The stench of cordite permeated the air, as did dust motes, and bodies were cast about the floor like discarded refuse among the knocked-over and broken, bullet-riddled slot machines; chips, glass shards, and bloodstains mingled on the patterned carpet.
Four EMTs from the two ambulances were scattered around the room, each attending to his or her own patient. Professionally soothing conversation and occasional moans and cries pierced an otherwise ominous silence, the eerie aftermath of tragedy in which Catherine could almost hear the echo of gunfire. Three Boot Hill police officers were providing first aid for a trio of victims, and a wide berth was given to two bodies, obviously dead.
In a snack bar off to the right—where cartoony cutout images of cowboys, Indians, and gunfighters jovially rode the walls—four more uniformed officers and two detectives were taking statements from a shell-shocked group…probably patrons of the casino during the shoot-out.
Near the entrance to the snack bar stood three men: a beefy guy, about fifty, wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and a red suit jacket with the Four Kings logo over the left breast; a fortyish fellow wearing a charcoal suit that accentuated a pasty complexion; and a tall, thin Hispanic man with slicked-back black hair and a hawk nose, police badge on a chain around his neck over a blue button-down shirt tucked into worn jeans.
When the three saw the CSI team, the Hispanic man headed over and the other two followed his lead. Catherine and Grissom were in front, colleagues fanned out behind. Catherine watched the leader trying to figure out which of them was in charge—but at least times had changed enough that the assumption that the man was the boss wasn’t made…at least, not out loud.
Unable to make up his mind, the cop took a spot in front of and between Catherine and Grissom.
He extended a hand in their general direction. “I’m Police Chief Jorge Lopez.”
Grissom’s hand started to come up automatically, but Catherine took a slight step forward and accepted the chief’s clasp. “Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Crime Lab. We’ve heard nothing but good things about you, Chief. This is Gil Grissom, Sara Sidle, Nick Stokes, and Sofia Curtis.”
They all nodded in turn and Lopez gave them a group nod.
Finally letting go of Catherine’s hand, he asked, “You’re the supervisor, I take it.”
She nodded. “Supervisor in charge. Dr. Grissom here is also a supervisor—we’ve combined elements of two shifts in anticipation of a big job.”
An eyebrow rose. “You anticipated right, Ms. Willows.” He turned slightly so she had a better view of the two men behind him. “This is Sergeant Cody Jacks—one of mine, also works part-time here, like a lot of my fellas. He saw this thing go down. And this is Henry Cippolina, chief of security and floor manager of the casino.”
She shook hands with both men.
“Looks like Custer’s last stand,” Grissom said grimly.
Lopez’s dark eyes, behind wire-frame glasses, were hooded, his expression grave. “Twenty-three years on the job, never seen anything could touch this. Thank God, only two deaths so far…”
“Small miracle in and of itself,” Grissom said.
“…but three more are critical, and five others are going to need serious medical attention. There’s also quite a few with splinters, glass cuts, assorted bumps, bruises.”
Grissom said, “When panic sets in, people run blindly.”
Catherine said, “Which means even the luckiest survivors’ll have at least superficial injuries…. How many shot?”
Lopez’s sigh bore the weight of the world. “Ten we know of…Christ knows how many others. Both gangs cleared out and, except for the one dead Predator”—he pointed toward a male lying facedown on the floor, the back of the man’s head very bloody—“they took their wounded with them, if there were any.”
“We’re going to need to clear the people from this room,” Catherine said, “the living ones, that is. We’re limited in what we can do till then.”
Lopez held his hands out. “We’re treating the wounded as fast as we can, and our officers are getting statements in the snack bar—really the only part of the casino that took little or no damage—to avoid having the witnesses traipsing through your crime scene.”
Cippolina then spoke for the first time, his voice a shade higher and louder than it should have been, his hands trembling at his sides. “How long do you think we’ll be shut down?”
Grissom blinked. “What? You plan to reopen?”
“No, no, no—I mean…before we can start cleaning up that mess.”
“That’s not a ‘mess’ out there, Mr. Cippolina. That’s evidence.”
Catherine slipped gently between Grissom and the casino man. “This is going to take quite some time, Mr. Cippolina,” she said. “It’s a huge scene and we won’t finish until we’re satisfied that we have collected every scrap that might matter.”
“Which means?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Grissom tense; but he said nothing.
“We’ll work as fast as we can, Mr. Cippolina, but this is not fast work. We’ll do our best not to have your casino shut down one more minute than it has to be.”
The casino’s floor manager still frowned, but he said nothing more. The unspoken tension between him and Grissom was not lost on Catherine, however, nor did she think it was lost on Lopez, who seemed not to miss much of anything.
The chief put a hand on the shoulder of the man beside him. “Sergeant Jacks is the lead detective on this case—I’d appreciate it if you’d keep him apprised of your findings.”
“Mr. Jacks, aren’t you a witness?” Grissom asked.
Jacks’s voice was deep and resonant. “I was here—saw a lot of what happened, but not all of it. Gave my statement to Adam Bell. I can stand down, if you think I should.”
“Dr. Grissom, we’re lucky Cody was on the scene,” Lopez said. “He’s got the detective slot right now.”
“Detective ‘slot’?”
“We have three sergeants who rotate on a six-month basis in the one detective post on the force. Adam Bell, another one of our sergeants, for example, is interviewing witnesses right now. We’re a small department—only have one detective going at a time.”
Catherine looked toward the uniformed officers in the snack bar. One had sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. He and a plainclothes officer were in the midst of interviews on the far side of the restaurant. “If you only have one detective slot going at a time”—Catherine gestured with her head toward the snack bar—“how can you have two detectives interviewing over there?”
Giving her a tiny smile, Lopez said, “The bald guy is Troy Hamilton.”
Catherine studied the man from a distance. Forties, paunchy, and so darkly tan he might have spent every waking moment outdoors, Hamilton was talking to an African-American woman of maybe twenty-five.
Lopez said, “Troy retired a year ago—bad back. But because of the size and nature of this crime, I called him to come help with interviews.”
“Good thinking on your part,” she said. “And generous of him.”
Looking at Cody Jacks, Grissom said, “Speaking of seeing what happened, is there video?”
Cippolina was the one to answer, though. “Too much.”
Grissom almost smiled. “My kind of problem.”
Catherine took Sofia aside. “Collect all the videotapes and take them back to the lab. We can get by with one truck here, and our own facility will be better suited to the task.”
Sofia nodded. “I’ll pick up some Visine and get right on it.”
Turning to Cippolina, Sofia asked, “Could you show me to Video Surveillance?”
“This way,” he said, and led her to the left and up a corridor.
Sheriff Lopez said, “We can’t lose sight that there were crimes committed here besides murder—attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, rioting, destruction of property, and on and on.”
“Our evidence processing will cover all that,” Grissom r
eplied. “Video tapes alone—”
“I appreciate that,” Lopez interrupted, “but my handful of men and my five jail cells won’t cut it.”
Catherine said, “Well, we can have the state police handle that—their investigation division can come in and grill our gangs.”
Then Catherine surveyed the ravaged casino. The other CSIs gathered around her and did the same as if viewing a battlefield after the fray.
“Let’s each take a quarter,” Catherine said, pointing, “and work from the outside in. Take lots of pictures—don’t be shy; we don’t know what might be important later.”
Grissom took the quarter with the biker body, and Nick and Sara got the two far quarters, while Catherine assigned herself the nearest quarter with the other corpse.
Getting out her camera, Catherine moved slowly through the detritus of the crime, careful not to disturb anything.
She bent over the body.
The woman was young, early twenties, brunette—a dealer, judging by her clothing. A name tag introduced Catherine to Vanessa Delware.
Lining the woman’s body up in the viewfinder, Catherine wondered idly what her story was.
3
Friday, April 1, 2005, 6:39 P.M.
WARRICK BROWN WAS PISSED OFF.
This was not a common state of mind for the tall African-American with the piercing green eyes. Not that shades of inner anger from disgust to rage were uncommon on the emotional rainbow of this man, whose demeanor was generally so low-key. But “pissed off” was something Warrick rarely got.
Today was different.
Warrick Brown was a dedicated professional, a CSI devoted to his work, who routinely went above and beyond the call of duty and had logged more overtime hours than anybody in the department. Couldn’t he even have one goddamn solitary day (and night) for himself?
He hadn’t shared this feeling with anyone else in the office, but as he sat in the locker room in one of his best ensembles—brown cashmere sweater, brown jeans, and brand-new sneakers—he was genuinely, definitely, decidedly, well and truly pissed off.
I’m supposed to be having dinner tonight, he told his sympathetic inner self, with the most beautiful woman in town—and the town is Vegas ! How could Catherine do this to him?
The woman in question, a nurse with only one day off a week, had finally acquiesced to Warrick’s appeals and agreed to go out with him—tonight.
He’d been halfway out his door for the evening when Catherine summoned him. After calling and getting an understanding but clearly disappointed response from his date, he’d gone straight to HQ, since he kept a spare set of clothes in his locker and could change there. But now, sitting on a bench staring at the interior of his locker, he was realizing that he did not have a spare pair of shoes here, which meant the brand-new sneakers would be going out into the field with him tonight. And who knew what kinds of crime scenes awaited?
Case in point—Frank the Perv, a deviant so far off the path that Warrick refused to ever use the guy’s real last name, even in the privacy of his own brain. When called upon to investigate Frank the Perv as a sex offender, Warrick had entered the man’s house to discover that Frank kept an extensive collection of jars of his own feces, urine, and semen. (“Everybody needs a hobby,” Grissom had remarked.) The shoes worn into that house for that investigation had ended up in a Dumpster when Warrick refused to wear them again after wandering through Frank the Perv’s love nest.
Warrick had changed pants and was just pulling on a tan T-shirt when Greg Sanders came into the locker room.
“Looks like it’s you and me tonight, ’Rick,” Greg said.
Shorter than Warrick but similarly lanky, Greg had finally tamed the unruly thatch of brown hair, blond-highlighted within an inch of its life, and—since moving out of the DNA lab into the field as a CSI—dressed more professionally now, or at least conservatively (tonight, blue polo shirt and black Levi’s).
“Who called you in? Catherine?”
“Yeah.”
“She tell you what’s up?”
“No—just said we were shorthanded and I was needed. Man, I almost didn’t answer my cell. This is supposed to be a vacation day for me—the night I had planned, aw…don’t even wanna talk about it.”
“Bummer,” Greg said, and filled him in on the Boot Hill shoot-out.
As the realities of his job came into focus through the young CSI’s words, Warrick felt a twinge of shame for having been petty about the broken date. Hell yes, he deserved his day off and this date; damn right, he wanted it right now more than a new car or a raise. But with something this serious, not some bureaucratic screwup, a genuine emergency?
After all, somebody had to hold down the fort.
And suddenly he really didn’t mind at all.
Gears shifted within him, and he was cool and ready to work.
“We’ve got a call,” Greg said, holding up a sheet of paper with an address scribbled on it. “Apparent suicide.”
“Where?”
“Sweeney Avenue.” Greg rattled off the house number.
“Let’s roll.” Warrick shut his locker and they were moving. “Where exactly is that on Sweeney?”
“Just west of Maryland Parkway.”
They went out to their SUV, Warrick climbing into the driver’s seat, Greg dutifully walking around to the passenger side.
As he drove west on Charleston, Warrick hit the flashing lights.
He glanced at his young partner. Before the night-shift team had been split up, Warrick had mentored the young CSI, and falling back into that role felt natural.
Warrick asked, “So…what do we know?”
Greg got out his small notebook but didn’t refer to it in the dark SUV. “The vic, Kelly Ames, apparently locked herself in the garage with the car running. A friend thought it was weird when Kelly didn’t show up for work, then weirder still when she didn’t answer her phone. So the friend called nine-one-one. Officer found the body and called the vic’s husband, Charles Ames, to come home from work.”
Turning off Charleston onto Park Paseo, Warrick asked, “Officer on the scene?”
“Weber,” Greg answered.
Warrick jogged left on Eighth Street, which would intersect with Sweeney. Jackson Weber, a swing-shift beat cop for most of his twenty years, was a good man with solid instincts.
Taking a left on Sweeney, Warrick didn’t need to check the number on the house because emergency vehicles out front, their light bars flashing, identified it. A squad car, an unmarked vehicle, and a coroner’s wagon lined the street in front as well.
A one-story stucco with a two-car garage tacked onto the left, the house was decades old but well tended. After pulling to a stop facing the squad car, Warrick jerked the gearshift into park and climbed out. As he did, Greg seemed to sprint to the rear; he already had the doors open and was pulling out his crime scene case when Warrick arrived back there.
“Moving fast is good,” Warrick said.
Greg eyed him. “But…?”
“Haste makes waste at a crime scene.”
They were just getting ready to walk up the driveway when Captain Jim Brass emerged onto the front porch, then wandered down to meet them. A dogged detective with a world-weary mien and eyes that somehow seemed sad and sharp at once, Brass—in a crisp powder-blue suit with a dark blue tie snugly in place—was the one detective that Warrick always wanted at his side, whether at a crime scene or heading down a dark alley.
“Aren’t these vacation days relaxing?” Brass said with a faint, knowing smile. “Think she’ll give you a second chance?”
“They reelected Bush, didn’t they?” Warrick said. “What have we got?”
Brass, like Greg, had a small notebook in hand; and, like Greg, he did not refer to it. “Kelly Ames. Twenty-four, suicide. Still in the garage.”
Frowning, Warrick noted, “Garage door’s open.”
Brass shook his head. “Officer Weber said she was definitely dead when he arrived
, and there was no reason to disturb the scene with attempts to revive the vic…but he opened the overhead door to clear the garage of carbon monoxide. Hard for you fellas to do your thing, otherwise.”
“What else’s been done?” Warrick asked.
“That’s it,” Brass said with a shrug. “Scene’s undisturbed.”
“Where’s Weber?”
Brass gestured with a head nod. “In the house with Mr. Ames.”
Warrick led the three of them up the driveway, where a navy blue Toyota Rav4 was parked. The left side of the garage was empty; on the other side beckoned the rear end of a gray Honda Accord, maybe seven years old.
When they got to the garage door, Warrick and Greg both set their crime scene cases down as Brass looked on. As they got down to business, Warrick noticed that the Accord was a four-door, no kid’s seat. No kids’ toys in the garage either.
“A childless couple?” Warrick asked.
Brass said, “Yeah—husband I haven’t really interviewed in depth. He’s reeling. Typical reaction—can’t believe she’d do this, happily married, no problems. Met at UNLV. Both graduates. I’ll get more.”
Brass headed off to do that.
“Greg,” Warrick said, “camera.”
But then Warrick noticed that Greg was already on one knee, opening the case that held his thirty-five-millimeter camera with flash attachment.
A lot of police departments were going digital, but Vegas had not completely turned that corner yet. Though digital was unquestionably faster and cheaper, with no need to develop hundreds of rolls of film, digital photos still were not admissible in court in some venues, viewed as too easy to doctor.
While Warrick went up the driver’s side, Greg took the passenger’s. Before either touched anything, Greg took several photos of the vehicle from every angle. The car windows were down, the engine turned off, probably by Weber when he showed up. Through the driver’s window, Warrick saw the young woman leaning forward in her seat, her forehead resting against the steering wheel. Long brown hair hung down, obscuring her face from view. She wore an orange T-shirt and—when he looked in through the open window—Warrick noted purple shorts and white tennis shoes.
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