Double Dealer

by Max Allan Collins

  At the first floor exit he stopped. He unscrewed the silencer, slipped it into a pocket. The pistol went into another and he checked himself carefully for splatter. He found a small scarlet blob on the toe of his right running shoe. Using a handkerchief from his pants' pocket, he daubed the spot away, got his breathing under control, stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket, wiped the sweat from his brow with his left hand, and finally took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out through his mouth. He was ready. He eased the door open and stepped out.

  Across the lobby, at the front desk, he saw the waiter screaming at a female desk clerk, and pointing in the general direction of the elevators.

  The Deuce, deciding to avoid the lobby as much as possible, turned into the casino, walked past a scruffy-looking blonde girl, probably all of twenty-one, who now occupied his poker machine. The tray was still full of coins from his four kings. Silently cursing, he hoped she pissed it all away.

  Avoiding security cameras altogether, often hugging walls, he kept moving, walking not running, not too slow, not too fast, then hustled through the door into the back parking lot, to his car. No rush now—he eased the car out of the parking lot, jogging from Atlantic to Wengert, then finally onto Eastern for the ride home.

  The Deuce was free—the lawyer was dead—and Barry Hyde could only wonder whether today had been an example of good luck or bad.

  Nick asked, “Then why aren't we busting the guy now?”

  “On what evidence?” Grissom asked.

  “The videotape,” Sara said.

  “Can't get a positive ID from that.”

  Warrick asked, “What about the ATM transaction?”

  “Hyde claims his card was stolen. Brass is checking into that now.”

  “We can match his fingerprints to the shell casings,” Catherine offered.

  “That's a big one,” Grissom said, nodding. “But we have no murder weapon. And nothing that ties Hyde to the murders of Fortunato and Kostichek except the signature.”

  Greg Sanders leaned in. “Excuse me—oh, Catherine?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thought you might like to know—your cigarette butt from Evidence matches the blood you took from the fence.”

  “All right!” she said, jumping to her feet. All around the room, smiles and nods appeared.

  Greg wandered on in, eyes dancing, his grin wide even for him. “That ‘ASAP’ enough for you?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, sitting back down.

  “But like they say at the end of the infomercials,” the lab tech teased, holding up a forefinger, “. . . that's not all!”

  Everyone looked at him.

  Enjoying center stage, Sanders said to Grissom, “Thanks for the take-out salad.”

  Willing to play along—for a moment—Grissom asked, “You enjoyed it?”

  “I think you will—the saliva matches the DNA from the blood and the cigarette.”

  “Salad?” Sara asked.

  “From the Dumpster behind A-to-Z Video,” Grissom said. “Hyde even invited me to help myself to his garbage.”

  “Nice guy,” Sara said.

  Catherine smiled. “What CSI would pass up an all-you-can-eat buffet?”

  “Well, I stepped up,” Grissom said, “with Warrick's help—and now we have Barry Hyde's DNA at the scene of the Fortunato killing . . . ten years before he claims he ever came to Vegas . . . and we've got that same DNA from the fence he vaulted, behind Marge Kostichek's house.”

  “What more do we need?” Nick asked.

  Grissom said, “Right now, nothing—we've got what we need for the warrant that'll get us even more evidence.”

  “At his residence,” Nick said, finally a believer.

  “And the video store,” Catherine added.

  “I'll call Brass,” Grissom said. “With any luck, we'll have a warrant in half an hour . . . Nick, Sara, Warrick—get your equipment together, full search. We're rolling in five minutes.”

  They all seemed to launch at once. The exhaustion left their faces, and they moved now with enthusiasm and a grim sense of purpose. Grissom watched, a faint smile not softening the hardness of his eyes.

  As he was heading out, Warrick turned to Grissom and the two men's eyes locked. “Gris, Barry can run . . .”

  “But he can't hide,” Grissom said.

  18

  MAINTAINING A LOW PROFILE IN THIS HIGH-RENT NEIGHBORhood would have been damn-near impossible; so Jim Brass didn't even try. In the early morning sunshine, dew still dappling, the cramped court looked like the Circus Circus parking lot: the two Tahoes and Brass's Taurus were parked in front of the Hyde residence, and two Henderson PD black-and-whites were pulled into the driveway across the street (Brass had not been about to repeat his faux pas with the local police, not only alerting them but calling them in).

  Neighbors—some in bathrobes, others fully dressed—came out to gawk as the CSI group, led by Grissom and Brass, stepped from their vehicles, a little army removing their sunglasses and snapping on latex gloves. For July, the morning was surprisingly cool, and Warrick and Nick wore dark windbreakers labelled FORENSICS—this was in part psychological, a way to inform the onlookers that this was serious business, and they should keep back and stay away. As the team approached the house, each CSI carried his or her own equipment, each already handed a specific assignment for the scene by Supervisor Grissom.

  Warrick would track down the shoes, Nick dust for prints, and Sara handle the camera work. Catherine would join Grissom as the designated explorers, their job to search out the more obscure places, seeking the more elusive clues. Brass—the only one not in latex gloves—would take care of Hyde.

  As they marched up the sidewalk to the front door, an aura of anxiety burbled beneath the professionalism.

  “Think he might start something?” Nick asked, obviously remembering the close call at the Kostichek house.

  At Nick's side, Warrick shook his head, perhaps too casually. “Why should he? Sucker thinks he's Superman. We ain't laid a glove on him yet.”

  Brass heard this exchange, and basically agreed with Warrick—but just the same, he approached the door cautiously. He held the warrant in his left hand, his jacket open so that he could easily reach the holstered pistol on his hip. Behind him, Grissom motioned his crew—their hands filled with field kits and other equipment, looking like unwanted relatives showing up for a long stay—away from the door, corralling them in front of the two-car garage.

  With a glance over his shoulder, Brass ascertained the CSIs were out of the line of fire; then he slowly moved forward. The front door—recessed between the living room on the left and the garage on the right—reminded the detective of the room doors at the Beachcomber, providing a funny little resonance, and a problem: if something went wrong, only Grissom—barely visible, peering around the corner like a curious child—would see what happened.

  Nick's words of apprehension playing like a tape loop in his brain—“Think he might try something?”—Brass, within the alcove-like recession, stepped to the right of the door, took a deep breath, let it out . . . and knocked, hard and insistently.

  Nothing.

  He waited . . .

  . . . he pressed the doorbell . . .

  . . . and still nothing.

  Glancing back at Grissom—who gave him a questioning look—Brass shrugged, turned back, and knocked once more.

  Still no response.

  Grissom moved carefully forward to join the homicide cop, the rest of the crew trailing behind.

  “I don't think our boy's home,” Brass said.

  Grissom reached out and, with a gentle latex touch, turned the knob.

  The door swung slowly open, in creaking invitation, Brass and Grissom both signaling for the group to get out of the potential line of fire.

  “Open?” Brass said to Grissom. “He left it open?”

  “Cat and mouse,” Grissom said. “That's our man's favorite game. . . .”

  They listened,
Brass straining to hear the slightest sound, the faintest hint of life—Grissom was doing the same.

  Long moments later, they traded eyebrow shrugs, signifying neither had heard anything, except the sounds of a suburban home—refrigerator whir, air-conditioning rush, ticking clocks. Drawing his pistol, Brass moved forward into the foyer of the modern, spare, open house—lots of bare wood and stucco plaster and stonework.

  Grissom said to Warrick, “Tell those uniformed officers to watch our back. Then join us inside.”

  “On it,” Warrick said, and trotted toward Henderson's finest.

  Then Grissom and the other CSIs joined Brass, inside.

  A wide staircase to a second-floor landing loomed before them; hallways parallel to the stairway were on its either side, leading to the back of the house—kitchen and family room, maybe. At right was the door to the attached garage, and at left a doorless doorway opened onto the living room.

  The loudest thing in the quiet residence was Brass's own slow breathing, and the shoes of the team screaking on the hardwood floor.

  In a loud voice—startling a couple of the CSIs—Brass called out, “Barry Hyde—this is Captain James Brass, Las Vegas PD! We have a search warrant for your home and its contents! . . . Sir, if you are here, please make yourself known to us, now!”

  The words rang a bit, caught by the stairwell, but then . . .

  “Simon and Garfunkle,” Sara said.

  Brass looked at her.

  “Sounds of silence,” the CSI replied, with a shrug.

  Brass eased forward and turned left into the living room, his pistol leveled—a big, open, cold room with a picture window, a central metal fireplace, and spare Southwestern touches, including a Georgia O'Keefe cow-skull print over a rust-color two-seater sofa.

  “Clear!” Brass called, when he came back into the foyer, Warrick had already joined Nick, Sara, Catherine and Grissom, who were fanning out—firearms in hand, an unusual procedure for these crime scene investigators, but the precaution was vital.

  Opening the door to the attached garage, Nick flipped the light switch and went in, pistol at the ready. After a quick look around, he yelled, “Clear.”

  They went from room to room on the first floor—Brass, Nick, and Warrick—checking each one. Grissom and Catherine—weapons in their latexed hands—stood at the bottom of the open stairway, to make sure Hyde didn't surprise them from above.

  When Brass, Nick and Warrick returned to the foyer, they all shook their heads—nobody downstairs. Brass then led the way up the stairs, with the same combo of guns and caution, and they inspected the second floor the same way.

  “It's all clear,” Brass said, returning to the top of the stairs, holstering his handgun. “Barry Hyde has left the building.”

  “Okay,” Grissom said, obviously pleased to be putting the gun away, “let's get to work. You all know what to do.”

  Sara unpacked her camera, Nick his fingerprint kit and they went to work as a team. Catherine and Warrick disappeared into other parts of the house.

  Adrenaline still pumped through Brass as he came down the stairs. “Couldn't the son of a bitch have done us the courtesy of just opening the door and getting indignant about his rights and his goddamn privacy?”

  “You're just longing again,” Grissom said, “for those days when you could shoot a perp and then say ‘freeze.’ ”

  “That approach has its merits.”

  “So is he not home . . . or is he gone?”

  “I said he might be a flight risk.”

  Grissom nodded, starting up the steps. “I'll check his clothes, his toiletries—see if there are any suitcases in the house.”

  Brass moved into the living room, where Sara was snapping photos that would comprise a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the room, working from that central fireplace. As she moved on to another room, Brass poked around. The front wall consisted of one huge mullioned window looking out onto the street, and that lone sapling in the front yard.

  A television the size of a compact car filled most of the west wall to Brass's left. A set of shelves next to the TV was filled with stereo equipment, several VCRs, a DVD player, and a couple of electronic components Brass didn't even recognize. On shelves over the television sat a collection of DVD movies, most of which Brass had never heard of. I have to get out more, he thought.

  Opposite the entertainment center sat a huge green leather couch and a matching recliner squatted along the shorter southern wall. Next to the recliner and at the far end of the couch were oak end tables supporting lighter-green modernistic table lamps with soft white shades. A matching oak coffee table, low-slung in front of the couch, displayed a scattering of magazines with subscription stickers to BARRY HYDE and a few stacks of opened mail and loose papers.

  Grissom came in, saying, “No clothes seem to be missing, but it's hard to say. Closet with suitcases seems undisturbed, and all the normal toiletries—toothbrush and paste, aftershave, deodorant—seem to be at home.”

  “So maybe he's just out for breakfast. Or putting bullets in somebody else's brain.”

  “You find anything yet?”

  Brass pointed at the line of movie cases on top of the television. “I found out I haven't seen a movie since John Wayne died.”

  Without sarcasm, Grissom asked, “And this is pertinent how?”

  The detective shook his head. This was one of the reasons he liked Grissom: the scientist had little use for the outside world, either. His universe consisted of his calling and the people he worked with; beyond that, not much seemed to get Grissom's attention.

  “Nothing pertinent about it,” Brass said. “Just a social observation.”

  Kneeling, Grissom started going through the material on the coffee table. Brass plopped down on the couch, watching as the criminalist leafed through Hyde's magazines. Several were vacation guides, one was a Hustler, and the last one a copy of Forbes.

  “Varied reading list,” Grissom said.

  “Travel, sex, money,” Brass said. “American dream.”

  Loose papers, in with the mail, included various reports from the video store, a folded copy of a recent Sun, and an A-to-Z memo pad—an address in black ballpoint scrawled on the top sheet.

  Holding up the pad, Grissom asked, “Familiar address?”

  “Marge Kostichek?”

  “That's right. Why do you think Barry Hyde has Marge Kostichek's address in his home? In the same stack including a newspaper with an account of the discovery of a certain mummified body?”

  “I could maybe come up with a reason.”

  “But if he's expecting us—if he knows he's on the spot—why leave this lying around?”

  Brass considered that. “More cat and mouse?”

  Grissom's eyes tightened. “Maybe he hasn't been home since we talked to him. Get Sara, would you, Jim? I want a picture of this.”

  Outside a horn blared, and both men looked through the picture window to see a huge semi-truck, out in the suburban street, apparently somewhat blocked by the two curbed SUVs. The driver of the van blew the horn again, and the Henderson cops—who were parked in the driveway of the home across the street—were approaching.

  Sara's voice came from the kitchen. “What's going on out there?”

  Brass and Grissom looked at the moving van, then at each other. From Grissom's expression, Brass found it a safe bet that the criminalist had a similar sick sinking feeling in his stomach. . . .

  “Let's go outside and talk,” Brass said, rising from the sofa, his voice lighter than his thoughts.

  Grissom got up, too, saying, “You guys keep working.”

  The CSIs did, but in strained silence; something in Grissom's voice had been troubling. . . .

  Following Grissom outside, Brass felt a headache, like a gripping hand, taking hold of him. Every time they got a goddamn break in this case, it evaporated before they could play it out! And he knew, damnit, he just knew, it was happening again. . . .

  The coveralled
driver—heavyset, about twenty-five, with sweaty dark hair matted to his forehead and a scruffy brown mustache and goatee—had already climbed down out of his cab to talk to the Henderson uniformed men. The latter moved aside as Brass and Grissom came quickly up, meeting the driver in the street, in front of the van. Another guy—a mover—was still seated up in the cab; he had the bored look of the worker at the start of a thankless day.

  Brass flashed his badge. “What are you guys doing here?”

  Not particularly impressed by the badge, the mover said, “What do you think? We're here to move furniture.”

  “What furniture?”

  He pointed to the Hyde residence. “That furniture.”

  “There must be a mistake,” Brass said.

  Fishing a sheet of paper from his pocket, the mover said, “Fifty-three Fresh Pond Court.”

  Brass and Grissom traded a look.

  “Show me,” Brass said.

  Rolling his eyes, the mover handed the sheet of paper over to Brass.

  “This seems to be in order,” Brass said, reading it, giving Grissom a quick look, then handing the paper back.

  Grissom asked, “How were you supposed to get in? Was someone supposed to meet you here?”

  The mover shrugged. “Guy on the phone said the police would be here to let us in . . . and here you are.”

  “When did this work order come through?”

  “Just now—I mean, they called the twenty-four-hour hotline. It was a rush job. They paid extra—through the nose, better believe it.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Grissom said, and sprinted toward the nearest Tahoe.

  Brass yelled at the mover, “Get that truck out of here—now!”

  “But . . .”

  “There's a murder investigation going on. You touch that furniture, you're in violation of a warrant.”

  “Maybe I oughta see—”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Brass blurted, and the mover jumped. Brass planted himself and glared at the guy and, finally, the man climbed back into the truck and ground the gears into reverse. As the moving van backed slowly up the court, Grissom was cranking the Tahoe around; then he pulled up next to Brass.