Lisa Scottoline: Devil's corner

"Notice anything special about this cocaine, little girl?"

"No. Do I flunk?"

"Look again, in the light." Bale snagged a Maglite from a uniformed cop, eased onto his haunches, and turned on the flashlight. He aimed it at the cocaine, and Vicki, crouching beside him, saw what he meant. There was a telltale shimmer to the cocaine, like a deadly rainbow.

"Fish-scale cocaine?" Vicki asked, surprised. She'd thought it was urban drug myth, yet here it was; a rainbow shine that looked like fish scales, if only in the vernacular of people who didn't fish.

"Right. It's so pure, it increases in volume when they cook it."

Vicki had learned this somewhere along the line, too. Most cocaine decreased when it was cooked, by mixing it with water, baking soda, and a cutting agent like mannitol, and stirring until oil formed on the water's surface. The oil would be cooled on ice, so it crystallized to form rocks. The crackling sound the mixture made when it was boiled gave the drug its name. Crack .

"This is quality coke, it's worth forty grand, maybe more," Bale added.

"Really?" Vicki couldn't help but feel a little wide-eyed. It was the reason she had wanted this job, after two years at the D.A.'s office; the chance to prosecute big-time, high-stakes drug trafficking. Only now it had gotten Morty killed. She rose, biting her lip not to lose control, and Bale switched off the Maglite, rising beside her.

"You guys couldn't have known," Bale said, an uncharacteristic softness to his tone, and Vicki felt a tear arrive without warning. He pretended not to notice, and she blinked it away.

"I should go see my CI."

"Name was Jackson, right?"

"Yes. Shayla Jackson."

"Did you meet with her before tonight?"

"No." Vicki felt her cheeks grow hot. "I talked to her on the phone to schedule the meeting. I waited to talk to her because I thought she'd speak more freely in person. Obviously, I made a terrible mistake."

"No, you didn't. It wasn't a bad call."

"Yes, it was. None of this would have happened. I should have known."

"Stop. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, you know that. I'd have done the same." Bale put a hand on her shoulder. "What'd Jackson say before the grand jury? That'll tell you something."

"I don't know. The transcript wasn't in the file."

Bale frowned. "Now, that shouldn't be. You gotta keep your files better."

"I got the file as is, remember? The only background info in the file is a memo from the old AUSA, saying that Shayla Jackson called the office and offered to testify that the defendant bought the guns for resale." Vicki felt another wave of regret that she'd waited to meet with Jackson. If she had known more, the CI would be alive tonight. And Morty. She pressed the thought away, but she knew it would return. "The coke confuses me. Jackson didn't sound like the type. I wonder if this has anything to do with the straw case."

"How?"

"Well, Jackson knew I was coming over tonight. It was risky for her to meet with me here, if she had coke in the house. It doesn't make sense." Vicki was thinking out loud, a bad habit in front of a boss. "What if she was killed to prevent her from talking to me tonight? Or from testifying?"

"In a straw purchase case, it's unlikely. How many counts is it?"

"One."

"So, five years at most. It's penny-ante. Who's the straw?"

"Her name is Reheema Bristow. No priors, held two jobs."

"So, nothing special. They pick straws who have valid ID, no record, and a steady employment history, in case the gun dealer checks. Straws don't have the juice to get anybody killed."

"Maybe whoever she resold the guns to does." Vicki couldn't dismiss it so easily. "And the timing's funny. Bristow's trial comes up next week, or would have."

"What's this do to your case?"

"It's over."

"No corroboration for Jackson's testimony?"

"No."

Bale frowned again, this time puckering his pinkish lower lip. "Okay, go on up, but you know the drill, don't touch anything. The locals don't like you walking over the scene, but they already sketched and took pictures. Just be careful; the techs haven't finished upstairs. You want company?"

"No thanks," Vicki answered. Bale was already nodding to a uniformed cop, trying to commandeer him to baby-sit, but turned away before he could see the cop hadn't budged an inch. No city cop was doing anything for the feds, other than lending him a Maglite.

"We'll talk later, at the office." Bale squeezed her shoulder again. "Don't stay long upstairs. Go home and rest yourself."

"Sure. Thanks for the water." Vicki turned to go.

Not knowing what she'd find.

Vicki lingered at the threshold of the upstairs bedroom. A team of crime techs clustered at the foot of the bed, working around Jackson's body, obscuring it from view. One tech vacuumed the light blue rug for hair and fiber samples, and another bagged Jackson's hands to preserve evidence under her fingernails. A police photographer bundled in a dark coat videotaped the crime scene, and another took photographs. Flashes of white strobe rhythmically seared the bedroom.

Vicki told herself that she was waiting for the police personnel to finish their job, but she was getting used to the primal odor of fresh blood and fighting to keep her emotions in check. She had seen three murder scenes at the D.A.'s office, but she had never experienced anything like tonight, in which a federal agent and a witness had been killed. The crime struck at the justice system itself, and Vicki wasn't the only one feeling its gravity. The crime techs seemed unusually subdued, absorbed in their tasks. Nobody was going to screw this one up.

The police photographer, an older man with bifocals, turned and asked, "Excuse me, am I in your way?"

"No, the investigation comes first," Vicki answered, and hoped she sounded convincing.

She glanced around the bedroom, sizing it up. Even by city standards, it was small; typical of the two-bedroom brick row houses that lined the blocks around Roosevelt Boulevard. Vicki could see the other bedroom down the hall, at the back of the house and figured she'd use the time to check it out.

She walked down the hall, and the lights were on inside, revealing a spare bedroom full of stacked boxes, gathered evidently from a liquor store. Two crime techs in latex gloves were slitting the neat brown packing tape with boxcutters and searching the boxes. Handwritten in black Sharpie next to the Smirnoff and Tanqueray labels, they read CDS and SUMMER CLOTHES.

"Looks like she was moving," Vicki said to the techs, then heard herself. "Duh."

"You must be a detective," the red-haired tech joked.

"No, an AUSA."

"Worse." The tech laughed.

"So what are you finding?"

"It's fascinating. Inside the box that's labeled summer clothes, there are summer clothes, and the box that says CDs has CDs."

"I'll leave now," Vicki said with a tight smile, and pondered the discovery as she returned to the master bedroom and stood again at the threshold. The techs were still at work over the body, and she made a mental note that the bedroom hadn't been packed up yet. If Jackson was leaving, it wasn't imminent.

Vicki looked around the bedroom. The oak dresser and night table had been ransacked and drawers hung open, and the bed, a king-size, sat opposite the two front windows. It had been covered with a quilted comforter of blue forget-me-nots, which had been yanked off, and even the mattress was off-kilter.

One of the techs muttered, "Sheee. Whole lotta blood."

"Whaddaya expect?" another asked.

Vicki eyed the messed-up bed. Stuffed plush animals tumbled on the pillows: a pink teddy bear, a fuzzy puppy clutching a white heart, and a greenish snake with black diamonds. There hadn't been any toys downstairs, so the stuffed animals had to be Jackson's. Vicki felt a twinge.