Justice Rain (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 11) Page 12

  That’d be a bit of a reach, but you didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

  Except, if there was eventually a son, it sure seemed like the pretty dang efficient-seeming Nash-Dalton directory would have picked that up.

  Or . . . the grandpa could have fathered a child out of wedlock (‘Alan’s’ dad again), and that might explain it.

  Maybe.

  Likely not.

  Chris had read about something not too long ago called Occam’s Razor. The principle went back centuries, and Chris was surprised to learn that it underlies much of scientific modeling and theory building.

  What Occam’s Razor states, in a nutshell is: Don’t make any more assumptions than the minimum needed.

  This made sense. And in this particular case -- Lucy’s Facebook friend claiming his grandpa -- on his dad’s side -- was the one cut down during Lucy’s dad’s crime . . . nope.

  The Nash-Dalton company archive laid it out nice and simple and logical for you.

  That ‘Alan’ may have indeed had a grandpa on his dad’s side -- but this wasn’t the guy. Because this guy was unlikely anyone’s grandpa on anyone’s dad’s side.

  At least until proven otherwise.

  Meaning . . . Lucy was most likely being scammed, not just by a legitimate family member who was mad and wanted some restitution -- that would be bad enough -- but by someone out there with no connection whatsoever, and who could easily be as unpredictable as the rest of the dark side of the internet.

  Chapter 12

  Chris headed from the library to the work, and it was a quiet Monday on the golf course, which Chris wasn’t complaining about, and maybe it was even quieter with everyone a bit jaded and on edge and burnt out following the NFL charity thing with the ensuing fireworks at the barbeque -- and wow, he hadn’t really isolated it in review, but that was something else with Dale having to fire the pistol into the air.

  After work Chris figured what the hey, you needed to move around, and he wandered on over to the pickleball courts. Dale was warming up on Court 4 and saw Chris and motioned (speaking of the devil) and you could see the issue was the guy on the other side was waiting on a partner which might not transpire, so Chris grabbed a paddle.

  They played a couple sets, switched teams around, and the level was decent. Chris felt like the worst one out there, and his first partner, the guy who needed one in the beginning, started giving Chris tips between games.

  Stuff like: “We gotta get up to the line faster. We gotta serve ‘em deeper in the deuce court! We gotta play the tall guy more in the dink game, he doesn’t get down as well as the short guy.” And when none of that worked, a few games later, the guy more directly told Chris: “My friend, you need to listen to me, or this ain’t gonna work.”

  Chris tried to smile it off and said to the partner, “It’s not going to work anyway. I’m the weak link tonight . . . You ever try to square up a horseshoe . . . into a sealed container?”

  “I’m sorry . . . what?” the guy said.

  “What you do,” Chris said, “take all my balls. Play it like I’m not on the court. What’s there to lose?”

  The guy said that wasn’t a bad idea, and thank you for extending that liberty -- and the guy did essentially take over, as though Dale and his partner were playing 2 against 1 -- and that was an unmitigated disaster, Chris pretty sure he and the wannabee dominator-partner won quite a few less points that way than when they were both actually playing.

  Whatever. When it ended the partner was miffed and got out of there right away, no small talk or niceties, and Dale’s partner said good night . . . and Chris and Dale sat for a few minutes on the courtside bench.

  Chris said, “I won’t bring up the activities yesterday, because I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of that today.”

  “You can,” Dale said. “No biggie.”

  “All in a day’s work, you’re saying?”

  “A colorful day’s work. Every cop needs a few of those. Break up the monotony.”

  “Well, understandable then,” Chris said. “Though something I’ve wondered watching it on TV, also reading in a crime thriller where a cop does it.”

  “Firing into the air?” Dale said, having fun with it.

  “Yeah. And you interrupted me. Old westerns, that’s where they really did it.”

  “Oh always, back then. That’s why I wanted to do it. I’ve been saving it up.”

  Chris said, “Dang. Never before then? The NFL fuck, he took the cake?”

  Dale nodded. “Seemed like a good time to initiate one. By the way, you hit him with the club?”

  Ooh boy. Chris said, “Well . . . will full disclosure work against me?”

  “It could. Except I feel good, winning those three sets handily. I think my topspin backhand’s getting better. You think?”

  Chris didn’t want to tell him that no, that stroke didn’t look any better, and to forget it, that’s the toughest shot in the game for hackers. That was drummed into him ad infinitum by Chandler . . . What was working better for Dale is he wasn’t trying to hit as many winners, so by playing it safer and keeping the ball in the actual court, he was playing better. But no point getting into it.

  Chris said, “In that case I’ll risk it. I did make a little contact with the guy down that fairway. Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you said did I hit him with the club -- not sure what you mean, it was actually a club. Since golfers carry a bunch of them.”

  “A 9-iron, I was told,” Dale said.

  “Try a 7. But who’s counting?” Chris said.

  “Well,” Dale said, scratching an ear, “I admire your diplomacy.”

  “Now we got it reversed,” Chris said. “That’s what I was going to tell you . . . But before I really put my foot in my mouth here . . . and you decide to arrest me . . . or you receive some random text that upsets you, undoes the high of the pickleball performance, and you change your mind for that reason . . . let’s switch it to the dead body.”

  “Fair enough,” Dale said.

  That was abrupt, and it caught Chris off guard slightly. He said, “So yeah . . . not sure what I was going to ask you, specifically, except are we anywhere on that? . . . they, I mean, not me as part of the we.”

  “Naw, you’re entitled,” Dale said. “We’re all community members here. I won’t get maudlin and call us a big, happy family -- but you’re as much a part of expecting and deserving good police work as any other individual.”

  Chris said, “That bad, then, eh? The status?”

  “Oh yeah, going nowhere fast with these idiots . . . We have a joke, across a bunch of jurisdictions, pretty timely at the moment . . . how you qualify to end up on the force in Eclipse. I won’t repeat it, it’s pretty unforgiving.”

  Chris had been going back and forth for a few minutes, since the pickleball ended, should he open a can of worms by asking about DNA. He decided screw it, and said to Dale, “I get you, you have zero confidence in their forensics . . . But is there anything testable? Far as you know?”

  “Blood,” Dale said. “The victim fought back, the perp spilled a few drops. Does that work?” Still with a goofy smile, but you had to like the guy okay.

  In fact Chris tried to think of any other cops where he could be sitting here, sun going down over the high desert hills, and be having this kind of loose casual conversation with.

  And he couldn’t really come up with one. And that applied to before his diagnosis -- when he was theoretically a solid citizen -- as well as to after it.

  Chris said, “So, what’d they do with the blood?”

  Dale turned a little more toward him, though he had to visor his face with his hand, the sun was really doing its thing now . . . not like up north or out west, really blazing here. He said, “What would you expect them to do with it?”

  “I don’t know . . . test it? See if matches anyone in the system?”

  “Not bad,” Dale said. “And that they did do. And they came up with thei
r dick in their hand. Meaning . . . for all points and purposes, that’ll end the search for justice in this case. Since now that they have to go to Plan B -- old fashioned detective work . . . meaning interviews, analysis, and gathering of circumstantial evidence . . . that ain’t going nowhere.”

  Chris said, “The suspect blood they picked up, they tested it against which database?”

  Dale let out a little chuckle. “Whadda we got here? An amateur sleuth? Or you been watching early re-runs of Law and Order . . . The New York ones by the way, I always thought they were more realistic, than wherever they fanned out to later.”

  “Baltimore.”

  “Oh that’s right. I take it back, some of those were compelling.”

  “So which database?” Chris said.

  “CODIS. Which I’m guessing you’re familiar with?”

  Chris was, in the sense that this was old-fashioned DNA police work. CODIS was the database of known felons, whose DNA was already in the system. If one of them committed a new crime, and the lab handled it right, you could have a match and solve the case. “Oh,” he said. “So within those limitations -- the killer is a first-time offender then.”

  “Probably,” Dale said.

  “May I ask which lab?” Chris said.

  “Man, you are a fanatic. Which I’m not holding against you. But what, you go on the serial killer forums on Reddit and shit, try to solve 40 year old cold cases?”

  Actually 50 would be the answer if you included the Zodiac spree, which began officially in December of 1968. The assault on the poor high kids in the pullout off Lake Herman Road in Benicia. But the details of the online forums weren’t important.

  Chris said, “All’s I know, which any law abiding citizen could at this point, from simply reading the papers . . . is police crime labs typically aren’t set up with the newest testing methods.”

  “Whoa,” Dale said, smiling fine, going along with it, “you have inside information then. Well, the city lab does the testing for all the jurisdictions around here.”

  “City?”

  “Yeah, Phoenix PD. Maricopa County has a crime lab too, but it’s slower.”

  Now it was Chris rubbing his ear, and wondering should he go any further. But you had to at least suggest something. Maybe someone was already on it, but you couldn’t leave it on the table in case.

  He said, “You wouldn’t . . . by any chance . . . have an extra sample. Would you?”

  Now Dale did laugh, but it was bit hard-edged, and he narrowed his eyes slightly. “You mean,” he said, “do I have one -- like in the top drawer of my desk at work?”

  Chris cleared his throat and lowered his voice, even though there was no need to. “Have is the wrong choice of words. The right one, it’d be more like get.”

  “Ah. That’s different. Can I get one? Steal one, you mean.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said, “that’d be good. We can run a different test, maybe.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well . . . you been following the way they caught the Golden State Killer, correct? Joseph Deangelo?”

  “Somewhat,” Dale said. “Family matching, which I don’t entirely get yet. Speaking of which though, they got us scheduled for a workshop on the subject of updated cold case principles. Which I’m assuming includes what you’re talking about. Weekend after July 4th in fact, which pisses me off, because that’s the normal weekend a bunch of buddies and me, we rent a houseboat at Lake Havasu.”

  “That rings a bell,” Chris said. “Isn’t that where the spring break college kids go?”

  “Sure. You don’t get any of that in the summer though. We play cards all night, sleep half the day, dive in whenever we feel like cooling off. You come back re-charged . . . I’d even invite you to come, but like I say it’s looking like it won’t work out this year.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” Chris said. “Like I say, they caught this guy by running DNA from the crime scene -- oh, and first, you need a better lab, the latest testing equipment and techniques -- so the DNA profile is more complex . . . Anyhow, they ran the DNA under the new improved method, matched to a 4th cousin. Once you do that, you can take it to the bank -- something like a billion to one odds -- that the killer is in that guy’s family tree.”

  Dale got up and went into Karolina’s little pro shed -- her not being here tonight, and him apparently having free run of the place -- and got a couple cokes. He didn’t say anything for a little while.

  “If I’m reading you right,” Dale said, “you know more about this shit than I do. I’m not ashamed to admit it . . . That’ll change. We haven’t broken out the cold cases yet . . . Plus you can probably figure out, petty department politics and all, we’re typically behind the curve of cutting-edge civilian science . . . However -- what makes you so smart, beyond your piddly internet groups? You don’t mind my asking.”

  This particular question felt penetrating, for the first time. Hopefully Chris was imagining it, and hadn’t gone too far. You better back it up though. He said, “Long story. I got some issues in my family, different relatives not getting along great . . . There’s been a concern that won’t go away, a bunch of them claiming there’s a half-brother uncle in the mix, the others claiming there was a foster situation . . . It’s stupid. I could care less, but then they started running their spit tests through Ancestry.com. Which wasn’t the right way to go about it.”

  “So you took over the investigation,” Dale said, and at least he was back to grinning.

  “I read up on it,” Chris said. “Cutting to the chase, we linked to a distant cousin in Detroit. Nice enough guy, and lo and behold, part of the authentic family tree. So yeah, I solved it for ‘em.”

  “Interesting . . . Which you’re proposing to do here, on behalf of the elite men and women of the Eclipse, Arizona, police force.”

  “Get me a little sample,” Chris said. “We’ll find a lab, give it a shot together. You never know.”

  Dale considered it. “You’re asking me to steal evidence in a capital case,” he said, “which, technically, is a felony.” The guy still smiling though.

  Chris said, “Can you . . . I don’t know, classify it as a borrow?”

  “I may be able to figure something out,” Dale said.

  ***

  Three in the morning there was a bunch of commotion. Chris had been sleeping beautifully in the recliner, where he tended to stay most of the night lately.

  In the past he’d let the thing put him to sleep and then shift to the bed, but now, apparently because of the darn pickleball, his old pinched nerve from 5 or 6 years ago -- that stint teaching high school history up in Terra Linda, where he stood and paced all day for emphasis -- and only later discovered he was wearing the wrong shoes for that kind of work -- was acting up again.

  You weren’t going to blame the pickleball. It was still kind of a dumb game, but you felt good after, and again, it kept you off the torturously monotonous exercise machines at the rec center. Plus, admittedly, you had the social element.

  But it was what it was, the pinched nerve and the sleeping situation . . . and now Chris staggered to his feet and opened the front door of the condo to take a look.

  There was quite a bit of yelling, a ground floor unit off to the right, about 20 away from Chris’s . . . which translated to maybe 50 yards. And he thought he heard a familiar voice in the middle of it . . . and you couldn’t see that well in the dark, and part of your view was obscured by a block of units extending horizontal . . . but it sure sounded like McBride.

  Chris debated giving it a closer inspection, or -- the much more sensible approach -- let whatever the heck it was play out . . . the what will be will be philosophy . . . but the darn voices seemed to be getting louder, which included some female ones as well . . . so Chris reluctantly threw on some sweats and hustled over there.

  You had a weird scene unfolding.

  Waylon and McBride were currently out front of condo section F of the Rancho Villas -- and Chris was
n’t sure whose apartment that would make it, since he’d been to Waylon’s and McBride’s -- but you’d assume it belonged to one of the other ‘players’ in the little after-hours thing they had going.

  In fact standing nearby, their hands up covering their faces as though terrified or horrified, were Reba, Karolina -- and Gee, not Amy this time but the thin, rangy gal, who he remembered from pickleball but hadn’t previously associated with this brand of activity.

  No Dale, apparently. Which likely would have prevented the altercation from getting this far out of hand.

  Waylon and McBride were both in their boxer shorts, no shoes, no t-shirts. They were angling west of the condo unit, right now were crossing one of the pebbly-walking paths -- and maybe 25 yards further was a fake duck pond about 2 inches deep that residents sat around.

  The crux of the matter though, the two of them were locked in an embrace. It was a fight, clearly, but you could have mistaken it for a dance. It reminded Chris of that Greco-Roman wrestling you saw in the Olympics, where you couldn’t grab the guy’s legs.

  McBride and Waylon actually had their heads on each other’s shoulders as they continued grappling for leverage and position. It would have been comical, almost, but Chris knew why you did that -- to avoid exposing your face to where the guy had enough distance to clock you with a major fist and end your evening with authority.

  Chris hated to insert himself, but since no one else was doing anything about it, he said, trying to fake his own amount of authority: “Okay fellas, let’s take it back inside . . . Come on. Break it up now.”

  He could feel them both sideways glancing at him out of their clinch but that was about it, and if anything, his little injection upped the intensity level of the altercation.

  You hated to call the police -- especially the Eclipse folks -- and likely Karolina and Reba were having similar thoughts, since they wouldn’t particularly relish being questioned about what was going on here -- the whole picture, that precipitated this?

  There were a couple other lights that had gone in people’s units, though no one else came outside, but someone must have called Rancho’s house security, because here was a guy rolling up to the action on a three-wheeler job, like the meter maids use.