Brass in Pocket

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Was there a fight?”

  “I don’t know if you could call it that. We pulled them apart pretty fast. I think Gemma got in a punch or two, and Sondra scratched her face a little. It wasn’t like anybody called the cops or anything.”

  That’s good, Catherine thought, because the last thing I need tonight is to bail you out of jail. “Then what happened?” she asked.

  “Then I tried to talk to Sondra about it, but she didn’t want to talk. She took off with that guy. She was acting like a stranger, like I don’t even know her. And so I came over to Gemma’s place and I’ve been trying to calm her down. She got pretty wasted.”

  “Are you okay, Lindsey?” That was the only part of this Catherine found truly important.

  “I’m okay. I just… I don’t know. Why do people act like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like either of them. It’s like two of my best friends have been possessed by aliens or something.”

  Catherine couldn’t resist. “Do aliens possess people? I always thought that was more of a demonic thing.”

  “Whatever, Mom. You know what I mean.”

  “I know, honey. I wish I could answer you. People are just—sometimes it’s like we’re all wearing masks. We show the world the image of us that we want others to see. Or that we think they want to see. Looking inside—getting under the mask to the real person beneath—that’s the hard part, because they have to be willing to let us in. If someone wants to keep the mask in place, it’s almost impossible to see under it.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Mom.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re talking about masks and stuff. That’s crazy. I’m just talking about Gemma and Sondra.”

  “It’s a metaphor, Lindsey.”

  “I know that! But… you really think I don’t know my best friends?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who said they’re acting like strangers.”

  “Well, yeah I guess.”

  “Did you ever expect to see these things happen to them? To have to pull Gemma and Sondra apart? Over some guy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then maybe you don’t know them as well as you thought. That’s all I’m saying, Lindsey. People show one face to the world, but that doesn’t necessarily represent who they really are. It might take a lifetime to truly know someone, if you ever do.”

  “Maybe you don’t really know your friends, Mom, but I don’t have that problem. We’re like family.”

  “I’m your real family,” Catherine reminded her. “I’m just saying—”

  “Saying what, Mother? That I don’t know what I’m talking about? That’s how it usually goes, right? You’ve been through every possible experience, and I don’t know the first thing about the world.”

  Pulling out the big gun of daughter/mother arguments: the “Mother” word. Once it had been considered a sign of respect. Now it signified sarcastic dismissal at best, and often outright antagonism.

  “That’s not it at all, Lindsey—” she began.

  Lindsey cut her off again. “Mom, Gemma’s puking. I gotta go.”

  “Take care, Lindsey. Get her to bed, then go home!”

  The phone clicked midway through her final sentence. Lindsey was gone. Catherine pictured her holding Gemma’s long blond hair as she knelt over the bowl. Not an image she had ever had of her daughter before.

  But then, the things she had been trying to say applied to mothers and daughters as well as to friends. There had been a time, years really, when she had known Lindsey. Or believed she did, anyway. Then the teenage years had struck with the force of a hurricane, erasing that knowledge and trust like floodwaters did names scrawled in beach sand.

  Now? Not quite strangers, not quite friends. They loved each other, she was sure of that.

  She wasn’t sure of much else, though. Not much at all.

  Her life seemed to be coming untethered around her. Sara and Warrick were gone. Gil was away from the lab, and in his less guarded moments, she thought she sensed an increasing distance there, as if he was working toward a departure as well. Lindsey would one day be an adult, and while that wouldn’t mean Catherine was no longer her mother, it would change their relationship. A child and an adult were two different people, she believed—there was continuity there, but Lindsey would have her own interests, her own life, and Catherine would be less a part of it than she had been for all these years.

  Then there was Jim Brass, seemingly mixed up in a murder. She wanted to find him, grab him by the collar, and make him tell her what he was up to. She couldn’t control the people she loved, but the more they seemed intent on straying away from her, the more she found herself wanting to do just that.

  She wasn’t the sort of person who liked to dwell on self-analysis, but if she were she might put it down to abandonment issues, because of her father’s absence from her childhood. Not wanting to be left again, her first reaction was to grab hold, to refuse others permission to move away from her gravitational orbit.

  That, no doubt, was an unhealthy response. Unhealthy and unhelpful.

  Which didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It was just something she would have to deal with, on her own terms, on her own time.

  She put her phone away, and looked up to see Greg standing in the doorway.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “I seem to be.”

  “You looked a little lost in space for a minute there.”

  “It’s… it’s nothing. What’s going on, Greg?”

  “What’s going on is Benny Kracsinski.”

  “Who?”

  “The night janitor at Desert View Airport.”

  “Oh,” Catherine said. “The Dunwood case, right? You think he’s your guy?”

  “I’d bet on it,” Greg said. “He handled the garden shears used to cut the tube that was jammed into the muffler. Everyone at that airport hates everyone else, as far as I can tell, even though they all claim to get along, but he’s the only one I can positively connect to the murder weapon.”

  “The first part sounds familiar. How many workplaces are any different? Present company excluded, of course. I think a lot of people get along with their coworkers, but a lot of them would just as soon never see them again when they go home at the end of the day.”

  “Probably so,” Greg said. “Here’s the clincher to me. Benny and Jesse Dunwood were in flight training together at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. They knew each other almost twenty years ago, which Benny never mentioned, to me or Grayson Williams, when he was being interviewed. He didn’t even say anything about being in the service, much less knowing the victim decades ago.”

  “That’s definitely suspicious.”

  “But wait,” Greg said, imitating an infomercial spokesman. “There’s more! Turns out they even hung out together off duty. At least, they did until one night when they went out to a couple of bars in San Antonio. On the way back, Benny was driving, Jesse riding shotgun, and there were a couple of other flyboys in the backseat. Benny, according to the newspaper accounts I found online, was sober—designated driver—but the others weren’t. The drunk ones were arguing about the radio, Jesse cranking it up and another guy reaching up from the back to turn it down, and Jesse bumped Benny’s arm just enough to send the car skidding into the path of an oncoming truck. Benny tried to correct course, but the truck rammed into his car, front left. Jesse and the guys in the backseat sustained minor injuries, but Benny was crippled for life. Obviously his flying career was over. He got an honorable discharge.”

  “And that sounds like motive,” Catherine said. “Revenge best served cold, and all that.”

  “I think it’s even more complicated than that,” Greg said. “Think about it. Benny’s career is shot. I don’t know what kinds of jobs he held in the meantime, but probably nothing terribly lucrative or glamorous, considering he wound up a night janitor at a little airport in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Jesse Dunwood has an hon
orable Air Force career as a fighter pilot. That was the future Benny dreamed of. After that, Jesse goes into business for himself, makes a lot of money, goes night flying over Las Vegas with a succession of beautiful women. Maybe—and this might be the worst part, the hardest sting—he doesn’t even recognize Benny Kracsinski. If he had ever acknowledged the relationship publicly, the others would have told us about it. But as far as anybody there knew, Benny and Jesse only knew each other from the airport.”

  “That’s definitely enough to bring him in for questioning, Greg. Good job. Do you want to be there?”

  “Is there anything going on with the Melinda Spence disappearance?”

  “We’re working it,” Catherine told him. “But there’s nothing concrete yet.”

  “Okay, then,” Greg said. “I guess I’ll go to the airport.”

  Greg had barely left Catherine’s office when Wendy came in. The revolving door again. It’s a miracle Gil ever gets into the field.

  “I’ve got something,” Wendy said. She was practically bouncing with excitement, or as close to bouncing as Wendy ever got at work.

  “Something on what?”

  “Something on that sheep. Or off it, rather.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Touch DNA. I swabbed the sheep’s… not armpits, but whatever you want to call them, and got some microscopic epithelials. The last person who handled her without gloves on was a man named Dawson Upson.”

  “That’s good to know,” Catherine said, her heart beginning to race. Halden Robles had identified the pizza delivery kid who was interested in his dog as Donnie or Dougie, she remembered. “Tell me more. Who is Dawson Upson?”

  “He’s a twenty-two-year-old Caucasian male. He’s a lifelong Las Vegas resident, except for the last four years when he was going to college back in Boston. He graduated in June, though, and he’s back in town, living with his mother, Vera Upson. He’s not currently employed. His major was history, so there probably aren’t a lot of jobs in Vegas suited to him. And get this—Mom’s house is less than two miles from the Empire Casino construction site.”

  “Are you trying out for detective, Wendy?”

  “I guess I got a little carried away. Touch DNA is still pretty experimental, so when I actually got a result I took it a couple of steps further.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with taking initiative.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way.” Wendy proffered a photo printed from the LVPD’s database. “This is his driver’s license picture.”

  Catherine took the sheet of paper and alarm bells started ringing in her head.

  Dawson Upson was the guy who had drugged Melinda Spence and taken her out of the Palermo.

  “Okay, I have to call Sam Vega,” she said. She felt a surge of almost maternal pride at Wendy’s discovery. Wendy was pretty, with a good body; in this city, a few wrong decisions might have pushed her down Catherine’s original path instead of her current one. Wendy had even acted in a low-budget horror movie once, so a career on one sort of stage or another hadn’t been out of the question. Catherine was glad she had chosen forensic science instead, because she showed a lot of promise. “How did Upson’s DNA happen to be in the system?”

  “It was evidence in a domestic violence case. His father beat him and his mother. The father claimed Dawson hurt himself falling down a flight of stairs, but investigators found his blood on a fireplace poker. The father killed himself rather than go to prison.”

  “That’s definitely rough on the kid,” Catherine said. She was sympathetic toward victims of abuse—but only to a point. “It’s no excuse for turning into a murderer, but it’s hard anyway. Thanks, Wendy.” She reached for the phone to call Sam.

  “There is one more thing, Catherine.”

  “What is it?”

  Wendy hitched herself up, seeming to grow a couple of inches taller. Pride, Catherine thought. She was glad to see it. “I did a quick scan through the newspaper archives of Boston papers, from while Upson was in school there. During that time, six young women were abducted in the area. Some of them were released right away, unhurt, but a couple were tortured with knives and razor blades before being released. None of them were killed, and no suspect was ever apprehended. The last incident was in April, and nothing matching that pattern has turned up since then.”

  “Because he was studying for finals?”

  “That’s possible. And then he came back to Las Vegas.”

  “And now he has Melinda Spence. Great work, Wendy. I’m going to have this guy picked up fast.”

  25

  NICK AND RILEY WERE on their way back to the lab when Catherine called. They were both still steamed about having to let Victor Whendt go, but they couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason to hold him. Riley reminded herself that she was a CSI, not a detective. She wasn’t supposed to play hunches. She found evidence and followed its trail.

  Catherine had called Nick, but he was driving and Catherine wanted to relay a street address. He handed the phone to Riley.

  “I need you to make a detour,” Catherine said.

  “Where to?”

  “We’ve identified a suspect in the Melinda Spence disappearance.”

  A thrill coursed through Riley’s body. That was the case that had started with the discovery of the animal burial pit. Saving Melinda’s life was of primary importance, but if in the doing of it they could also bring in whoever had killed those poor animals, so much the better. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “A man named Dawson Upson—I guess not much more than a boy, really. He lives with his mom a couple of miles from the Empire Casino site. He just came back from four years of college in Boston—”

  “Which would explain the time gap in the animal corpses!” Riley interrupted. “Sorry.”

  “That’s right,” Catherine said. “He may have abducted and tortured some women in Boston. And he’s a physical match for the person we have on video taking Melinda out of the Palermo. I have a feeling this is our guy.”

  “Good. Where do you want us to go?”

  Catherine read off an address, which Riley wrote down in a notebook she kept in her pocket. Low tech, but it worked. “Vega’s on his way, and so is backup,” Catherine told her. “But I don’t want to waste a second. You’re not too far from Dawson Upson’s house. And chances are he doesn’t take his victims there, since his mother lives there, too. I need you to get over there now. If he’s there, we need him in handcuffs. If he’s not, process his room. Work the whole house if you need to. There’s a warrant in the works, and it’ll get there soon. If there’s any clue as to where Upson would have taken Melinda, I want it found.”

  “We’re on it, Catherine,” Riley said. She filled Nick in, then brought up a route correction on the vehicle’s GPS unit. He put his foot down and the SUV shot through the dark Nevada night toward the northeast side.

  Established neighborhoods fell away behind them as they entered new development territory, surrounding the Empire Casino construction site. A few of the developments had been here for ten or twenty years, but they had been built with plenty of open desert between them. Now most of that desert had been filled in by more houses, constructed with a sameness that Riley found depressing. Watching out the window, she saw what seemed like an endless progression of signs advertising new housing projects and one brown stucco wall after another after another—some of them tan, occasionally an olive or a dun, but all within the same general palette and built in similar styles.

  Every now and then they passed patches of undisturbed desert, or at least desert that appeared, to her relative newcomer’s eye, to be pristine. Small forests of creosote bushes shot past the window, stands of cottonwoods and mesquites and other trees she couldn’t identify but had admired elsewhere in daylight, sparse and scrubby, with profuse blooms somewhere between pink and magenta. Occasionally the headlights swept over shaggy yuccas or barbed chollas. “It’s a long way from here to the Strip,” she said.

  “
Not too bad when there’s no traffic.”

  “I meant metaphorically. Out here you still feel like you’re in the desert. On the Strip, you could be anywhere. I mean, nowhere but Las Vegas—but Las Vegas could be set down in the middle of Tokyo or New York or on the moon. It’s something apart from its surroundings.”

  “I guess,” Nick said. “To me it’s all Vegas. Desert and heat and lights and noise and greed—it’s all one and the same. Vegas is as different as can be from where I grew up in Dallas, but I guess it’s kind of worked its way under my skin. You can’t remove any one element, because then it wouldn’t be the same place anymore.”

  “But as all the desert gets eaten up by new construction, doesn’t that throw it out of balance anyway?”

  “Yeah, it might. The one constant here is change, though, so if there wasn’t continual growth it still wouldn’t be the same.”

  “I guess,” Riley said. “Okay, left turn up here.”

  Nick slowed the SUV and turned left into one of the older developments, meaning it had probably been there since the 1980s. Hidden spotlights beamed toward the fronds of mature palm trees, set into a patch of thick green grass that could only exist in the desert thanks to an abundance of cheap water. From everything she had heard about Las Vegas’s future, that kind of thing was on its way out. Citizens could already be fined for watering a lawn during the day, or for hosing off a driveway.

  From the other direction, multiple headlights split the night. “Here comes the cavalry,” Nick said.

  The approaching vehicles turned into the development. Nick pulled over and let them pass, two squad cars and one unmarked, racing toward the Upson house. They followed taillights the rest of the way, and by the time they had gathered their field kits, officers in assault gear had fanned out around the house. Sam Vega and a couple of officers approached the front door, all clad in Kevlar vests. The Upson house, a single-story ranch, had a xeriscaped yard, raw dirt and rocks with some native plants scattered sparsely across it. Better for the environment than a lawn, plus housing a single mother with her teenage son away at college, it would be easier to maintain. The windows were dark, the house silent.