House of the Rising Sun by Chuck Hustmyre

luck, he broke his hand at just the right time and was out on a sixty-day injury leave when the FBI started up their wiretap. The only guy in the six-man Vice Squad who didn’t go to prison.
    LaGrange said, “Ray, if there was anything I could’vedone . . . anything. I even talked to a lawyer, told him I wanted to help, but he said there was nothing I could do.” LaGrange took a sip of his espresso. “I waited, expecting any second they were going to come for me. Hardest thing I ever had to go through in my life was seeing you, Sergeant Landry, and the other guys walking out of the federal building in chains, on your way to prison.”
    Ray remembered that day, too. He remembered it like it was yesterday. He pulled a Lucky Strike from his pocket and lit it with his Zippo.
    LaGrange glanced around the coffee shop as a panicked look crossed his face. Then he pointed to Ray’s cigarette. “You can’t do that.”
    Ray took a deep drag, held it for a second, then blew the smoke across the table into LaGrange’s face. “Can’t do what?”
    â€œSmoke,” LaGrange said as he coughed. “You can’t smoke in here.”
    Ray looked around. “It’s a coffee shop, right?”
    Their waitress stomped over to the table. Not so perky anymore. “Sir, you can’t smoke in here.”
    Ray looked up at her. “Why not?”
    She propped her hands on her hips. “This is a smoke-free environment.” Saying it like Ray was an idiot for not knowing that already.
    He waved her away. “Go get me an ashtray.”
    She stuck her chin out. “We don’t have ashtrays, sir. We don’t allow smoking.”
    â€œCome on, Ray, put it out,” LaGrange said. “Quit giving her a hard time.”
    The not-so-perky waitress folded her arms across her chest. “If you don’t put that out, I’m going to have to call the manager.”
    â€œYou better find me an ashtray, or when I get done I’ll just stub it out on your floor.”
    The waitress spun on her heel and marched off.
    Ray took another drag on his cigarette. “So what’s IBIS, some kind of new fingerprint machine?”
    LaGrange looked nervous as his eyes followed the waitress across the coffee shop. Finally, he looked back at Ray. “No, not fingerprints, bullet prints. I-B-I-S stands for . . .” He glanced at the ceiling like he was looking for the name to be written up there, but evidently he didn’t find it because after a couple of seconds he said, “I can’t remember exactly, but it’s the something-ballistic-identification system.”
    â€œWhat does it do?”
    â€œIt’s a computer database we got from ATF.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œIt’s at the new crime lab on Tulane. On every homicide involving a firearm, in fact, on every shooting, the lab takes the bullets and the casings and puts them into this machine.”
    Ray pictured some lab guy in a white coat dumping hundreds of shell casings into a big machine.
    LaGrange must have read his mind. “I don’t mean the bullets and cases themselves. The lab photographs them and converts the pictures into some sort of digital code that the computer can understand.”
    Ray was getting impatient. “How does that help me?”
    LaGrange held up his hand. “I’m getting to that. The machine runs comparisons on bullets and casings from every shooting. It can tell you which ones were done with the same gun.” He slapped his palm down on the tabletop. “But here’s the really good part. In addition to every shooting, the department enters a test-fired round from every confiscated firearm. The computer runs the comparisons automatically, so when a gun comes in, we get an automatic hit if it’s been used in a shooting.”
    Ray was impressed. He thought about the gun used to blow Pete Messina’s face off. “What about