looked shocked. Maybe she thought I was about to confess to something. She was still lost, but I could tell her mind was racing. I let her stew on it for a minute. “The perp. He committed felony assault and homicide.”
“Well, yeah. But … ”
“But what? Kelly, you gotta get your head in the game here. My life and career are on the line.”
I went through and explained to her what she needed to bring out in the interview, just as if I were doing it and there was someone else sitting in my seat. I really did want her to do a thorough job here. Any deficiencies and a civil attorney worth their salt would jump on it later and make my life miserable by claiming there had been a cover-up. I gave her some pointers and she managed to cripple through the interview. It was definitely a rookie’s interview, but I made sure I got the things on tape that needed to be there, like all the minor details that led me to the decision to shoot. When it was over she turned off the tape. I could see small beads of sweat on her brow.
“Thanks, Detective.”
I noticed she didn’t ask me how I thought she did. I don’t think she really wanted to know. I stood to leave and reached out and shook her hand. Her palm was sweaty as well. I pretended not to notice, but she looked at me and smiled.
“Good job.” I didn’t mean it. Well, at least she seemed to try hard. Maybe I was just getting softer as I grew up.
I had five days off on paid administrative leave while the CIT completed its investigation and a shooting review board looked at the policy for any violations. It was standard procedure. I knew I was golden on both accounts. Chief Stalone had even seemed more than pleased with the outcome. Almost excited about me waxing the guy. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I kept it in the back of mind. Unbelievably, the media didn’t put my name and the shooting together, which meant it only got a casual mention on the nightly news.
Coop Watts did catch it on the news, though, and gave me a call. Actually, the call had more to do with a different topic, but he took the opportunity to check and see how I was doing. He had the same concerns that I did; was this incident going to trigger some repressed stress from the previous stuff? I told him it hadn’t so far and he cautioned me to keep an eye on it. He finally got around to the real reason he was calling. He wanted to know if I was interested in being on an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. The local JTTF was an ad-hoc group and not a full-time job. I would have to attend meetings, get some training, and pass a background. I didn’t say anything about the background already being done. I asked him what I was going to get to do, and he explained it was simply an extension of the investigative services of the FBI. The days of keeping everything to themselves were over after 9/11, and they were bringing state and local government into the fold. It was a force multiplier for their manpower. I told him I would have to run it past my boss, and he said that had already been done. I hated it when I was the focus of a decision and wasn’t brought into the loop until the end, but I agreed.
Up until a few years ago I hadn’t known the difference between Osama bin Laden and Uncle Ben’s rice. After 9/11, just like everyone else, I learned about bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Islamic Extremists in general. After the St. Louis incident, I had put a little more effort into understanding the issues and the players. I was by no means an expert, but at least I could keep up with the conversation when Coop got to talking about what he knew so well. He had also liked my newfound interest since it gave us something else to talk about. In my limited knowledge I had come to a few conclusions. Terrorism is here to stay. The showdown with Islamic Extremists had started a long time before 9/11 and had been ultimately inevitable. Bin Laden had only been the beginning and his death was not going to be an end. Al-Qaeda and its follow-ons had grown in numbers and prestige and had become a thorn in the side of most governments in the world, including many Arab nations. And the only way to fight them was aggressively.
Coop agreed with me on some things but not on others. I always felt sheepish arguing with him, considering he was a bona fide expert and I was an armchair novice. But it was still my opinion. Anyway, it gave us something to argue about, which is something we did well. One of the things we agreed on was that the U.S. was going to have to eventually have a National Defense Agency. I decided, by the way, that’s what it needed to be called as well—the NDA. None of the existing agencies would fill the bill. The FBI was built and run as law enforcement, which strictly adhered to the U.S. Constitution and was in the business of making criminal cases. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole. According to its charter, the CIA was not allowed to carry out any missions on American soil. That would be like putting a round peg in square hole. And even if they were somehow able to skirt the CIA’s charter, the even bigger problem existed, which is changing what they do and how they do it. If the thing a government agency does best is to protect and ensure its existence, the thing it does worst is change. In that case, it was like trying to put the square peg where no hole existed. An exercise in futility. The only good answer was a new agency, with a new mission, new ideas, a new perspective, and hopefully, new rules.
Although Colorado has international terrorists within its borders and several worthy targets, more of a problem are the homegrown types. White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Constitutionalists, Anarchists, Eco-Terrorists, Animal Rights Extremists, and the like. I actually found domestic terrorism more interesting than the international stuff. Probably because it was closer to home. What I found out was that we even had some in our area. Nothing too extraordinary, just a spattering of idiots with extremist views. It had opened up a new avenue of interest for me, and I began to really enjoy it.
Chapter Eleven
When it rains, it pours, and just about the time I was getting into the terrorism thing, there was a murder in Logan County. The county experiences about sixty deaths a year, but just as Detective Bush had admitted, almost all of them were accidents or acts of God. But every so many years or so, there was a murder. I had worked the last one back when I was a detective for the Sheriff’s Department. It had been a normal domestic violence crime that escalated to a murder. The husband tried to tell us his wife had killed herself. The fact that the rifle wound had been to the upper rear quadrant of the skull had been my first clue that he was full of shit. Once again, this murder had been in the county’s jurisdiction, although not by much.
Eaglenest Ski Area is not very large. Not like Aspen or Vail. But it is scenic and off the beaten path. The city council, and more importantly the owners of the ski area, had put a lot of money into the whole area, and as a result they had introduced a lot of rich people and actor-types into the area. It takes money to make money, and the investment return was pretty good. The county, on the other hand, seemed to be there just to support the town and ski area. Ranching was quickly becoming a lost way of life in this part of the state, so the ski area basically supported the county. It was normally too expensive to live anywhere close to the town limits for anyone who bought their sheets at Walmart instead of Neiman Marcus, and the have/have-not quotient was pretty severe. To make matters worse for the county, the actual ski slopes themselves were unincorporated county property and that meant all law enforcement issues up on the mountain were handled by the Sheriff’s Department. Why should the town incorporate the slopes since the money was made at the ticket counter, which was as the base and, of course, incorporated? The slopes were just empty land with snow. It was a real sore spot for the Sheriff’s Department and the Commissioners. The same had been true for the parking lot until the ski area decided to make it all a pay lot; then the city incorporated it, too. Money talks.
The murder had happened up on the slopes; therefore, it belonged to the Sheriff. Well, and to his novice detective Kelly Bush, of course.
I had heard the ambulance being dispatched to the ski area, which wasn’t uncommon at all since skiing can be a dangerous sport. I also heard something being said over the air about the victim doing a header into a tree. Bush will get another death case, I thought. At that point I had quit paying attention to the radio traffic. It was normal for the traffic to pick up since there were cops and an ambulance rolling. Everyone wants to talk on the radio, you know. However, at some point the tone of the traffic changed. After you’ve been a cop for a while, you can tell by someone’s tone that something’s not right. I turned the radio up and started listening again. A somewhat excited LCSO officer was giving a clothing description. I had missed the radio traffic just prior, but any time you start getting clothing descriptions, it usually means someone’s looking for someone. Randy walked in and saw me paying attention to the radio.
“What’s up?”
“Don’t know, but they’re airing information on a clothing description.”
“Maybe someone is skiing without a pass?” I could tell he wasn’t interested but I kept listening.
“Well I think there was a death up there on the hill, too. I don’t know if they’re connected.”
That perked him up. Any cop worth his salt perks up when there’s a coincidence. Mainly because they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. We both listened to the radio, and the chatter picked up. They were setting up a perimeter at the base to check people leaving. That put it into our jurisdiction. The other thing most experienced cops learn is don’t buy trouble, because it will come looking for you soon enough. Neither one of us jumped up to run out there. Better to figure out what was going on first. It may turn out we could serve the situation better from here right now anyway. It was just too soon to tell.
I picked up the phone and called dispatch, which we shared with the S.O., and all the other emergency services in the county.
“It’s Moffat at the E.P.D. What they got at the ski area?”
“Stand by.” She was busy, I knew, and I took the put-off in stride. “Skier death,” she said when she came back on the line.
I knew that. “Why the perimeter?”
“Someone else involved, it looks like.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s the deal?” Randy asked me.
“Skier verses skier it looks like, and maybe he fled the scene.”
“Oh.”
It wasn’t that big a deal. We had skier vs. skier crashes all the time. Every once in a while, the DA would file a charge if one of the skiers was out of control. It looked like this skier just didn’t stop, and it may very well turn out to be a homicide. Good for Bush. I went back to what I was doing, and about ten minutes later my phone rang.
“This is Detective Moffat.”
“You listening to your radio?” It was Toby.
“Yeah. Sounded like a skier/skier and the winner fled.”
“It’s going to be more than that. It appears it was deliberate. Can we get your help?”
“Yeah, but it’s not my call. You’ll need to ask Stalone.”
Toby must have convinced Stalone that it would be a good idea to do a joint investigation. I would imagine the real reason Stalone bought off on it was that by me being involved, the ski area could have some input, or control, in the investigation vicariously through us. He had agreed and I had grabbed my jacket and headed out. Randy was right behind me. He had never worked a homicide.
The ski area base was set up a lot like many of the other high-end ski areas. There was a gondola that came down right at the edge of the village, which was also the base of the slope. There was also a conventional, four-person ski lift a short way down for those die-hards who didn’t like the idea of confinement. What I liked most about the base was that the P.D. had two parking spots reserved especially for us. The S.O. had to compete with the security division for their spots. It used to piss me off; now I rubbed it in Toby’s nose. There was already a P.D. Expedition parked in one of those spots. I took the other one and Randy double-parked behind me. I could see a crowd about three hundred yards up the slope, just past an intersection where two runs merged. I assumed that was my crime scene. Great.
I looked around and saw two cops about twenty feet apart checking out everyone coming off the slopes. I looked around for Bush, or whoever was in charge of the scene, but no one was popping up so I got my radio. I switched it over to channel five, which was our car-to-car channel. Each department had their own, and we had channel five for all agencies. This was besides the main dispatch channel, of course.
“I4 to Logan 12.” My call sign was I4, which was short for Investigations 4, and Bush’s was Logan 12 for Logan County 12. Everyone had their own way of coming up with call signs.
“This is Logan 12, go ahead I4.”
“Where are you?”
“Up on the slope. Why?” I could hear it in her voice. She didn’t know why I was here, ergo, she didn’t know I was being called to assist on the case. This ought to be interesting.
“I’ll tell you up there.”
I found someone with ski patrol to take me up on a snowmobile. I told Randy to stay down there in case I needed him to do something. He was senior to me in the Investigations Division, but I was the only one who had ever worked a homicide. I put my notebook in my jacket pocket and climbed aboard. Th
e driver handed me a helmet and I put it on. I didn’t care about hurting my head if I fell off, I just needed it to keep my ears warm.
We got to the scene, and I had to wade through the crowd to get to Bush. I had sunk down to my knees twice when my boots broke through the crust, so I was already fueled for a bad attitude. The crowd milling around the crime scene had poured gas on the fuel, and when I got to Bush, she lit the match.
“What are you doing here?” It wasn’t a question. It was an invitation to leave. There was a crowd, and it would have been a mistake to get into an argument in public. I’m sure the dead guy wouldn’t have complained, but his family may have a beef with the two detectives on the case having a pissing match at the scene.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the S.O. I turned away so no one could hear what I was saying.
“Hey. It’s me.” I was talking to Toby. “Who’s the primary?”
“It’s our jurisdiction so I guess Bush is. Is that a problem?”
“Yep. I lead or I walk.”
There was silence and I knew he was calculating his options. “Are you on-scene?”
“Yep.”
“She there?”
“Yep.”
“Let me talk to her.”
The conversation went about like I thought it would. Lots of “buts,” “wells,” and a “fuck,” right before she folded the phone and handed it back to me. She didn’t waste any words. “Your case. Detective.”
I looked into the trees at the body. It was a male, judging by his size and lack of tits. I couldn’t see the face because his jacket was laying over it. Ski patrol had tried to revive him and had apparently used one of those portable Automated External Defibrillators to try and shock him back to the land of the living. He still had the pads stuck to his chest. He was lying face-up in the snow. His right leg was bent at the knee and tucked under his left leg, which was almost straight out. His left arm was out from his body and his right was bent at the elbow and extended above his head. Both of his ski poles were still attached to his wrists by straps. I looked around for his skis and saw them sticking straight up in the snow a few feet away and uphill. I had no idea why ski patrol always did that, but they always did.