Brass in Pocket Read online

  “That’s what I understand. Anyway, Brass’s fingerprints were in the motel room, in multiple places. I’m still waiting for hair and fiber analysis to see if there’s anything else linking him to the scene.”

  “He is a detective, Catherine.”

  “He’s off duty tonight, and he didn’t sign the motel log.”

  “Okay… that is a little strange. So your presumption is that he was there before the homicide? Or after, but for some reason he didn’t sign in. If he knew the victim was Freeson, he might have been upset, distracted. Is there anything else?”

  “Nick went to Freeson’s office and looked around there. Brass’s cell phone number was written on a notepad sometime within the last few days. We’re still waiting on the phone records to see when, or if, they talked.”

  “That’s a more concrete connection, but it’s still not definitive. Any more?”

  “That’s everything I know so far, Gil. I guess I just have a weird feeling about it.”

  “Did you ask Jim about it?”

  “I called and left him a message. He hasn’t returned my call yet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does the name Antoinette O’Brady mean anything to you? She’s a local woman, fifty-six years old, according to her driver’s license. I’m thinking the name is probably an alias, but whoever she is, she was in the room at some point. She went out a window, with some of Deke’s blood on her, and she’s missing now.”

  “She doesn’t sound familiar.”

  Someone passed by in the hallway, and Catherine waited until the footsteps had faded into the distance. “I know I’m fishing here. But since I haven’t been able to ask him directly…”

  “I know how you feel, Catherine. You know Jim. You like him. We all do. You don’t want to think he’s mixed up in anything. But you’re a CSI. We can’t prejudge the situation; we have to let the facts fall where they fall. The evidence will tell you what to think.”

  “I know, Gil.”

  “Of course you do. Keep working it. Keep it as quiet as you can, and don’t make your mind up about anything. Brass deserves a presumption of innocence, just like anyone else. But depending on where the evidence leads you, he doesn’t get any special dispensation from the facts.”

  “Got it. I guess I just wanted to hear someone say it who wasn’t me.”

  “I understand.”

  “Thanks, Gil. And I hope your presentation goes well.”

  “It will if I can ever get any sleep. Keep me posted if there are any new developments.”

  “I’ll do that.” She sat there holding the phone in her hands. Gil hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t been telling herself. Coming from him, however, it carried a different weight. She might have been trying to convince herself of something, one way or another, but not Gil. He liked Brass as much as the rest of them did, but if Brass was mixed up in murder and the evidence proved it, Gil would be the first to admit that Brass had to go down.

  She hoped desperately that was not the case. She had lost too many friends and loved ones lately. She couldn’t bear to lose Jim Brass too. Certainly not that way.

  If she had to make the call, though, she would make it. Nobody got away with murder, not if she had anything to say about it.

  Not even a close friend. Maybe especially not a close friend. That would make the betrayal all the worse.

  “Catherine?”

  Nick’s appearance at the doorway startled her. She had been inside her own head, not registering his footsteps in the hall or his tapping on the door, until his voice broke the spell. “Nicky, come on in.”

  “Have you talked to Brass yet?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I’m still waiting for him to call me back.”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “That’s what you get paid for.”

  “I thought I got paid for carrying heavy stuff and spending a lot of time on my hands and knees looking at stains,” he said with a grin. “But what I’ve been thinking is, I believe our initial reconstruction at the scene was probably pretty close. I think Deke Freeson was in the room with Antoinette O’Brady. Not sure yet if they were there with each other, if you get what I’m saying, or if she was a client or what.”

  “I get what you’re saying.”

  “Someone broke in the door with that battering ram. Maybe two someones, given all the trace we found.”

  “Then again, who knows how well those rooms are cleaned? I’m surprised we didn’t find more than we did. Like the missing contents of Al Capone’s safe, maybe.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t get the sense that cleanliness was a huge priority there. Anyhow, he or she or they came in, dropped the battering ram, and fired a gun. Deke was hit but returned fire, and he missed. His assailant moved in closer, point-blank range so he wouldn’t miss with the second shot, and fired again. Antoinette was behind Deke on the bed, crouched down low enough to not get hit. She got spattered with his blood, then ran and got away out the window. She probably took Deke’s car. The assailant gave chase, which is why when the cops got there, barely five minutes later—”

  “Which is a great response time for that neighborhood,” Catherine interrupted.

  “Someone deserves a commendation. Point is, by the time they got there, all the vehicles in the parking lot could be accounted for among the guests. So either the attacker was a motel guest, which is unlikely, or he or they took off after Antoinette. Who escaped, by the way, covered in blood and without her purse, wallet, phone, or ID.”

  “Which should make it difficult for her to hide out anywhere. I wish we had something more than a phony driver’s license to go on.”

  “We know it’s a fake?”

  “I’m pretty sure. Most fifty-six-year-old women keep more in their wallets than a driver’s license and a Visa card, which was also issued recently. Her cell phone’s brand-new, too, hasn’t even been used. Prepaid, purchased in a convenience store probably, without a contract. Credit cards, library card, supermarket reward card, various business cards… she didn’t have any of that. It makes me think she was trying out a new identity, and maybe had just started working on it.”

  “She could be out there on her own, then. Exposed and vulnerable.”

  “If she was the target, and not a bystander,” Catherine said.

  “Can we afford to think otherwise?”

  “Not really. Deke’s already dead. But as far as we know, she’s still alive, so we’ve got to find her.”

  “Well, I’m heading back over to that rat hole to see if there’s brake fluid in the parking lot.”

  “I’d be surprised if there’s any kind of fluid that’s not in that parking lot, Nick.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about it. But someone went into that room with brake fluid on his shoes, and it wasn’t Freeson.”

  “Okay, check it out. Maybe it does mean something, or maybe someone just spilled brake fluid in the parking lot and Antoinette O’Brady walked in it. Or one of the cops.” Or Jim Brass, she thought but didn’t say. No point in stressing his involvement.

  When Nick had left again, Catherine turned over the scenario in her head. In the craziness of the night so far, she had almost forgotten about the battering ram. It was the same kind LVPD officers used, which meant that Brass might have had access to it. It had gone into the fingerprint lab, so Catherine headed down there.

  She found Mandy removing an orange ceramic table lamp from the cyanoacrylate fuming chamber. The same stuff that was found in superglue, it turned out, not only adhered well, but was perfect for revealing friction ridge impressions. The chamber looked like a phone booth, and the lamp was suspended from pulleys in the center of it. There were smaller chambers, but none that would accommodate such a tall—and hideously ugly—lamp. “Is that from the motel?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Mandy said. “It was next to the bed. Nick figured that people in a strange room reach in for the switch before they really know where it is, so they m
ight touch any part of the lamp.”

  “Get anything off it?”

  “Just smudges. Lots of them. I don’t think the thing’s been cleaned for a year.”

  “What about that battering ram?” Catherine asked. “Anything on there?”

  “No. Smudges again. I’d guess whoever touched it last wore gloves, since you couldn’t really use it without gripping the handle, and that was wiped pretty clean. It probably spends most of its time riding around in the trunk of a car.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Of course.” Mandy pointed at it. “I haven’t had a chance to get it to evidence storage yet.”

  “It’s been a busy night,” Catherine said.

  “When isn’t it?”

  “Right.” Catherine studied the battering ram, a cylinder of black steel about two inches in diameter and eighteen inches long, with a handle in the middle and various labels beneath that. Short and heavy enough to punch through most doors, it could be used with one hand, leaving the other free to hold a weapon. Overkill for that motel’s doors, probably, but the attacker might not have known what he would be dealing with until he got there. It definitely looked like the ones she’d seen LVPD officers using for forcible entries.

  She looked more closely at the labels until she found a serial number at the bottom of one. “Mandy, I need a piece of paper,” she said. “And a pen.”

  Mandy put them both next to the battering ram. Catherine wrote down the serial number.

  If it was police issue, she would find out who it had belonged to. And that person would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

  11

  THE SERIAL NUMBER CATHERINE found on the battering ram traced back to a patrol car used by two LVPD cops—partners named Lee Wolfson and Garland Tuva. Catherine could have confronted them alone, but there were two of them, and in her experience cops in pairs didn’t always want to acknowledge the professional seniority of a slightly built woman, no matter how tough she really was. Sometimes cops by themselves didn’t want to, either, but when they had someone to show off for, it was worse. Anyway, she wanted a witness with her. She wasn’t ready to accuse them yet of anything untoward, but she needed to find out how their battering ram had wound up at the scene of a homicide.

  Nick had already left to look for brake fluid at the motel, but Greg and Riley had just come in from the Empire Hotel and Casino’s construction site, so she grabbed Greg.

  Catherine found out from dispatch that Officers Wolfson and Tuva were on shift, and arranged to meet them outside a twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Sahara. Through the restaurant’s windows, she could see a couple of people punching coins into slot machines, and a few others drooping over coffee or lemonade or slices of pie. The interior decor was basic fifties bland, updated only with a fresh coat of dark yellow paint once every decade or so. The outside was midcentury modern, of interest to architecture students studying that era, but coming across only as dated to Catherine.

  The squad car was parked out in front. As Catherine and Greg approached it, two uniformed cops emerged from the restaurant. The smaller of the two—blond, mustached, and wiry—carried a Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid, steam slipping from the opening. The other one must have been six five and three hundred pounds, with olive skin and dark hair and eyes. A Pacific Islander, Catherine guessed, Samoan or Hawaiian maybe.

  “You the CSIs?” the small one asked.

  “That’s right,” Catherine said. “I’m Supervisor Willows. This is CSI Sanders.”

  “Lee Wolfson,” the smaller one said. He grinned at her in a way that she guessed was the one he used when trying to pick up women in bars. Maybe there were even some who went for his smile. Catherine wouldn’t have been one of them. “And Garland Tuva. You can call him Tiny.”

  Brilliantly original nickname, she thought. She knew better than to employ sarcasm, though, at least until she had a better sense of these two. “I’ll just call him Officer Tuva.”

  Wolfson shrugged and the grin vanished. “Suit yourself. What can we do for you, Supervisor Willows?”

  “I’d like to know the whereabouts of the handheld battering ram assigned to your vehicle.”

  “So would we,” Tuva said.

  “You got a line on it?” Wolfson asked. “I thought you CSIs would be busy working on more important crimes, but if you think you have something, let’s hear it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Catherine asked.

  “Our battering ram. Isn’t that what you’re here about? It was stolen from the trunk. What was it, Tiny, two days ago?”

  “Yup, that’s right,” Tuva said.

  “We reported it,” Wolfson said. “You wouldn’t believe the paperwork. Outrageous. So, if you found it…”

  “We found it, all right,” Catherine said. “At a homicide scene. It was used to open a door.”

  “That’s what they’re good at,” Wolfson said. “Oh boy, so you weren’t just looking for the ram?”

  “No.”

  “Oh well. Whatever works. When can we get it back?”

  “It’s evidence in a homicide,” Catherine reminded him. “It could be a while.”

  “We already have a replacement, so I guess it’s not urgent,” Wolfson said. “I just figured if we could turn it back in, maybe our lieutenant would be happy. It takes a lot to make her happy. That battering ram might just do the job.”

  Tuva laughed at that. His teeth were very white and very large. Catherine chose to ignore the remark, because to follow up on it might mean filing a sexual harassment claim against the cops. Wolfson had been skating on thin ice, but he hadn’t quite broken through yet. Talk about paperwork.…

  On the way back to the crime lab, Catherine was silent, trying to work through in her head the possible ramifications the conversation had raised. Maybe the battering ram really had been stolen from the vehicle’s trunk, although it would take a pretty bold thief to break into a squad car’s trunk and carry it away. Or maybe Wolfson and Tuva had left it behind someplace, and then reported it stolen when they realized their error? Maybe they had given the ram away, or sold it, and ditto. What she didn’t want to think, but had to consider, was that they had been actively involved in Deke Freeson’s murder. Even the scenario that they had given it away or sold it implicated them as accessories before the fact. But she had probed with a few more questions and quickly decided that without more to go on, she would get nowhere with them. If she came up with additional evidence linking them to the motel, then she could charge them. They would lawyer up and the force would close ranks around them, at least until it was definitively shown that they had participated in a homicide. Even then, some of their fellow cops would support them. The thin blue line didn’t break easily when it was drawn around some of their own.

  “Catherine?” Greg asked, drawing her away from her private reflection.

  “Yes, Greg?”

  “That bone pit you sent us to. At the Empire Casino construction site.”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “It was pretty disturbing. There were lots of bones there, from a bunch of different animals. But they had been shot or stabbed and dumped there over what looks like a period of years. Except for one sheep, which has probably just been there for a few days, certainly not much more than a week, if that; everything else was picked completely clean. So there’s a pretty big gap in time between the killing of that sheep and the rest of the animals.”

  “That is strange.”

  “Here’s what gets to me, though. I think it all indicates a serial killer in training. There are premortem or perimortem practice cuts on the sheep’s neck. There’s a progression, I’m betting, between the times of death of the smaller animals, building up to larger and larger, and finally to the freshly killed sheep. And now this person’s burial site has been violated. I don’t think he’s started killing people yet—and for the sake of argument, let’s say it is a ‘he’ doing this—because I expect he would have dumped them in the
same place, at least until the Empire construction site was fenced off. But I don’t know that for a fact, and the shock of finding out that his site has been discovered might spur him to something more drastic.”

  “It’s a long jump from sheep to people,” Catherine pointed out.

  “It is, except that’s how many serial killers get their start. Torturing animals, then killing them, then graduating to human victims.”

  Catherine nodded. She knew that, but had wanted to hear Greg verbalize it in case he had any other insights. “Right,” she said.

  “My first impulse was to want to pull files on recent unsolveds, to see if there are any matching patterns. It wouldn’t hurt to do that, but I have this feeling that while he thought his site was secure, he was probably okay doing animals. He was still in practice mode with that sheep, getting closer to humans, but he hadn’t made that leap yet. Now that it’s compromised, though, all bets are off. Who knows what that’s done to his precariously balanced mental state?”

  “What do you think we should do now, Greg? Got any ideas?”

  “Now I think we should watch out for disappearances—homeless people, streetwalkers… any easy victims. Kidnappings without ransom demands. No way to tell how this guy would pick human victims after preying on animals, but I would expect victims of opportunity would be the likeliest ones at first. I don’t know if the discovery of his burial site will really push him over the edge, but then again, I think he was pretty close to the edge to begin with.”

  Catherine parked the Yukon in the lab garage and set the brake. “Okay,” she said. “Disappearances, check. Brass is off tonight, but I’ll call Sam Vega and make sure he keeps us in the loop.”

  “Thanks. It really is the strangest feeling, standing there, surrounded by all those bones, and just knowing the guy who put them there is itching to try his skills on people.”

  “You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t affect you,” she said. “I’ll make the call. In the meantime, you try to pinpoint how wide the time gap is between the sheep and the other animals. Maybe he’s been out of town or something.”