Brass in Pocket

by Jeff Mariotte

  The fact that Antoinette Blago had been in the same room might be sheer coincidence.

  Grissom said there was no such thing as coincidence. But the connections between events could be tenuous, even invisible until something else revealed them, so Nick wasn’t sure exactly what the difference was. Grissom would assume a link between Whendt’s presence in the motel room and Antoinette’s, and so did Nick. But he couldn’t yet prove it.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “You can go. We might need to talk to you again, though.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it,” Whendt said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “This was the highlight of my day, guys.”

  Emil Blago’s estate was on the northwest side, off Summerlin Parkway in Country Club Hills. A tall, whitewashed wall surrounded it. Through an ornate wrought-iron gate, Catherine could see a veritable tropical jungle, with carefully positioned spotlights beaming up the trunks of towering palms, banana trees, and other plants utterly out of place in the desert landscape. The entire southwestern United States was suffering an extended drought, and Blago must have been using a small city’s worth of water just to keep his garden lush. That alone should have been reason enough to arrest him. The house itself was invisible from the gate, which was probably the reason for the foliage. Crime bosses never wanted to make things easy for their enemies.

  The gate, of course, was locked. There had been a guard on duty at the entrance to the development, and she half-expected to find another one here, but she didn’t see any. There was an intercom mounted on the wall beside the gate, and a couple of cameras, one high up on either side so they could cover the whole area.

  She pushed the intercom button. A male voice responded almost immediately. “Can I help you?”

  Catherine showed her badge to the cameras. “Las Vegas Crime Lab,” she said. “I need to talk to Emil Blago.”

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “Mr. Blago doesn’t care to be disturbed at this hour. I’m Paul, Mr. Blago’s estate manager. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I’m here on police business. So Mr. Blago can—”

  “Have you a warrant?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you a warrant for Mr. Blago’s arrest? Or to enter the premises?”

  “No,” Catherine said. “I haven’t a warrant.”

  “I have strict instructions not to disturb Mr. Blago before eight o’clock in the morning,” Paul the estate manager said. “So unless you have a warrant, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Did I mention that this is a police investigation?”

  “Mr. Blago is always happy to cooperate with law enforcement,” Paul said. “So if you’d like to call Mr. Blago’s attorney after eight A.M., we can arrange for a visit to the house, or you can meet Mr. Blago at his attorney’s office and he’ll answer all your questions.”

  Catherine was stuck. She could always shoot the lock, but that would probably just get the city sued and her in trouble. Paul was right—without a warrant, she couldn’t compel him to open up and let her in. “How about Mrs. Blago?” she tried. “Is she home?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  “Come on, Paul, help me out here. I’m not asking anything complicated. Is she there or isn’t she?”

  “You’ll have to call Mr. Blago’s attorney. After eight A.M.”

  “Yeah, right, I got it,” Catherine said. “After eight.”

  “That’s correct. Will there be anything else?”

  “Anything else? Doesn’t that imply that there’s been something to begin with?”

  Paul chose not to dignify her question with a response. Probably for the best. She wouldn’t have either, in his shoes. She was frustrated, but giving this poor sucker a hard time wouldn’t make things any better. He already had the unenviable job of staying up late answering Emil Blago’s door. Nothing she could do would make his life worse than that. “Thanks, Paul,” she said. “I’ll check in later.”

  “Do you know how to reach Mr. Blago’s attorney?” he asked.

  “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

  20

  THERE WAS, CATHERINE FOUND, something about the Las Vegas Strip that she always found stimulating, no matter how many times she drove it, how many hours she spent bogged down in traffic, or how much she knew about the sometimes unsavory truth behind the lights and the glitter. Casinos—not these, but primitive early versions of them, mostly downtown on Fremont Street—had transformed a little watering hole in the middle of a vast and forbidding desert into an international tourist destination. Big casino hotels, the ones that now lined the Strip with reproductions of other destinations—Paris, Venice, New York, Egypt, ancient Rome, the emerald city of Oz, a volcano, a feudal castle—had swollen its fame and created more showrooms for big-name performers, and then still more sophisticated hotels without glitzy, artificial themes created an air of maturity for a city that was still mostly dedicated to allowing adults to live like teenagers, without responsibility or rules. Legal or not, every sort of activity took place in the city, every imagin-able sexual liaison, every form of gambling, and various other transactions involving weapons and drugs and flesh.

  A law enforcement officer in Las Vegas never had much cause to be bored.

  Catherine, who had been born in Las Vegas, and then in a way reborn out of its seamier side when she shifted from a career as an exotic dancer to one in law enforcement, didn’t romanticize the city she lived in. But she couldn’t help loving it just the same.

  And being a cop, even a CSI, had its perks. She pulled into the valet area of the Palermo and showed her badge to the first uniformed young man who ran up to her. “Leave it where it is,” she said. “I won’t be long.” She dropped her keys into her purse, to make sure it wasn’t inadvertently moved. She had been trying to get here for what seemed like hours, but the sudden flood of information on the Blagos and Victor Whendt had changed her priorities.

  Inside, a hotel security officer Catherine had known since her strip club days had arranged for her to meet Melinda Spence’s father in a private conference room. The security man’s name was Glenn, and he’d harbored a longtime crush on Catherine—just enough of one to give her power over him. He wanted to stay for the meeting with Mr. Spence, but Catherine dismissed him. “Round up all the surveillance footage you have, starting at the time Melinda had dinner with her family,” she instructed him. “I won’t be here long, so get it ready for me to take away with me.”

  “You don’t have—”

  “A warrant? No, Glenn, I don’t. But I don’t need one. We’re on the same side here. We all want to find the girl.”

  “I’ll get it burned onto DVD for you, Catherine,” he said. He opened the conference room door. “Mr. Spence, this is Supervisor Catherine Willows, with the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Lab. She’s going to be looking for Melinda.”

  “Thanks, Glenn.” Catherine closed the door behind her, to make sure Glenn didn’t come in.

  Mr. Spence stood up. He was a tall, lean African-American with red, worried eyes. “I hope you can be more helpful than the last detective I talked to,” he said.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Spence.” She waited until he sat again, then sat across from him. The chairs were black leather, butter-soft and comfortable, and the conference table a modern steel and glass construction. “First, I want you to know how sorry I am that your daughter is missing. I know this must be terrible for you, and not at all what you were hoping for when you came to Las Vegas.”

  “That’s for damn sure.”

  “Look, Mr. Spence, if you talked to a detective who didn’t seem sympathetic, it’s because Melinda hasn’t been missing nearly long enough for an actual missing persons report to be filed. People go off the radar all the time in this city. They usually come back on their own after a few hours. Sometimes it even takes a few days, but they usually turn up. The number of distractions this city holds is impossible to count.
I’m sure you’ve considered all the things she could be doing—she could be at a nightclub, a rave, gambling at some other casino. She might have met a man and had one of those whirlwind Las Vegas romances. She could be getting married by an Elvis impersonator as we speak. I know you don’t want to think about these possibilities, but this city is a strange place and it has a powerful effect on some people. It causes people to relax their inhibitions… or forget they ever had any.”

  “We came to Las Vegas to see some shows, and because hotel prices are reasonable,” Mr. Spence said. “And it’s easy to get cheap flights from almost anywhere in the country. There are thirty-three of us here, ma’am, from seven different states. I can assure you that Melinda is no hardcore gambler and she is not the sort of girl who would run off with some man she hardly knows.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, I’m sure that’s true.”

  “Under any circumstances.”

  “I’m sure you want to believe that, Mr. Spence. And it’s very possibly true. I’m just asking you to keep an open mind while we look for her.”

  “We didn’t realize what an evil city this is, Ms. Willows. I don’t know you, and I don’t know if you like it here or not, but it is truly evil. Any place that profits so heartily from the degradation of human beings, exploiting their weaknesses, their addictions… well, I just don’t know another word for it. Evil. When we find Melinda, we’re leaving here and never coming back.” He squeezed his hands into trembling fists on the tabletop. “You’ve got to get my little girl back for me.”

  “Even though it’s early, Mr. Spence, we’re going to spare no effort. We’ll be looking for her, using every resource at our disposal.” That part wasn’t strictly true. Las Vegas was the most heavily surveilled city in America, with cameras in every casino and on most major streets running 24/7. But to get access to all that footage, and to get the entire LVPD on the lookout for Melinda, the required time would have to pass. On her own initiative, Catherine could get the crime lab’s resources on the job, and if they found evidence of foul play, then they could bring in the rest of the department.

  The Palermo’s security team had already checked their internal surveillance video for Melinda. They didn’t want guests running to the cops, or cops spilling through the front doors and making a fuss. But they had other things on their plates, too, and how seriously they looked would depend on how seriously they took the Spence family’s word that Melinda was so straight an arrow that Las Vegas couldn’t possibly tempt her to stray.

  Like all casino personnel, they had a vested interest in believing the opposite—that anyone could be tempted at any time.

  “Well, I appreciate that, Ms. Willows. We all do.”

  “I have a daughter too, Mr. Spence. I know exactly how I would feel in your position, and I will make every effort to get Melinda back to you as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “If there’s anything else you can tell me about her—what sorts of things she is interested in, what games she plays when she does gamble, what she was wearing…”

  “She’s a twenty-four-year-old Christian girl from Hamilton, Ohio. She works in a bank. She goes to church on Sunday mornings and sings in the choir. She’s never had a serious boyfriend, although she’s dated a few nice, polite young men… When she came to dinner she was wearing a red silk blouse and black pants. I don’t know what kind of shoes she had on, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were sensible.”

  “Okay, Mr. Spence.” Catherine put her business card on the table. “If you think of anything else, or if someone hears from her, call me. I mean it, no matter what time it is. Even if it’s good news. Especially if it’s good news. If I find out anything at all, I’ll call you here at the hotel.”

  “You’ve just got to find her, Ms. Willows.” His eyes brimmed with liquid. She didn’t want to see him cry. If something had happened to Melinda, he would be doing enough of that later. “Please.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Catherine said. That, she meant.

  Greg Sanders stood in the lab’s layout room cutting plastic. He had thought searching for fingerprints was the boring part of the job, but this? This was truly the boring part.

  He was a smart guy. He had gone to school early, then to a private school because, even though enrolled younger than most of his classmates, public school hadn’t proved challenging enough for him. He had earned a free ride at Stanford, a full academic scholarship. Maybe he hadn’t graduated at the very top of his class, but he’d been Phi Beta Kappa, and he could smell the top from where he was.

  And here he was cutting plastic.

  He had taken samples of all the irrigation tubing at the airport that seemed to match the tube that had been used to direct carbon monoxide into Jesse Dunwood’s cockpit. Then he had rounded up a variety of cutting implements—clippers and shears and knives of every description, from toolboxes and hangars and sheds, even a Buck knife from a snap-fastened scabbard on the janitor’s belt and a pocketknife from Patti Van Dyke’s purse.

  With those edged implements, he cut plastic.

  The Strokes blared in the background, but he barely heard the music, so intent was he on his work.

  He made circular cuts around some of the tubing with each one in turn, noting which tool he was using, what time it was, and what he was cutting. Then he took pictures of the tool and the cut plastic. Then he made another cut, with a different part of the blade, and repeated the notation process. Then he looked at the cut marks under a comparison microscope, next to the end of the tube that had actually been used in the crime.

  At first glance, one cut in a plastic tube looked pretty much like the next. But under enough magnification, minute differences became apparent. Some edges sliced more cleanly through the plastic, others feathered it, some had imperfections in the blade that were apparent in the cut.

  It had taken years—years—to attain the professional stature that would allow him to spend an hour cutting plastic in one of the most advanced crime labs in the world.

  His parents would be so proud.

  21

  CATHERINE WAS FINALLY DRIVING back to the lab when Wendy called.

  “Catherine, I got a hit off one of the dogs,” she said.

  “The dogs?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right, or if this was some new usage of the slang word dawg as it was used to refer to a person.

  “The bones from the pit, at the Empire Casino construction site? One of them turned up in Canine CODIS.”

  “You’re kidding.” Canine CODIS was a database of DNA taken from dogs impounded during the investigation of criminal cases. A lot of them were fighting dogs, but by no means all. She had once dealt with a sweet-faced sixty-seven-year-old woman who had murdered the widower next door. The woman had nine Chihuahuas in the house, and they’d had to be impounded before the CSI crew could begin to process the house. She had worried about those trembling little things in the shelter along with pit bulls and Dobermans and the like, but several of them had been adopted almost immediately.

  “Not kidding,” Wendy said. “The dog was a blue heeler named Tiffany, owned by a Halden Robles of Henderson. Robles is a sheet metal worker, but currently unemployed. Tiffany was taken in when Robles was picked up on a series of smash-and-grabs, five years ago. He beat the rap and was on the street again in time to reclaim Tiffany.”

  “So you think he’s our animal killer? If he had been away for longer, it would make more sense, given that time gap between the skeletal remains and the sheep put there recently.”

  “I don’t know if he is, Catherine. It seems like a stretch that he would reclaim his dog and then kill her. But maybe there’s some kind of connection between him and the killer. Robles lives in Henderson now, but when he was arrested he lived in Las Vegas, just about four miles from the Empire Casino site.”

  “Interesting,” Catherine said. “So if he knows who killed his dog…”

  “It’s a long shot, I admit,” Wendy s
aid. “But when the dog turned up in the database, I thought you should know.”

  Catherine thanked her and detoured to Henderson, a side trip that took her well out of her way and would eat up valuable time. But knocking on someone’s door in the middle of the night was often a good way to catch them off guard. Lying was harder to pull off convincingly when you were still mostly asleep.

  Halden Robles lived in a tiny square adobe-walled house in a poor neighborhood. A waist-high chain-link fence surrounded a yard of patchy grass and bare earth. On the corner, a streetlamp beamed down on it, illuminating the place from above like one of those lights mounted on picture frames. Still Life with Poverty, Catherine thought. American post-Gothic.

  She let herself in through the fence, looking for signs of dogs and not finding any. The house had no doorbell, so she knocked hard on the hollow wooden front door, which rattled in its frame. The stoop was simple poured concrete with no mat.

  After a couple of minutes, a Hispanic man wearing faded jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt pulled the door open. He appeared to have just thrown the clothing on; even the top button on his jeans was undone. His black hair was matted, his face puffy. He had a thin mustache that dropped down past the corners of his mouth, and prominent eyebrows roofing large, liquid eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Supervisor Catherine Willows, with the Las Vegas Police Department’s crime lab,” Catherine said, showing her badge.

  He eyed it, then made a dismissive motion with his hands. The house was dark behind him, and reeked of stale cigarette smoke. “Man, you people get your hooks into someone once, you don’t never let go, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it ain’t like I’m some kind of gang kingpin or anything, right? Why can’t you guys just leave me alone? I made some bad decisions, years ago. I got arrested, but then I got off because some of the state’s witnesses didn’t bother to show up. Maybe they never existed, I don’t know. I don’t see how they could because I never did the things they charged me with. Since then, it’s like every cop in the city is so pissed I didn’t do time they just keep bothering me.” He let his gaze wander up her body and rest on her face. “Never seen you around before, though.”