Bill pulled the heavy automatic from its holster. He dropped the clip and pulled back the slide. He always carried one in the pipe and a full clip. The chambered-round ejected. He slipped the clip back and chambered another round. Then he dropped the clip and loaded the round that had been ejected and shoved the full clip back in the butt of the automatic. He opened his briefcase and checked for his extra clip, his cuffs, and his flashlight. He was ready. He already knew it was going to be a long night.
Bill pulled up, watching me pace back and forth in my driveway. He would have been disappointed if “the boss” wasn’t outside waiting. He knew there was no point in telling me to wait in the house until he got there; I would never do it. I was always outside pacing and looking at my watch.
Bill smiled. It was a homicide. The victim would be on the floor waiting for us. He or she wasn’t going anywhere. Besides, there would be homicide investigators at the scene when we got there. The D.A.’s job was to assist the homicide investigators at the scene. We weren’t the primary investigators. Still, there was always a little adrenalin surge when you rolled into a homicide scene.
The first time Bill called me “boss,” I laughed. I knew what he thought of me. When I first arrived at the D.A.’s office, I didn’t know anything, just like most young deputy district attorneys fresh out of law school. But I listened and I learned.
I remember the first time I went down to the Identification Bureau. The “I” Bureau we called it. These days, there are whole television shows built around the people at the “I” Bureau. They call them “Crime Scene Investigators” or “CSI.” I guess “CSI” sounds more exciting, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the “I” Bureau. If they had a television show called the “I Bureau,” people would probably think it was about the local department of motor vehicles. I can hear it now, “I work for the ‘I’ Bureau,” and people will wonder if they can get their driver’s license photo fixed. I told one of the “I” Bureau techs, Jessie, to “run the print for a match.” She had a big stack of fingerprint cards, a magnifying glass, and a latent print card with the unknown perp’s prints. That was how they did it back then; they would take out a stack of print cards with some common characteristics and compare them by hand and eye to the latent print lifted at the scene. I remember that Jessie looked at me and smiled the way you do at a child who still believes in Santa. “Well it might take me a little while—what did you say your name was again?” That’s the first time I realized I had made an ass out of myself with seasoned investigators. Lesson learned. This wasn’t like television.
Things were different now. The difference for Bill was that now I was no longer fresh out of law school. I still listened and I knew I still had things to learn, but I also had come to know things he didn’t know, and he tolerated that. There was even his grudging concession that took me by surprise one morning when over a mug of coffee he observed that for a lawyer I might not be totally useless. When I told him to do something, it was usually after he had either politely and obliquely suggested it or we had discussed it. In a way, it had become a game between us—I would occasionally say the right thing before he suggested it, and this was happening more and more frequently. We had become a team. In law enforcement parlance, “a team” means that you take turns buying donuts, but it also means a lot more: like the unwritten rule that the other guy is the one who watches your back and you watch his.
Becoming chief of homicide for the district attorney was my dream. It was the top of the line for a trial prosecutor. Oh, you might be the district attorney, but when you were the chief of homicide you were at the top, as far as trial prosecutors were concerned. You got the biggest cases and you tried the toughest ones. And, while you always represented “The People,” who you really spoke for was the victim.
As far as investigators were concerned it was the same thing. “Homicide Investigator” was more than a title; it was the top of the line for cops. It was where all the other cops wanted to be. Whoever watched a show on television about the burglary division?
For me, well, I was never the high school quarterback, but he never became the chief of homicide either. Besides, my stories were a lot better. So, to put it mildly, I liked my job. After I graduated from law school, I briefly considered going to work at one of the big law firms. A lot of money was out there if you did it right. But me? I wanted to be a real trial lawyer. I wanted to try cases all the time. I didn’t want to sit in an office listening to some client pissing about what had been done to him or what he wanted to do to somebody else or how much it was going to cost in legal fees. No, I wanted to be exactly what I was. There was that one moment at the beginning of a big case when the judge would slowly look at everyone gathered, all of those who waited pensively, the jury, the defense team. Then the judge would focus on me. That was my moment at which all the nervousness disappeared, the great beginning when the curtain went up and I was alone on the great stage of human drama. I liked standing up and saying, “Ready for the People.”
Bill flipped on the dome light and got on the radio. He wanted to know which investigators were at the scene. He lowered the window on our undercover car. I always laughed at the idea of his car being undercover. Who drove a blue Dodge with a whip antenna except cops? Of course, that was back then. Nobody has a whip antenna anymore, but the blue Dodge hasn’t changed. It still looks like a cop car and doesn’t fool anybody, especially since the blue color is one that nobody would really pick for a car, and there were also the cheap hub caps to always give it away. I think automobile makers must have a selection of paint just for police undercover cars, or maybe it’s just the paint that is left over after all the other colors are picked.
“Boss, it’s a triple. We got some witnesses and I guess a neighbor tried to play John Wayne with the shooter. Got himself shot in the ass. You ready?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I slid into the front seat beside him. A triple? Not “three dead,” not “three people murdered”—we called it a “triple.” If it had been two, it would have been a “double.” If it was a single, it was a “dead guy” or, depending on the part of town where the homicide occurred, “a stiff.” When you said it, everybody in the business knew what you meant; “I worked a triple last night.” That was enough. Besides, when you said it, you didn’t need to swagger. Those on the inside knew what you did and those on the outside just knew that you must do something special. Bill gunned the engine. He never did that in his own car, a Cadillac. Oh, well, it wasn’t his gas.
“What else we got?”
Bill glanced over and frowned. “Three down in what looks like a robbery, but Kenny says there’s something not right.” Kenny was Kenny Badiali, the on-scene sheriff’s detective.
“Not quite right? How?”
“They got some woman who was at the scene when the first officers rolled up. She was in the bathroom, covered in blood and hysterical. They took her to the hospital. Ross Kelly talked to her. Kenny thinks there’s a connection. Said she wasn’t hurt and she looks like she’s loaded, maybe on meth. Says he doesn’t want to talk more over the radio. Too many people are listening.” Kelly was another on-scene investigator. He was built like the stereotype version of a truck driver: curly, reddish hair, thinning in the middle of his head, with the rest of him spreading out around the gut. A really good guy.
“Kenny spends too much time worrying. Wired too tight. Tell him that we need to draw blood from her at the hospital and run a drug screen,” I said.
“Well, wired too tight or not, he knows what he’s doing. He says we need to get there yesterday. If Kenny says something’s wrong, then something’s wrong. And, I’ll bet he’s already asked for the drug screen.”
“Just make sure, Bill. I want that blood before she starts to realize something’s going on.”
Bill didn’t give me his usual comment about the investigators knowing what they were doing, which meant he wasn’t sure either. He got on the