He was just wondering if he shouldn’t give himself the order he’d handed Calleigh—namely, to get a decent night’s sleep and let the whole thing wait until morning—when the door swung open.

  The blond uniformed cop of about fifty, five foot eight, had a thinning mustache and a name tag proclaiming his name as RICHARDS.

  “Afraid I’ll have to ask for your ID, Lieutenant Caine,” Officer Richards said.

  Caine complied, saying, “I’m looking to track a gun.”

  Richards frowned; he obviously rarely dealt with this kind of thing on graveyard shift. “This time of night?”

  “It’s important.”

  “We prefer you do that during regular hours.”

  “Time and crime wait for no man.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did.”

  Richards thought about that for a moment, then said, “Well, then, I guess you better come on in.”

  “I guess I better.”

  The guard looked around, making sure Caine was alone. Convinced, Richards held the door open for him.

  They went through a locked mesh door into a vestibule, and through another locked mesh door into an anteroom with a table, two chairs and an overhead light. A three-ring binder lay open on the table next to a paper bag that Caine assumed held Officer Richards’s lunch and a thermos of coffee with the lid off, the plastic cup half full next to the bottle.

  “Gonna need you to sign in.”

  Caine signed the man’s book.

  “Now—what can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  From his jacket pocket, Caine took Calleigh’s printout, which contained the evidence number of the gun in question. He handed the sheet to Richards, and the guard studied it for a moment.

  “We’ll have to refer to the computer on this one. Come with me, Lieutenant Caine.”

  Richards led him out a door at the far end of the anteroom and into a hallway. They turned into the first door on the right, and Caine found himself in an office lined with file cabinets and several computer stations.

  Richards sat at a monitor and keyed the numbers in. The screen displayed a table with various numbers, names, and locations. The guard used the card as a marker against the screen until he found the line he wanted.

  He nodded his head slowly. “This is from the Little Haiti lot, isn’t it? An AK-47 that came in the night of the big one…one with the fire, right?”

  “Right. Where is it?”

  “Well, here, of course.”

  “But it isn’t,” Caine said. “It was used in a homicide tonight…and another one last night.”

  “That’s impossible,” Richards said. “If it’s in the record, it’s here. Unless—” He read further. “Unless it isn’t here…”

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  “I’m going to need you to clarify that, Officer.”

  “It was checked out, Lieutenant.”

  “Checked out?”

  Richards said, “Yeah, that case went federal. That gun’s outta here. Signed out to a U.S. attorney. It should be in his evidence locker in the Federal Building.”

  “Which U.S. attorney?”

  Still using Caine’s piece of paper as a marker, Richards read down the monitor screen. “Kenneth LaRussa.”

  The U.S. attorney who’d shown up at the Wallace crime scene with spaghetti sauce on his shirt….

  “Let me get this straight,” Caine said. “This particular gun isn’t here now because it’s supposed to be in the evidence locker of Kenneth LaRussa?”

  “Why do you say, ‘Supposed to be’?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  Richards shrugged. “However you slice it, Lieutenant—you’re gonna need to contact Mr. LaRussa.”

  “Yes, Officer Richards…I am.”

  5

  Gang War

  THE SUN ROSE HIGH and fast the next morning, banishing the coolness of the last few days, turning south Florida into a sauna.

  A clear day was a rarity this time of year—the city averaged only about two completely clear days for the whole month of September, typically one of the wettest months, and here they were entering their second straight day of no rain, practically a drought in south Florida.

  Horatio Caine—driving around downtown, looking for a place to park (a challenge even for a detective of his skills)—couldn’t get over the recent dramatic changes in this part of the city.

  The feds were building a brand-new courthouse west of Miami Avenue, and the area surrounding the old David W. Dyer Federal Courthouse, the Federal Detention Center, and the James Lawrence King Federal Office Building had become, post-9/11, a veritable fortress. Large orange barriers, each about three feet high, four feet across, filled with water, stood end to end in a huge plastic necklace around the throat of the block.

  Caine headed for the U.S. attorney’s office in the King Building. Tripp was supposed to meet him outside, and the pair of them would go in to question Kenneth LaRussa about the mysteriously missing gun. When he’d laid out his plan for the crew earlier this morning, they hadn’t been very confident that it would work.

  In truth, neither was he.

  The detail had converged in the layout room first thing to go over their meager evidence. Alexx had been absent, still performing autopsies on the various victims of the two shootings; but Calleigh, Speed, and Delko had been there, alert and ready to go.

  With the aroma of Delko’s Cuban coffee pleasantly permeating the room, Caine leaned over the large central table while the others had fanned out around him. Calleigh leaned against a counter on which Delko sat, further down; Speed perched on a chair turned around so he could use the back as a rest for his folded arms.

  “What have we got so far?” Caine asked.

  “You’ve got everything I have,” Calleigh said, “from matching the slugs to both drive-bys and, of course, NIBIN making our murder weapon.”

  “In a most enigmatic way,” Caine said.

  The other CSIs looked blankly wide-eyed, from Caine to Calleigh and back again. Their supervisor prompted his firearms expert to share her knowledge with her coworkers, which she did.

  When she was finished, the two were still wide-eyed, if hardly blank, but while both Speed and Delko were capable of sarcastic remarks in almost any situation, from bizarre to grotesque, neither could offer a quip about the notion of a weapon used in multiple murders turning out to be a stray from an evidence lockup.

  “I’m going to LaRussa’s office as soon as we wrap up here,” Caine had announced.

  With a humorless smirk, Speed said, “Yeah, he’s gonna be a big help.”

  “He will be,” Caine said with a shrug, “if he’s a smart man.”

  “I never made him for stupid,” Speed admitted.

  Caine shrugged again. “The Pelitier case isn’t due in federal court for a while—he’ll let us have the gun to move the state case forward.”

  “H,” Speed said, “you don’t think that AK-47 is still there, do you?”

  “If somebody put it back it is,” Delko said.

  “I don’t think it’s there now,” Calleigh said, “but if he’s innocent, Mr. LaRussa won’t know that.”

  Delko frowned. “Guys, this dude wants to be a U.S. senator. He’s not going to relish anybody knowing a major piece of evidence disappeared on his watch, much less was used as a weapon in two new murders.”

  “Eric’s got a point,” Speed said. “I said the guy was smart. Smart guys don’t like to look dumb. Especially smart guys with political ambitions.”

  Calleigh’s eyes widened. “Don’t forget that he was at the first crime scene…and doesn’t that make him a suspect?”

  Caine nodded his general agreement; everything that had been said by his crew had merit.

  “Think about it,” Speed had continued. “LaRussa’s not going to help if he’s guilty…and if he’s not guilty, he won’t help because he’s a U.S. attorney, which in my book makes him full of—”

  “Let’s save our contempt for the bad guys,” Caine said.

  “Maybe he is a bad guy,” Speed pointed out.

  Caine smiled. “Maybe he isn’t…. Anyway, I’m going to talk to him and give him a chance to help. When he finds out the gun’s gone, he’ll have the opportunity to lead the way, in tracking down how it got out of his evidence locker.”

  Speed, frowning in thought, asked, “How you goin’ in, H?”

  Hands on hips, Caine moved his head side to side, saying, “Like we think the gun’s still there.” He gave his team a sly smile. “When Mr. LaRussa can’t produce it…we’ll see what shakes down.”

  Delko and Speedle exchanged raised-eyebrow looks and short nods.

  “It’s the kind of crazy plan,” Calleigh said, a touch of archness in her drawl, “that just might work.”

  The remark made everybody smile.

  Which they could all use about now….

  Moving on, Caine asked, “What else have we got?”

  Speedle said, “The paint chip from the Archer hit is silver. Definitely came from a silver Lexus.”

  “Any luck with the partial license number Jeremy Burnett gave us?”

  “There are several silver Lexuses with Dolphin plates. Mendoza’s got one.” Delko said. “But the only one with LD in the number is registered to our old friend Manny Calisto.”

  “Leader,” Caine said softly, “of the Mitus gang.”

  “Local arm,” Speed said, “of the Colombian drug dealers.”

  “Which brings the question,” Caine said, “where is Calisto now?”

  Shaking his head, Delko said, “We’ve had blue and whites looking for him everywhere, starting with his fancy crib to all his favorite haunts.”

  “Manny’s either in the wind,” Speed said, “or gone underground.”

  “Either way,” Delko picked up, “we’re not finding him or the car…and no one around him is talking.”

  “Well, none of us are knocked over with surprise,” Caine said dryly, “now are we?”

  The CSIs shared a few more details with their supervisor, none terribly illuminating, and Caine had finally called a halt to the proceedings, sending them back to their respective tasks.

  Now, as he finally squeezed into a parking space on Fifth Street, Caine had to hope LaRussa would be more cooperative than anyone expected. While LaRussa was not his favorite law enforcement official, Caine had no desire to discover that the man was in any way dirty, or, for that matter, was Caine eager to embarrass or disgrace the U.S. attorney.

  The thought of the cases that could go down the porcelain vortex, because of the doubt cast over the provenance of evidence in LaRussa’s care, chilled Caine. An army of criminals walking on technicalities was not something Caine relished putting in motion….

  With no break in the barricades on this side of the block, Caine would have to walk around. As he did, he gazed up at the rear of the Federal Detention Building. Two large concrete columns, each at least fifteen stories high, marched north toward Fifth Street, a smoked glass section between them, silver bars running the length of the glass, separating them into panes, looking like a giant fretless guitar neck. Two other wings spread east and west, each pockmarked with windows barely a foot square.

  Terrorists with an eye toward making a political statement by blowing up a federal building were not the only motivation for the water-filled barricades. Inside the detention center were housed some of the most ruthless and notorious cartel members in the world, with several Al-Qaeda terrorists thrown in for good measure.

  All those incarcerated in the DC had friends who would like nothing better than to spring them right from under the government’s nose. Julian Pelitier was still cooling his heels in jail, but if he rolled over on his suppliers, his lawyers would no doubt be hoping to get him transferred to the cushier DC.

  Heading south on Miami Avenue, barricades blocking the sidewalk, Caine was forced to watch traffic and walk in the street. At Fourth the street had been cut off on each end of the block and replaced with heavy gates and guard shacks. A uniformed guard stepped out of one shack as Caine approached.

  Tall and buff and thirtyish, the brown-haired guard didn’t look like the typical rent-a-cop. His name tag read MULLIGAN.

  “Help you, sir?” The voice was deep and slightly scratchy, the tone no-nonsense; the eyes, too.

  Caine showed the guard his credentials.

  “Destination, Lieutenant?” Mulligan asked.

  “Kenneth LaRussa’s office.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “If you mean do I have an appointment, no.”

  “I’ll have to phone Mr. LaRussa’s office, sir.”

  “Please.”

  The new security was time consuming, but Caine understood the need for it and couldn’t argue. The guard retreated into the shack, made the call, and came back less than two minutes later, though the time had seemed longer to Caine. He didn’t mind tedium when work was being accomplished, but simply waiting—time wasted in reception areas, for example—was an irritation he had to work at controlling.

  Mulligan handed Caine a Visitor laminate on a neckchain.

  “You know the drill, I’m sure, Lieutenant. You have to wear this while you’re in the compound; when you come out, return it to one of us.”

  The guard showed him past the heavy gate and into the area that used to be Fourth Street. Some cars still drove here occasionally—delivery trucks and vehicles dropping off or taking away prisoners—but most of the time it served as a pedestrian walkway between the four buildings: the DC on the northwest, the James Lawrence King Federal Office Building on the northeast, the Dyer Federal Courthouse on the southeast, with the court annex on the southwest.

  Imposingly tall—looking more like a bank than a federal building—the King stood ten stories, housing any number of different government agencies and their respective offices, including FBI, IRS, DEA, and ATF. The U.S. attorney’s office was on the fifth floor. As Caine approached the building, he found Tripp sitting on the front steps of the building.

  By way of greeting, Caine asked, “Any luck with Manny Calisto?”

  Tripp shook his head. “He’s a ghost.”

  “Who ya gonna call?” Caine said wryly, and they entered the building, skipping the metal detector by showing their badges.

  When they exited the elevator onto the fifth floor, they were in the lobby of the U.S. attorney’s office, which occupied the entire floor.

  U.S. attorney’s office was something of a misnomer, though one everyone in local law enforcement freely used. Actually, more than sixty government legal eagles occupied the space, most in the criminal division…and all under the supervision of Ken LaRussa.

  But there were also United States attorneys who dealt with civil matters—like right-of ways, eminent domain, federal parks, and other less than glamorous activities.

  The lobby was typically institutional, a few chairs in a reception area, a painting of waves crashing on a beach (Why so many ocean paintings in this town, Caine had to wonder, when seeing the real thing was no problem?), with a desk behind which sat an attractive plump brunette with black glasses, a crisp white blouse and an oval face. She seemed busy, but when she looked up and saw them, she gave them a smile that somehow acknowledged she had read them as law enforcement officers.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” she asked.

  “Miami-Dade police to see Mr. LaRussa,” Tripp said.

  They displayed their credentials, which she read, jotting down the names on a pad. “I’ll tell him.”

  She picked up the phone, spoke into it using the names she’d copied from the credentials, listened for a moment, then hung up the phone and smiled at the two officers again. “He’ll be right out.”

  Three minutes later, LaRussa—in a light blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, geometrically patterned tie, and black suit trousers—came into the lobby, his hand extended, his politician’s smile glued on.

  “Frank, Horatio—good to see you.”

  They went through the ritual of shaking hands.

  Then the U.S. attorney’s smile transformed into something grave. “Listen, we’re all broken up about the Burnetts. I knew Joanna—she was a living doll.”

  “Not now,” Caine said.

  With a sigh, LaRussa shook his head and said, “I understand Jeremy should have a full recovery. His staff was on Orange Alert…?”

  “Yes,” Caine said. “Vest saved him.”

  “These gang wars—these cowboys usually target each other. Don’t they know the kind of trouble they bought, shooting at our team?”

  Tripp said, “Can we talk somewhere more private?”

  “Certainly. Right this way, fellas—we’ll chat in my office.”

  As LaRussa led them into the warren of offices and cubicles, he asked, “Is this visit related to the Wallace shooting? Frank, do you need a formal statement?”

  “No,” Tripp said. “Another matter.”

  They strolled down an aisle between cubicles to the far end of the floor, where LaRussa had a good-size office. His secretary, a pretty redhead whose dark glasses and white blouse mirrored the receptionist’s, sat at a desk just outside.

  “Hold all calls, Tina,” LaRussa told her as he opened his office door and gestured for the two cops to enter.

  “Have a seat, guys,” LaRussa said. They did, and he closed the door.

  The office was a spacious dark-panelled affair with large windows on the city (the blinds half-drawn, at an angle, to keep the light out but the skyscape revealed) behind a mahogany desk smaller than a tennis court. The file cabinets along the left wall were also mahogany, and the wall at right was arrayed with diplomas and awards and especially photos of LaRussa with celebrities, particularly political ones. Caine’s favorite touch was the paired photos of a beaming LaRussa shaking hands with President Clinton next to a seemingly identical shot of the smiling attorney clasping hands with President Bush.

  Covering all the bases.

  On the lawyer’s desk was a framed photo that Caine knew was of LaRussa’s wife, a beautiful Hispanic woman, and their two grade-school-age kids. The attorney flopped into the huge leather desk chair and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head.