House of the Rising Sun by Chuck Hustmyre Page A

shotguns?”
    LaGrange shook his head. “They say the next generation ofIBIS will do shotguns, but for right now it just works with pistols and rifles.”
    â€œSo why are you telling me about IBIS? They used a shotgun in the House.”
    LaGrange shook his head. “That’s not all they used.”
    â€œI was there.”
    LaGrange reached under the table and pulled a black leather attaché case onto his lap. From inside he slid out a stack of paper, at least twenty or thirty pages, held together by a clamp.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Ray asked.
    LaGrange laid the stack of paper on the table. He flipped through the first couple of pages. “This is the initial report and a few of the follow-ups.” He stopped flipping and stared at one page for a second, then pointed to something about halfway down. “Right here’s where you got lucky.”
    â€œThat’s the second time you said that. I don’t feel lucky, so why don’t you just tell me what you found.”
    LaGrange tapped his finger on the page. “Crime Scene dug a forty-caliber slug out of the floor.”
    Ray shook his head. “Nobody fired a pistol in—” Then an image flashed through his mind.
    The dancer up on stage, a hole in her leg, blood pouring out after a shotgun blast. Seconds later, another blast. Then something else, a pop, barely audible after the big explosion from the shotgun. Feeling the heat searing the back of his head
.
    Ray looked at LaGrange and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Where’d they find it?”
    The former Vice cop flipped through more pages, skimming each for a few seconds before he found what he was looking for. He turned the stack around so Ray could read it. Ray saw a copy of a neatly drawn diagram he recognized as the first floor of the Rising Sun.
    LaGrange’s finger pointed to a small handwritten “15” between the bottom of the stairs and the front door. “Itemfifteen is the bullet,” he said. “They found it buried in the wooden floor, twenty-five feet from the door.”
    Goose bumps broke out on Ray’s arms. “That motherfucker tried to shoot me in the head.”
    â€œI’ve told you before, you’ve got the luck of the Irish.”
    Ray pictured the skull mask, the pair of eyes, and the bad teeth, but most vivid was the image of the tattoo, the spiderweb wrapped around the back of the hand, reaching all the way to the base of the thumb. Somewhere—he wasn’t sure where—he had seen that tattoo before.
    â€œWhat good does it do me that Crime Scene found that slug in the floor,” Ray said, “if they don’t have a gun to match it to?”
    LaGrange pulled a second stack of papers from his attaché case. “Your friend Landry has already run an IBIS check on the bullet and it came back positive.”
    â€œPositive for what?”
    LaGrange hefted the second report in his hand. “Turns out the same gun was used in a shooting six months ago. They dug the bullet out of a body on Frenchman Street.”
    â€œAny arrests?”
    The detective nodded. “Two weeks later, Homicide picked up a guy named Cleo Harris, goes by the nickname Winky.”
    â€œThey obviously didn’t find the gun he used, not if the shithead with the skull mask tried to kill me with it.”
    LaGrange nodded. “They got the shooter but not the gun.” “Even if I could get into lockup to talk to the guy, what’s his name, Harris, there’s no way he’s going to tell me what he did with that gun.”
    â€œHe’s not in lockup.”
    â€œHe bonded out on a murder charge?”
    The detective shook his head. “The D.A. dropped the case.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThe only witness developed amnesia.”
    â€œNo witness, no case,” Ray said.
    LaGrange nodded.
    â€œIs Harris white or black?” Ray asked.
    LaGrange slid his index finger