Snake Eyes

by Max Allan Collins

  “Conjecture,” Jacks said.

  “When we’ve had some time at the scene of Price’s ‘suicide,’ we’ll see about conjecture,” Grissom said. “Anyway, there’s some key evidence you didn’t consider, which I’ve already taken steps to secure.”

  “Such as?”

  “The other body.”

  A harsh laugh tried to dismiss that, but panic in the gray eyes betrayed the suspect’s real feelings. “What other body?”

  “The young woman’s. The card dealer. It’s under lock and key at the mortuary right now—I quietly took care of that, after I realized the killer had neglected to think through that bullets were in both bodies. And I don’t think anybody’ll be sneaking up on that particular mortician again.”

  Jacks’s face was as white as the underbelly of a fish. “Young woman…”

  “The witness you shot. That wasn’t part of the plan, was it, Sergeant? A pity—I understand you knew her. Had even been a kind of father figure to her…. Horrible irony for you to have to live with…and her to die with.”

  “Shut up, Grissom….”

  “You mean to revenge your daughter’s honor and, along the way, you have to protect yourself by killing your other, surrogate daughter…leaving a child motherless. Who’s the predator now, Sergeant?”

  Silence shrouded the office.

  Then Cody Jacks spoke, the rich voice cracking.

  “I…I thought the world of that girl. Vanessa. Vanessa.” Tears glistened in his gray eyes, but his expression remained feral. “But you know how it is for us cops—shit happens.”

  Grissom shrugged. “Only this isn’t police work, is it, Sergeant? By the way—how do you plan to keep Buck Finch from ratting you out?”

  The gun no longer hung loosely at the suspect’s side—Jacks had brought it up, to aim it directly at Grissom’s chest.

  “Anybody moves, the know-it-all dies first,” Jacks said, indicating Grissom. His eyes traveled around the faces of the three other CSIs. “Drop the pistols in that garbage can—now. One at a time, ladies first…touch only the butt with two fingers or your boss dies.”

  Slowly, the others did as they were told, their weapons clunking into the garbage can next to Lopez’s desk.

  “Now you, Doc,” Jacks said.

  Grissom complied and pitched his pistol on top of the others.

  Catherine had an amazed smile and was shaking her head. “Sergeant Jacks—you can’t think you can get away with this.”

  Jacks laughed once. He gestured with the Glock. “If any of you had been looking outside, you’da seen that the Predators and Spokes have gathered out in the street and’re about to go at it full tilt. There’s gonna be a hell of a firefight that’ll make last night look like a paintball match. Dust clears, a lot of people won’t be alive no more…including you four fucking busybodies…and some lowlife bikers.”

  “Including Buck Finch,” Grissom said.

  “Another Kewpie doll to you, Doc—and what a sad goddamn tragedy it’ll be, can’t you just see it? Be all over cable news. And Chief Lopez will put his best man—me—in charge of the investigation…to figure out how this coulda all gone so very, very wrong.”

  “We were killed during the riot,” Grissom said.

  “That’d be my best guess,” Jacks said. He shook his head. “Helluva story you come up with, Grissom—mostly on the nose. I don’t like the way this has gone, entirely—I certainly meant little Vanessa no harm. But you can’t imagine what Valpo did to demean and degrade my little girl…used her, raped her, got her hooked on drugs. We had her in and out of detox…that scumbag ruined my life and my daughter’s.”

  Outside there was a gunshot, and everyone flinched, including Jacks.

  “All of you,” Jacks said, his voice hard now, “up against the windows.” He did not mean the glass walls onto the empty bullpen, rather the three behind the chief’s desk, where minutes ago, centuries ago, Jacks had stood watch.

  He was saying, “Hate to have a stray shot come through the window here and not get one of you.”

  They lined up against the windows, facing the closed blinds—all except Grissom. At the end of the CSI lineup, he remained facing Jacks.

  “Show me your back, Grissom,” Jacks said, waving the Glock irritably. “I’m sick of that face of yours.”

  Grissom ignored him. “So many people have to die, all to avenge a daughter who’s still alive?”

  “You call that living?” Jacks snorted, eyes and nostrils flaring. “She’s a goddamn shell of herself—Valpo destroyed her. She may be breathin’, but she hasn’t been ‘alive’ since he got his filthy hands on her.”

  “What about Price?”

  The smile seemed almost inhuman now. “Poor Tommy—a gambling problem hardly anybody knew of. Worked at the Four Kings, but played in the casino in Cal Nev Ari. Owed some money to some very bad people and needed ten grand real bad…I just happened to know where to get it. Buck Finch hated Valpo and the Predators practically as much as I did. Ten thousand was nothing to those assholes, and they had their pride to think about. After all, the Predators thumbed their noses at the Spokes every chance they got.”

  “Finch knew you intended to kill Valpo.”

  “He knew. But he wouldn’t have talked—couldn’t’ve, without implicating himself. Only now, I think it’s better if he goes to that big Biker Blowout in hell.”

  Another gunshot from outside made everyone flinch again—except Catherine, who stood before blinds only partly shut.

  “They’re just shooting in the air,” Catherine said.

  Grissom turned and pried open two venetian blind slats to look out at the crowd of bikers gathered in the street. Local cops and Highway Patrol stood guard, their backs to the police station, others in a line dividing the biker groups; but the lawmen looked edgy—the least little thing might turn this confrontation into a full-fledged melee.

  Grissom swivelled to face Jacks again. The suspect did not see the door opening from the street onto the bullpen.

  Catherine was saying, over her shoulder, “Is this how you hope to make your daughter proud?”

  “Spare me—I been a cop too long.”

  “Yes,” Grissom said, “you have.”

  Chief Lopez was coming in the outer office, his gun in his hand.

  “Have what?” Jacks snarled at Grissom.

  “Been a cop too long,” the CSI said.

  Jacks sneered and raised his weapon, taking a bead on Grissom’s head.

  Grissom barely flinched when glass broke, carrying the explosion from Lopez’s pistol as he fired, the bullet catching Jacks in the back of the head. The detective’s eyes widened in surprise in a final instant of consciousness.

  The Glock dropped from Jacks’s dead fingers to the floor, his body pitching facedown onto the chief’s desk. For a split second Grissom thought Jacks’s last act had been to spit in the CSI’s face; then Grissom realized he had been sprayed with blood and bits of Jacks’s skull and brains.

  Looking at the body of the man who’d been just about to kill them all, Grissom said, “On the other hand, frontier justice has its merits.”

  Lopez rushed in, and the CSIs gladly left their spot at the window to gather near the doorway around the chief.

  “My God,” Lopez said, aghast, “I had to do it—couldn’t risk anything but a head shot. I could see he was going to shoot you, Doc! What in God’s name…”

  Grissom took him gently by the arm. “You saved our lives—let’s step out into your bullpen. That glass may give way…”

  Indeed, the large pane of glass in the office wall had spiderwebbed around the bullet hole.

  “…and anyway, that’s a crime scene in there now.”

  The blond fiftyish dispatcher, Gloria, came in, gun in hand. “Chief…I heard a shot. Is everything—”

  “Get back to your post,” Lopez said, patting the air and holstering his weapon.

  The woman’s eyes were doubtful, particularly as she saw the cracked glass
and Cody Jacks’s corpse sprawled on the desk.

  She said, “That’s Cody…Sweet Jesus, that’s—”

  Grissom said, “He was a murderer. You’d have been his next victim, after he took care of us.”

  The dispatcher, mouth agape, stood frozen.

  Lopez said, “Get to your post, Gloria—now.”

  Finally, moving backward, staggering, her face white with terror, the dispatcher exited the bullpen.

  11

  Saturday, April 2, 2005, High Noon

  WARRICK BROWN LIKED TO THINK he was in tune with his body.

  As a musician, melody was important to him, and the tune his exhausted, aching muscles were playing now was a dirge. He and Greg should both have been home and in their own beds by now; but Ecklie had come in, on a Saturday no less, to personally ask them to hang around.

  “I don’t have to tell you, Brown,” Ecklie said, “how shorthanded we are with this Boot Hill shooting.”

  Plus, two of the day-shift analysts were in the middle of two-week vacations and a third, Bob Halpern, was undergoing yet another round of chemo treatments; Halpern obviously had issues that made Warrick feel guilty about wanting to go home over something as trivial as complete physical exhaustion.

  So, now he was bearing down on a full twenty-four-hour shift, as was Greg, with nothing left to do about it but try to hang in there and be ready to be awake and alert when the next call came in. Toward that end, Greg had sacked out on a couch in Catherine’s office and Warrick had commandeered one of the holding cells, so he could crash on one of the crappy cots.

  Warrick had notified both the dispatcher and Ecklie as to where the pair of CSIs would be, with the hope that they could both catch an hour or two’s nap. They were, after all, only here in case of an emergency; and since the Boot Hill shoot-out had already been the biggest emergency in months, how many could there be…?

  Don’t ask stupid questions, Warrick told himself. Not even stupid rhetorical ones.

  On his side on the bunk, Warrick closed his eyes and immediately felt a thick, dark curtain sweep over him. Before long he was with his new friend, at home, the two of them on the sofa, she drawing close to him, warm in his arms….

  Her hand touched his shoulder, shook it gently.

  “Tina,” he cooed.

  “Tina?” a decidedly male voice asked. “Do I look like a Tina?”

  Warrick’s eyes flapped open and he found himself staring up at Greg Sanders. “What?”

  “Tina who?” Greg asked innocently, though his eyes had a glitter of mischief.

  Sitting up, reorienting himself, Warrick wiped a quick hand across his eyes. “Tina None-of-your-damn-business.”

  Greg kept up the innocent act. “What is that, a German name?”

  “I just woke up, bro. Don’t push it….”

  “Does Mia know?”

  “Mia who?”

  “Mia Who-you’re-always-hitting on, Mia.”

  Warrick blinked, damn near fully awake. “Uh, no. Anyway, Mia’s just a friend.”

  “Riiiight.”

  “Tina is…I don’t know…maybe something more.”

  Now Greg seemed really interested, and the kidding dropped away. “Really? Something more?”

  Warrick shook his head. “I don’t know, we just met recently. She’s a nurse.”

  “I like a woman in uniform.”

  “Let it go, Greg…. Why did you wake me up, anyway? Did I look too restful?”

  “Ecklie,” Greg said almost sheepishly. “Got a call.”

  Rising now, stretching, Warrick asked, “Where’s everybody else?”

  “No sign of our Boot Hill buddies yet. The day-shift crew caught a bunch of primo stuff—a domestic disturbance turned murder/suicide, two robberies, one burglary, and patrol found a stolen car that Williams is dusting for prints.”

  “Glad I was asleep. So, what did we draw?”

  “Bank robbery.”

  “What about the Feds?”

  Greg shrugged. “They’ve been called and agents are on the scene…but they only have one available crime scene analyst, so we got elected to volunteer to help out Uncle Sam.”

  Warrick admired Greg’s enthusiasm, though at the moment he was having a hard time matching it. “Your first bank robbery, right?”

  Greg nodded. “Yeah. I won’t lie to you—I’m jacked.”

  Wanting to settle his partner down some, Warrick said, “Don’t blame ya, but hey—let the Feds take the lead. Not only is it their case, they’re easier to get along with if you let them think they’re in charge.”

  “Roger that.”

  The Green Valley branch office of the Mountain Creek Bank was a single-story adobe building with a red-tile roof on the outskirts of a mall on Warm Springs Road. Even though the Saturday closing time of noon had come and gone, the parking lot was full.

  As they pulled in, Warrick behind the wheel, he saw only a couple of cars out front that looked like they might belong to customers. The rest were a mixture of patrol cars and unmarked Crown Victorias. Toward the back of the lot, on the right, away from the building, sat three cars that probably belonged to bank employees.

  Warrick parked and they climbed down. Greg started to open the back door to unload their equipment, but Warrick stopped him. “Let’s get the lay of the land first.”

  They did take a moment to slip into their LVPD Crime Lab windbreakers before approaching the bank.

  Crime scene tape had been set up around the front entrance; a uniformed officer stood just behind it with his arms crossed. He was a bruiser with flattop, wide chest, stovepipe arms, and hands the size of frying pans, sausage fingers poking out. His name was Tucker and Warrick knew, fearsome looks or not, the guy was a real softie.

  “Hey, Tuck, what’s up?”

  The big cop gave Warrick a grin as he stepped out of their way and let them step under the tape. “Brand-new day, same old shit.”

  Warrick nodded. “Who’s the Special-Agent-in-

  Charge?”

  “Jamal Reese.”

  The officer opened one of the double glass doors for the CSIs, and it took a second for Warrick’s eyes to adjust to the light in the lobby.

  Despite plenty of windows and fluorescent lighting, the bank interior still seemed dark compared to the early-afternoon’s brilliant sunshine. With his vision clearing, he glanced around.

  To his left, a waiting area was tucked back in the corner next to a counter running down the wall, three teller windows available. A group of people gathered in the waiting area, along with several men in suits who were obviously FBI.

  “Looking for Special Agent Jamal Reese?” Warrick called out. One of the agents pointed past Warrick.

  Warrick glanced over to his right and saw a slender white man seated behind a desk, talking to a black man seated opposite, his back to them. The African-American had to be Reese.

  He walked over to the pair, Greg trailing behind, and came up on Reese’s right. Behind the desk, the other man, presumably the branch manager, seemed to be wondering if he should rise as Warrick and Greg approached. Poor guy seemed flummoxed, as would any bank employee after a robbery.

  Seeing that, Reese rose himself, his head swivelling toward them.

  “Special Agent Jamal Reese,” he said, extending a hand.

  Warrick shook it. “I’m Warrick Brown; this is Greg Sanders. Las Vegas Crime Lab.”

  “Thanks for the help,” Reese said, offering an easy smile. “We’re kinda shorthanded in the CSI department today.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Reese nodded, eyes narrowing. “Ah, that Boot Hill thing—that depleted you but good, I bet.”

  “Safest bet in Vegas.”

  Warrick was pleased to see Reese showing none of the arrogance Warrick sometimes encountered in FBI agents.

  A couple of inches taller than Warrick, Reese wore a charcoal suit so well-tailored that the armament bulge on his hip barely registered. He had close-cropped hair and a thick, dar
k mustache with just a pinch of salt, which was also visible at his temples.

  “Single armed robber,” Reese began, crisply businesslike. “Came in around ten minutes before closing, carrying a large manila envelope. Only a couple customers inside, along with the guard, two tellers…and, of course, Mr. Warner, the manager.”

  Reese nodded toward the man behind the desk, who had stood up by now.

  Timidly, Warner nodded to Warrick, who nodded back. The manager wore wire-frame glasses and his sandy hair was combed over in a failed attempt to disguise a sizable bald spot. His suit seemed almost as expensive as Agent Reese’s.

  Reese said, “Once he’s inside, UNSUB jerks a pistol out of the envelope, cold-cocks the guard, yells for the customers to hit the floor, makes the tellers empty the drawers into a bag, then splits.”

  “Where’s the guard?” Greg asked, at Warrick’s side now.

  “Office in the back. Got an ice bag on a bump on his head. I suggested he take a ride to the ER, but he doesn’t want to leave. Point of pride—more pissed than hurt.”

  Warrick frowned. “I’d make him take that ride.”

  Reese nodded. “I’ll let him hang out a while longer, then I’ll see that he goes and gets checked out; but the bump doesn’t look like much.”

  “Who’s your crime scene analyst?” Warrick asked.

  Reese pointed across the lobby to a man in a business suit; the CSA had the customers and tellers gathered in a small waiting area. The victims sat on sofas and chairs as the analyst talked to them.

  “Mark Bynum, one of our best.”

  “Never met him,” Warrick said, “but his name’s come up. In a good way.”

  “You’ll be happy with him. Check in with Mark, and he’ll tell you what he needs.”

  Warrick nodded.

  He and Greg went over and introduced themselves to Bynum. Tall, thin, wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and red-and-blue striped tie, he was the prototypical Fibbie with the firm handshake and death-glare eyelock issued to all agents with their badges and guns.