CSI Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

  With a smirk, she stubbed the cigarette out in a black ashtray in front of her.

  “You’ve used other names during your life, correct?”

  “Yes. Joy Starr, Joy Luck, and several more other stage names. They called me Monica Leigh in the Swank layout; that’s a magazine. The name I was given at birth was Monica Petty.”

  Without even thinking about it, she lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. Tavo said nothing. She took a second drag, blew it out through her nose, and finally realized she was smoking where she shouldn’t be and blotted out the second butt in the ashtray.

  Half-annoyed, half-curious, she asked, “Why is there a goddamnn ashtray if we’re not allowed to smoke?”

  “It’s just always been there,” Tavo told her.

  For several minutes Tavo elicited from her the story of Marge Kostichek taking in her in as a runaway, raising her like a daughter (albeit a daughter who worked in her strip club). Catherine wondered if a sexual relationship might have developed between the women, but the officer didn’t ask anything along those lines.

  Finally, Tavo lowered the boom. “Ms. Petty, I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

  “What? What is this about, anyway? What is this really about?”

  “Marge Kostichek was murdered this evening.”

  “No…no, you’re just saying that to…”

  Tavo assured her he was telling the truth. “I’m afraid it was a brutal slaying, Ms. Petty.”

  Her lip was trembling. “Tell me. Tell me…. I have a right to know.”

  Tavo told her.

  “Ms. Petty—do you know who killed Malachy Fortunato in Las Vegas in nineteen hundred eighty-five?”

  “I…I know what they call him.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The Deuce. Because of those two head wounds, like Marge got.”

  “The Deuce is a professional killer?”

  “Yes. I don’t know his name, otherwise.”

  “Do you know who hired him?”

  “…I…know who hired him, yes.”

  “Who?”

  The woman seemed fine for a moment, then she collapsed, her head dropping to the table as long, angry sobs erupted from her. Tavo’s hand came into the picture, touched her arm. The gesture seemed to give her strength and she wrestled to control her emotions.

  “I’ve…I’m sorry.” A sob halted her, but she composed herself again and said, “I loved him, but Malachy was not a strong man. He didn’t have the strength to choose between his wife or me. And neither of us would give him up, either. He had a tender touch, Malachy. But he was selfish, and weak, too—that’s what led him to embezzle from the Sandmound, you know…the casino where he worked.”

  Tavo said nothing, letting her tell it in her own time, in her own way.

  “I stripped at a bar called Swingers. I’d been there since the owner, Marge Kostichek, took me in when I was fifteen. Marge knew that once the mob found out Mal was embezzling they’d kill him, and anybody who had anything to do with him. So, she beat them to the punch.

  “She hired this guy who did these mob hits. I don’t know how she knew about him, how to contact him; I heard Swingers was a money laundry for some mob guys…I just heard that, you know…so maybe that was how. Anyway, hiring this guy cost her most of the money she’d saved over the years. The rest she gave to me along with a bus ticket to L.A.”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Petty—I want to remind you that I did advise you of your rights.”

  “I know you did. See, I didn’t know Marge did it, till years later. I thought…I thought the mobsters had Malachy killed. And Marge told me I was in danger, too, and put me on that bus. And I went willingly. I was scared shitless, believe me.”

  “So…you stayed in touch with Marge over the years?”

  “Yes—we wrote to each other regularly. She even came out to visit a few times.”

  “Have you been back to Las Vegas?”

  “I’m not that brave.”

  “So how did you come to find out the truth?”

  “Maybe five years later, when she visited me. I was in Reseda at the time. We spent a long evening, drinking, reminiscing…and she spilled her guts. I think she felt guilty about it. I think she’d been carrying it around, and she told me how about, and cried and cried and begged me to forgive her.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure. She did it to save me, she thought—those mobsters mighta killed me, too, and Mal’s wife…I mean, if they thought one of us was in on it, the embezzling?”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? End of the day, I loved her a hell of a lot more than I did that candy ass Malachy…. Listen, Officer—I need to use the restroom.”

  And that was the end of the taped interview.

  O’Riley covered for his pal Tavo in L.A. “Hey, she wasn’t under arrest or anything. She came in voluntarily. He let his guard down. By the time he got a female officer to check the john, and hunted down his partner, they were fifteen minutes behind her, easy.”

  “Plenty of time,” Nick said, “for Joy to pack up and get out of Dodge…but why? Why did she run?”

  Grissom was staring at the blank screen.

  “Running is all she knows how to do,” Catherine said, with an open-handed gesture. “That’s what she’s done her whole life. It started at fifteen when she ran from her parents, and she’s never stopped since.”

  “And Marge Kostichek was just trying to help the poor girl,” Nick said, bleakly.

  “You don’t win Mother of the Year,” Grissom said, “by hiring a hitman to commit first-degree murder.”

  15

  A bout the time O’Riley and Nick found Marge Kostichek’s body, Warrick was hunkered over a computer monitor in the layout room at work. His eyes burned and his temples throbbed and his neck muscles ached. A while back Sara had stopped by to tell him about the bewildering background search on Barry Hyde’s personal history, and Warrick had told her that Hyde’s business life was proving equally messy and mysterious.

  “No matter what I learn,” he’d said to her, “something else suggests the opposite.”

  “I know the feeling,” she’d said.

  Now, an hour later at least, things were messier and more mysterious. Although the business spent money buying the latest video releases, A-to-Z did little advertising and had the worst rental rates around. Patrick the pot-smoking manager had copped to the store’s light traffic, and yet every month Hyde paid what Warrick considered an exorbitant rent in addition to buying more and more movies. Where did the money come from?

  He turned away from the monitor’s glow, rubbing his eyes, wondering where he would search next.

  That was when Brass stumbled in, exhausted and a little disheveled, looking for Grissom.

  “Not sure where he is,” Warrick said. “One minute he was here, then O’Riley called from Kostichek’s house.”

  “What was it?”

  “Frankly, sounded like your ballpark—I think Marge got sent to that big strip club in the sky.”

  Brass’s well-pleated face managed to tighten with alarm. “You don’t think it’s the…”

  “Deuce if I know,” Warrick said.

  Brass slipped into a chair next to Warrick, slumping. “The more we work on this, the more bizarre it gets.”

  With a slow nod, Warrick said, “Tell me about it. It’s like that damn video store—hardly any business, you wouldn’t think much cash flow, and yet Hyde seems to have plenty of dough.”

  The cop grunted a humorless laugh. “What do you make of Hyde traveling all the time?”

  “If he’s the Deuce, maybe he’s got gigs all around this great land of ours.”

  Brass shrugged. “So we just trace where he went. And see who got murdered, or disappeared, there.”

  “I’m all over that—for what good it’s doing. No record of Barry Thomas Hyde on any passenger manifest for any airline…ever.”

  “Some people hate to fly. Maybe he drives.”
>
  Warrick shook his head. “Last month, when he was traveling, his car was in a Henderson garage getting serviced.”

  “What about ren—”

  “No rental records. And he doesn’t have a second car—I mean, he’s unmarried, no record of a divorce or kids, either.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “That the guy leaves town regularly. He doesn’t fly, drive his own car to get there, or even rent a car.”

  “Bus? Train?”

  “No records there, either. For a guy who gets around, there’s no sign he ever left home.”

  Brass smirked. “Just that calendar and that pothead’s word.”

  “Why would Hyde tell his video store staff he was gonna be out of town, if he wasn’t?”

  “Well, then he’s got another identity.”

  “Our maildrop guy, Peter Randall, maybe? That’s the only thing that makes sense—particularly if he’s still taking assignments as the Deuce, despite the lack of bodies that’ve turned up in the past few years.”

  Brass stared into nothing; then he shook his head, as if to clear the cobwebs, and turned to Warrick and asked, “What about hotels?”

  “Well, that’s going to take forever to check in detail, you know, to try to see if he was registered anywhere…I mean, he never told Patrick where he was off to…but I can tell you this: Hyde never charged a hotel or motel room to any one of his three credit cards, and never wrote ’em a check either.”

  Brass sighed heavily—then he rose, stretched; bones popped. “Something very wrong here—very wrong…When Grissom gets back, have him page me.”

  “You got it.”

  Brass walked out of the office, got about four feet, and his cell phone rang. The conversation was a short one, Brass sticking his head back inside the layout room moments later, his expression suddenly alert.

  “C’mon,” Brass said, waving impatiently. “You’re with me.”

  “All right,” Warrick said, and in the corridor, falling in next to Brass, he asked, “What’s up?”

  Brass wore a foul expression. “Barry Hyde’s number, I hope.”

  Sara awoke with a start. She had fallen asleep at her computer and evidently no one had noticed. She sat up, made a face, then rolled her neck and felt the tight stiffness that came when she slept wrong. Reaching back, she kneaded her neck muscles, applying more and more pressure as she went, but the pain showed little sign of dissipating. Standing up, her legs wobbly, she got her balance and went out into the hall to the water fountain. Then she wandered from room to room looking for the rest of the crew, but found no one.

  At least not until she stepped into the DNA lab, where she discovered skinny, spiky-haired Greg Sanders, on the phone, a huge grin going, his eyes wide.

  “You’re going to do what?” he asked. “You…you’re such a bad girl…. ”

  Clearing her throat, Sara smiled and, when he spun to face her, gave him a little wave.

  The grin turned upside down, as he said, “Um, we’ll continue this, later. I’ve got to go.” He hung up without further comment.

  “Serious, meaningful relationship?” she asked.

  “Hey, it’s not as kinky as you think.”

  “No, Greg, I’m pretty sure it is. Where is everybody?”

  He shrugged. “Catherine and Nick are at a murder scene. I think Grissom went to join the party, and Warrick left with Brass, like, I dunno, ten minutes ago.”

  She felt very awake, suddenly. “Murder scene?”

  He held up his hands. “I don’t know the details.”

  She sat down on an empty stool. “What do you know?”

  On his wheeled chair, he rolled over to another work station, saying, “I know the cigarette butt Catherine brought in, from the mummy site, is too decomposed, and too old, to give us any workable DNA after all that time.”

  “Okay. That’s the bad news part—how about some good news?”

  “If you insist. How about that other cigarette butt? The one they brought in from Evidence—it was old, too, but somebody bagged it years ago.”

  “What about it?”

  “It doesn’t match the mummy’s blood…or the wife’s DNA, either.” Warming to the topic, Sanders grinned at her in his cheerful fashion and pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder. “Take a peek.”

  She rolled on her stool over next to him. “DNA test results,” she said, reading, pleased. “So, the cigarette butt came from the killer?”

  “Hey, I just work here. I don’t know whose DNA it is—it just isn’t the wife’s or the mummy’s.”

  “Does Grissom know about this? Anybody?”

  “No.” Sanders shook his head. “I haven’t had a chance to tell them.”

  “I know,” she said. “You were busy—had phone calls to make.”

  “Listen, I get break time like anybody—”

  She leaned in and smiled her sweetest smile. “Greg—I’m just teasing you. From what I heard, sounded like you enjoy it…. Anyway, I’ll pass the news along. You’re going to be popular.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Good. I like being popular.”

  “So I gathered.”

  And she left the lab.

  Warrick sat in the darkened car next to Brass. The unmarked Taurus was parked at the intersection of Fresh Pond Court and Dockery Place, with a good view of Hyde’s house and its putting-green front yard. The car windows were down, the evening nicely cool, the night a dark one, not much moon. Patrol cars were parked on Eastern Avenue, South Pecos Road, and Canarsy Court, observing the sides and back of the house, to make sure Hyde didn’t sneak in on foot.

  The Hyde residence stood dark and silent, a ranch-style tomb. The neighbors’ houses showed signs of normal life, the faint blue glow of televisions shining through wispy curtains in darkened rooms; others were well-lit with people occasionally crossing in front of windows, somewhere a stereo played too loud, and a couple of houses away from Hyde’s, somebody had his garage door open, fine-tuning the engine of a Kawasaki motorcycle. At this hour the guy was pushing it—it was almost ten P.M.

  “You think Hyde’s really the Deuce?” Warrick asked.

  Brass shrugged.

  “If he is, you think he’d come back here, right after murdering somebody?”

  Within the dark interior of the car, the detective gave Warrick a long appraising look. “You know, Brown, sometimes it’s better not to think so much. Just wait for it and react. If he comes, he comes. Don’t try to out-think these mutts. Leave it to them and they’ll do it. That’s when we pick them up.”

  Warrick knew Brass was right; but it frustrated him.

  They sat in silence for a long time; how long, Warrick didn’t know—he thought he might even have dozed off a couple of times. Stakeout work was boring, even when there was an undercurrent of danger, and it made Warrick glad he wasn’t a cop. The neighbor with the motorcycle either got tired or somebody called to complain, because he stopped working on the machine and shut his garage door. One by one the lights in the windows around the court went out.

  “Maybe he’s made us,” Warrick said, “or one of the squads.”

  Brass shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. He didn’t stay alive in that business this long being careless. I doubt if he spotted us, though—there hasn’t been a car on this street since we got here.”

  Just then a vehicle turned toward them off South Pecos Road. Its headlights practically blinded them and they slid down in their seats. Then the vehicle—a big black SUV—pulled to a stop almost even with them.

  “Grissom,” Brass said, sounding a little peeved.

  The black Tahoe idled quietly next to them and Grissom rolled down his window. “So?”

  “Nothing,” Brass said. “House has been dark and quiet since we got here.”

  “All right. When you get back, Jim, you need to see an interview the LAPD sent over—Joy Petty confirming Marge Kostichek hired the Deuce.”

  Brass blew out air. “Jesus—so she was an old loose
end getting newly tied off.”

  Grissom didn’t respond to that, saying, “I’m going back to the lab. Warrick…”

  Brass shushed him and pointed to Hyde’s house where a light had just come on in the living room. Grissom eased the Tahoe over to the far curb, parked it and returned to the Taurus on foot, quietly slipping into the backseat.

  The walkie seemed to jump into Brass’s hand. “Light just came on in the house.”

  The reports came back quickly. No one had seen anything.

  “Damnit,” Brass said. He sighed. “All right—I’m going to go take a peek in the window. You two stay here.”

  “No way, Jim,” Grissom said. “We’re not going to let you go up there alone.”

  “Let’s not completely blow our cover,” Brass said. “It could just be a timer.”

  “And,” Warrick added, “Hyde might be a professional killer who has already done one murder tonight, and forty-some others over the years—that we know about. You really want to go up there alone?”

  Brass scowled at Warrick. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

  Letting out a long tired sigh, Warrick said, “No, I just asked a question. Do you really want to go up there alone?”

  Brass thought about it; finally he said, “All right—one of you.”

  Warrick opened the door and jumped out, beating Grissom to the punch. The pair made their way cautiously up the street, moving through yards and trying to avoid the circle of light thrown off by the only street light, back on the corner. Warrick stayed behind the much shorter Brass, keeping low. At the edge of Hyde’s yard they ducked in next to the garage.

  “You only go as far as that end of the garage,” Brass whispered, pointing.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going around the back, and come up the other side, and try to see in the window.”

  Warrick nodded. “I’ll follow you to the back of the garage. When you go up the far side, I’ll move up to the front.”

  “Okay,” Brass said, and pulled his revolver from his hip holster. He eased to the back of the garage and Warrick, his own pistol in hand, crept along in Brass’s shadow. At the corner, in darkness out of the range of the street light, the detective gave Warrick a little wave and edged around the corner. Taking position, Warrick watched as Brass moved across the huge backyard. The detective was halfway across when a high-mounted motion light came on, putting Brass in the spotlight….