“High school girls in this town,” Warrick responded dryly, “get seventy-three percent of the speeding tickets in their age group.”
Greg was still parsing Warrick’s remark when they got to the postal encoding station, where Brass was leaning against his car.
“You two take the scenic route?” he asked.
Greg’s chin came up, just a little. “I drove the speed limit and obeyed the traffic signals.”
“Imagine how impressed I am,” Brass said. He made a sweeping “after you” hand gesture. “Shall we?”
Unlike a normal post office, no customer business was conducted within—this was strictly a glorified sorting house. A low brick building with a parking lot out front, the encoding station sat in a strip mall on the aptly named Industrial Way. Maybe fifteen cars filled the slots of the lot, the lights of the station the only ones on in the entire area.
“You been inside yet?” Warrick asked, as they headed toward the facility.
Brass nodded.
“Did you mention the computer?”
“No, but I did talk to Megan Voetberg. She’s got a break coming up…”—Brass tilted his watch toward one of the lights that illuminated the parking area—“…in about two minutes…and she’ll be out to talk to us then.”
Warrick smiled at Greg and said, “Hey, bro—nice timing.”
Greg grinned and said, “Shut up.”
Exactly two minutes later, as if she had been using a stopwatch, a young, thin, dark-complected woman with straight black hair and exotic brown eyes swivelled through the door and came out to join them. She wore hip-hugging jeans and a tight white T-shirt emblazoned with a Chinese take-out container smiling and playing guitar. Above the crazy little caricature were the words THANK YOU and below it WEEZER.
Three coworkers trailed out behind the woman, moving to a picnic table at the far end of the building.
“Captain Brass?” she asked tentatively, walking up. She had a soft, almost soothing voice.
“Megan Voetberg,” Brass said, “this is Warrick Brown and Greg Sanders from the crime lab.”
She nodded and glanced toward the table of coworkers.
Taking the hint, Brass said, “Maybe we should move around the corner?”
Again, she nodded. Even in the dim light, Warrick could tell the woman was trembling.
“I thought you people only did crime scenes and lab stuff,” she said as they walked.
Warrick, falling in next to her, said, “Not all evidence of a crime is at the scene of that crime. Your friend, Kelly, working at this station, for example, brings us here.”
They eased around the corner between the building and its twin, fifty feet down the parking lot. The light was even dimmer here, the flick of her lighter causing a tiny flashfire as she lit a cigarette.
As an afterthought, she said, “Hey, do you mind?”
They all shook their heads.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Warrick said.
“Thanks,” she said. She took a deep drag, shaking more as she exhaled. “I can’t believe…believe Kelly’s dead, really dead.”
They said nothing.
She frowned as if something smelled bad. “Suicide?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Brass said.
She scuffed a shoe at an invisible piece of dirt. “Guys—Kelly did not kill herself.”
“Why do you say that?” Warrick asked.
Megan shrugged. “Not the suicidal type. All there is to it.”
Brass asked, “Then she wasn’t depressed, or despondent?”
The young woman considered that for a long moment. “Depressed, probably. Who isn’t sometimes?…Despondent? What is that, really?”
“Depressed,” Greg said, “is being in low spirits. Despondency is the same thing, only worse—no hope.”
They all gave him a long look.
Greg stared back. “Sorry. But they are different.”
Megan said, “Then she definitely wasn’t despondent…even though she was a little depressed. You wanna know mostly what Kelly was? Mostly Kelly was pissed.”
“About what?” Brass asked. He nodded toward the postal building. “Her job?”
“No! No. Hell, no. What do you think? Her stupid husband! She wasn’t going postal pissed; but, maaaan, she was getting there.”
Brass’s eyes tensed. “Why was she unhappy with Charlie?”
Megan’s look was incredulous. “Duh. What’s the usual reason? Because the jerk was having an affair.”
Warrick exchanged glances with Brass.
“She knew that for sure?” Brass asked. “She had proof?”
Taking a long drag on her smoke, Megan considered that momentarily. “Not smoking-dick-type proof, no. But she was pretty goddamn sure…Kelly was convinced she knew who it was.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t tell me. Not the name, anyway.” She dropped her cigarette and snuffed it out under her shoe. “Just some slut Charlie worked with. Hey, my break is over, you mind?…You guys can call me at home if you want more—not that I have anything.”
They took her contact info, then thanked her and watched as she and her coworkers went back inside at the end of their break.
“So Kelly did have a reason to commit suicide,” Brass said when the three of them were alone.
Warrick nodded. “Right, and maybe she hated her cheating hubby so much she set him up to take the fall for her ‘murder.’”
“Yeah,” Brass said with a sardonic laugh. “That could happen. You been doing this how long?”
“Twelve years.”
“You ever see that happen before?”
“Couple of times…”
Brass frowned at Warrick, as if to say, Say what?
“…on TV.”
Letting out a single laugh, Brass said, “Then you don’t think that’s what happened here.”
“No way.”
“Then why even go there?”
Warrick shrugged. “Because Grissom taught me to never overlook any possibility—no matter how crazy it seems.”
Brass frowned. “Then what do you think happened here?”
“I think Charlie Ames killed his wife,” Warrick said. “And you know what else I think?”
Greg asked, “That we’re going to prove it?”
“Damn straight,” Warrick said, grinning.
He held out his open hand, and Greg seemed confused as to whether to shake it, or give him a high-five, or…
“Car keys, Greg.”
Greg handed them over.
4
Saturday, April 2, 2005, 12:01 A.M.
FIRST THEY’D USED UP ALL THEIR PLASTIC A-frame evidence markers.
Then, following Grissom’s advice, they’d fashioned more, using two decks of cards—turning the numbers outward—and even that had not been enough.
Finally, they resorted to masking tape and a black marker.
And when they were done, over one hundred and fifty bullet holes had been marked and photographed inside the Four Kings Casino.
Sara Sidle didn’t know if they had brought enough bullet trajectory rods to mark the scene. She guessed she would soon find out.
With Nick’s help, Sara set up the DeltaSphere-3000 3D Scene Scanner. One of the newest tools in law enforcement’s crime-fighting arsenal, the 3D scanner had been secured by Ecklie for the lab, on loan from the device’s manufacturer, 3rdTech. The DeltaSphere was like a yacht: if you had to ask how much it cost, you couldn’t afford it. But 3rdTech had provided it in hopes of a sale, and Ecklie hoped they would “donate” it to the LVPD in exchange for a glowing recommendation from the ninth largest police force in the United States.
Sara figured that by the end of the trial, both sides would leave disappointed. In the meantime, she and Nick would have a pricey new toy to play with.
Sitting atop a tripod stronger but no larger than a photographer’s, the DeltaSphere looked like a silver briefcase with a four-inch black square in its top border t
hat housed the scanner’s lens and laser. Weighing in at a shade over twenty pounds, the device would give them a 3D color scan of the crime scene in less than fifteen minutes.
When finished, the scan would be loaded into a computer and give the team a 3D rendering of the crime scene with as much detail as a drawing that would have taken hours to complete. As Sara watched the machine cast its laser around the room, the red, pencil-thin beam slithering over every centimeter of the crime scene, she couldn’t help but think how much time this machine would save them if it was just half as good as advertised. She had seen Nick use it at another crime scene and knew that the DeltaSphere was everything it claimed to be, and a bag of chips.
Once the scanner had done its thing, they had marked and photographed over one hundred shell casings, then bagged and tagged those casings (the bullets they could find), and hundreds of other things that might or might not be important evidence. They had shot so many rolls of film that the casino had donated three money bags just to hold them. And Sofia had loaded close to one hundred videotapes into several boxes that were now on a two-wheel cart near the door, along with the film and other evidence.
The wounded had been rushed to hospitals in Laughlin. The seriously wounded—those who could make the flight—rode the medevac chopper to Vegas.
To Sara Sidle’s surprise, the investigators still only had two deaths on their hands—one male, one female. Henry Cippolina, the Four Kings’s floor manager, had identified the female as Vanessa Delware, a twenty-one-year-old dealer and single mom. Both Chief Lopez and Sergeant Jacks had ID’d the male casualty as Predators leader Nick Valpo, the kind of corpse that could spark not just more trouble but grow the past battle into a future war.
Though a couple of the injured hailed from one gang or the other, the largest percentage of wounded were your garden-variety innocent bystanders—staff, tourists, casino regulars, even one poor schlub who’d wandered in off the street for a drink, all simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Grissom approached Sara with a tiny thoughtful frown. He said, “Something odd.”
“Odd?”
“After all,” Grissom said, “everything here seems pretty straightforward.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Riiiiight—for a biker firefight that broke out in a casino.”
He did not acknowledge her sarcasm, still frowning thoughtfully, looking out on the torn-up landscape of the casino. “Everybody that got hit was shot from a distance, right?”
Unable to figure out where Grissom was going with this, Sara took the ride. “That seems to be the consensus.”
“Shot from the front,” Grissom said, gesturing to himself, “or side.”
“Right. That was the line of fire.”
“Mostly hit with nine-millimeter rounds, correct?”
“Mostly, or something bigger. From the shell casings and bullets we’ve harvested, I think a couple of the shooters had three-fifty-sevens.”
Nodding, Grissom said, “So, if we begin with everybody shot with nine mils or larger, and from a distance…how do we explain Nick Valpo being shot up close and personal…from behind…and with a small-caliber weapon?”
Now she frowned in thought. “Somebody took advantage of the melee…and committed a murder in the middle of a gunfight?”
“Yes,” Grissom said, pleased with her. “But not a murder, exactly.”
“No?”
His eyes tensed. “An execution.”
Sara considered that for a moment. “Small-caliber, you say—what kind of gun?”
“We may have the shell casing among all those we gathered. But we won’t know for sure until we see the autopsy results. Judging by the wound, though…something small—a twenty-two or maybe twenty-five.”
Sara blinked. “That’s a purse gun. What self-respecting biker carries a twenty-two?”
Grissom shrugged. “A gun that size would make a good backup piece. In a boot, maybe…. Come with me.”
She followed Grissom to Nick Valpo’s body. Near a large bullet-scarred column, one of many scattered about the room, Valpo lay facedown on the floor, left hand on a pile of glass from a shattered slot machine, right hand reaching into an aisle for his Glock, just out of reach.
Sara knelt over him.
The entrance wound in the back of Valpo’s head was just a small, round hole with gunshot residue making a dark targetlike circle around it. Another larger dark blossom opened from the right shoulder of Valpo’s black vest—an exit wound.
“He got hit,” Sara said, “went down, then someone came up behind him and finished the job.”
“Yes,” Grissom said.
“Videotapes should tell us the story on that one.” She looked across the aisle at the deceased dealer lying on the floor, the dead woman’s eyes staring at nothing but locked in Sara’s direction. “If she wasn’t already dead, the dealer saw the whole thing…. She won’t be taking the witness stand now, though.”
Grissom’s eyes narrowed. “No—but if she was shot because of what she saw, the caliber of the bullet inside her will testify.”
He led Sara over to the woman’s body and they had a look at an entrance wound similar to the one on the Predator’s remains.
“No powder burns,” Sara said. “Shot from a distance. But that doesn’t look large enough to’ve been made by a nine mil—though too big to’ve been made by a 357.”
“I’d agree,” Grissom said. “This will be a key autopsy.”
They stood back and watched in respectful silence as the paramedics put a sheet over the dealer’s body and loaded it onto a gurney. Catherine came over to join them.
“A young one,” Catherine said quietly.
Sara said, “With a baby. Single mom.”
“Not young,” Grissom said flatly. “You don’t get older than deceased.”
The two women looked at him, wondering at the seeming coldness of the comment; but Grissom’s grave expression belied that.
The gurney rolled out, and Chief Lopez edged around it, coming in. Sara had not seen him leave, but for a crime scene that should be secured, people were sure wandering in and out, almost as if the casino was open for business.
Lopez crossed to them, looking like he’d aged a year for every hour the CSI team had spent in Boot Hill.
“Nice kid,” the chief said sorrowfully.
“You knew her?” Grissom asked.
“Boot Hill isn’t a very big town. You get to know a lot of people. At least she has a mom who can look after the baby.”
Catherine asked, “How’s it going, getting control of the town?”
“It’s about to get harder,” Lopez said with a sigh, thumbs in belt loops. “One of the biker casualties just became a fatality—a Spokes member died from his wounds before he even made it to the hospital.”
A few ominous moments of silence followed, or at least near silence—omnipresent was the sound of glass crunching underfoot.
“‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice,’” Grissom said, “‘which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.’”
Sara said, “Shakespeare?”
“Francis Bacon. Chief, were you able to line up any more help?”
“The governor sent us two dozen more Highway Patrolmen,” Lopez said, with a that’s-something-anyway shrug. “Got ten of ’em tryin’ to keep the Rusty Spokes rustled up in the Gold Vault, across the street.”
“And the rest?”
“Tryin’ to round up the Predators and keep them from laying siege to the Gold Vault.”
Catherine blew out a breath, as if trying to put out candles on a birthday cake. “This doesn’t sound promising.”
“Sure it does,” Grissom said. “We just don’t like what it promises.”
Lopez said, “I’ve got a police force of twelve plus me, two dozen Highway Patrolmen, and then there’s you folks.”
Patting the holstered weapon at her hip, Catherine said, “If you need us to walk away from the crime scene and
lend support, you give us the word. We’re all law enforcement here.”
Sara gave Grissom a sideways look to see how he liked the sound of that; apparently he liked it fine.
Lopez was saying, “That gives us a little over forty on the home team, and those motorcycle gangs have closer to a hundred members—each.”
Grissom asked, “Prognosis?”
Lopez’s eyebrows hiked. “I think we can probably handle one or the other of the gangs…but I see three ways for this to go down. First, they all decide to go to their separate homes and lick their wounds—most of these bikers have lives outside of the gang: families, day jobs, what have you. And we all walk away from this with our skin still on.”
“How likely is that scenario?” Catharine asked.
“About like hitting a million-dollar jackpot on one of these slots. The likeliest scenario is both gangs decide to go at it, and Boot Hill’s the playing field, and we’re stuck in the middle, refereeing.”
“Chief,” Sara said, “you said you saw three ways this could go….”
But it was Grissom who replied: “They bury the hatchet…”
“Well, that does sound promising,” Sara said.
“…in us,” Grissom finished.
“I don’t get it,” Sara said.
But Catherine did.
She said, “The gangs realize that together, they outnumber law enforcement five to one. They join forces, table any interpersonal disputes, and come after us. Secure the battlefield, or the playground, depending on how you look at it.”
“Do I have to look at it?” Sara asked, upper lip curling.
Catherine’s eyes were hard. “With forty or fifty cops out of the way, the combined bikers could do a lot of harm to this town, and each other, before any cavalry got here.”
Grissom said cheerfully, “That’s probably a record number of mixed metaphors, but I think we have the situation well analyzed, at least.”
A sick feeling washed through Sara’s stomach.
Nick came up. “Anybody got anything? I feel like I’m putting together one of those thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles that’s mostly blue sky.”
“Not much blue sky here,” Sara said, and gestured toward Valpo’s corpse on the floor.
“What’d I miss?” Nick asked.
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