Blood Quantum Page 6

  This one hadn't, and Ray had a feeling that he or she wasn't about to do so.

  No, they would have to figure this one out the old-fashioned way, one piece of evidence at a time, amassing enough to make an airtight case.

  Doorknobs next. Ray got busy.

  *

  Nick was collecting fingerprints off the plastic part of the Escalade's dashboard, on the passenger side, when a dark blue or black dust-caked pickup truck stopped at the end of the driveway. The fingerprints had shown up easily with titanium white powder, and he lifted them with tape, which he then closed over the attached acetate sheet. Beautiful prints, they would be easy to scan and compare with the APIS database.

  He heard the truck first, then looked in the Escalade's rearview mirror and saw the occupants getting out. A truck driving up to the house of a murder victim so early in the morning was note worthy, to say the least. Nick put down the acetate and got out of the SUV, walking around to the Escalade's rear.

  Two young men with long dark hair, shoulder-length in one case, stood at the end of the driveway, watching him. They met his gaze with aggressive stares. The one with longer hair was slender and wore a black T-shirt and jeans. The other was a bigger guy, barrel-chested and with a gut billowing his black, heavy-metal-logo T-shirt. His shorts were calf-length, black, and baggy, with what seemed like dozens of random zippers and straps on them. His arms were sleeved with monochromatic tattoos. Both looked Native American, with dark complexions, hair black and straight, slightly Asiatic facial structure. "Something I can do for you?" Nick asked.

  "We lookin' for Chairman Domingo," the smaller one said. "Who the hell are you?"

  Nick showed his badge. "I'm CSI Stokes, with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Who are you?"

  "Crime Lab?" the big guy echoed.

  "That's right."

  "Where's Robert?" the smaller one asked.

  He had called him Chairman Domingo a moment ago, Nick noted. Was he trying to play up their familiarity now that he knew the police were involved? Or had the surprise of Nick's response elicited a more honest view of their relationship?

  Nick watched the slender guy's face when he said, "He's dead."

  The guy was good. Nick had to give him that. The shock registered in his eyes, which opened wider, but only for an instant, and in a sudden intake of breath. His spine straightened briefly, too, as if his muscles had tensed up all at once. But none of it lasted longer than a moment, and then he was back to normal, poker-faced, in that same aggressive stance.

  The heavier guy wasn't as polished. Even though Nick had been watching the smaller one, he heard the other guy's gasp.

  "That sucks," the smaller one said. "Let's go, dude."

  "Wait," Nick said. "Since you know the guy, I'd like to ask you a few questions. Maybe you can help us find out who did it."

  "Screw that, we got us some ass to kick," the slender one said. The two rushed back to the dark pickup and jumped in. The engine roared to life, and they screeched off into the waning night. Nick was able to catch the first four characters of the license-plate number – a tribal plate, he noted – in the first gray light of dawn, and he wrote them down on a notepad. It wasn't much, but the guys had reacted as if Domingo's death was a surprise, if not entirely unexpected, and a turn of events that demanded action. Reprisal, probably. They didn't come across as suspects at all, but they might be come suspects in a separate crime if they took the law into their own hands. He could call in the plate, try to make sure they didn't get into any trouble, but unless they actually committed a crime, they weren't his business. If nothing else, maybe they would lead the police to a suspect. Either way, he had to stay there and keep working, to make sure that when they did narrow down a suspect, they could close the case.

  *

  Ray stood by the window, looking into Robert Domingo's manicured backyard. Dawn was breaking over the valley, and in the soft light of morning, the yard looked peaceful, a good place for contemplation.

  Ray was doing some contemplating of his own, thinking about "Quantum," that word written in blood (but with some sort of tool, not a finger, unfortunately). Ray figured the person who wrote it had used something like a stick or maybe a spoon. He hadn't found it in the house, but it was something else that would have traces of Domingo's blood on it and could help tie the killer to the scene. When they did locate it, they'd be one step closer to a conviction.

  The dictionary definitions, as he understood them, were that a quantum was an amount, or else a small, indivisible unit, of energy. Quantum physics, quantum mechanics… the word was common place on the WLVU campus these days, at least in the math and science departments. But Robert Domingo was a businessman and a tribal leader, not, as far as Ray knew, a physicist or a mathematician. So it still didn't make any sense in this context.

  Ray wondered if there was some other meaning of which he was unaware, something to do with tribal issues or with one of the various businesses that Domingo oversaw in his role as chairman. Brass had named a few of those enterprises but suggested that there might be more. Ray thought that perhaps his next step should be to find out more about the victim, in hopes of closing in on what "Quantum" meant and who might have wished Domingo harm.

  Ray knew a couple of Native American experts at the university, scholars who were much better versed in such things than he was. He was an educated guy, good in his specialty, and with a wide grounding of knowledge in other areas. But the important thing was that he knew enough to know what he didn't know – the amateur's mistake was to believe he knew it all and didn't need to turn to anyone for help. Ray had always turned to others for help understanding things or finding out facts he didn't know, and had learned that most people enjoyed talking about their areas of expertise. They tended to study and work in fields they were interested in, and sometimes the opportunity to show off to outsiders – especially with information that would appear arcane, although other professionals would consider it common knowledge – was all but irresistible.

  The hour was early yet, but he could head over there when he had finished up, see if the word rang any bells for his friends. His shift might be ending soon, but one of the first things he had learned about this job was that it didn't hew to any specific schedule. When you had a hot case, you ran with it. If you had any integrity at all, you went home only when there was nothing going on, no clues to follow up on, no statements to take, no bodies waiting for justice to be done.

  The sun inched higher in the sky, and Ray knew that he was in for a very long day.

  7

  "Nothing." Detective Joe Spitzer spread his hands apart, as if to let the air between them indicate just how much nothingness he meant. "I got zip. Nada."

  "But the Cameron family is very prominent in town," Catherine said. They were in a diner on Flamingo, not a place Catherine would have picked for breakfast, but apparently Spitzer ate there almost every day and hadn't died of food poisoning yet. He had named the meeting place, and she went along with it. "Daria Cameron couldn't have just vanished from the face of the earth. Somebody somewhere knows something about it."

  "Far as I know, she was abducted by aliens." Spitzer had ordered three eggs, over easy, with sides of hash browns, bacon, and sausage. When his plate arrived, he had looked at it, looked at Catherine, and said, "Gotta toughen up the arteries, that's what I say. Mine are damn near invulnerable at this point." He had splashed Tabasco sauce on the eggs and ketchup on the potatoes. Now he was mopping grease off his plate with toast and shoving it into his mouth. He swallowed before he spoke again, a small mercy that Catherine appreciated. "Kind of a habit with this family, seems to me."

  "Aliens are a habit?" The waitress lit briefly, refilled Catherine's coffee, and bustled off to help some other customer. The place was busy, buzzing with conversation and the clink of china and flat ware, shouts between waitstaff and chefs, and the sizzle of the grill.

  "Disappearing is a habit."

  "You think Daria had mob ties?"


  The detective shook his head. He was rail-thin, and considering how loaded his plate had been at the start, she didn't know how he stayed that way. Catherine had gone with a muffin and a cup of coffee and didn't think she would finish the muffin. "I wouldn't say that there's no organized crime in Las Vegas at all," he said, spearing a runaway bit of potato. "But it's decreased in importance and power, decade by decade. When Bix Cameron and the kid, the boy, got iced, the mob still owned at least a piece of most of the major casinos. Those are all legit now, or mostly all. The kinds of things organized crime is into here nowadays are a different sort of animal – drugs, prostitution, that stuff. Your trafficking crimes. Gaming Commission keeps them away from the big money. It's nothing that a high-class woman like Daria Cameron or her mom would have any connection to."

  "Okay, but -"

  "I'm just saying. She's been missing for, what, seventy-eight hours now. She has plenty of credit cards, but none of them has been used. Her phone is off, maybe the battery's been pulled, and she hasn't made a call on it or made any calls that we know about on any other phone. She hasn't accessed her e-mail account. Way I hear it, she's a nut about staying in touch. Not so much on the phone, but she's one of those people who check their e-mail ten times a day. And she always calls her mother every day if she's not staying at the house. Since she hasn't done either of those things, I have to think the worst."

  "I'm getting that impression myself. Where was she last seen?"

  "The estate. She was visiting her mom. Then she left, said good-bye, said she was headed back to her condo. It's in one of those luxury high-rises overlooking the Strip. But she never got there. Staff never saw her come in, she didn't show up on security video. It should be, what, a twenty-minute drive? Maybe up to forty with Strip traffic, if she didn't take the back roads. Which she would have done, since she's a native and knows her way around. Still, say between twenty and forty, tops. But it's been seventy-eight hours." Spitzer glanced at his watch. "And change. Fifteen, sixteen minutes and counting. She's just gone. Poof. Vanished. Like I said, aliens. She's on a flying saucer headed for the Crab Nebula."

  "And there haven't been any ransom demands?"

  "No communication with the family at all, from her or anyone making any claims about her. They haven't publicized her disappearance, so as not to bring out the wackos. But if it was a garden-variety kidnap for profit, we'd have heard something by now."

  "Have you located her vehicle?"

  "We're still looking for it."

  "You think I can get a copy of the crime-scene report on her condo?" Catherine asked.

  Detective Spitzer rubbed the end of his nose. Catherine had never known the cop well, but she had heard stories about him and met him several times on different cases. He had been a hotshot, right out of the police academy, had gone into uniform determined to make a difference. He'd been so gung-ho that it had caused him problems, reprimands for getting in over his head, trying to make busts he wasn't good enough for yet. His approach had soured a few high-profile investigations, ended up getting cases kicked out of court because he had violated procedure or failed to amass the proper evidence.

  But that early ambition had been tempered with time and experience. He had become an exemplary street cop and had finally made detective. His career had seemed to be climbing a steadily upward path. Then, in the space of less than a year, his partner had been busted for graft – he'd been taking payoffs, in cash and favors, from a prostitution ring to look the other way when its girls operated – and Spitzer's wife of three years had left him for another man… a criminal defense attorney with a big house, a handful of fancy cars, and a seemingly unlimited financial future.

  Joe Spitzer had taken the double whammy hard. He crashed and burned, coming to work drunk and getting into fights with fellow officers and suspects alike. He was on the verge of losing his job and his pension when he pulled himself together. He'd been on an even keel since, but his early enthusiasm had never returned. These days, he seemed mostly to be piling up the years to retirement, doing the least he could do without earning a reprimand or another black mark in his jacket.

  The way he had investigated the Daria Cameron case did nothing to alter Catherine's opinion of him. He was a smart cop, but he had turned lazy. If he had been one of her CSIs, she would have found a way to get rid of him. Lazy and law enforcement didn't go together. Every profession had its good members and bad, she knew, but when the job was on the cops, she wanted everyone to be at the top of their game.

  "There isn't one," he told her. "Condo's not considered a crime scene. She never got there, right? If we find her car, that'll most probably be a crime scene. But the condo? It's clean."

  "I see. Does Daria have a boyfriend?"

  "She's single and unattached, according to the family. Last guy resembling any kind of steady boyfriend was more than a year ago. She was never big on dating anyway. Way they talk about her, she sounds like kind of a nun. Half a nun, anyhow."

  "Does she work?"

  "Not that she needs to, with that family money. She did have a job at an art gallery, but she quit when she got sick. Hasn't been in touch with anybody there since she left."

  "So she never saw anybody except family?"

  "That's about the size of it. The staff at her building, I guess. She had a couple of close friends, other women around her age and social station, but none of them has heard from her, either. They all describe her pretty much the same way. She's serious. She doesn't go out much. She reads a lot. She's very close to her mother. That's the picture I got. Half a nun."

  "There are a lot of blank spaces in that picture."

  The detective shrugged. "What can I tell you? I'm trying to fill those in. I'm one guy, and I have a caseload like you wouldn't believe."

  "Oh, I'd believe it," Catherine said. She was no stranger to the Las Vegas Police Department's ways. But a heavy caseload didn't excuse laziness. "You can trust me on that."

  *

  Seventy-eight hours gone by. For evidentiary purposes, Daria Cameron's condo was already a bust. It hadn't been secured, which meant that anyone could have come and gone over the past several days. Anything inside it that might have told Catherine where Daria had gone could already have been compromised, altered, or taken away.

  Still, Catherine wanted to see the place. She stopped at the front desk in a marble-floored lobby that soared at least three stories high. The desk was surrounded by a profusion of potted plants, and a young woman with the vitality of a personal trainer at a fitness center greeted her with a smile. She wore a navy-blue polo shirt tucked into snug red shorts, white sneakers, and her brown hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Her teeth were so white Catherine regretted leaving her sunglasses in the Yukon.

  Catherine showed her badge and introduced her self. "I need to get into Daria Cameron's unit," she said. "I'm investigating her disappearance."

  The young woman made a face as if she had just bit into something spoiled. "Oh, that's sucky," she said. "But… I can't let you into her place. That's totally against the rules."

  "I'm sure the rules can be bent for law enforcement."

  "Do you have a… whaddyacallit?"

  "A warrant?"

  "Yeah, that!"

  "I don't have a warrant," Catherine said. "I just want to take a look around, see if I can find anything that might help us find her."

  "Yeah, I get that, only I like my job, you know? Anybody found out I let you in, I'd be back at the mall selling smoothies. And I hated that."

  "Is there someone else I can talk to?" Catherine asked. Seventy-eight hours so far – by the time I turn this ditz around, it'll be a hundred and eight. "A manager? Building security, maybe?"

  "Oh, yeah, totally. Hang tight." The young woman swiveled in her chair, snatched up a telephone, and touched a couple of buttons. In a moment, she explained to somebody that there was a cop outside with no whaddyacallit who wanted to go upstairs to look for somebody who was missing.

 
; A minute later, a well-groomed, crisply efficient woman in a tailored suit emerged from a door at the back of the lobby. In the cool stillness, her heels clicked loudly against the marble. "Yes?" she asked. Her hair was dark and as crisp as the rest of her. She snapped a business card into Catherine's palm. "I'm the chief security officer on duty."

  Once again, Catherine explained her mission. "Of course," the woman said. "Come with me."

  An elevator door slid open as they approached it. The woman boarded, and Catherine followed her. The woman didn't push any of the floor buttons, but the one for seventeen illuminated on its own. The perky thing at the desk was controlling it, Catherine figured. She had been in other buildings with similar systems, but that didn't mean they weren't always a surprise when she saw one in action.

  On the seventeenth floor, the woman led her out into a carpeted, softly lit hallway that had the hush of a cathedral. Downstairs, Ms. Perky had at least given the place a feeling of life, but this corridor felt almost funereal by contrast. "Cheery," Catherine said, unable to help herself.

  "Our residents appreciate an oasis of quiet amid the noise and tumult of Las Vegas," the woman replied.

  "Tumult," Catherine echoed. "Good word for it."