Grissom asked, “How?”
She shrugged. “I heard him bawlin’.”
Silence draped the small room.
Then Amy plunged back in: “Anyway, when he wouldn’t open the door, I tried the knob; but it was locked. I was worried about him.”
Sara almost laughed. “Worried?”
“Yeah. We needed his help in the dining room. So I came downstairs to get Herm, to try to get Tony outa his room. That’s why I was on the elevator—remember?”
Grissom had a sinking feeling: how close they’d come to preventing this…if she was lying, and if she wasn’t lying.
The phone on the desk rang, and Cormier excused himself past Sara and picked up the receiver. His voice was shaky as he said, “Hello?”
Several moments later, the old man handed the phone to Grissom, saying, “The constable—wants you.”
Grissom took the phone and heard the Canadian say, in a somberly professional manner, “I’ve locked myself in the room to protect the scene. We can work it whenever you’re ready.”
“We’re interviewing Amy on that subject now,” Grissom said. “She claims she went to the room and he wouldn’t answer. Says she didn’t do this.”
“She have any blood on her?”
“No.”
“What’s she wearing?”
“Standard waitress uniform.”
“Unless she dumped her clothes somewhere and switched into a spare uniform, she’s probably telling the truth. The bathroom walls are red. Drip-ping from the damn ceiling. Hit an artery—incredible spray.”
“I’ve seen it often,” Grissom said grimly.
“If Amy Barlow was in that room, she’d have blood on her somewhere.”
Grissom said, “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” He hung up. “Amy, we’d like to look in your room. You say you’re innocent, and the only way we can help you prove that is—”
“Help me? Right.”
“We need your permission.”
“What, so you can try to find evidence to lock me up?” She thrust her middle finger at him.
“I’m going to take that as a ‘no,’” Grissom said.
He picked the phone up, got an outside line, a dial tone, and—after punching the numbers—was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of an operator.
“Nine-one-one,” the crisp female voice said. “Please state your emergency.”
“I need to speak to the sheriff—we have another suspicious death at the Mumford Mountain Hotel. At least one is a murder.”
A long silence ensued and Grissom wondered if the woman had heard him. He was about to repeat himself when she intoned, “Transferring.”
Covering the mouthpiece, Grissom asked Cormier, “Who will I be talking to?”
“Sheriff Tom Woods.”
When Sheriff Woods came on the line, Grissom introduced himself and began to explain the situation. He wasn’t very far along when the husky-voiced Woods asked to speak to Herm Cormier.
Grissom handed Cormier the receiver; the hotel man held it in a hand as shaky as his voice, saying, “Hello, Tom—this is Herm…. No, he’s for real, a forensics man from Vegas who made it in for that conference ‘fore the storm hit…. Yup, happened just like he was saying. You better hear the rest.”
Cormier listened again, then handed the phone back to Grissom. “Wants you, Dr. Grissom.”
“This is Grissom, Sheriff.”
“Would you continue, please,” Woods requested.
Grissom finished filling him in.
“We’re damn lucky to have you there, Mr. Grissom. But the fact is, you’re not a peace officer in New York State. You have no jurisdiction. What do you propose we do?”
“I would happily turn this over to you,” Grissom said.
“Lord knows I’d love to help, but the roads won’t be open today, for sure…and maybe not tomorrow. Record snowfall, y’know.”
“Right now, I need a search warrant for our suspect’s room.”
Amy, sitting with her arms folded, sneered at a wall.
The line crackled while Woods thought about it. Then the deep voice said, “Here’s how we’re going to handle this, Mr. Grissom. Would you raise your right hand, please?”
“…Are you deputizing me?”
“I’m appointing you a special deputy for Ulster County. That allows me to get a judge to grant you your search warrant—and allows you to serve it. Your hand in the air?”
Sara grinned as Grissom, feeling a little foolish, switched the receiver to his left hand and raised his right. Over the phone, Sheriff Woods read him the oath, at the end of which, Grissom said solemnly, “I do.”
“Deputy Grissom, I’ll fax that warrant to the hotel as soon as Judge Bell grants it. Put Herm on so I can get the number.”
“Thanks, Sheriff Woods. I appreciate this.” And he gave the receiver to Cormier.
Half an hour later, a fax warrant in hand, Grissom served it on Amy Barlow. Maher stayed behind in the manager’s office, watching the prisoner, while Grissom and Sara searched the room. Sara found the boots in a closet; not only did they match the castings from both the crime scene and the lake, multiple dried drops of blood were visible on the upper portion of both boots.
They searched the room carefully but found no sign of bloody clothing that would tie the waitress to Tony Dominguez’ death. The hotel would have to be searched, but the likelihood that the boy had taken his own life seemed strong.
Back in the office, Grissom confronted the young woman with the bloody boots. Amy remained adamant about her innocence. “I still say Tony did it, and a couple boots with a couple flecks of blood ain’t gonna convince anybody otherwise.” She gave him a satisfied smile, saying, “And looks like Tony won’t be around to defend himself, either.”
“He won’t have to be,” Grissom said. “We have your boots. We have matching footprints at the crime scene. We found James’s…Jimmy’s…knife, with blood on it, which I’m confident will match yours. Oh, and we found your bloody gloves and the gun you threw out on the lake…. Next time, Amy, when you throw evidence in a lake, better that it not be frozen over.”
She paled.
But Grissom wasn’t through: “We’ve got your fingerprints on a coffee cup you served me this afternoon…remember?…and they match the prints on the ziplock bag…the one you put the gun and gloves in, when you tried to hide them in the lake?”
The weight of the evidence seemed to sink her deeper and deeper into the chair.
“Anything you’d like to tell us, Amy?” he asked.
Her voice seemed small, childlike, and not as cruel. “I loved Jimmy. I gave him everything…I was a lover, a friend, a mother to him…and he throws me over for…a guy?” She shook her head, swallowed, and finally some tears came—no sobs, just crystal trails dribbling down her cheeks. She looked at Sara and said, bitterly, “Try that out on your self-esteem, honey.”
Sara asked, “Was it self-defense?”
Now the usual Amy reasserted herself. “Fuck no! Jimmy was weak…weak in a lotta ways, I see that now. What I was gonna do was beat the shit out of him, for what he did to me. I only took the gun along to scare him, humiliate him like I was humiliated….”
Sara said, “He hurt you.”
The tears began their gentle trail again; her voice trembled. “He didn’t hurt me…he killed me. He ripped the woman part of me out and stomped on it. He made me feel like a useless, worthless, unwanted skank.”
Grissom asked, “What happened, Amy?”
She shrugged, taking the tissue Sara handed her. “I was yelling at him, beating on him. He couldn’t feel the kind of…inside pain I felt, but I could at least hurt the outside of his sorry ass.”
“Is that when he pulled the knife?” Grissom asked.
“…He pulled that damned knife and I just looked at him. You know what I said? I said, Well, faggot—looks like you still wanna stick somethin’ in me after all!…And he did. Got in a lucky one.” She gestured with her wounded hand. �
�So I pulled out the gun and…” She laughed. “He ran…ran like the scared little girl that he was.”
Sara asked, “When you hit him, was that a…miss? A mistake?”
“Knowing Jimmy, that was the mistake. No, honey, I meant to shoot the son of a bitch, and I did. He wasn’t gonna hurt me no more.”
Grissom asked, “Amy…why did you burn him?”
She wiped the tears off her face, drew breath in through her nose. “I turned him over and he was looking up at me. He was dead, and he was still fuckin’ mocking me.” She swallowed. “And I still hurt inside. So what else could I do? I went back to the toolshed and got the gasoline.”
She folded her arms, as if trying to warm herself; she smiled—a terrible smile.
“When he was burning,” she said, “finally…I felt better. I felt like I was a woman again.”
Grissom glanced at Sara, who said, “Then you heard someone coming, right? Heard someone and ran?”
“Yeah.” She looked from one CSI to the other. “What, was that you two?”
Grissom nodded. So did Sara.
Her eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth, a vicious animal. “Well, go to hell, both of you…go to hell for spoiling my fun. I wanted to see that prick turn to ashes.”
Grissom looked at Sara and shrugged; she did the same—neither had any more questions for the suspect, who sat, eyes glazed, sinking into the chair, arms tight across her chest, her face as blank as a baby’s.
“Herm,” Grissom said. “Keep an eye on her for a second.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Grissom.”
Grissom and Sara stepped out of the little room, behind the front counter.
“What now?” Sara asked.
“We still have plenty to do. We should process that scene upstairs. Try to determine whether Tony committed suicide or Amy did it.”
“I’m betting Amy.”
“We’ll wait for evidence. Oh, and another thing…” Grissom nodded toward the open doorway of the little office, where dead-eyed Amy sat. “We’ll need to keep tabs on our perp till the police arrive.”
Sara said, “I’ll take first watch, if you don’t mind. I’m not anxious to work that red room upstairs.”
“I don’t blame you. Could be another long night.”
A pretty half-smile dug a dimple in the young woman’s cheek. “Could be worse.”
Grissom huffed a laugh. “How?”
She grinned. “Could be outdoors….”
12
JIM BRASS WAS IN NO HURRY.
The Taurus was in a late-morning line of residential traffic consisting of churchgoers bound for home or maybe brunch, as opposed to salvation. Getting a judge to sign a warrant for DNA on a Sunday was never an easy assignment, and he’d delegated O’Riley to track down a magistrate who owed Brass a favor.
But cell phone reports from the crew-cut detective indicated the judge was proving elusive, and Brass had no intention of sitting outside the Mortenson home, waiting for a warrant. If Regan Mortenson proved to be guilty—which with the evidence the crime lab had amassed seemed a dead certainty—she was a cold-blooded murderer, possibly psychotic and capable of God knew what; so the homicide captain preferred not to announce his presence in advance by sitting in an unmarked car on Goldhill Road, about as inconspicuous as a Good Humor truck.
Next to him as he slogged through Sunday morning traffic, Catherine sat back, her eyes closed, her breath not heavy—not asleep, just relaxing. Brass felt fairly alert, though he, like Catherine, had been up forever. They both knew that Sheriff Mobley would be apoplectic over the OT, but graveyard was so close to breaking the Missy Sherman case, they couldn’t bear to pass the ball to Ecklie’s day-shift crew, who had screwed it up in the first place. The eventual media attention would salve any wounds the overtime created, anyway.
A cell phone ring gave him a rush—Brass was surprised by how eager he was for that warrant—but he settled back behind the wheel when he realized it was Catherine’s phone. Her eyes opened slowly and she answered it on the third ring.
She identified herself, then listened for a long moment. “So they were already looking into it?…But they hadn’t gone to the authorities yet?”
Brass took an exit ramp off 215, easing down to a stoplight. He took a quick right and pulled into a gas station. He’d worked up a thirst, waiting for O’Riley’s call.
“Water?” he mouthed to her, as Catherine continued on the phone, and she nodded.
About five minutes later, when Brass returned with two bottles of Evian, Catherine was still on the phone. He got in, handed her a bottle, removed the cap from his and took a long pull.
“All right, then,” Catherine said, finally. “Keep me posted, Nick, will you?…Thanks.” She clicked off.
“What did Nick have?”
“Plenty,” she said, and unscrewed the cap on her water. “He got hold of Gloria Holcomb, the accountant for Las Vegas Arts. She agreed to meet with him in her office.”
“On Sunday morning?”
She lifted both eyebrows and gave him a wry look—nobody did wry looks better, or prettier, than Catherine Willows. “Seems Ms. Holcomb needs the LVMPD as much as the LVMPD needs her. She has strong suspicions that the Arts council has an embezzler in its midst…more than suspicions, really.”
“Why hasn’t she gone to her boss?”
“She reports to the suspected embezzler—Regan Mortenson.”
Brass grunted a laugh. “Versatile girl, our Regan. But I thought she was just a volunteer worker.”
“Seems Regan started out that way. Made such a strong impression, she was offered more responsibility. But the council could only provide her a nominal salary, which she said was fine with her—she just wanted to help out.”
“Or help herself.”
“I should say—about six figures worth.”
“Which, end of the day—not that nominal,” Brass said. “Is that our murder motive?”
“You mean, friend Missy found out Regan was embezzling? Probably not—Regan only moved from volunteer status to ‘nominal’ salary maybe a month prior to Missy’s disappearance.”
“It’s possible, then,” Brass said. “It does predate Missy camping out in that Kenmore.”
“But not by much—Regan would have to be knee-deep in pilfering during her first month on the job, and Missy would somehow have to stumble onto it. And I never heard that the Sherman woman was even active with the Arts council.”
Soon they were headed back for the interstate. They were barely back on the expressway when another phone ring got Brass’s hopes up—his own cell, this time.
And it was O’Riley, beautiful O’Riley, saying, “Signed, sealed and ‘bout to be delivered…on my way.”
“What’s the deal? Stop at Denny’s for a couple Grand Slams?”
“Hey, I deserve better—Judge Hewitt was playing golf. I had to rent a cart.”
“What the hell’s he playing golf for?”
“I know, it’s a dumb sport.”
“No, I mean it’s like forty-five degrees out.”
“Temperature does not seem to be an issue for his honor. But getting interrupted when he’s playing golf…that is. An issue, I mean.”
“You did good. How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
Brass thanked O’Riley and clicked off.
He hit the lights, but not the siren. They whizzed along 215 toward Eastern Avenue.
“I take it we’ve got the warrant,” Catherine said.
“A calligraphy class couldn’t’ve taken longer coming up with one.” Then he laughed abruptly.
“What?” Catherine said, Brass’s laughter infectious enough to put a smile on her face.
“Just thinkin’ about the sight of O’Riley riding the golf course in a cart, chasin’ that judge.”
Less than five minutes later, they drew up in front of the Mortensons’ mission-style house. As a precaution, Brass parked his Taurus at an angle blocking the driveway.
“Wait for O’Riley?” Catherine asked.
“No. He’ll be here.”
They strolled to the front door, keeping their manner as low-key as possible—Brass in front, Catherine a step behind and to his left, both conscious that in a matter like this, a detective never knew when he might have to draw his gun, the CSI knowing better than to be in the way. His badge was pinned to his sport-coat breast pocket; this would be all the credentials he’d need. He rang the doorbell.
Regan Mortenson, her blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, peeked out the window next to the door, forehead crinkled, as she studied her callers.
Brass tapped his badge. He stopped short of yelling, but tried to make sure his voice would be heard through the glass: “We need to talk to you, Mrs. Mortenson!”
She nodded, and seemed about to leave her lookout to let them in, when a screeching sound froze her, and she—and Brass and Catherine, turning—watched as O’Riley’s Taurus jerked to a stop in front of the house. Then the big detective jumped out and charged the house, warrant in hand, like a pro football tackle bearing down on a quarterback.
Brass and Catherine looked back at the window and Regan was gone.
Huffing, O’Riley was next to Brass now, proffering the warrant. “Got it!”
“You forgot the bullhorn,” Brass said to him, and O’Riley just looked at him.
They gave it a few seconds, until it became obvious Regan Mortenson had not left the window to answer the door.
“She’s ducked back inside,” Brass said.
O’Riley said, “I’ve got the rear,” and went hustling around the garage.
Catherine was shaking her head. “What does she think she’s accomplishing with this?”
“Either she’s making a break for it,” Brass said, “or getting ready to hole up.”
He tugged the nine millimeter from its hip holster, held it with barrel pointed down, per safety regs. With his left hand, he checked the door—double-locked…lock in the knob and a dead bolt. No kicking this sucker in; no shooting the lock, either—why risk a ricochet?
“Catherine,” he said, his voice tranquil, eyes on the door, “battering ram in the trunk—go get it. Cover you.”
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