Red Man Down(12)
‘The department didn’t want to talk about it when they fired him,’ Leo said. ‘They put the lid on tight, told the media something vague about his health. The incident that led to it was a one-car crash, so there weren’t any complainants to be dealt with. But anybody who had to work with him during the second half of his shifts that last year knew he was going down.’
‘What, he was using on the job?’
‘Sure was. Vodka and weed. And sometimes something else … I heard meth.’
‘Meth … That’s what I figured when I saw him today,’ Menendez said. ‘You notice the way his mouth was wrecked?’
Sarah tried to remember, but it had been the bullet hole beneath his chin which had attracted her attention.
‘Of course,’ Tobin was nodding to himself, remembering, ‘he didn’t look quite this bad while he was still working … he used to clean up for roll call and make a pretty decent show, but he had stuff stashed along his route, and by the time he checked out at night he was way up in the clouds.’
‘Huh.’ Delaney shuffled through the pages, looking. ‘His record doesn’t reflect any of that till he wrapped his squad car around a light pole, and then people came out of the woodwork, apparently, to say what a bad boy he was. He went off the charts for DUI, it says here, and flunked the narc screen big time.’ He pulled off his glasses. Polishing them, he asked the table, ‘Anybody know what set him off?’
‘His wife left him,’ Menendez said.
‘OK, but what was the bad news?’ Jason said, and got his laugh from everybody but Delaney, who just looked impatient.
‘Well, before that his uncle got, you know, disgraced …’ Cifuentes said.
‘Disgraced by what?’ Delaney hated gossip, and always got mean and sharp when, as now, it became useful and he had to tolerate it.
‘That’s right, that Martin guy was his uncle, wasn’t he?’ Tobin said.
Delaney looked around the desk at his suddenly buzzing detectives and said, ‘You’re not talking about Frank Martin, are you?’
‘Yup.’ Tobin always remembered the best stories. ‘The beloved do-gooder who got caught with his hand in the till at the Old Pueblo Credit union , then shot himself in the head. It was in all the local papers. They never found the money, though.’
‘That was Ed Lacey’s uncle? Why didn’t I know that?’
The faces around the table all grew a little half-smile until Leo Tobin said, kindly, ‘Boss, you don’t schmooze much.’ He shrugged in an understanding way. ‘It’s not a problem.’ He nodded at the rest of the crew. ‘We all gossip enough to make up for your share.’
What will we do when Leo retires? Sarah wondered. He always knew how to walk the talk back from the place where sparks might fly.
Delaney gave a derisive snort and muttered, ‘You got that right.’ He peered at the ceiling light for a while as if it might hold answers up there instead of only dead flies. ‘That was a strange case, all right. But when’s the last time you knew a guy to go off the rails over something that happened to his uncle? Must’ve been something else going on.’
He closed the jacket. ‘Oh, the crime-scene crew picked up all three of Spurlock’s bullets off the asphalt, did I tell you that? They all went through Lacey so they’re pretty beat up but they think they can ID them. They found one in the street, too, right at the edge of the driveway. Looks like a match for the rimfire casing they picked up earlier beside Lacey’s body. If so it’s almost certainly from Lacey’s Sig Sauer. Except the angle’s all wrong – I don’t see how Lacey could have been that far off with his shot, but … the lab’s got all four of them now. I asked them for a rush job on the one from the street. No use wasting time on it if it isn’t from Lacey’s gun. Well, what else? Ollie’s still at the autopsy, huh?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s all take an early lunch and then start on what we can do in the meantime. Sarah, you’ll be following through with IA, of course …’
‘Did most of that Saturday,’ she said. ‘The rest is on hold till the autopsy reports come back.’
‘OK, then you’ve got some time? Hold that good thought, I’ll get back to you. Leo, I want you to go back to that bar where the call came from, talk to everybody there, try to find the two guys who called nine-one-one on Saturday. Ray and Jason, you canvass all the buildings around there, both sides of the block, see if you can find anybody who witnessed the shooting.’