by David Archer
“Well, Johnson is dead, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. This private eye didn’t know anything about the stolen list, did he?”
Garrett chuckled. “I'm not sure he knew what Johnson really did for the DOJ. When I mentioned RICO, he seemed a little bit surprised.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry about it. What are you doing to find the list?”
“I already had my guys go in and toss Johnson’s house. They didn’t find it there, so we’re looking for his car. He didn’t have it with him last night, so it must be hidden away someplace. I'm personally betting that’s where the list is, too.” He paused for a moment. “Unless maybe it got turned over to these private eyes.”
“It’s bound to turn up sooner or later. Meanwhile, we need to find out where he put the Martinelli witnesses. The old man goes to court next Monday, and they need to be silenced before then. That’s another five million dollar bonus if we get it done, not to mention the fact that Martinelli knows who we are. Last thing we need is him talking about his deal with us, trying to make a better deal for himself. Any progress on that?”
Garrett sighed. “Nothing yet, but we’re still looking. I’ll keep you posted.”
The call ended and Chance dropped the phone into his pocket. He got into his car and headed toward his office, taking out his own phone to call Pete.
“Mission accomplished,” he said. “Got in, connected the phones and got out. Already listened in on one phone call, with Garrett complaining to someone about me paying him a visit.”
“Seriously? Any idea who it was?”
“It was a woman, but that’s all I could tell,” Chance answered. “Maybe Josie can find out more?”
“She’s already working on it. Why was he complaining?”
“Seemed to be worried that Johnson might have told me too much. I think he just wanted somebody to feel sorry for him, but I don’t think it worked. Whoever she was, she told him not to worry about me, but to get busy finding out where the witnesses are hidden.”
“That’s a bingo, then,” Pete said. “We identify her, we probably can wrap this case up. What are you doing now?”
“Well, I figured I would head down to the office and check the mail and answering machine. Got anything else for me to do?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Go to Johnson’s house and see what’s happening over there.”
“Okay. And speaking of that, I heard Garrett tell the woman that he had his people search the house this morning, looking for what they called ‘the stolen list.’ He said they didn’t find it, so they’re looking for his car, but he did speculate we might have it.”
“They won’t find it at the house, of course. Check out what’s happening there and let me know what you find.”
“You got it.”
Chance was already getting close to the office, so he stopped to pick up the mail. There were no messages on the answering machine, so he locked up again and headed for the Johnson place. He wasn’t surprised to find it still surrounded by police crime scene tape, but there were no squad cars sitting around. There was a crime scene van, however, and one of the crime scene investigators was taking fingerprints off the front storm door.
Another CSI tech spotted Chance walking toward the van. “Sir, I'm sorry, this is a crime scene. I'm afraid it's off limits.”
Chance flashed his Dixon Investigations ID and smiled. “I'm a private investigator, and I happen to be working for the lady who was accused in this case. Just thought I’d like to ask you guys a few questions, if I may.”
The tech turned and looked at his partner for a couple seconds, then turned and looked back at Chance. “I probably shouldn’t, but we were just about done here anyway. What is it you want to know?”
“Well, our client says somebody else shot her husband and tried to make her take the gun, which is how her fingerprints ended up on it. Did you find anything that might corroborate her story?”
The tech looked at him for a moment, then motioned for him to wait. He walked over to his partner in a whisper for a few moments, then he came back to Chance. “Like I said, we were about done here anyway. Come on in and I’ll show you what we found. I'm not sure it’s going to help your client any, but you might spot something we didn’t see.”
Chance grinned. “I appreciate it,” he said. “Okay, one of the rules is that I'm not supposed to touch anything, right? Anything else?”
“That’s pretty much it,” the technician said. “And don’t leave anything behind. They may send somebody out to do a final sweep, and you’d hate for them to find your DNA on a piece of chewed up bubblegum. I'm Lonnie, by the way.”
“Chance Reddick,” Chance said with a grin. “Good to meet you.” He followed the tech up to the front door and into the house, and then through it to the utility room. It was pretty easy to see where Darrell had supposedly died; while there was still a good sized bloodstain on the linoleum, the body had been outlined with yellow marking tape. Chance stepped up very carefully and looked down at the spot.
“That's where the victim was laying when the first officers got here,” Lonnie said. “You can see where his wife actually knelt down and put her knee in some of the blood.”
Chance looked where the guy had pointed, and sure enough, there was a round imprint on the edge of the big bloodstain. “Awful lot of blood,” he said. “Is that normal?” Chance had shot enough people in the head to know the answer, that head wounds bleed profusely, but it seemed like an appropriate question at the moment.
“Yeah, it’s normal. He got shot in the head, and that produces a lot of blood.” Lonnie looked at him curiously. “You look like you might have seen this sort of thing before. I’ve seen cops that tossed their cookies looking at a spot like that.”
“I grew up on a farm,” Chance said. “Helped my grandpa butcher pigs and cows. A little blood isn’t going to upset me that much.”
The tech grinned. “Gotcha,” he said. “The gun was found over here. Looked like it had gotten dropped, because there’s a dent in the flooring. See, right there?”
Chance looked, and sure enough, he could see where something had dented the linoleum. To his untrained eye, it looked like the gun had fallen barrel first. He turned around and looked at Lonnie.
“The way I heard it, the little boy was in his room and heard his parents arguing, then came out after the gunshot went off. Do you know where the kid’s room was?”
“Yeah, right down the hall, here.” He led Chance down the hall and pointed at a doorway. “This room.”
“Okay, do me a favor,” Chance said. “I'm going to step inside there and close the door, and I want you to go back down to the utility room and yell, like you’re having an argument. Do you mind?”
Lonnie shrugged. “Sure, no problem.”
Chance nodded and stepped inside the bedroom, and the tech pulled the door shut behind him. A moment later, Chance heard the sound of the tech's voice yelling, “You son of a bitch. I hate you.” He could hear the man’s voice clearly, even through the closed doorway.
He opened the door and called out, “Okay, good enough. I guess the kid could hear just fine, because I could.”
“Okay,” Lonnie yelled back, just as Chance came down the hall. “Anything else you want to check out?”
“Give me just a minute,” Chance said. “I'm thinking.”
“So,” Lonnie continued, “Mom and Dad were arguing about something, then a gun went off and the kid came out to see what was happening. He found his mommy kneeling down over his daddy, and I guess he told the officers he just watched for a minute, and then the officers showed up. Did you know he let them in?”
Chance looked up at him. “Let them in? The little boy?”
Lonnie nodded. “Yep. Somebody called and said there were shots fired over here, and Las Vegas’ finest come roaring up and ring the doorbell. The kid was the one who opened the door to let them in, and he showed them where his parents were.” He clucked his tongue. “I h
eard mama was pretty upset, crying her eyes out and screaming at them to help her husband.”
Chance nodded his head again. “From what I know of her, that would make sense. I doubt she really was understanding what was happening at that moment.”
Lonnie walked over beside the outline of the body and stared down at it. From the position the body had been laying in when the police arrived, it appeared that Darrell had been facing into the utility room, at an angle. He would have been standing beside the dryer, and it looked like he fell back and to the left.
Chance looked around the room once more, and something dawned on him. “Wait a minute,” he said. “The way I got it, Johnson was standing here in the utility room when he got shot. How come there’s no blood spray on the wall anywhere?”
Lonnie looked up at him. “You know, that’s the one thing about this that seemed off. The gun was a thirty eight loaded with hollow points and it was fired at close range, but the blood is mostly on the floor. It hit him right between the eyes and took out most of his upper face, but stopped inside the skull. The only thing we can figure is that it must’ve been a light load, because at such a short range, it should have punched all the way through.”
Chance nodded. “Yeah, that sounds pretty odd to me, too. How long before you’ll know if that was the case?”
“Ballistics lab has the gun,” Lonnie said. “They should have a report back later this afternoon. If you give me a number, I could maybe give you a call and tell you what we find out.”
Chance took out his wallet and passed over one of the business cards he had printed up. It said Dixon Investigations on it, but it had his own cell number.
“I’d appreciate that,” he said. “And anything else you might be able to tell me.”
Lonnie grinned at him as he took the card. “No problem,” he said. “Never know when I might need a private investigator.”
He led Chance out of the house and waved as Chance got into the Charger and drove away. Chance watched him in the rearview mirror for a moment and then took out his phone once he was out of sight. He dialed Pete and grinned when the old private eye answered.
“Well, our friendly crime scene investigators are on the job,” Chance said. “One of them was good enough to give me a tour of the murder scene.”
“Yeah? And what was their conclusion?”
“I don’t think they have an opinion one way or the other about Christina,” Chance said. “On the other hand, they don’t understand why the bullet didn’t go all the way through the head of the corpse. Right now, they think the bullet didn’t have a full load of powder.”
“That,” Chance heard Johnson say in the background, “was because he was actually shot from a distance. I couldn’t do anything about that, but the body was close enough to my description that I had to go with what I could get. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was shot with a thirty eight, so that’s the kind of gun I dropped at the scene.”
“But won’t ballistics be able to tell that the bullet in the body didn’t come out of that gun?” Chance asked. Pete relayed the question to Johnson.
“Ballistics isn’t quite as exact a science as the police would like us to believe,” Johnson said. “Most ballistics labs can tell you what type of gun fired a bullet, but they can’t always be certain that they found the actual gun it came from. On top of that, there have been numerous cases where ballistic technicians came up with a ‘false positive.’ Because they expected to see similarities, they saw them, even though they weren’t really as similar as they should have been. I doubt there will be enough differences for anyone to say conclusively that the bullet did not come from that gun, but even then, it won’t throw out the case. They won’t start to really wonder until they get the DNA analysis back and find out for sure that the dead guy isn’t me.”
“Well,” Chance said, “Lonnie the CSI said he would give me the ballistics report later today. We’ll have to wait and see what it says, I guess.”
Chapter 16
Pete decided to meet Chance at the office, leaving Darrell to ride herd on the witnesses. He and Josie showed up just before lunch time, bringing sandwiches along with them.
“Got a call a few minutes ago from Christina’s lawyer, Rosenstein,” Pete said. “Christina Johnson is going into her arraignment hearing at one o’clock. It’s possible she’ll be granted bail, but if she’s not, I want you to go and visit her at the jail this afternoon. She needs to know that we are still on the case, even though she thinks her husband is dead.”
“I can do that,” Chance said. “What about Garrett and his phone call?”
“I checked it on the server,” Josie said, “and got the number he called, but it’s one of those cheap cell phones you can buy without even giving your name. No way to tell who it belongs to, and it doesn’t have GPS set up in it. The next time it’s active, though, I can probably triangulate its location with cell towers. We did get to listen to it, though. Whoever she is, she seems to have some power over Garrett.”
“Yeah. If we can get a location on that phone, then at least we’d know where to look. Did Johnson have any ideas who the woman might be?”
Pete shook his head. “Not a clue,” he said. “According to him, there aren’t any women in Garrett’s immediate chain of command.”
Chance’s phone rang, and he answered quickly. “Chance Reddick,” he said.
“Mr. Reddick? This is Lonnie Jamison, the CSI?”
Chance grinned and looked at Pete. “Hey, Lonnie, how are you?”
“I’m doing pretty good, sir. I just got the ballistics report I was telling you about, and thought you’d like to hear about it. Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all,” Chance said. “What did you find out?”
“Well, it’s actually kinda confusing. They pulled the slug out of the body and it didn’t match the rest of the bullets in the gun. The gun was loaded with hollow points, but the bullet they took out of the body was just a regular ball round. The fired a test round through the gun, and the markings—well, they’re similar, but—if you put me on the witness stand and asked me to swear both bullets came out of the same gun, I might have to really think about it. They’re close, but they’re not a perfect match in my opinion.”
“So what do you think that means, Lonnie?” Chance asked.
“Well, we speculated that the shot that killed Mr. Johnson might have been a light load,” he said, “so I suppose that could account for some of the differences. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t say one way or the other. That make any sense?”
Chance grinned. “More than you might expect,” he said. “Thanks for calling, Lonnie.”
“No problem, sir,” Lonnie said. “Maybe it will help your client out a bit.”
Chance put the phone back into his pocket and shared what he had learned with Pete, and then they resumed their conversation.
“Anyway, it sounds like getting a location on that woman is our best chance at finding out who she is. About Christina Johnson and her arraignment, should one of us be at the hearing?”
“That might not be a bad idea,” Pete said. “Why don’t you go? That way, you’ll know if she makes bail or not, and you can go straight to the jail to see her if she doesn’t.”
“Sounds like a plan. What will you be doing?”
Pete grinned. “Waiting for Garrett to make another call to that woman, so I can try to find out where she’s located. If we can identify her, we should have enough to break this ring and put both of them away.”
Chance grinned back. “Or let me handle them,” he said. “Been getting a little antsy lately.”
Josie glanced at him, then looked away. Pete continued to grin. “That sounds like an even better way to handle it, but remember that your FBI friends will be watching this case. It could backfire on you.”
“I think I can handle it,” Chance said. “I’ll make sure I have an ironclad alibi.”
They finished eating lunch and C
hance left the office. He drove to the courthouse and asked a clerk where he would find Christina Johnson’s arraignment, and she directed him upstairs. He found the correct room and took a seat, then had to wait another half hour before Christina was brought in.
She spotted Chance as she was led to the defense table, but her attorney claimed her attention then. They whispered for a few moments before the court was called to order, but then it was time for the hearing to begin.
“All rise,” said the bailiff. Court was called to order, and the judge walked in and took the bench. Chance sat and watched as the charges against Christina—murder in the first degree—were read out loud, and then came the question of bail. Christina’s attorney argued that she was a lifelong member of the community and had no reason to flee, especially considering the weakness of the state’s case against her. The prosecutor, on the other hand, pointed out that a conviction could mean spending the rest of her life in prison, and the judge agreed to set the bail ridiculously high. At five million dollars, Christina said that was beyond her ability, and she was remanded back into custody.
Chance waited until she was led through the door reserved for prisoners, and then caught the attorney as he walked past. “Mr. Rosenstein? I’m Chance Reddick, I work for Pete Dixon.”
The lawyer looked at him for a second, then recognition lit up his face. “The private eye, right? Let’s go out into the hall.”
Chance followed him out and they found a place away from others waiting for their own court appearances. A bench was empty, so they sat down.
“Okay,” the lawyer said. “What can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering how you think the hearing went,” Chance said. “Seemed like they’re coming down pretty hard on her.”
“That’s how they play the game around here. She’s charged with murder one, so that’s pretty scary. The idea is that they can then offer her a deal and take it down to murder two or manslaughter, and she’s likely to take it to avoid life in prison. I told her to ignore it, because they don’t really have a case. All the evidence is circumstantial.”