GIBRALTAR

Chapter 8



Walsh entered the precinct CO's office with a flourish, holding the stack of 5 X 7 photos in a way that reminded McKenna of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. He had made three copies of each of the twenty-eight photos, and he awarded Brunette, Shields, and McKenna a set apiece.
     Brunette thanked Walsh, and then dismissed him with the message that he wanted to talk to him later. However, Walsh was a difficult man to dismiss. "Am I in trouble?" he asked.
     "No, Joe, you're still in good graces," Brunette said. "I just want to make sure you stay that way."
     "Don't worry, Commissioner. Not a word to the press until it's over, and that's a promise."
     "Okay, Joe. I believe. How long will it take you to get the lifts off all our treasures?"
     "Hours, but I'll have them sometime this afternoon–if I'm permitted to get to the lab right now without enduring another lecture."
     "Enough said. Get back to work."
     Walsh left, and the three men sifted through the photos.
     McKenna thought the photos were good, maybe even as good as Walsh thought they were. By the change in the clothes worn by the subjects, he could tell that Dominguez had taken two shots of each of the seven bird watchers on the two Sundays before. And Walsh was right about Dominguez; he had been quite a photographer, capturing each bird watcher in a full-length shot and a head shot on each date. On either one of the dates, all but the woman had either a camera or a pair of binoculars around their necks. All of the men were in their twenties or thirties, and McKenna studied their photos until he was certain he would know any of them if he saw them.
     As for the woman, there was no need for McKenna to study her photo; she had a stunning face that was easy to remember, and maybe hard to forget. He looked closely for flaws, and could find only one. There was a small space between her front teeth, and he wondered why she had never had it corrected. Maybe she didn't want to be perfect, he thought, just another unflawed beauty fit for the covers of Elle or Glamour. On second thought, McKenna thought that small gap enhanced her appearance, giving her an aura of innocence, and that caused him to wonder what had happened in her life to turn such a delightful-looking woman into a cold-blooded killer.
     That she was a killer, and an experienced killer at that, McKenna had no doubt. The ETA was an organization that used murder and mayhem as a political tool, and she had risen to command one of its most important actions ever, a successful action in which a valuable hostage had been taken and two men killed in cold blood. That indicated experience, so much experience that McKenna thought he could show her picture to any traffic cop in Spain, and then sit back while the cop related her name and full history.
     McKenna stacked the photos, and found Brunette and Shields watching him. "Pretty, isn't she?" Brunette asked.
     "I'll know her if I see her again," McKenna replied.
     "Looks like she's in great shape, too, wouldn't you say?" Shields asked.
     McKenna realized that he hadn't even got past her face to study her figure, but he didn't want to admit that. "Sure. Looks very athletic, just like we figured," was all he said.
     "Nice photos, but I don't think we'll be able to use them today and still keep ourselves free from court worries after we get this crew," Shields said.
     "I agree, if we're still thinking about showing our witnesses photo arrays today," Brunette added.
     As good as the photos were, McKenna knew Brunette and Shields were right. According to court-mandated procedure, witnesses must be shown a photo of the subject in a folder that also contains photos of five other persons not connected to the crime being investigated. These five others must be of the same general age as the subject, the same race, and also must have the same general hair characteristics.
     Usually, that was not a problem. Every detective squad has pictures of hundreds of people to put in their photo arrays with their suspect. However, in this case, McKenna realized there was a monumental problem. The photos of the subject and the fillers all had to be the same size, shot from the same angle, and with the same background. Since the filler photos maintained by detective squads were all 3 X 5 shots, and since none of them were shot from the tenth floor with the park as a background, the witnesses waiting to identify the killers couldn't do it today. "So now what," McKenna asked.
     "We could have somebody shoot our fillers from the ambassador's apartment tomorrow, but it would be a problem," Shields said. "Unfortunately, we're not going to get that many people in the park to pose with cameras or binoculars around their necks, so we'd be taking pictures of our people for the filler photos–and we're going to be needing everybody we've got Upstate tomorrow."
     "Then let's not worry about dotting every i and crossing every t," McKenna suggested. "We know that three of the people in these photos were the people who actually grabbed the ambassador, and that's all that's important. Let's get them all, and sort out which one did what later."
     "The director's not gonna like that," Shields said. "He's a stickler for proper investigative procedure."
     "Nobody argues with success," McKenna countered. "Once we get them, you can tell him you decided to go for the Best Evidence Rule. When it comes to identifications, the courts have always preferred line-ups to photo arrays. We catch them, put them in line-ups, and have the witnesses tell us then who did what in front of the building."
     "And what about Ibarretxe?" Shields asked. "We already know that he's managed to get the director's ear through channels, and he knows we've got the photos. I'm sure he's expecting the ambassador's wife to be looking at them today, and I don't want him thinking that we're dragging our feet."
     "Then I'll have another chat with him," McKenna said. "He seems a reasonable guy, so I think he'll understand when I explain to him why we're doing what we're doing."
     "Alright. We'll do it your way, and kill two birds with one stone," Shields said. "Bara promised to keep Ibarretxe informed on any progress we make, and the director just told me to make sure we do just that. Give him a call, and then go fill him in."
     "You want me to tell him everything we're doing?"
     "That's not what I'd want you to do, but I've got a boss, too. In this case, we're going to have to take many political considerations into account as we do the job."
*     *     *
\ql McKenna called Ibarretxe, and was given an appointment to see him at 4:00 \plain\fs20 P.M\plain . at the Spanish Embassy. Ibarretxe said that he expected to have the full details on the kidnapping of the ambassador in Paris and Carmen's kidnapping by then, which suited McKenna just fine. However, it did leave him with almost three hours to kill. He took his set of photos and the DMV printouts, went up to the detective squad office, and told Tommy McKenna that neither José Gomez, Sandra, or Daniela would need to hang around any longer, and the reason why.
     Tommy relayed the news to the witnesses. Since Gomez was being paid for the day anyway, he took it just fine. Sandra and Daniela didn't; they appeared disappointed and complained about having wasted their time, but they promised Tommy they would still be at his beck and call to help him solve the case.
     Tommy left to drive his witnesses back to the their building, and McKenna decided to use his down time to stay abreast on his paperwork. He used NYPD forms to type his reports on the interview of Ibarretxe and Señora Clavero, the discovery of Dominguez's camera, and the receipt of the developed photos from Joe Walsh. They were short reports, and he was just putting the finishing touches on the last one when Cisco came into the squad office.
     "Did you get any more from the boys and their father?" McKenna asked.
     "Nothing significant," Cisco replied.
     "Where are they now?"
     "Back at the building with my agent, waiting for Mrs. Santos to get off work."
     "Your agent?"
     "Yeah, the one Bara assigned to help me out. Nice guy, paid for lunch on his federal Amex card."
     "And then what's happening? Is he driving them up to New Paltz?"
     "Later. We don't have pictures on the two drivers, and Santos watched them for hours for three days. Says he'd know them anywhere, so I called Bara. He's having one of their sketch artists come in, and my agent is going to take the Santos family down to Federal Plaza to get the sketches done."
     "And Bara didn't want you to go with him?"
     "Too mundane a chore. He recognizes that Cisco is an exalted first grade detective, not a lowly FBI agent."
     McKenna thought it much more likely that Bara was changing his attitude on Cisco. After all, McKenna reasoned, Cisco had done a great job in finding the boys, and then getting everything their father knew when he didn't want to tell it.
     "What have you been doing here?" Cisco asked, and McKenna told him. After Cisco studied the DMV printouts, McKenna was glad that Cisco arrived at the same conclusion he had: the whole gang was Upstate, and Bara was wasting his time in Queens.
     Next, Cisco thumbed through the photos, and he stopped at the woman's. "This gorgeous creature is the enemy?" he asked, holding up the head shot.
     "That's her."
     "Then we're really moving up in class, amigo. I can't wait to meet her."

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