Double Tap (15 page)

“According to the police report, you told the cops you forgot the gun at the house,” Harry points out. “Now you’re telling us you left it there because she wanted you to.”

“At first I did forget it. When she called me, after the security detail was ended, I told her I needed to come by and pick it up. That’s when she asked me if I could just leave it there a while longer. I figured there was no sense telling the cops: they weren’t gonna believe me.”

“What about other people on the security detail? Did they know the gun was there?”

“They may have. Like I said, toward the end I tried to make sure I was never alone with her at the house. It was getting to be bad form.”

“So somebody might have seen the gun in the drawer?”

“It’s possible.”

We go over the list of names. This is short: two other employees of Karr, Rufus.

“Did they find any fingerprints on the gun?” asks Ruiz.

“Should they have?” says Harry.

“I assumed that if they found somebody else’s, they wouldn’t have arrested me,” he says. “Did they find mine?”

“No.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ruiz says. “I cleaned and oiled it pretty well last time we used it. After we went to the range. Put it away wet: figured I probably wouldn’t be using it again for a while so it was best to give it a good oiling. You’re not likely to find prints on something like that.”

Ruiz seems to know a lot about this, the forensics of fingerprints on firearms. It is a truism that most people don’t realize that good prints are rarely found on a firearm after a crime. One of the reasons is the oil used to clean the gun, along with the shooter’s sweaty hands—that is, if he isn’t wearing gloves.

“The oil and the recoil usually screw up anything that might be readable,” says Ruiz.

“You sound like you might have worked crimes at one time,” I say.

“No. Just done a lot of shooting. You pick up bits and pieces of information.”

Harry changes the subject. “Have you ever heard the name Primis?”

Ruiz looks at him as if perhaps he’s talking to someone else. “Excuse me?”

“Primis software?”

He gives Harry a face, a kind of scrunched-up expression, then shakes his head, shrugs. “Never heard of it.”

“What about Protector?”

He shakes his head. “No. What is it?”

“You never heard Chapman talk about either of these?”

He thinks for a moment. “No. Like I told you, she didn’t talk about business. At least not with me. What are they?”

“You never overheard her talking to anybody else when she might have mentioned these?”

He shakes his head. “I told you. No.”

We’re done for the session. Harry begins to gather his papers, slipping them back into his briefcase.

“Oh, one other thing before I forget: the handgun. The forty-five. It has some letters engraved on the side of the frame. Do you know anything about those, what they stand for?”

“I don’t think so.”

I pull a slip of paper from my pocket, the yellow Post-it, and read from it. “The letters read USSOCOM. All capitals cut into the side of the slide.” I look up at Ruiz.

He’s standing there, one foot up on the metal chair at the other side of the table, gaze cast down at the flat stainless-steel surface in front of him. He arches his eyebrows, cigarette pressed between his lips, one hand up to cup it. He slowly shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“I checked it out. Ran a Google search. You know what that is?”

“Internet, right?”

“Yeah. Seems there’s actually a site on this particular model handgun.”

“That so?”

“Yes. Heckler and Koch Model Mark Twenty-three. Originally it was made for only one customer, the United States government.”

“Really?”

“They make a civilian model now, but the original, the one you had, that was made only for military use under a special contract. The letters on the side”—I look down at the note in my hand again—“USSOCOM: it stands for United States Special Operations Command.”

If this sets off galvanic responses in his skin or elevates Ruiz’s blood pressure or respiration, you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. “Oh, I have heard of Special Ops Command. Didn’t recognize the acronym.”

“They’re headquartered down in Tampa,” says Harry. “MacDill Air Force Base.”

Ruiz takes it all in but doesn’t say a thing.

“Seems there’s a lot of interesting things going on down there,” Harry remarks.

“Really?”

“According to the online site, they have an Army Ranger unit attached. Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment?”

“Not familiar with them,” says Ruiz.

“And there’s something they call Psy Ops,” says Harry. “Psychological Operations Command. And a special-warfare school.”

Ruiz doesn’t say anything, just takes a drag on the cigarette, which is now down to a butt.

“So, have you ever been there?”

“Where?”

“MacDill Air Force Base?” says Harry.

Ruiz smiles. “I was wondering when you were going to ask. Sorry to disappoint you. The answer is no. Listen, the fact that that sidearm was issued doesn’t mean a thing. That particular weapon is probably issued in half the military ranges in the country. For training purposes.”

“So you’ve never been attached to Special Operations Command?”

“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever even driven past MacDill Air Force Base,” says Ruiz.

CHAPTER TWELVE

F
or the veterans of Korea who were ahead of the psychiatric learning curve, it passed for battle fatigue. Today we have a name for the condition that afflicted my uncle. It is called post-traumatic stress disorder and it produces symptoms in varying degrees of severity. In my uncle’s case it was catatonia. His soul had been possessed by this particular demon in the winter of 1950 somewhere north of a place on the map of Korea called the Chosin Reservoir. Those who survived to tell of it have become known as the “Chosin Few.”

Through the hell that was the battle at Chosin and the retreat south to the coast, from what I came to learn later, my uncle functioned normally. He drove a truck carrying supplies and the wounded, and used a rifle and fought when he had to. His problems, the mental cloud that descended on him, came later, after he’d had time to think, a kind of delayed reaction.

For the better part of a year after returning from Korea, he seemed fine. With the war winding down, he found himself stationed at Fort Ord, assigned to drive an ambulance. With little to do but dwell on the past, the memories of faces and voices, of dead companions, he passed time waiting for his discharge. It was there, during this period of psychic decompression, that the twin demons of battle trauma—the guilt of survival and depression—began their corrosive effect. Evo began to ask troubling questions. Why was he alive when so many of his friends were dead? Like a man who escapes by a hair the carnage of a catastrophic collision and an hour later succumbs to uncontrollable tremors, my uncle fell into crying jags without any explanation. On leave at home, my grandmother would find him in the morning curled in a fetal position in the corner of his room, soaked in cold sweat and shaking. Within weeks Evo was catapulted into a psychotic pit beyond reach.

By the time they had finished with him at the VA hospital, shooting a zillion volts of electricity through his body—shock therapy, the cutting-edge treatment of the time—Evo was completely catatonic. To a wide-eyed kid of seven, my uncle Evo was a scary guy.

When he smiled, which wasn’t often, there were gaps up front where teeth were missing. On most days, uneven dark stubble, whiskers like a wire brush, covered his expressionless face.

On visits to my grandmother’s house where he lived, I would watch him sit in his chair silently, staring at nothing in particular—the wall, the television, whether it was on or not—the expression on his face an impassive mask. At times I could not help but look at him in fascination and fright until my father would gently call my name and shake his head, a message that this was not polite.

For hours Uncle Evo would sit chain-smoking in a stretched out white tank-top undershirt, burning holes in the upholstery with his cigarette while he drilled psychic holes in the wall with his eyes.

Years later I would swear that the paint, the brown nicotine-stained walls of the living room, bore scorch marks from Evo’s gaze. He could stare for hours and never blink, lost somewhere in thoughts of past horror, his own private hell. At times his senses were so dulled by the anesthesia of past mental pain that a cigarette held between his fingers would burn down until it singed the flesh between them, filling the room with an unmistakable sickening sweet odor.

On the few occasions when my uncle turned his dead eyes on me, I felt as if I would melt. Once after nearly a year sitting in his chair without uttering a word, getting up only for food or to relieve himself, he did something I will never forget. Visiting with my father, I sat silent in a corner watching the adults talk, when suddenly Evo swung around, looked at me, smiled his toothless grin, and said: “Paul. How is school?”

You could hear the clock ticking two rooms away in the silence that filled the room. All eyes were on Evo. As I picked myself up off the floor, he laughed just a little, the happier face of times gone by. Then just as suddenly the leaded curtain behind his eyes dropped once more, his unfocused gaze passing through me as if I were transparent.

To my grandmother, who spoke no English, it was a miracle on the order of the fishes and the loaves. To this day I remember it as one of the truly unnerving events of my childhood, seared into my memory as if placed there by a white-hot branding iron.

“The truth is that we would have had to let him go even if they hadn’t charged him.” Max Rufus is talking to me from behind a massive antique partners desk, quarter-sawn oak, probably two hundred years old, with brass-pull-decorated drawers and leg wells on each side. The top is covered by a blotter of inlaid burgundy leather. Atop this is an antique letter box of darker oak and an ornate gold desktop pen set complete with gold-nib pens and two square crystal ink bottles for dipping, both of them empty.

Everything about Rufus is big, from his desk, to the size of his office, to the man himself. His hair is thinning and gray, his face tanned with creases like the furrows of a field across his forehead and around the corners of his eyes. I would guess he is in his late sixties and that the tan is from sailing. There is a large photograph of a boat under full sail on the wall behind him. This is flanked by framed certificates and licenses. The photograph, obviously taken from the air—the strut of a small plane visible in one corner—is close enough to make out the gray head at the helm, behind the oversized stainless-steel mariner’s wheel in the boat’s cockpit.

This morning Rufus reclines, almost laid out, in the leather executive chair, rocking back, his hands clasped behind his head as he talks.

“I liked Ruiz. He was a likable guy. He always had a good word and a smile. He would take any assignment you gave him, and for the most part he was good at what he did. I think he’s a little wanting in judgment—well, more than a little wanting,” he says. “Having an affair with a client is about as far as you’d want to go. Except for killing her. But then, I’d like to believe that he didn’t do that. I wish him well. I do,” he says. “I hope you can get him off. God knows, this firm doesn’t need the bad publicity that surely will be showered on us if he’s convicted. That phone”—he nods toward the one on his desk, a marble and onyx French antique—“hasn’t stopped ringing with calls from the press since the day they arrested him. So you can be sure that we have an interest in the outcome of your trial.”

The main offices of Karr, Rufus are not located in downtown San Diego but situated in the heart of the Village in La Jolla. It’s a strange place for a large security firm. Rufus tells me that Emmit Karr, his longtime partner, now deceased, came here nearly thirty years earlier when commercial real estate was a relative bargain. Karr managed to buy one of the larger buildings with an ocean view and now has one of the prime locations in downtown La Jolla. Most of the company’s equipment and security personnel are housed in cheaper quarters, in an industrial park out near La Mesa.

“But you say you would have had to let Ruiz go even if he hadn’t been arrested?”

“Sure. What else am I supposed to do? I’m sure you’re aware he was taken off the executive security detail out at Isotenics at the request of Madelyn Chapman herself. After the rather embarrassing situation.” Rufus is talking about the videotaped incident between Ruiz and Chapman on Chapman’s office couch.

“I take it Isotenics was one of your bigger clients,” I say.

He gives me an expression as if maybe this is true and maybe it isn’t. “Karr, Rufus has clients all over the world. But Isotenics is a substantial account.”

“So the company hasn’t changed security consultants since Ruiz was charged?”

“Oh, no. Why would they? There’s no reason,” he says. “It’s nothing
we’ve
done.” He calls the whole thing “a difficult situation.”

“When the CEO calls you and tells you that she wants her security detail terminated because she’s not comfortable with the agent in charge, that’s a problem,” Rufus continues. “But her death: we had absolutely nothing to do with that. Ruiz had been told—told emphatically—to stay away from Isotenics. He was assigned to other duties, mostly low-security night-watchman functions for other clients, pending an investigation of the events on the videotape. We would have fired him sooner, but that investigation hadn’t been concluded when he was arrested for her murder.”

“Madelyn Chapman called you directly to have Ruiz removed from security?”

“Yes, she did.”

“What did she tell you?”

“I expect you’ve seen the accounts in the police investigative reports,” he says.

“I’d like to hear it from you.”

“What did she say? What
could
she say?” says Rufus. “She had been captured on video surveillance with the man in a compromising situation. I wasn’t in a position to ask her questions. She said Ruiz’s conduct was unprofessional, that he took advantage of her in a weak moment.”

“She was on the couch with him, in her office, the head of a large company, Isotenics, and she viewed Mr. Ruiz as unprofessional?”

“That’s what she said. Or words to that effect.”

“How is it possible that she was caught on a videotape in her own office?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she had to know that the cameras were there.”

“Ah. I see your point,” he says. “Actually, she didn’t know that the camera was there. I mean, it was a small pencil cam, about the diameter of your middle finger. It had a fish-eye lens that allowed it to capture pretty much the entire room. It was connected to a monitor in the security observation area.”

“You mean there were other people watching when Ruiz and Chapman were being taped?”

He smiles. “Actually, no. In that regard you’re lucky,” he says. “The only other witness was this Ms., ah . . .” He tries to remember the name.

“Karen Rogan?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Actually if everything had been up and running, there would have been security on the monitor watching. But as it was, the system was still being installed. You see, it was new. The camera had been installed in a small hole in the back of a bookcase just two or three days before the event. Ms. Chapman had been traveling, away on business. The head of security out at Isotenics—who, by the way, was fired shortly afterward—thought it would be wise to install a camera in her office. He was concerned that occasionally she met with people who might not be thoroughly vetted by security. Needless to say, he should have checked with her first.” Rufus has a kind of pained expression as he explains all of this.

“In short,” he concludes, “it was a major screwup. Of course, that doesn’t relieve Ruiz of the responsibility that he violated strict company policy. It’s in our operations manual: no fraternizing with clients or employees of client companies, on or off company time. He knew that. When Ms. Chapman found out that it was all on tape, well, she was embarrassed to say the least. And angry. She called and read me the riot act. I told her we were merely providing the service the client requested.”

He sees me smiling from the other side of the desk and catches himself. “I, ah, I didn’t use that exact phrase,” he says. His face now red, he sits up, leans forward in the chair. “I meant that we had only installed the camera at the client’s request, and I told her that we were operating in good faith on the belief that the installation of the camera in her own office had been cleared by her through her own security personnel, who had requested it. Obviously, if we’d known that the head of Isotenic’s security division hadn’t checked with her first, we would never have installed it. Goes without saying.”

I can believe that Rufus has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial. There have already been reports in the newspapers that Chapman’s survivors, her mother in New York State and a sister in Oregon, have been consulting lawyers with an eye toward suing Karr, Rufus for negligence in assigning Ruiz to the security detail. In the news articles Rufus has been unavailable for comment. No doubt their defense would be that they had no way of knowing that Ruiz might be a risk as an employee. If he can beat the murder charge, the civil liability for Karr, Rufus may disappear with it.

“So you see, we would have been compelled to fire him no matter what,” says Rufus. “There were other reasons as well. I can’t go into everything at this point.”

“Are you talking about reports that Ruiz was stalking Chapman after he was removed from the security detail?”

He is looking down at the top of the desk when I ask this, so that his gaze darts up at me. He seems surprised that I would know about this.

“As I said, there are things I can’t discuss. When they arrested him, that cut it. We discharged him. I’m sorry, but we had no choice.”

“I’m not here to get his job back. I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

“I understand,” he says. “The fact is that you run a business these days and you get sued every time you turn around, at the drop of a hat,” says Rufus.

“What about Ruiz’s military record?” I ask.

“What about it?”

“Was it good, bad, indifferent? Your firm hired him. I assume you checked him out?”

“Oh, sure. He had a good record. Exemplary,” he says.

Of course this is what Rufus would tell lawyers if he were on the stand and his company were being sued for wrongful death on grounds that they had negligently hired a dangerous employee and put him in charge of Chapman’s security detail.

“What did he do in the military? What was your understanding?”

“You’re asking
me
? I assume you’ve talked to your own client,” he says.

“I have. But what was your understanding as to what he did in the military?”

He makes a face, sits back in his chair again, and looks at me across the distance. Then finally he says: “I’m sorry, but that’s a personnel matter, and I really shouldn’t go into personnel matters.”

“If you’re called to the stand in his trial, you may have to.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to deal with that bridge if and when I come to it. But for now, company policy doesn’t permit me to get into personnel matters. I’m sure you understand.”

According to Ruiz, company policy is whatever Rufus says it is. For now, he is trying to tap-dance, to keep all his options open. I can’t say I blame him. If he can avoid having to testify on the issue of Ruiz’s prior military background during the murder trial, and he is later sued, his lawyers have more latitude to go back and fill in terms of what they knew and when they knew it. For my part, I was hoping that he might shed some light on what appears to be a seven-year hole in my client’s life, when, for all intents, Emiliano Ruiz seems to have vanished from the planet.