Brass in Pocket

by Jeff Mariotte

  Riley and Nick stood back to let the police do their thing. Vega watched one of the uniforms pound on the front door. “LVPD!” the cop shouted. “Open up!”

  A light flicked on at the end of the house. Moments later, a woman came to the door, clutching a cotton robe at her chest. She was in her mid-forties, Riley guessed, with short red hair that had spiked off everywhere while she slept. Her eyes were puffy. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”

  “Las Vegas Police Department, ma’am,” Vega said, stepping forward and displaying his badge. “Are you Vera Upson? Dawson Upson’s mother?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Yes, I am. What—”

  “Is your son home?”

  “Of course. I mean… I assume he is. He should be.”

  Assuming, Riley thought. Never a good idea, especially when your son might be a monster. “Do you mind if we check?” Vega asked. His manner was calming, which considering she could see heavily armed police officers surrounding her house, must have been intended to put her at as much ease as was possible.

  “I… I have trouble sleeping. I took a pill. He was still up when I went to bed, but it’s late now, so—”

  “We’ll just have a look, ma’am,” Vega said. “It’s very important.”

  “Do you have a… what’s it called? A warrant?”

  “Do you have something to hide?” Vega asked. “There’s a warrant on the way, but we’d like to be allowed inside. A young woman’s life might be in danger.”

  “I don’t… what are you talking about? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I’m asking you to step back from the doorway and let us in, Mrs. Upson. If you cooperate, it’ll be better all around.”

  “But, a woman’s life? Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Honestly?” Vega said. “It might not be a bad idea. Now if you don’t mind…”

  “Fine!” Mrs. Upson waved them in. “Go ahead. He’s probably sound asleep in his room. You know how boys are.”

  “We’ll find out,” Vega said. “Which one’s his room?”

  She pointed down the hall. “Third door,” she said. She was awake now. She looked shell-shocked.

  As soon as she moved out of the doorway, cops flooded into her house. Riley and Nick waited outside. Banging doors and shouts of “Clear!” rang from the house.

  A few minutes later, Sam Vega emerged, shaking his head. Vera Upson trailed him out the door. “The kid’s not here,” Vega said.

  “I… I just don’t know where he could be. He’s not some wild thing, not like some other boys.”

  “Do you take pills to sleep every night?” Vega asked her.

  “Like I told you, I have trouble sleeping.”

  “Do you have any idea where he goes at night while you’re unconscious? What he does?”

  “Apparently not,” Mrs. Upson said. There was a hint of indignation in her voice. “I don’t think I like your tone.”

  “I apologize, ma’am,” Vega said. “We’re just trying to find someone. It’s very important.”

  “This woman you mentioned? I’m sure she’s not here.”

  “It doesn’t appear that she is. Does Dawson have someplace that he likes to go? When he’s not here?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know every place he goes. The library, the mall. He goes to a lot of movies. He goes hiking in the desert.”

  “Where in the desert?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Sam, we’re going to get started in his room,” Nick said.

  “Yeah, go for it. If I get anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  He and Riley went into the house. At least one of the Upsons was a smoker, as the odor of old smoke enveloped them at the door. Police officers milled about, not needed now that it was clear Dawson and his victim weren’t on the premises.

  Every door in the house had been left open. Riley and Nick entered the room Mrs. Upson had identified as her son’s. Riley was slightly staggered by the appearance of his room, the walls painted black, the cream carpeting stained from spills and caked with dirt, wastebasket overflowing, every surface covered in streaked dust except for a computer on a desk and a small flat-screen TV mounted on one wall between horror movie posters. An ashtray, thick with ashes and butts, sat next to the computer.

  She went back into the hall. Sam was just sitting Mrs. Upson down in the living room.

  “One more thing, Mrs. Upson,” Riley said. “Do you go into Dawson’s room often?”

  “Dawson is a young man. He needs his privacy. I give it to him.”

  “That’s what I thought. Thank you, ma’am. We’ll let you know when we’re done here.”

  “What was that about?” Nick asked when Riley returned.

  “She never comes in here or she would know what her son was really like,” Riley said. “Look at this place.” She pointed out the movie posters on the walls: Murder 9, Corpse with My Face, A Taste for Blood, Can I Lick the Spoon?, I Was Satan’s Bitch, and more of the same.

  “He’s got a thing for slasher flicks,” Nick said. “Bloodier the better, it looks like. That doesn’t make him a killer.”

  Riley had already moved toward his bookshelf, which she had found was sometimes the easiest way to get a glimpse of someone’s personality.

  “It’s not just fictional slashers he’s into,” she said. “He has true crime books here about John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Gary Ridgway, even Albert DeSalvo.”

  “The Boston Strangler?” Nick asked.

  “Maybe the Strangler was a role model for him. Catherine said he went to college in Boston.”

  “And that’s where he made the leap from abducting animals to people.”

  “Abducting, cutting, torturing—we’ve got to find this guy, Nick. We have to find him now.”

  Nick opened a couple of desk drawers. In the second, he found a cigar box. When he pulled it out, it appeared to have rags in it. He unfolded them, revealing three straight razors and a hunting knife. “Blades are dirty,” he said. “I’m going to try a little luminol on these…”

  “We’ll find blood,” Riley agreed. “He’s got to have more than those, though. He wouldn’t have taken Melinda Spence someplace with no weapons.”

  “He used guns on those animals too, right?”

  “He’s a shooter and a slasher. Greg’s theory was that he was trying to figure out which one he was more comfortable with.”

  “Okay, let’s get organized,” Nick said. “We need to divide the room and see what’s what. And it wouldn’t hurt to call Catherine, let her know what we’ve found so far.”

  “I hope that warrant gets here soon,” Riley said. “If Mrs. Upson decides to rescind her invitation…”

  “Vega will just have to make sure she doesn’t. I’m gonna call Cath from outside, so Mrs. Upson can’t hear.”

  Nick went out, leaving Riley alone in the presumed monster’s lair. There were touches—a team photo of the New England Patriots, a stuffed Teddy bear on the bed—that made Dawson Upson seem like a normal kid. The kid his mother believed him to be.

  But Riley suspected he hadn’t been normal for a long time. And not really a kid, either.

  She just hoped they could figure out where he was. And fast.

  In case Melinda Spence was about to become his first human kill.

  26

  OUTSIDE, THE SUN HAD just crested the eastern hills. It would be glinting off the still waters of Lake Mead and igniting the red peaks of Valley of Fire State Park. The lights of Las Vegas would dim and many of them—but not all—would be turned off until sunset. The day shift would come on duty soon.

  They would have their hands full. If Vegas never slept, neither did its criminal element. Catherine’s crew had to keep working their ongoing cases. You could go home if you were working on cases involving dead people and you had done absolutely everything you could for that shift. But you couldn’t walk away from two missing women. It would mean
overtime for the crew. She didn’t care.

  Finding Melinda Spence and Antoinette O’Brady was what mattered.

  Sleep? Career considerations?

  Those could wait.

  At least she had been able to break away from the lab again, if only for a short while. She had received a call from Nick about their disappointing but hardly surprising discovery at the Upson house, and another from LVPD headquarters letting her know that cops on patrol had spotted the Chevy Malibu registered to Deke Freeson, parked outside a gas station on Eastern Avenue, well south of McCarran.

  The next call, from Melinda’s father, had come while she was en route to see Freeson’s car for herself. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said. “I’m just checking to see if you have any new information on Melinda.”

  She didn’t want to tell him about Upson yet, didn’t want to build up his hopes in case that angle didn’t pan out. “We’re following up on some solid leads,” she said after a moment’s pause. “We hope to have something more definitive to tell you very soon now.”

  “That would be wonderful. I’m glad there’s progress being made. We’re praying for Melinda and for you.”

  He was bizarrely calm. If she had been in his position, if she was a civilian and Lindsey was missing, Catherine was sure she would behave like a lot of other parents she had dealt with over the years—demanding, insistent, possibly insulting, and almost certainly unreasonable. She would want answers when there weren’t any to be given. Mr. Spence, on the other hand, seemed to accept that she was doing what she could, and that the Las Vegas Police Department wasn’t comprised of barely functional and probably crooked morons who would make the Keystone Kops look like models of efficiency.

  Maybe his calmness could be attributed to his faith. Or maybe he simply accepted that bad things happened in life, along with the good ones. I should take a lesson, she thought; parents and their children didn’t automatically turn into antagonists, either during the teen years or at the onset of adulthood, and relationships could apparently deepen with time. Even if some, or much, of that time was spent apart.

  Catherine had barely finished with that call when one came through from Lindsey. She glanced at the position of the sun over the horizon.

  “I hope you’re just waking up,” she said.

  “I haven’t been to bed yet, Mom. I’ve been dealing with Gemma.”

  “You’ve been up all night? Lindsey, are you okay? Is she?”

  “I’m a little sleepy, I guess. But sometimes friends come first, right?”

  “I suppose. You can’t take care of anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself, though.”

  “Like I don’t know that.”

  “I’m just saying, Lindsey.”

  “Well, don’t treat me like a child, Mother. I do know a few things.”

  “I’m aware of that, Lindsey.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you ever get a chance to talk to Sondra about the whole situation?”

  “I called her. We talked.”

  “And?”

  “You know what you said about people wearing masks? Not really showing you their true selves?”

  “Yes.”

  “She told me to mind my own business. She said she knows what’s best for her, and she’s breaking up with Jayden.”

  “That’s her prerogative.”

  “I know, Mom. It’s just… I never would have expected her to take that attitude with me.”

  “You can’t ever get inside someone else’s brain, honey. You can only go by what they show you.” She didn’t add how aptly that summed up her job: studying evidence to determine intangibles like motivation and intent.

  “Well, she sure had me fooled.”

  “It might not be that so much,” Catherine offered. “She’s young. Maybe she wasn’t hiding anything from you, but she doesn’t really know her own mind yet.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I guess. It didn’t seem like that, though. It just seemed like she turned into this heinous bitch, out of nowhere.”

  “That can happen too, Lindsey. It’s less common… but when you’re dealing with human beings, just about anything is possible.”

  “I guess.”

  “You should go on home, get some sleep.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “I’m pulling some extra hours today, but with any luck I’ll be out of here before too much longer. I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “That sounds good. See you later!”

  Lindsey hung up. Catherine was pleased with the way the conversation had gone, overall. The tension of their previous talk had been overcome or forgotten. Lindsey was apparently willing to accept that her mother was not a complete tool, maybe even that she knew a thing or two. Catherine had to accept that Lindsey had her own life and made her own decisions, at least about many things. She knew that would only continue, that she would make more and more of them on her own, that the gap between them might become a canyon.

  On the other hand, bridges could always be built, even across the widest of chasms. She didn’t have to lose Lindsey—she had only to maintain the right kind of ties. Trusting her, as Mr. Spence had apparently learned to trust his daughter Melinda, was probably a good first step.

  A few minutes later, Catherine pulled up at the Mi-T-Gas. A female officer, slender and honeyblond, in her mid-twenties, stood on the side of the building next to a blue Malibu with a dented rear fender and a broken taillight. “I’m Supervisor Willows of the crime lab,” Catherine said as she approached.

  “I was told to expect you,” the cop said. “I’m Liz Tavrin.”

  “I’m Catherine. Where’s your partner, Liz?”

  “Dave’s looking around the neighborhood to see if he can find anyone who saw the driver.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  The cop pointed to the taillight. “I saw the busted light as I was driving past the station. That’s a violation, so we figured we’d have to write a fix-it ticket. But when I stopped my vehicle, my partner Dave remembered the BOLO for a blue Malibu. We checked on the tag number, and this was the car. We called it in, then went into the gas station to see if the missing woman was inside.”

  “And?”

  “No dice. There’s no convenience store or anything at this location—just a couple of service bays and some outdoor vending machines. Restrooms are accessed from outside and left unlocked if there’s anyone here. There’s a cashier and a single mechanic on duty, but neither one saw the car pull up or anyone get out.”

  “There a security video?”

  “They only have one camera, on the pumps. She didn’t get gas.”

  “What did she do, then?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not here, and I was told to watch the car.”

  “Okay,” Catherine said. “Thanks.” She eyed the car’s position, badly parked on the side of the building nearest the restrooms. Intentionally out of sight of anyone inside, she supposed. Overnight there had probably only been one attendant on duty, if that—the pumps took credit cards and could function 24/7 with no human supervision.

  Logic suggested that Antoinette had stopped for the restroom. Catherine walked past the car, looking inside it as she did. Some fast food wrappers, a days-old newspaper, and an empty plastic water bottle were all she could see inside. None of it pointed to Antoinette O’Brady—the stuff could have been hers but just as easily could have been left there by Deke. She could find out who had handled it, given time.

  But time was what Antoinette might be running out of.

  The keys weren’t dangling from the ignition, which told her Antoinette had not left the car for good. She had meant to come back to it and wanted to know it would be there. Of course, if she had started to come back and seen a uniformed cop standing there, that might have scared her away. Depending on what she was mixed up in… Catherine wished once again that Brass had responded to her phone and radio calls.

  Tugging on a pair of latex gloves, she went into the wome
n’s room. The waste bin was full to overflowing, the floor dirty and strewn with toilet paper, paper towels, and sanitary napkin wrappers. If they left the restrooms open overnight, then probably there was an attendant on duty inside, but that attendant hadn’t bothered to come out and clean them in some time. Rust stains streaked the white porcelain of the sink, and the mirror had been splashed with water. Every wall had graffiti on it, a sort of ongoing conversation between utter strangers.

  Catherine glanced in the toilet, which was always a fairly high-risk activity in a place like this. It had been flushed since its last use, and while she wouldn’t call it clean, no obvious clues stared her in the face.

  She tried to re-create Antoinette’s mental state. She had been running from someone who was trying to kill her. She, not Deke, was probably the real target of the shooter in the motel—otherwise, would Deke have worried about shielding her with his body? Would she have escaped out the bathroom window and taken his car? The fact that she was Emil Blago’s wife only complicated things further.

  So Antoinette would have been scared, maybe desperate, even close to frantic. She had no wallet, no ID, maybe no money on her at all. She had whatever she’d been wearing when the attack had come, but her clothing, and she, were covered in blood. Hours had passed, during which things had not started looking any brighter for her situation.

  And she had to pee. Who wouldn’t?

  It was the covered-in-blood part that spurred Catherine. In Antoinette’s place, she would want to clean off as best she could. That meant the sink. And the waste bin.

  She pulled the lid off and set it on the floor. Used paper towels and other trash cascaded to the floor. Antoinette would have shoved her trash deep inside, though, to make sure it stayed hidden from casual view.

  Catherine reached in, pushing through layer after layer of waste paper until her hand touched a particularly wet clump.

  Jackpot. The paper towels she pulled out were soaked and pink with blood. Wendy Simms could match the blood to Deke Freeson’s in no time, Catherine guessed. But she didn’t need the lab work at the moment—she was convinced it meant Antoinette had come in here to clean up. Perhaps with the sun coming up, she had begun to feel vulnerable.