HE PARKED MORE than a block away from the point of the shooting, so he could take in the scene and get his bearings before anyone noticed him and started to tell him what had happened instead of him discovering what had happened. He could see the outer edge of the yellow crime-scene tape coming from the convenience store one block east of the Intracoastal. The Sheriff’s Office had a memo of understanding with the town that the S.O. Homicide Unit would investigate their officer-involved shootings. The previous sheriff had signed the memo, not realizing that there would be more shootings in this small beach town than in all other municipalities combined, and no one knew why. In addition, none of the suspects, five of whom were dead, had ever had a weapon. They had reached for wrenches, umbrellas, tape players – one had used a car – but none had had a gun or knife. That didn’t mean the cop hadn’t acted in self-defense; it just looked bad in the media. Stoltz didn’t care about the media or even the reasons why there were so many shootings in the town. All he cared about was doing a good job on the investigation and finding out what had happened in this shooting. If the cop had acted incorrectly, he would note it. If the shooting was justified, he would note that too. That was his job, and the only thing he had going for him now.
As he neared the tape, he heard a voice say, “Detectivesaurus Rex, I thought you had retired.”
Stoltz looked over at the forty-year-old police chief of South Fort Lauderdale Beach. He had known the chief since the guy was a patrolman and never thought he’d be a chief of police. At least not in the United States. “Hey, Howie, your man doing okay?”
“He’s a little shaky. The perp wrestled with him for a good five minutes before he finally had to drop back and fire. This’ll be an easy one for you.”
“Will he talk to me?”
“Through the PBA attorney. Just to be safe.”
“Whatever he wants.”
The young chief straightened his tie and adjusted his suit coat. “You haven’t changed. Still the Joe Friday look.”
“The dress code is shirt and tie.”
“Yeah, but short sleeves and a blue clip-on?”
“Never had a client complain.”
The chief smiled. “Nice to see some things never change.”
“I could say that about how your cops react to threats.”
“Stoltz, you know that’s not fair. Just because you never had a rough patrol zone, don’t think it’s not dangerous out there.”
He looked around at the beach shops and the park that extended five blocks. “You call this a rough patrol zone?”
The chief ignored him. “C’mon, I’ll take you to the scene.”
Stoltz followed the younger man to the tape, where a female officer in a city uniform wrote down his name as he entered the scene. She looked young enough to be one of his kids. He ducked under the tape that sealed off the entire ten-car parking lot at the Beach Snack Shop. He noticed that the S.O. Crime Scene people were already photographing the area. One tech had a detailed sketch of the lot and was placing yellow markers next to the two spent.40-caliber casings on the ground in front of the store’s door. Inside the brightly lit store, Stoltz saw six people leaning or sitting near the back wall, one of them a small man with a dark complexion, wearing a bright-red shirt with a badge that read beach snack shop.
This was what he had been trained to do and why he hadn’t had a bad day in his six years with the unit. His mind seemed to understand the template to use to set down the case. Interview the witnesses, interview the cop, get the radio transmissions, talk to the dead guy’s family, pull together crime scene and ballistics, throw in a few photos, and he had a case that would make sense. That was what he loved, pulling order out of chaos. That was all he had left.
He turned to find his partner next to the worried-looking chief. “Chuck, talk to the witnesses inside and get me an idea of what happened. Chief, I’ll need your radio tapes and the cop’s clothes and gun. You have something for him to use until we’re done with the examination?”
He nodded.
“Can we use your PD for interviews and stuff? It’s a lot closer than the S.O.”
“No problem.” He paused and then said, “Ben, you’re not gonna bury this guy, are you? Albury is fairly new but a good cop.”
“C’mon, Howie, you know I gotta look at this with an open mind.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“Why would you think I wouldn’t?”
“Because Carla Lazaro is waiting at the PD to sit in on interviews.”
Stoltz patted the chief on the arm and said, “Don’t worry, Howie. She doesn’t conduct the investigation and she doesn’t influence me.”
“I’m just worried about her using something like this to make a name for herself.”
“It’ll be fine. I’m sure she won’t interfere. She’s just a dedicated assistant state attorney.”
They both started to laugh as they moved on through the scene.
BEN STOLTZ FELT a sort of Zen pattern with homicide investigations. When he was on the scene of something like this, nothing else mattered. The problem he had experienced was that, when working a hot case, an activity that often took days or weeks after a body was discovered, he excluded almost everything else from his consciousness. He had missed Jenny’s dance recitals and cheerleading contests, more than one anniversary, which explained his current one-bedroom apartment in the town of Davie, and would have missed Craig’s sporting events if he had ever played sports. He did miss his son’s slow transition from rock to punk to Goth to whatever the hell he was now, with the piercings and tattoos. That was one favor the job had done for him.
Now, he let his instincts dictate what steps to take in the case. He didn’t worry about family, salary, or even Jane Doe number sixty-eight. The drought in homicides had lasted so long, he had to savor this activity of checking in with all the cogs that made an investigation run. The young woman from Crime Scene showed him where the body had fallen and where a small amount of blood had leaked onto the cement sidewalk. He tried to visualize where the body had landed. He didn’t like to call them “victims” in officer-involved shootings because he cringed when he heard the TV reporters refer to them that way. It made the cop sound like a murderer even if he was doing what he had been paid to do and was protecting the public. Contrary to Hollywood lore, Stoltz had never actually seen anyone use chalk lines on a body. If the corpse had been involved in immediate violence, like a drive-by, he or she would have been rushed to the hospital so every effort could have been made to save the person. If a body was found that was days old, Crime Scene took hundreds of photographs to provide an accurate view of how the corpse was discovered and what condition it was in. Chalk lines served no purpose. At least at a homicide scene.
He stood at the door to the small store, with the bloodstain a few feet away and the two casings about ten feet beyond the blood. He tried to get a sense of what the witnesses might have seen from the door or from inside the store. He tried to imagine what the corpse saw as the cop approached him. Stoltz had to wonder why, if the dead guy saw the cop with a pistol pointed at him, he didn’t drop the ASP. While the ASP expandable baton was a lethal weapon, it was no match for a Glock.40 caliber.
The lack of blood on the sidewalk probably meant good shot placement and that the guy’s heart stopped before it pumped much blood. Some bloody napkins and paramedics’ bandage wrappers lay next to the wall and in the lot just off the sidewalk. Someone had made an effort to save him.
Stoltz scanned the area to see all the vantage points. Inside the store, two of the female witnesses cried into paper towels.
The shooting had occurred more than an hour ago. He had a hard time understanding the lingering stress of the incident. To him, the aftermath was just an activity, like doing your wash or balancing the books. He often was mystified by the emotion that followed. At least the hysterics of witnesses who didn’t know the corpse. He noticed his partner speaking to a witness off to the side, away from the others. That seemed natural to him, not emotional. Get the scene in order, then break it down. Talk to the witnesses separately so one account doesn’t influence the others.