Blood Quantum

by Jeff Mariotte

  "You have who? Where are you, Greg?"

  "I'm in a helicopter," he replied, which explained the roar around him. "With Daria Cameron!"

  "You found her!"

  "Her and Bix Cameron, too. He's long dead, but she's alive. The chopper's taking us to Desert Palm Hospital. There's a bus bringing Bix to the morgue."

  "I guess I'll have a lot to discuss with Helena Cameron and her people. Thanks, Greg, that's great work."

  "No problem. I'll talk to you again after we land, when I get a better sense of Daria's prognosis."

  He hung up, and Catherine sat in the car for another couple of minutes, gathering her thoughts. This was going to be a very different conversation from the one she had expected to have.

  When it was over and Ecklie heard about it, she hoped she'd still have a job.

  22

  Brass and Aguirre made several more frustrating stops before they could begin to claim any real progress. They talked to some of the senior staff at the old Grey Rock Casino and the project manager at the construction site for the new one, a tall, triangular-shaped structure that mimicked, in steel, concrete, and glass, the real Grey Rock territory. They stopped at Ruben Solis's home and Shep Moran's.

  The only thing everybody they talked to had in common, besides their heritage, was the fact that they all claimed to have no idea where Solis and Moran might be.

  At the casino, there had been four police vehicles and an ambulance, because a verbal argument had escalated into a physical one, and a guy had been slammed onto a roulette wheel, injuring his back and totaling the wheel.

  Finally, they stopped at the home of one of Solis's aunts. She was in her late twenties, not much older than her nephew. She had long black hair and dark skin and a tired look on her face. The dusty front yard was littered with tricycles, a slide, a sandbox (which seemed more than a little redundant to Brass, given the home's nonexistent lawn – sand was in more plentiful supply than almost anything else), a couple of Razor scooters, and an assortment of balls and other sporting equipment. But the house was as large and modern as anything in a Las Vegas suburban development, the only apparent concession to the bare desert surrounding it a paucity of windows, and those few remained blocked by heavy drapes.

  "Nice place," Brass said as they approached from the road. "Does that mean she's on Domingo's good list?"

  Aguirre eyed Brass without turning his head. "I hope I haven't given you cause to underestimate us, Jim. There's a lot of poverty on the rez, but we're not just that. There are Indians who leave the rez and stay poor and others who stay here and get rich. Some have jobs in town, some here at one or another of the tribal businesses. Some of us have college degrees, advanced degrees. I'm one of them. I was recruited by the FBI, but I thought I could do more good here than in a Bureau office in California or Rhode Island or someplace."

  "My apologies. I didn't mean -"

  "It's okay, Jim. I have a problem seeing slights that don't exist outside my own head. Forget I said anything."

  When Solis's relative came to the door, she had a toddler clinging to her left leg. "Hello?" she said.

  "Hello, ma'am," Aguirre said. "Are you Ruben Solis's aunt?"

  The toddler hid behind the woman's leg, peeking out at Brass as if afraid the police captain might like to have him for an afternoon snack. "Yes," she said. "Is there something…"

  "No, ma'am," Aguirre said. "We're just concerned about him. I don't know if you've heard about all the trouble, the fights and things going on around -"

  "Just a little," she said. "I've been pretty busy, but I had the radio on, the rez station, and they said something about that."

  "Well, we have reason to believe that someone might try to hurt Ruben," Aguirre told her. "But he's hiding out someplace, and we're having a hard time finding him to warn him."

  Brass didn't like it when cops lied to civilians. He had already called Aguirre on it, in private, after Aguirre had used the same story earlier. But the tribal cop said he was just stretching the truth in a good cause. A rubber band could be stretched, Brass thought, but sooner or later, it would snap, and as often as not, it would come back and sting the person doing the stretching. He hoped that wasn't the case here.

  The baby started to fuss, and she clucked at it, rocking it back and forth in her arms. "Did you try Shop Moran's mom's place?"

  "No, we haven't looked there," Aguirre said. "Does she live on the rez?"

  The young woman shook her head. "No, Shep's mom isn't Grey Rock, but his father was. After they broke up, she had a place in the city, but it got foreclosed on. She's moved to Phoenix with her new boyfriend's parents. But the house is sitting empty, and sometimes Shep and Rubin go out there and party."

  "We'll try it," Aguirre said. "Thank you for your help. You don't happen to have the address -?"

  Brass cut him off. "That's okay, we can find it."

  "Thank you," Aguirre said again.

  The woman closed the door, aided by the toddler, who pressed his hands against it and shoved, just in case Brass might change his mind and lunge for him.

  "She could have given us the address," Aguirre said as they climbed back into his Jeep.

  "And while she had it handy, she could have made a quick phone call to let him know we were coming," Brass pointed out. "This way, she still has her hands full with the kids, and she's less likely to dig for the number."

  "But how do we -?"

  "We know the place belongs to Shep Moran's mother. You get me her name, and I can track that down in ten seconds."

  Aguirre shrugged. "Okay," he said. He started the engine and reached for his radio at the same time. "I won't have any authority there."

  "We'll be on my turf," Brass said. "So now I'll be the escort, and you can be the guest."

  "I can't wait," Aguirre said, thumbing the button for the mic. "That means you buy dinner."

  *

  Shep Moran's mother had lived in a neighborhood about twenty minutes from the edge of the reservation. The good-sized single-family homes were built on quarter-acre lots, so there was some space around each one for the now-standard xeriscaped yards. The whole development wasn't more than ten years old, and some of it appeared newer than that. Probably built in phases, Brass guessed, and her place was in one of the later phases. What little vegetation grew there was immature, so the houses were exposed to the full strength of the Nevada sun.

  They had stucco walls and tile or shingle roofs, covered entryways, dormer windows. Brass could almost picture the flags snapping in the breeze, the signs offering easy terms and upgrades and low, low interest rates, back when the developer had been trying to entice people to buy these houses. Back when money flowed freely and credit was cheap.

  The place was a ghost town.

  It wasn't hard to tell which houses were still occupied. They had curtains hanging in the windows, maybe a vehicle in the drive and flowers n the garden.

  But even most of those homes had For Sale signs standing out front. Anybody who was stuck in one of these houses wanted to get out, once all the neighbors had been forced from their homes. Brass couldn't blame them. They had moved into a neighborhood, which implied the presence of neighbors, friends for the kids to play with, block parties. Instead, there was the forest of For Sale signs on those posts that looked disturbingly like gallows.

  He had been in too many Las Vegas neighborhoods just like this one recently. The recession had hit the city hard, and one of the nation's most booming markets had gone bust practically overnight. The foreclosed homes sat there like silent ghosts, with gaping windows for eyes and Realtors' lockboxes on doorknobs standing in for a little bling in the mouth. Yards were no longer tended, and even in the desert, weeds grew. Broken windows were fixed with tape or boarded over. When no one was buying, no real estate agent wanted to invest in maintaining the houses, and the banks holding the paper weren't about to put money into upkeep.

  Shep Moran's mother's house looked just like the others. They watched
the addresses as they cruised through the development, and they parked the Jeep well out of sight of the house. Cutting through backyards (and it was worse there, with pools filled with stagnant, algae-filled water or black mold crusting their sides, more broken windows, more signs of neglect), they reached a spot from which they could get a view of her house. It was a pale tan, almost cream, two-story, with a dark brown shingle roof. It sat in a cul-de-sac, with houses on each side but behind it a steep hillside choked with boulders almost the size of the house itself.

  Parked out in front were two pickup trucks, one dark blue, the other white, scaled with rust and caked with dirt. A couple of men in tribal police uniforms lounged in the scant shade offered by the white truck, with rifles in their hands.

  "Is that one of their official duties?" Brass asked, ducking back behind the cover of an empty house. "Welcoming committee for a couple of punks who aren't even on the reservation?"

  "Not official" Aguirre said. "But like I told you, Ruben and Robert Domingo were buds. So I'm not too surprised to see some of Domingo's guys here. I wish they weren't in uniform – that's a little too obvious, isn't it?"

  "You could say that."

  "How do you want to play this, Jim?"

  "Do you know those guys?"

  "Sure, I know 'em. Doesn't mean we're friends or anything. If we just walk up to them, they'll sound some kind of alarm, and Ruben and Shep will be gone out the back before we can reach the door. At least we know they're inside, though."

  "Then I guess we need to flank them." Brass stepped out of cover long enough to eye the layout of the cul-de-sac. Since they couldn't know what room Solis and Moran were in and because the houses on the curve were set at a slight angle to one another, there was no way to approach from the front without being seen. "I'll hike up into those rocks and come out behind the house. You give me fifteen minutes to get into position, then drive up to the front to distract those cops, and I'll go in the back."

  "You sure? Could be a rugged hike."

  Brass glanced at his shoes. Polished leather, hard soles. Cop shoes. Not made for mountaineering. But there didn't seem to be a lot of choice. "Well, we don't have a helicopter handy, and I don't see any other way in."

  "You want to wait for backup?"

  "And stand here while Solis and Moran decide to go somewhere else? I'll make the call on my way, but l don't want to wait."

  "It's your call," Aguirre said.

  "Then it's a plan. And Richie?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If you get shot, try to make sure it's loud enough and takes long enough to cover my entrance."

  "I'll try to do that. And what are you going to be doing, exactly?"

  "I'll be asking Solis and Moran some questions," said Brass.

  "Questions? You don't think arresting them might be a good idea?"

  "I think it's a great idea. But they're not suspects yet."

  "In Domingo's killing. Which is your biggest problem. In the attack on Meoqui Torres's home, they're definitely suspects, and that's my problem."

  "True. But they're on my turf now, which gives me first crack. Don't worry, I won't let them go anywhere without releasing them to you.'

  "Whatever you say, Jim. It's not like I have any jurisdiction here anyway. But if we don't get 'em rattled up, we're never gonna get anything out of 'em on either case."

  "Okay," Brass said. "Not a great plan, but it's a plan."

  "That's how I look at it." Aguirre raised his chin toward the boulders behind the house that was giving them cover. "Head that way, then circle around," he suggested. "Maybe a quarter-mile, a little less. There probably won't be guards inside. Or not many, at least."

  "I just want to talk to them, not get into a gun-fight," Brass said. "Maybe you should go in the back door."

  "And let you go in the front way? You want to go talk to the guys who we know have guns?"

  "What, you don't think they'd welcome me with open arms?"

  "I'm more worried about what'll be in their hands. Go ahead, Jim. I'll get back around front and keep them occupied. When you get the drop on Ruben and Shop, get 'em in cuffs and bring 'em outside."

  "Got it," Brass said, heading into the rocks. "I'll see you there."

  By the time Brass had picked a route between the first boulders, a fine layer of light brown dust had completely coated his shoes and the cuffs of his dark pants. Soon he wished he had left his suit jacket in the Jeep or managed to bring the vehicle's air-conditioning with him. It wasn't a particularly hot day as southern Nevada went, but it wasn't cool, either. Brass took the jacket off and slung it over his shoulder as he worked his way over, around, and between more huge slabs of stone.

  He wasn't sure what he would find when he got to the house. But if it was air-conditioned and had a floor, it would be better than this.

  *

  When the traffic hemming him in lightened, Ray pressed down on the accelerator pedal and felt the vehicle surge forward. He had been meaning to head for the reservation for hours, certain that Nick and Captain Brass could use another pair of hands there. But one thing after another had come up, stalling him, keeping him otherwise occupied. Now that he was finally on his way, the urge to race there at top speed was almost overwhelming.

  He would have to call Nick when he got a little closer. As reservations went, Grey Rock was not a large one, but it still covered a lot of square miles, and he didn't know his way around.

  But as he thought about calling Nick, he remembered the last phone call he had received, from Wendy. Domingo, she had said, was killed by a white man with blond hair and blue eyes. Since they didn't have a specific suspect in mind yet, it wasn't necessarily a game changer. But it certainly shifted the emphasis of their search.

  As Ray drove, he pondered what else he knew about the case, both things he had learned firsthand from the physical evidence and details he had been told by others. Domingo had been out at a nightclub, where he spent a lot of money and quite a bit of time with a young Paiute woman. He tried to take her home with him, at which point she revealed her true agenda. They argued, and she got out of his Escalade and threw a brick through the passenger window. But she didn't kill him, or so she said. The evidence backed her up on that point.

  Domingo continued home. There he lit a cigar and relaxed… and then had a visitor. He let the visitor in. They talked. Perhaps they argued. At some point, things got physical. Domingo scratched the visitor, but the visitor whacked him in the head with the heavy gold lighter Domingo had used earlier to light that cigar.

  He or she had wiped the lighter clean of fingerprints – or had been wearing gloves the whole time, which seemed unlikely on a pleasant April night – and dropped it into the blood already spreading on the floor. He or she had then written the word "Quantum" on the wall in blood and had taken off. Little physical evidence had been left behind. Some tiny bits of soaptree yucca. A few threads. Orange cat hairs. Footprints had been left behind the house, maybe by the killer but maybe by someone else – perhaps even a witness to the murder.

  Footprints, threads, yucca… Ray tapped his brakes and searched for the nearest exit. Reaching it, he swung off the highway and pulled to the side of the road to make a quick phone call.

  Archie Johnson answered after two rings. "Good, you're still there," Ray said. "Listen, I know this is outside your usual range of duties, but I need some information. I don't know if you'll find it online, but if not, you might have to call the Grey Rock Paiute tribal headquarters. I'm going to give you a name to check on. You ready?"

  When the call was finished, he got back on the highway, headed in the opposite direction.

  The reservation would have to wait.

  *

  A painted sign on a skinny post outside the clinic showed a red cross and the words "Grey Rock Medial Clinic #4." A couple of cars and trucks were parked on the paved lot outside the tiny concrete-block building, a cube painted a kind of sunset rose that made Nick think of diluted blood. Right in front, not i
n a parking spot but cutting across the entry path, was the white pickup with tribal police markings that Rico Aguirre had sent over. Guess cops are the same all over, Nick thought. They think parking rules apply to everyone but them.

  He was glad to see the vehicle, though, glad that the cop inside had followed orders and come there to guard Torres.

  It looked as if the officer was sitting inside the truck, behind the wheel. Nick walked over to check in, to let the cop know he was there before going inside to see how Torres was doing. He crossed the parking lot, hand raised to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun glinting off the truck's windshield.

  But when he reached the truck, its driver's-side window was open, and the driver hadn't budged. He was leaning to his right, his head tilted forward, his straw cowboy hat shading his face. Taking a nap, it appeared. "Hey," Nick said, putting some extra volume into it. "Everything okay here?"

  The cop didn't respond. Nick went closer, and the smell hit him like a clenched fist.

  Nick halted and made a quick scan. Whoever had done the cop didn't seem to be present anymore.

  Or, more likely, he had gone inside.

  Nick drew a weapon and took a few steps nearer the truck. The guy had been shot through the open window and slumped away from it, but his seat-belt held him in place. The shot had come from a slightly up angle, catching the cop just below his left eye. He had probably been talking to his assailant through the open window when the person outside raised a small-caliber weapon and shot him. The bullet exited out the back of the cop's skull – the truck's passenger side was painted with blood, hair, and brain matter.

  Did he know the shooter? Why was he wearing his seatbelt? Had he been somewhere else and just returned to the clinic? Or was he about to leave?

  Another crime, another crime scene. Nick would have to call it into the tribal police headquarters and hope that they had the staffing available to handle one more scene in a day full of them. Or, once again, he would have to work it himself.