‘Well … she was maybe thirty pounds lighter in those days. And the night we went dancing she had on a low-necked dress, and, you know, she did have a very nice rack.’
‘God,’ Sarah said, parking the Impala, ‘I had to ask.’
SIX
Inside the station, walking toward the elevator, Oscar said, ‘I’m going to write up my report of Angela’s interview right away. Can I get you to check it before I turn it in?’
‘Sure,’ Sarah said. She left him there and headed for the stairs. These days, her crowded home life often forced her to skip workouts. She was trying to compensate by climbing every set of stairs she encountered.
Ollie Greenaway, walking into the lobby as she reached the bottom step, called out, ‘Ah, there goes the Queen of the Risers, climbing again.’ Like all her mates in the investigative division, he thought her stair-climbing habits were amusingly retro, something like canning pickles or spinning one’s own yarn. ‘Hang on, Sarah, I’ll walk up with you. We’ll tighten up those glutes together, by golly.’ He reached her in a few long strides and clattered upstairs with her, chuckling.
‘You’re in an unusually good mood,’ Sarah said. ‘You just find a clue or something?’
‘Not yet, but maybe any minute now. I just got a message to call Moses Greenberg ASAP.’
‘Oh, well, he always wants everything ten minutes ago. Don’t tell me he’s changing his opinion about the Lacey killing.’
‘Beats me. Why do you care?’
‘I’d just like to see us get that poor Spurling kid off the hook. Less than a year out of the academy and he has to shoot a guy? Pretty tough.’
‘Aw, come on, Sarah, you can’t go around feeling sympathy for this bunch of yahoos, you’ll wear yourself out. The thing to do is find out what the Spurling kid’s worst faults are and keep telling yourself it serves him right.’
Reaching the top step, Sarah stopped for a deep breath. ‘You know,’ she said, still thinking of what Cifuentes had said about Angela, ‘amazingly enough, I believe that’s only the second worst thing I’ve heard in the last ten minutes.’
‘You see? What other workplace affords this level of amusement?’ Ollie went on to his cubicle, smiling benignly.
Passing Delaney’s open door, Sarah saw that Banjo Bailey, the pint-size firearms and toolmarks criminalist from the crime lab on Miracle Mile, was curled in a chair in front of the sergeant’s desk. He moonlighted in a bluegrass band and groomed himself to look appropriate in bib overalls and loggers’ boots. Evidently he thought the lab could tolerate a few idiosyncrasies but the band needed validation. Right now he was caressing his soul patch and handlebar mustache as he read from a report form, looking like some unlikely cross between Santa’s helper and Mephistopheles.
Whatever he was saying appeared to have Delaney’s full attention. Hoping to slide on by and let the day’s commotion cover her tracks with Cifuentes, Sarah kept her head down and avoided eye contact. Delaney saw her anyway out of a corner of his eye, and waved her inside.
‘Hey, Sarah, where you been?’ Luckily he was too full of his own fresh news to wait for an answer. ‘Come in and listen to this. You’re going to like what Banjo’s got to say.’
‘The three bullets from Spurlock’s Glock, no surprises there,’ Banjo said, reprising quickly for Sarah. ‘They were all pretty beat up from going through the wire thief. But because he was standing when they hit, none of them dug into the asphalt – just laid on top till we picked them up. So I’m going to get pictures good enough to show they’re our ammo and they all match.
‘The fourth bullet, the one the crime-scene techs dug out of the edge of the street – it was just a fantastic piece of luck the way it landed, right in the middle of a pothole patch that the street crews had just finished. Nice soft tar, mostly. That bullet looks like it was preserved in a bowl of Jello. I don’t get to look at much used ammo like this, looka here.’ He showed her the picture he’d brought along.
‘I mean, it’s like the textbook example for lands and grooves. Can you see the right-hand twist?’
‘Plain as day,’ Sarah said, and passed it to Delaney.
Banjo would have no problem, he said, showing that this bullet came out of the barrel of the Sig-Sauer the suspect had used – ‘I guess I’m supposed to say allegedly used, huh?’ – to shoot at the cop.
‘Well, but you’ve tested the gun, right? You know it was fired?’
‘Yes. The gun that was found at the scene was fired. So I guess we can dispense with the “allegedly” nonsense, huh? But I’m curious … the Sig’s a surprisingly elegant weapon for this bozo, isn’t it? Your average wire thief, most of them are losers, just trying to raise a few bucks for their next fix.’