Crystal Meth Cowboys (6 page)

The Chief looked to the Mayor, who was studying copies of the reports in Bell's jacket. Wes couldn't remember ever seeing a bald politician before. All the pols in Massachusetts had serious hair. And why did they call him 'Boss Hogg'? He wasn't fat. Perhaps it was the slight upturn to his nose that let you see up his nostrils.

Boss Hogg raised his head from the reports. Though he never looked, he seemed to know that the Chief was waiting for him. The Mayor rapped his knuckles softly on the desk. "Quite an impressive record," he said. "Quite an impressive record." Mayor Krumrie laid his hands flat on the desk. One was suntanned, one was pale. Wes wondered why.

The Mayor picked up a copy of form 5683-F and studied the first page. He turned to the Narrative Supplement. Wes studied the pale hand and saw a tan line at the wrist. Ah. Golf glove. "Officer Bell, in your report you say that Mr. Bjornstedt was unarmed."

"Initially. Yes, sir."

The Mayor turned a page. The Chief and CJ did likewise. "You say he, Mr. Bjornstedt, took Officer Lyedecker's gun." Boss Hogg looked up, showing his nostrils.

"Yes, sir."

Wes held his breath. The Mayor was going to ask if the naked man had ever proffered the weapon. Bell had insisted on 'the subject
raised
the weapon' in the Narrative Supplement, neglecting to mention that the subject had raised the weapon all the way to the ceiling. This was going to be the key question, Wes felt sure.

"Yet the subject never fired that gun. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," said Bell through his teeth.

The Mayor tapped his pen on the last page of the Narrative Supplement. "Yet you fired three two-shot blasts…at extended intervals."

"The intervals were very brief, sir."

Boss Hogg fished around amongst the sheaves of papers splayed out in front of him. He found the affadavit he was looking for and held it up for Bell to see. "Well, according to a guest in a nearby room at the Coach House…" The Mayor read from the affadavit. "'There were two gunshots. Then a long pause, some yelling and two more
gunshots…Another long pause, no yelling. Then two final gunshots.'" The Mayor lowered the affadavit to his desk and waited for an explanation.

Bell worked a piece of grit from his eye. He didn't get it. Boss Hogg was a gold-plated card-carrying asshole, everyone knew that. But he liked to portay himself as pro-police. Why was he doing this with an election just around the corner?

Wes felt both relieved and guilt-stricken. The Mayor had apparently assumed that 'raised' the weapon meant 'pointed' the weapon. If the gun were aimed at Bell then the intervals between shots hardly mattered. Their lie of omission on the Narrative Supplement had worked.

"Mr. Mayor,
sir
," said Bell, folding his hands in his lap to keep himself from wagging his finger at the Napoleonic little prick. "I could have squeezed off six rounds in quick succession. I did not. The
reason
I did not is that, in a small, enclosed space, my partner close to the line of fire, an adjoining motel room next door, I wanted to neutralize the threat to our lives with the smallest possible expenditure of rounds." Bell ached to tell the famous story of the accidentally discharged pistol round that exited the wall of a house, shattered a kitchen window next door, ricocheted off a neighbor's forehead and zzzz'ed around and around a crystal bowl spinning foil-wrapped candies all over the linoleum. But all he said was, "Every round out can end up killing someone you have no interest in killing."

"But you
were
interested in killing Mr. Bjornstedt."

"No sir," replied Bell, his voice rising. "I was
interested
in getting him to drop the weapon." Bell paused. "Unfortunately it took six bullets to convince him."

The Mayor sharpened his stare. The Chief dropped his head and shook it. CJ winced. But Bell grinned like a just-popped Jack in the Box, his head bobbing at Boss Hogg.

"Call the Medical Examiner," said the Mayor to the back of the room.

Bell and Lyedecker turned to see Deputy Coroner Bernard Fischer escorted into the office by the Mayor's secretary. A diminutive man wearing wire rim glasses, Fischer was recognized as the top ME in Santa Barbara county after only nine years on the job. A top pre-med student at Stanford, he had turned down medical scholarships in order to care for his aged parents in Wislow. The Sheriff had snatched him up in a heartbeat.

Bell chewed on his mustache. Boss Hogg wouldn't have brought the ol' Kingfisher up from SB to deliver any good news. Bell watched Bernie refuse the Mayor's offer of a high-backed chair and smiled to himself. The little man didn't want his legs to dangle.

Fischer stood to the right of Bell, facing across the desk so that everyone had to turn to face him. Bell made eye contact and Bernie nodded curtly. Bell hoped he hadn't told one too many Jewish jokes at the last SO picnic.

"First of all," said the Mayor. "I would like to thank Deputy Coroner Fischer for schlepping all the way up here on his day off." The Mayor gave Bernie his best shit-eating grin. "And helping us laymen make sense of this complex document."

The Mayor held up a copy of the autopsy report. Deputy Coroner Fischer remained impassive inside his starched and steam pressed green and khaki uniform. His parents owned a dry cleaners and Bernie never donned a uniform that wasn't wrapped in polyethylene.

"I realize this is a preliminary autopsy report pending certain lab results, but, after all…" The Mayor gestured to all the happy participants happily. "This isn't a legally binding inquiry, is it?"

Bell told himself he would have to have a little chat with his old drinking buddy Lieutenant, now Sheriff, Jack
Broome about leaking a copy of a preliminary autopsy to Boss Hogg without extending the same courtesy to himself.

"Okay," said the Mayor and bent his nostrils to a page of the autopsy marked with a red plastic clip. "I'm particularly interested in your take on the shoulder injury sustained by the deceased," said the Mayor. "The result…" The Mayor scrambled through the mass of paperwork on his desk. "According to Officer Bell's report…" The Mayor paged through the Narrative Supplement hurriedly. "Of…yes, Officer Bell's second shot." Boss Hogg grazed Bell with a look before he turned to the Deputy Coroner.

"My 'take'," said Fischer, "Is that the bullet severed Mr. Bjornstedt's brachial plexus nerve."

"Right," said Boss Hogg. "Quite right. So, once Officer Bell shot the man in this way, would it have been possible for him to point and fire a weapon with that shoulder…with the arm
attached
to that shoulder after sustaining that injury?"

Boss Hogg looked confidently at the Deputy Coroner. Bell knew Hizzoner already knew the answer, had asked Bernie the question before hauling him up here. "To the best of my knowledge, no."

Mayor Krumrie rocked back in his black leather chair. "Well," he said, "That's good enough for me."

"Mr. Mayor," said Bell. "The manual decocking device was off." When this brought no look of recognition, Bell said, "My partner's nine millimeter semi-automatic, the one with the suspect's prints all over it, the one he waved at me, the manual decocking device, the safety, was
off
."

The Mayor's face remained bereft of comprehension. Bell whipped out his service weapon, creating quite a stir. He pointed the weapon at the far wall. "Disarming the safety on a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter automatic requires coordinated movement and strong fingers." Bell demonstrated. "You have to grip and steady the butt with your fingers while flicking upwards, strongly, with your
thumb. A man with…" Bell nodded to Bernard Fischer. "An incapacitated shoulder could not have released the manual decocking device on a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter."

"Exactly," said the Mayor. He looked to the Chief of Police. "We believe the safety became released in the prior struggle over the weapon. Or perhaps the safety was
already
off in Officer Lyedecker's holster. He's a rookie. Who knows?"

Wes Lyedecker sat frozen to his chair as he experienced the dizzying transformation from casual observer to a man whose neck was being fitted for a noose. He looked at Bell, who inclined his head forward, giving him permission to speak. "Mayor Krumrie, Chief Sunomoka, Officer…"

"Chiminski," said CJ.

"Officer Chiminski. I can assure you that the safety on my service weapon was inoperable…the safety wasn't inoperable, the
gun
was inoperable…not that it didn't work but…when the gun was in my holster the safety was on. Definitely on."

Wes sat back and exhaled from his ankles. Bell's mood blackened. CJ the narc, his personal reclamation project and sole representative on the Board, was leaning back in his leather chair, just-a
smilin'
like a field nigger invited up to the big house to share Massa's table scraps on Christmas day. So far the only thing he'd said was his name.

Deputy Coroner Fischer spoke up. "I have further information."

Mayor Krumrie waved him on. Fischer pulled a folded-up report from his pants pocket and unfolded it. "I received the lab results this morning." He read from the report. "Robert Bjornstedt had almost four hundred micrograms per deciliter of methamphetamine in his system when he died." Fischer paused. When he had everyone's undivided attention he continued. "I said before that the subject couldn't have
fired a weapon with his shot-up shoulder
to the best of my knowledge
. But methamphetamine intoxication at that level is the equivalent of dark matter." He paused and checked again. The geeks were his. "Astrophyicists claim that over 60% of the universe consists of so-called 'dark matter' where the commonly accepted laws of physics do not apply. Light disappears, gravity works backward. Whatever. The point of this dissertation is that a human body subject to that much meth is capable of almost anything this side of winged flight. And I'm not so sure I'd rule that out."

Boss Hogg looked from Chief Sunomoka to CJ and back again. Bell dug an elbow into Lyedecker's ribs.

Lt. Coroner Fischer surveyed his listeners with his hands on his hips. "When Officers Bell and Lyedecker confronted him, the subject's blood pressure was, conservatively, 260 over 110. At most he had five minutes before his arteries ruptured and his heart exploded." Bernie graced Bell with a look before he turned to face the Mayor. "As it turns out they did the man a favor."

Chapter 6

"Speak to me," said Bell.

Wes took a sip from the mug of fresh ground coffee that Bell had painstakingly alchemized from three different kinds of beans and inhaled a medicinal smell. He had coated the insides of his nostrils, dry from the constant wind, with Mentholatum. A blue bottle fly, sensing sugar, buzzed around his coffee. Wes swatted at it. Bell snatched up two album covers from a boards-and-brick shelf and ushered the buzzing fly out the sliding glass door to the back yard. Two big dogs galloped up as he slid the door shut. "Fly herding," explained Bell as he returned to his studio.

Wes stepped up to a microphone that looked like an electric razor and said, "Testing." His plosive
T
rattled the studio monitors mounted above the mixing board. The speaker grills had been removed and Wes could see the bass cone throb. He backed off and repeated, "Testing, testing."

Bell adjusted a knob on a gunmetal gray box that glowed with vacuum tubes. Wes examined a black and white glossy of a P-51 Mustang bursting through the clouds that hung in the place of honor above the mixing board.

"So, Mr. Lyedecker," urged Bell, the unctuous game show host, "Tell us something about yourself."

The dogs, a blonde Labrador and a German Shepherd, muzzled up against the sliding glass door. Morning sunlight angled into the oblong room.

"Well, I'm 23 years old, six foot one, 180 pounds." Bell tweaked something inside the metal box as Lyedecker talked. "I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts on September 12th, 1971 and I grew up in Braintree."

Bell stirred his hand like a stage manager giving the fill sign. "Uhh, I'm an only child, my parents are
divorced, my father is an investment counselor and my mother works in hospital administration. Umm…I enjoy weight lifting, I used to play football, and I…"

"Have a large collection of porcelain frogs," said Bell. "All right, we get the idea." Bell leaned over an Ampex tape recorder and cleaned the heads with a cue tip.

Wes sat down in a highback club chair. The leather on the arms was dry and cracked. On the wall next to the kitchen counter hung an autographed photo of a man standing in front of a WWII bomber. Wes hunched forward, wondering if this might be Bell's father. But the photo was signed by Paul W. Tibbets and the logo on the fuselage read 'Enola Gay'.

Bell threaded a ten inch reel of tape onto the take-up reel. "You ready?"

"I guess." Wes had never recorded anything but a phone machine message and sounded stilted doing that. "What do I say?"

Bell grabbed up a legal pad and handed it to Wes. "It's gotta be quick. Four seconds max," said Bell, punching the record button. The ten inch reel twirled. "Rolling."

Wes read Bell's overlarge scrawl in a shallow voice. "This message paid for by Citizens to Elect Florence Jillison Mayor."

Bell jabbed the yellow stop button. "Loosen up. Project."

"Shouldn't you be doing this?"

"Hey, I'm the engineer."

"I'll be happy to push the record button."

Bell plunked himself down a wheeled stool and threw out his arms, rolling backwards as he said "Awright, awright. I don't want my voice on Florence Jillison's campaign commercial. Ex-pecially if Boss Hogg wins." Bell looked moist blue eyes at Lyedecker. "Plus, too many shitheads know my voice in a negative context. As in 'put
your nose in the dirt you scumsucking felonious welfare recipient shithead motherfucker'." Bell tucked his size twelves under the bottom rung of the wheeled stool. His face assumed that slew-eyed crinkle-browed font-of-all-wisdom look that Wes was beginning to dislike. "And it just so happens Florence Jillison is targeting the core shithead motherfucker constituency in this campaign."