by Ken Goddard
“Mialkovsky?” Brass said softly.
Grissom nodded his head slowly. “I had to go back to the AAFS conference proceedings to be sure, but that was definitely his name.” Grissom opened the handbook to a marked page. “Mialkovsky, Viktor, Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, MS in Forensic Science.”
For a long moment, the lab was deathly silent.
“So he’s a military sniperand a forensic scientist?” Brass finally said in a hushed voice.
“According to the AAFS…and I do remember thinking at the time that he seemed to know an awful lot about forensics for an Army MP,” Grissom added.
“A guy like that wouldn’t have a whole lot of trouble rigging a crime scene, would he?” Greg muttered.
“No, he wouldn’t…and that’s something I’m afraid we’re going to have to watch out for if he manages to survive his…uh…interaction with the good Major Park, and then heads back our way,” Grissom said in agreement, turning to stare at Fairfax, “which, coincidentally, reminds me that we have a second rigged scene to resolve.”
For a brief moment, it appeared as if the DEA supervisor was going to lose control of his temper; but then he visibly recovered and stared at Grissom contemplatively.
“Mr. Grissom, I have no reason to believe that the scene of our shooting incident was rigged in any manner,” he finally said in a calm voice. “Is there other evidence that I need to know about?”
“Yes, there is,” Grissom said. “Before we returned to the campsite a few hours ago, my team and I processed the interior of the truck cab for gunshot residues.”
“And you confirmed that our suspect did, in fact, fire his rifle once, through the roof of the truck—thereby covering the inside of the cab with gunshot residues—immediately after he’d been shot,” Fairfax recited. “Yes, I recall you mentioning that. So?”
“What I didn’t mention,” Grissom went on calmly, “was the fact that the floor of the cab was also completely covered with a fine—and equally distributed—layer of GSRs…including the specific area under the passenger front seat where we found that Smith & Wesson hammerless revolver.”
Fairfax started to say something, and then stopped.
“And since we found no area inside the cab—on the floor or the seats—with a no-GSR outline of a hammerless Smith & Wesson revolver,” Grissom added with a shrug, “I think it’s pretty obvious that the pistol was placed inside the cab at some point after the shooting. That is what we would call a rigged crime scene.”
“That pistol could have fallen out of his jacket packet when he got hit—or when the truck came to a rapid halt,” Fairfax pointed out.
“That’s true,” Grissom agreed, “but if that had been the case, I would have expected to find a great deal of the subject’s blood inside the chambers and other recesses of the weapon, not just on the outer surface—like it had been dropped or tossed into some fresh blood splatters under the front passenger seat.”
“So you’re planning on accusing Jane Smith of falsifying evidence? Is that what you’re telling me?” Fairfax demanded.
“No, actually, it’s not,” Grissom said. “I have no idea who placed that revolver in the cab of the truck after the shooting. But there are only a limited number of possibilities, and I’m sure that—at some point—a judge or jury will make the appropriate inferences. I think the more interesting question is: Who actually fired the fatal shot that killed the driver of that truck…and was that specific shot justified?”
“But to figure that out, you need to find the fatal bullet,” Fairfax reminded. “And, as far as I’m aware, you haven’t—”
“Actually, Agent Fairfax,” Catherine interrupted, “I believe that Mr. Dawson and I can shed some new light on those questions.” She looked over at Dawson. “Are we in agreement?” she asked the firearms examiner.
“We are,” Dawson said with a nod, giving Fairfax another contemplative stare.
“What are you talking about?” Fairfax demanded, his eyes widening in apparent concern.
“We were able to place all of the shooters and the truck relative to each other during the few seconds that the questioned shooting actually took place,” Catherine said. “And we were able to account for every relevant shot…except for the one that blew the subject’s head apart and exited through the back window of the truck.”
“That’s the bullet you haven’t been able to find, and probably never will find,” Fairfax said impatiently.
“Actually, you’re talking about the bullet we neverwould have been able to find, had it not been for all of the 3-D triangulations that Warrick made, based on those specific shooter-truck locations, which ultimately allowed Sergeant Cooperson to focus her search on a very specific—and a slice of desert with a metal detector…and find this,” she said, walking over to her comparison microscope and removed a shiny green-tipped bullet from one of the two stages.
Fairfax stared at the projectile in Catherine’s hand with visible disbelief.
“Sergeant Cooperson found an expended three-oh-eight hardened rifle bullet that Mr. Dawson was able to match to the three-oh-eight Winchester Seven Hundred scoped rifle you delivered to us earlier this morning,” Catherine explained. “A rifle which I’m led to believe was in the hands of a DEA protection team at or near the location where the questioned shooting occurred. I just confirmed the match a few minutes ago; but I cannot tell you that this bullet passed through the head of our subject—and the window of his truck—because there was no blood on this bullet that we could use to make that specific match. If there ever was blood on this bullet, it was undoubtedly scrubbed off by its impact against the sand drift where it was found…or washed off by the rain…or both. Not that it really matters,” the senior CSI finished with a shrug.
“We’re not done with our report, Agent Fairfax,” Bobby Dawson said firmly as he walked over to his comparison microscope and removed an object from one of the stages.
“What’s that?” the DEA supervisor demanded, his face now a distinct shade of red.
“This is a bullet”—Dawson held the misshapen piece of metal out in the palm of his right hand—“with a very interesting history. It started out in Officer Grayson’s forty-caliber Sig-Sauer pistol, punctured the right rear tire of the subject’s truck, and then managed to strike Jane Smith a glancing blow across her forehead, setting a series of unfortunate events into motion…the most relevant being—and I’ll admit I’m guessing here—the perfectly understandable decision of the DEA agent watching the entire shooting sequence take place through the scope of his Winchester Seven Hundred rifle to put the subject he believed to be Paz Lamos down with a single shot to the head immediately after he saw Jane Smith fall backwards and grab her head after being hit by Grayson’s bullet.”
Fairfax stood silently, looking confused.
“Wait a minute,” he finally said. “I thought you people told me that Grayson couldn’t have shot Smith because she was never in his line of sight?”
“That’s true, she wasn’t,” Warrick confirmed.
“But then how—?”
“What we failed to take into account,” Catherine went on, “was the possibility that the bullets Grayson fired at the rear tires of the truck might have ricocheted off some hard object after penetrating the tires.”
“And we also didn’t really appreciate the fact that Officer Grayson was firing at the truck from a somewhat downhill angle relative to the path of the truck, which kept the bullets from immediate burying themselves into the ground,” Warrick added. “But once I was able to compile all of the data—including all of the laser-scanned rock formations—into a 3-D reconstruction of the scene, there were three rock formations that offered some interesting possibilities.”
“Once I brushed all the sand away from the second formation, which had probably accumulated during the storm,” Catherine continued, “I discovered what appeared to be a fresh streak of copper and lead on an angled face of a specific rock that seemed to line up with Smith’s rep
orted position…which, in turn, gave us asecond vector leading to the third rock formation that apparently functioned as a very handy backstop, because that’s where I found the bullet with a metal detector: buried under about three inches of sand. I matched the bullet to Grayson’s pistol, and Bobby just confirmed the match.”
“But how do you know—?” Fairfax started to ask when Catherine interrupted again.
“That Grayson’s bullet actually hit Smith? We don’t know that…yet.”
“But we will know, for sure,” Dawson said, glancing down at his watch, “in another hour or so, when Wendy’s DNA comparison tells us if the little bit of tissue we found under the peeled-back portion of this bullet—the portion that started to mushroom out when it ricocheted off the rock before hitting Smith—matches the DNA sample we collected from Smith at the scene.”
“I’m guessing it’s going to be a match,” Catherine concluded. “I could be wrong, but I doubt it.”
“At the risk of speaking for Captain Brass,” Grissom said, “it appears to me that we’ve reconstructed a questioned-shooting scene, as requested, and confirmed your initial assertion that the shooting was justified. Sadly, it’s also apparent that a more or less innocent deer poacher managed to be in two very bad places—and at two very unfortunate times—within an hour of each other…decisions that ultimately led to his violent death at the hands of a covert team of federal and state agents who understandably misinterpreted his seemingly aggressive actions in the very few seconds they had to make a decision.”
“That’s assuming, of course, that our deer poacher and Ricardo Paz Lamos are not one and the same individual,” Brass said.
“True,” Grissom said, “but all of the evidence we found strongly suggests that’s not the case. Setting aside the fact that our subject showed every sign of being desperately poor, it’s difficult to imagine a criminal with a lethal history like Ricardo Paz Lamos engaging in a high-level cocaine deal with six well-armed individuals while only armed himself with a single-shot rifle and a homemade cross bow. You described him as being deranged and unpredictable,” he added, turning to Fairfax, “but I think that’s stretching things here a bit.”
“So if our subject isn’t Paz Lamos, where is he?” Catherine asked reasonably.
Fairfax sighed heavily. “I’m guessing he either spotted our surveillance, or got the hell out of there when Toledano and his bodyguard arrived and took the high ground,” he said.
“There’s always the third possibility: that he ran into Mialkovsky while checking out Toledano,” Brass said, “in which case, we may have another body up on that mountain.”
“If that’s what happened, the critters up there are welcome to feast on his rotting carcass,” Fairfax growled as he turned to face Grissom. “I’m more interested in hearing the rest of your report.”
“There’s not much left to say, other than the obvious,” Grissom replied. “Had Officer Grayson’s ricocheted second bullet not struck Smith at the time and place that it almost certainly did, one can only imagine how the incident would have resolved itself…because it’s also apparent that none of the UCs fired their weapons with the intent to kill until they saw the muzzle blast from the subject’s rifle in the cab.”
“Justified?” Fairfax turned to Brass. “Is that really what your report will say?”
“I’m going to question the decision to allow an informant on the scene with a pair of pistols that had once belonged to your supposed suspect,” Brass said, “and I will mention the fact that one of those pistols ended up in the cab of the victim’s truck under questionable circumstances. But, yes, once I receive the final lab reports, I expect to issue a final report of my own that vindicates the actions of all the UCs at your scene.”
Fairfax started to say something, but hesitated again, for the last time…and simply extended an open right hand to Brass. “Thank you,” he said with apparent sincerity in his voice. “I really didn’t expect things to work out quite as they did.”
“Frankly,” Brass said with a grim smile, “neither did I.”
23
TWO HOURS LATER, the storm had returned, flooding the streets of Las Vegas with another deluge of rain that threatened to overwhelm the city’s rarely pressed storm drains.
The timing of the storm coincided with the reappearance of a guest at the front desk of the luxurious Silver Garden Casino and Hotel. The nicely attired and extremely attractive desk clerk looked up with a warm smile of recognition. “Mr. Haverstrom, you’re back early. We weren’t expecting you until late—” The clerk hesitated and then blinked in shock when she saw his face. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
“A climbing accident.” Mialkovsky shrugged easily. “I should have stayed in camp and waited out the storm, but I thought I could make it back down the mountain before the front hit. A bad decision on my part, as you can see,” he said, holding up a bandaged right hand.
“But you’re okay…not badly hurt?”
“Mostly bumps and bruises,” the hunter-killer shrugged. “I was lucky. Another member of my party took a much worse fall.”
“Worse?” the young desk clerk had a stricken look on her beautiful face.
“Both of us slipped. I managed to catch onto a tree branch that broke my fall; he didn’t—a simple matter of luck and timing. He’s a tough fellow, so I’m sure he’ll be up and around in a few days. I suppose we both should know better than to try to act like we’re twenty years younger,” Mialkovsky added with an easy smile.
“That must be why your friends were trying to get ahold of you…wondering if you were okay,” the clerks said.
“My friends called here?”
The clerk nodded. “I told them we weren’t expecting you to be back from your climbing trip until tomorrow at the earliest. I hope that was okay. We’re really not supposed to be giving out information on our guests; but they sounded real worried and I—”
“Don’t worry, it’s not a problem at all,” Mialkovsky said reassuringly. “I’m just surprised they managed to find me here. I upgraded to the Silver Garden at the last minute—one of those impulsive decisions I’m probably getting famous for among my friends.”
“Actually, they didn’t know for sure that you were staying here,” the clerk confessed. “They said they were looking for a friend who was staying in town, and the description they gave just fit you perfectly—especially the part about your…uh…hand,” the young woman added, looking embarrassed.
“Oh, this?” Mialkovsky held up his gloved left hand with the missing little finger. “It happened so long ago, I keep forgetting that it’s missing.”
“Well, it is pretty distinctive…and, kinda, you know, hot…I mean, the fact that you can climb mountains with it, and all that,” the young clerk stammered, blushing.
“Hot, huh?” Mialkovsky chuckled appreciatively. “I can’t wait to tell my friends…they’re going to love to hear that. When did you say they called?”
“Oh, just a few minutes ago,” the clerk said, looking relieved but still a little embarrassed. “That’s why I was so surprised to see you—”
Mialkovsky quickly checked his watch.
“Well, in that case, I’d better get going before we miss each other again. Are we clear on my bill?”
“Oh, I believe you have a refund coming for tomorrow—”
“That’s okay, just add it to my tip to the staff,” Mialkovsky said casually as he picked up his duffel bag with his undamaged left hand. “I had a very nice time here, in spite of my misfortune. I hope to be back soon.”
“We’d love to have you back, sir, anytime,” the young clerk said, still blushing as she watched the ruggedly handsome Mr. Haverstrom walk quickly out the door, telling herself that he really was too old for her, but…
As the taxi bearing Viktor Mialkovsky made the turn onto Flamingo Road, the hunter-killer looked back through the rear window and observed what looked to be a combined military MP and LVPD raid team exiting their vehicles and rapi
dly surrounding the front, side, and rear entrances to the Silver Garden Casino and Hotel. He muttered something unpleasant under his breath.
“Excuse me, sir?” the taxi driver said, looking back over his shoulder.
“I said ‘Never again,’” Mialkovsky replied calmly.
“You didn’t like staying at the Silver Garden?” The taxi driver blinked in amazement.
“Oh, the hotel was fine: excellent accommodations and first-rate staff. Things just got a little warm at the end,” Mialkovsky said, his mind elsewhere. “I usually prefer a much cooler environment.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I do too,” the taxi driver agreed, and then shut up when Mialkovsky’s cell phone began to ring.
“Hello?”
“There was an incident out in the desert last night,” a deep voice rumbled ominously.
“Yes, so I’ve heard,” Mialkovsky acknowledged.
“We weren’t pleased.”
“No, I suppose not.” Mialkovsky’s voice remained calm, but his eyes were now scanning his environment closely.
“What I mean to say is, we were not pleased with the decision of your client to hire your…services,” the deep voice amended. “We consideryour actions to have been of a professional nature.”
Mialkovsky hesitated a brief moment. “That might be a matter of opinion,” he finally said. “I wouldn’t say that I earned my fee in this particular instance.”