Stakeout (2013) (13 page)

“What do you mean?”

“This bullet came from a police lab.” He put up his hands. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They use them in education. But they leave the headers on. So you know what you’re dealing with. This photo’s been mutilated. Which means something isn’t kosher.”

“It’s a blind test. One student is given a fatal gun and a fatal bullet. Everyone else is given a placebo.” I wondered if you could say that in forensics, or just in medical trials.

“Doesn’t that give one student an incredible advantage?”

“Yes, if it were true. I think they lied to us. I think either all of the bullets match, or none of them do.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be taking a forensics course?”

“Thank you very much.”

“You mind telling me what’s really going on?”

I sighed. Whipped out my ID. “Look. I have this gun. I need to know if it fired this bullet. If it did, I’ll have to get the police involved. But I don’t want to involve them if it didn’t.”

He considered. “Okay. Two hundred bucks and I’ll have it by tomorrow.”

“I need it now.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t have it now. I gotta fire the gun, make the comparison photos, type up a report.”

“I don’t need a report. I just need a yes or no answer, is it the gun?”

“I understand. And I can’t give you a snap answer. If you’d actually had a course in forensics you’d know this was precision work.”

“Can’t you tell right away if it wasn’t the gun?”

He shook his head. “Gun’s a .38. Bullet is too. Class characteristics are going to match. So you’re talking individual characteristics. It’s a tricky thing. And if this is as important as you say, it better be right.”

“It’s as important as I say.”

“Then maybe you better have it done in a police lab.”

“Fine,” I said. “Tomorrow would be great.”

I got the hell out of there so as not to prolong the conversation. Believe me, I wasn’t happy. Waiting till the next day was going to be excruciating. I was afraid I’d walk into the guy’s office tomorrow and he’d say, “There’s no doubt, the bullet came from the gun.”

But that far from the worst-case scenario.

The worst-case scenario was I’d walk into his office and it would be filled with cops. Whom he’d called as soon as he got me out of his office. Which is
why
he got me out of his office. I mean, come on, the guy’s an expert, he can’t compare a bullet while I wait? The more I thought of it, the more it seemed a likely premise. Would he have called the New York cops, or would he have called the New Jersey cops? The guy had recognized the photo as coming from a crime lab. Could he tell which crime lab? “Oh, yeah, that’s the type of photographic paper they use in Jersey.” And if he called the Jersey cops, would Fuller be one of them? Wanting to know what the hell a gun and bullet had to do with his homicide, at which he’d recovered the gun and bullet.

No, finding cops in the ballistics expert’s office would be about as ugly as it could get. But aside from that, finding the bullet matched would be a hell of a kick in the crotch. Assuming that happened, I would be one mighty unhappy detective.

I figured I better prepare for that possibility.

29

I
STAKED OUT THE BEAUTY
parlor at three in the afternoon. I tried staking out Jersey Girl’s home but she wasn’t there. I checked out the beauty parlor on a hunch, figuring she might work different shifts. She did, and she was there, and I staked her out.

Frankly, I didn’t expect to learn anything by staking out Jersey Girl, but I was scared to death of what I might miss by not staking out Jersey Girl. So, there I was, once again, watching the beauty parlor with high anxiety and low expectations.

She was out a 4:35. That was a break. I was afraid she’d stay until eight. I started the car, fully prepared to follow her home.

Only she didn’t go home. She cruised around a few streets, and got on the New Jersey Turnpike heading south. She went two exits, got off, and drove out to where the residential properties looked lush.

Jersey Girl parked in the street beside a sprawling, two-story frame house with a flashy-looking car in the drive. She walked up the concrete path to the front stoop and rang the bell. She must have been impatient, because it seemed only a second before she rang it again.

The door was opened by a teenager with an attitude. In my day we’d have said “bad attitude,” but today we say “attitude” to mean “bad attitude,” which seems unfair to the word, but then who am I to judge? The kid must have been right at that fine line where computer games still trumped computer porn, because lush Jersey Girl might have been a wet dishrag to him. He shut the door in her face, went back inside.

Jersey Girl stood there a few moments, then turned and came down off the stoop. I thought she was leaving, but then she hesitated, looked over her shoulder toward the house. She seemed lost, helpless.

The front door banged open and a woman came out. She might have been attractive but she had her hair in curlers and a scarf on her head. I couldn’t hear her, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was saying. The woman clearly didn’t like Jersey Girl. In fact, a catfight was not out of the question. That seemed a little harsh, with a woman whose boyfriend was recently dead. Anyway, Curler Head stepped up and went went jaw to jaw with Jersey Girl.

Jersey Girl wasn’t about to take it lying down. Yes, I realized what that sounded like the moment I thought it. But you know what I mean. She strode up to Curler Head as if she were about to give her a permanent without benefit of anesthetic. Then, in a perfectly-timed anticlimax, she turned on her heel, marched down the sidewalk to her car, and drove off.

I was late getting started. Partly because I wanted to give Curler Head time to get inside so she wouldn’t notice the coincidence of two cars pulling out at the same time, and partly because Jersey Girl was so quick she caught me by surprise.

At any rate, I lost her.

I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to explain how that happened to Alice, MacAullif, Richard, or any number of New Jersey cops.

I headed for the Jersey Turnpike, since that was how we came, got on, and drove like the devil. I didn’t see her anywhere. I got off and drove straight to her house.

She wasn’t there.

Proving, as if I needed any further proof, that I am not cut out for this job.

She showed up half an hour later. Hardly enough time to have gotten into any trouble. Long enough to convince me she probably had.

She parked and went into her house.

I weighed my options. I could go inside and ask her where she’d been. Or I could jump into the mouth of an active volcano.

It was a tossup.

30

I
CALLED
M
AC
A
ULLIF, GAVE HIM
the address of the house.

He didn’t sound happy. “What about it?”

“Who lives there?”

“You’re in no position to be asking any favors.”

“You’re in no position to be refusing.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Remember the thing that was bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“Think about it.”

“You did something stupid?”

“Would that surprise you?”

“Yes, it would. You’re in so much trouble any move you make could be fatal. That should be apparent to even you.”

“Forget it, MacAullif. We’re way beyond that. I got a lead. The guy who lives at this address could be pay dirt.”

“What makes you think so?”

“His wife doesn’t like the widow.”

“What widow?”

“Jersey Girl.”

“The one you stole the gun from?”

“Is this a secure line?”

“Yeah, right. Like the department bugs my calls. Listen, dipshit, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re all out of favors. You don’t want me to slam down the phone, start making sense.”

“Jersey Girl rang the front doorbell. Apparently the man of the house wasn’t home, because his wife came out and tried to rip her tits off.”

“A cat fight?”

“Not really. All talk and no action.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Can you find out who the guy is?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know if he killed her boyfriend because he’s hot for her bod.”

“You’ve got the guy’s address. Why don’t you look him up yourself?”

“I’d like more than his name.”

“Like what?”

“I’d like to know if he’s in the mob.”

“Oh, great.”

“One more thing.”

“One more thing? You ask me to trace a mobster, and you want one more thing?”

“You’ll like this. Jersey Girl. The naked girl. The girl with the nice tits.”

“What about her?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know who she is?”

“Don’t you know?”

“She lives over someone’s garage. It’s not that easy to trace. But I got her license plate number.” I took out my notebook, read it to him. “Could you run it?”

“Just in case I get curious,” MacAullif said sarcastically. “Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.”

“So, what did you do with the gun?”

“I’ve still got it.”

“You hesitated before you said that. Is that because you’re lying?”

“Wanna see it?”

“I most definitely do
not
wanna see it. I wanna maintain plausible deniability. You remember me telling you if you had any gun I didn’t know about, it would behoove you to get rid of it?”

“Do cops actually say ‘behoove?’”

“Hey, asshole.”

“I’ll get rid of it, I’ll get rid of it.” Visions of the ballistics expert danced in my head. “What’s the extradition agreement between New York and New Jersey?”

“Extradition?”

“If I get arrested in New York, and I’m wanted in Jersey, do I have to go?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll be there before you can raise the point.”

“I have my lawyer on speed dial.”

“Ever dial a phone with your hands cuffed behind your back?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Better practice.”

31

“I
T
’
S DEFINITELY FROM THE SAME GUN
.”

“You’re kidding!”

The ballistics expert shook his head. “There’s no doubt about it. Here, look at these pictures from the comparison microscope. See how the striations line up? Here’s an enlargement. You see that?”

I didn’t. I had stopped looking, stopped listening. My head was coming off. All my worst dreams were coming true. Well, there weren’t cops in his office, but aside from that. I gave the guy his two hundred bucks and got the hell out of there.

I had to get rid of the gun. That was one thing MacAullif said that made sense. And he didn’t even know it was the murder weapon. As far as he was concerned, it would merely seal the deal on impersonating an officer. He didn’t know it would make me an accomplice after the fact to murder.

The charges were really piling up.

Which put me in a horrible position. I couldn’t keep it, and I couldn’t get rid of it.

By rights, I should give it back to Jersey Girl. Then the cops could catch her with it and prosecute her for it. Only they couldn’t anymore, because I’d taken it away from her. And who was to say the one I gave her back was the same one she gave me?

That was just for starters. Even if I had given her back the same one she gave me, I was still impersonating an officer when I did it. And by doing that, I had probably fucked up the evidence so badly that she could never be prosecuted, though I certainly could.

So the only way to give it back to her was to give it back to her without her knowledge. Plant it in her car, for instance. Only that wouldn’t work, because she would still tell people about the police officer who took her gun. She would claim he must have planted the gun on her. Which was what she was telling me to begin with, only this time it would be true. True, but irrelevant, since planting the gun was only to put things back the way they were to begin with, and maintain the status quo.

I wondered if I should do that.

I wondered if I should drive back to Jersey.

I wondered if I should
walk
back to Jersey and drop the gun in the Hudson River from the middle of the George Washington Bridge.

I stopped in at the Westside Stationery Store and bought a manila mailer, the padded kind with the bubble wrap inside. I put the gun in it, sealed it up.

I went to the post office, got a Priority Mail label, addressed it to myself, General Delivery, Westport, Connecticut. I put my real address as the return address.

I went to the Priority Mail self-service machine where you can avoid the line by dipping your credit card and weighing it yourself.

I dipped my credit card, answered some questions. I lied to the machine. It asked me if I was mailing anything dangerous and I said no.

I pulled out the postage label, slapped it on the package, and dropped it in the bin.

I immediately felt a sense of relief, and it wasn’t just that the pistol hadn’t discharged when it hit the bottom. It wasn’t loaded, but even so. Even an unloaded gun could have that one, stray shell in the chamber that blows your head off. Not this time. I walked out of the post office a free and unarmed man.

I stood on the sidewalk, took a deep breath. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful day.

I was totally screwed. I had taken a chance that Jersey Girl was an innocent victim of circumstance who just happened to have her boyfriend’s gun. Instead she was a lying scheming murderess, which put my actions, always questionable, in a much less legal light. I had not impersonated a police officer to prove to my satisfaction that the girlfriend of the murdered man in fact had nothing to do with his demise. No, I had impersonated a police officer in order to suppress the murder weapon, making it next to impossible to convict the woman who was almost certainly guilty. I had a feeling the police would be apt to frown on that.

My cell phone rang. I nearly peed my pants. I was that wound up. I whipped it out (my cell phone), and flipped it open.