Cold Burn

by Max Allan Collins

She huffed out a little anxious breath. “Keys?”

  Pistol still pointed downward, Brass—feeling that strange calm that came over him, in such potentially violent situations—reached into his sportcoat pocket, withdrew the Taurus keys, and tossed them toward the sound of her voice, eyes never leaving the door.

  He could hear Catherine’s low heels click on the concrete for a couple of steps, then she must have cut across the lawn. Standing staring at the door, he was wondering which way to play it when Catherine returned. The manual said he should call in SWAT, but hell with that—this wasn’t a bunch of holed-up gangbangers or some heist crew, this was a suburban housewife with ice water in her homicidal veins, and moreover this was an important bust. His bust.

  His immediate concerns were more concrete. Was Catherine strong enough to bust the lock with the ram? The Thor’s Hammer battering ram resembled a giant croquet mallet, a nonsparking and nonconductive ram, perfect for entering, say, the meth labs that seemed to be springing up everywhere. But it was a heavy mother, and not equipment a CSI often handled.

  If Catherine wasn’t up to it, Brass would have to trust her to cover him while he broke the door. Not really a problem, though. Of the night-shift CSIs, Catherine was the most skilled with her weapon and had, in recent years, taken two perps down in clean kills that passed the Shooting Board with flying colors. She might be a scientist, but at heart she was all cop and there wasn’t a man or woman on the LVMPD who wouldn’t trust Catherine Willows with their lives.

  Catherine appeared beside him, hefting the big, black hammer like a lumberjack, despite her fashion-model looks. She gazed at him with an admirably flinty-eyed expression—she was ready. He was about to give her the go-ahead, when the latch suddenly clicked.

  The nine millimeter swung up automatically and, as the door opened, Brass pushed through, moving inside, pistol in the lead.

  Regan Mortenson stood before him in the stucco entryway—small, blonde and very pale. She looked like a teenage girl in a Dali-print black tee shirt and blood-red sweatpants, her feet bare, toenails painted red, fingernails, too.

  “Las Vegas Police,” Brass barked. “Show me your hands.”

  But her hands were empty, and so were her eyes, staring at the black hole of the barrel without fear or apparent interest. Behind Brass, Catherine had set down the battering ram and filled her right hand with her automatic. She followed Brass in, as Regan backed up, her hands high, palms open, head bowed, the stairway to the second floor at her back.

  Clipping the words, Brass said, “Hands behind your head—now.”

  She was doing that when a shattering noise shook them all—from the rear of the house!—the brittle music of breaking glass.

  Regan flinched, her raised hands covering herself, as if that glass might be raining down on her.

  “Easy,” Brass told her, as he kept his pistol trained on the young woman. “Catherine, check that out.”

  But Brass had the sinking feeling he knew what it was already. And indeed, before Catherine could respond to Brass’s request, O’Riley came barreling into the hallway.

  “Police!” he shouted, as he leveled his pistol at Regan.

  “Sliding glass doors?” Brass asked.

  “Yeah,” O’Riley said, breathing hard.

  Brass was just thinking the city could afford the price of a little glass, considering, when another noise shook the house.

  Brian Mortenson came tromping down the stairs, his eyes wide and indignant, the close-trimmed goatee looking smudgy on his chin, like he’d been eating chocolate cake by sticking his face in it.

  About halfway down, he yelled, “What the hell is going on…"

  His voice trailed off as he saw Catherine—in shooting stance at the bottom of the stairs—aiming her pistol up at him.

  “Las Vegas Metro Police,” she said, not yelling, but there was no mistaking the no-nonsense meaning.

  He stopped with one foot on one step, the other on another, hands shooting skyward, a pose that vaguely recalled his college basketball background.

  Brass said, “Walk slowly down the rest of the stairs, sir, and please keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Mortenson obeyed the command, and Catherine gave him a quick frisk. Then she told him he could lower his hands. The tableau consisted of Brass holding his nine millimeter on the woman of the house, just beyond the entryway, and Catherine training her automatic on the man of the house, at the bottom of the stairs. O’Riley stood in the archway of the living room as if on guard, his weapon in hand.

  It only took Brian Mortenson a few moments to regain his composure. “What is going on here?” he demanded. “You better have a warrant or I’ll build a parking lot where the police station used to be.”

  “We’re here to serve a warrant,” Catherine said. “Specifically, to serve your wife with a warrant for DNA and fingerprints…but she decided not to cooperate.”

  Mortenson frowned. “So you people decided to dismantle our house?”

  “Your wife resisted,” Brass said.

  The childlike Regan finally found her voice. She turned on Brass with indignation: “You scared me! I was going to let you in until…” She turned toward O’Riley, who was standing on the periphery like an oversize garden gnome with a gun. “That big brute came running across our lawn, and I thought…I thought…I don’t know what I thought! I was just scared.”

  “Mrs. Mortenson,” Brass said, “we properly identified ourselves—and I’m sure you recognized me.”

  “How could I forget you?” she asked.

  Mortenson gestured to Catherine’s weapon, still trained on him. “Do you mind?…You searched me. Could I go to my wife?”

  Catherine nodded; and she holstered her weapon.

  Before she allowed the husband to stand at his wife’s side, she quickly but thoroughly frisked the young woman, too.

  She glanced at Brass—clean.

  Mortenson slipped an arm around his wife and brought her to him; somehow, she didn’t seem terribly interested.

  He asked, “Regan, honey…are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  But Brass wasn’t so sure—something didn’t look quite right about the petite blonde, and he could tell Catherine was concerned, too, flicking little glances Regan’s way. Missy Sherman’s “best friend” had claimed to be scared, and maybe she was; but did that explain why she was sweating so profusely, and why her skin had lost its color?

  One arm still looped around his wife’s shoulders, Mortenson said, “Let’s see your warrant. What’s it all about, anyway?”

  Finally Brass holstered his weapon, and nodded to O’Riley to do the same. Then the burly detective came over and handed the warrant to Brass, who, in turn, passed it on to Mortenson.

  “This warrant,” Brass said, “gives us the right to fingerprint your wife and for CSI Willows, here, to swab Mrs. Mortenson’s mouth for DNA.”

  Mortenson, forehead taut as he quickly scanned the document, said, “That still doesn’t tell me what this is about.” He drew the blank-faced Regan even closer. “Now explain yourself, or I call my attorney, right now.”

  “That’s your prerogative, Mr. Mortenson,” Brass said. “But the purpose of our visit? Your wife is the primary suspect in the murder of Missy Sherman.”

  “…What?” Mortenson was astounded; they might have told him Martians were on the rooftop. “What kinda ridiculous bullshit…"

  Regan’s eyes were huge; she seemed to be in shock, kind of weaving there, Stevie Wonder–style, under his wing.

  Meanwhile, her husband was going strong. “Is that what my tax dollars go for? So you can come up with some wild-ass asinine theory that Regan killed her own best friend? Jesus!”

  “Mr. Mortenson,” Catherine said, “it’s best you just comply.”

  He stepped forward, and Regan slipped out from his shielding grasp. “It’s not enough she’s lost her best friend…now you have to go and say she killed her? Shit!”

  “Mr
. Mortenson…,” Brass began.

  But the husband was off and away on his rant. “This is how you treated Alex, isn’t it? He cooperates, and then you accuse him! You put him through this same shit, I heard all about it. What, are you just going door to door, accusing people? Maybe it’s a conspiracy! Maybe we all did it!”

  Finally Mortenson paused to take a breath—Brass had decided to let him blow off some steam—but now the homicide captain waded in.

  “Sir,” Brass said, “let me explain why your wife is our primary suspect.”

  “Please! Enlighten me!”

  “A blonde hair was found inside the freezer where Missy’s body was hidden away; it matched a blonde hair we got from Missy’s Lexus.”

  Mortenson’s mouth was open, but no words came out; and confusion tightened his eyes.

  Brass continued: “We also believe that fingerprints from the freezer and the SUV will match your wife’s.”

  Mortenson turned to his wife. “You don’t know anything about this, do you, baby?…They’re fuckin’ crazy. Tell them they’re fucking crazy, baby.”

  She stared at him. He slipped his big arm around her again, drew her to him. “This’ll go away, baby. We’ll make it go away. This is just circumstantial bullshit they’re misinterpreting. Don’t you worry one little—”

  “Let me go!” She wrenched away from him. Then she looked at Brass, her icy eyes huge, wild. “You have to protect me!”

  Her husband winced, as if he were trying to see her through a haze. “Baby…honey?”

  She pointed at him, shaking. “I won’t lie for him any more!…He admitted it, months ago, and I’ve had to live with it! He did it!”

  Mortenson’s mouth hung open.

  “Don’t deny it, Brian. You did it, you know you did it!” She turned pleadingly toward Brass. “You have to believe me…. He and Missy were having an affair, and he tried to break it off—”

  “What?” Mortenson said, apparently bewildered.

  “And when Missy threatened to tell Alex, he killed her! That’s his blonde hair!”

  Her husband looked like an actor who’d walked into the wrong scene in some strange play. “My…? What…?”

  Regan moved from Brass to O’Riley to Catherine, searching their eyes for support, coming up empty.

  Finally, standing before Catherine, she said, “You have to protect me—he said if I ever told anybody, he’d kill me, too! Put a plastic bag over my head and suffocate me!”

  “Regan,” Mortenson said, “what are you saying? What is wrong with you?…She’s sick, Officers. Something’s wrong with her….”

  “She’s sick, all right,” Brass said.

  Looking at the pretty blonde, blue eyes to blue eyes, Catherine said, “I’d call your husband’s hair more a light brown, Mrs. Mortenson. And, anyway, the hairs we got from Missy’s Lexus and the freezer belong to a blonde…woman. A long-haired blonde woman.”

  “No…it’s not true!” Regan screamed. “He’ll kill me if you don’t—”

  “Regan,” Brian Mortenson said. He stared at his wife as though he didn’t know whether to embrace her or slap her. This seemed to be moving way too fast for him. Finally he managed, “You’re trying to blame me…for your friend’s death?”

  “She can try to blame you,” Catherine said, “she can try to blame the Boston Strangler…it’s not going to help. You see, your wife doesn’t think we know about Sharon Pope.” Catherine turned toward Regan with a tiny smile. “Lavien Rose?”

  Regan’s lovely features seemed to wilt. “No…I…” The woman teetered for a moment, losing her balance, as if the room had begun to spin…

  …and then dropped to the floor.

  “Regan!” Mortenson shrieked, and he dove to her side, and held her, tenderly, as if she had not, moments before, tried to fit him in a frame for murder.

  Brass knelt. “What’s wrong with her? Has she been ill? Does she have a medical problem, a condition?”

  “Nothing…nothing serious…. What have you people done to her?…You saw her, she had some kind of mental breakdown….”

  Catherine ducked into the first-floor bathroom, then called, “Jim!”

  Brass said to O’Riley, “Watch them,” and joined Catherine in the bathroom, where she had found the answer on the counter: a small white bottle.

  “Ambien,” Catherine said, reading the label. “Dosage, ten milligrams. If Regan had a full month’s supply, that means three hundred milligrams.”

  “She killed herself?”

  “Maybe. But people’ve been brought back after taking as much as four hundred milligrams. Ambien’s engineered to make it difficult to use for suicide.” Catherine tucked the bottle in her slacks pocket, and they rushed back to the hallway.

  “Overdose,” she said, mostly for O’Riley’s benefit, dropping to her knees and pushing the husband out of the way. “Sleeping pills.”

  “Oh my God,” Mortenson moaned. “She has sinus headaches…can’t sleep.”

  She was having no trouble sleeping now.

  Catherine began CPR. “Let’s take her in your car, Jim. Label says it was refilled yesterday, and if she took the whole thing, we don’t want to wait for an ambulance—she could be gone.”

  But Brass was already halfway out the door.

  O’Riley and Mortenson carried Regan, racing to the Taurus. Brass cranked the key as the men loaded the blonde in the back with Catherine. Mortenson tried to climb in back with them, but Catherine pushed him away.

  “Hey, I’m her damn husband! I’m going with her.”

  “Ride in front, then!”

  “I have a right—”

  Catherine snapped, “Do you want to waste time?”

  Mortenson climbed in front.

  O’Riley gunned his Taurus and pulled up next to Brass. “I’ll lead,” he said. “That new hospital, St. Rose Dominican, Siena Campus? That’s closest.”

  Before Brass could answer, O’Riley hit the lights and was off. Brass hit his lights and siren as well and tore off after O’Riley.

  Mortenson leaned over the passenger seat, his eyes moist and focused on Regan. Catherine kept up with the compressions, but things did not look good. She gave Regan mouth-to-mouth—once, twice, three times. Then she resumed CPR.

  The woman’s skin was the color of an overcast sky. She was limp and lifeless, and when Catherine checked, Regan’s pulse was weak. Though the young woman still took the occasional breath on her own, those seemed to be coming more and more infrequently.

  O’Riley served as lead blocker as Brass twisted the Taurus through traffic. He sawed the wheel and turned onto St. Rose Parkway—former Lake Mead Boulevard—and slammed down the gas again.

  The Siena Campus, the second St. Rose Dominican facility, was mission-style—like the Sherman and Mortenson homes—white stucco with a red tile roof. O’Riley slid to a stop in front of the emergency room entrance and was out of the car and through the doors before Brass even had his car stopped.

  A crew dressed in scrubs came running out with a gurney, and Catherine handed Regan over into their care; they wheeled the woman inside, with Brass, O’Riley and Brian Mortenson in hot pursuit. Catherine remained behind, sitting in the backseat for several long moments, letting the adrenaline rush subside.

  She was quite sure Regan Mortenson had killed Missy Sherman and Sharon Pope—cold-bloodedly, for reasons as yet undetermined. There could be little doubt that Regan was a sociopathic monster. And yet Catherine had just tried her best to save the woman’s life.

  If a cop asked her why, she might have said, to make sure that bitch didn’t have an easy out, so that a murderer would live to face justice. But Catherine knew it was something else that had driven her. Let the sociopaths take life lightly. She would choose to save a life, if she could.

  And if Regan Mortenson lived today, to die via lethal injection tomorrow, that would be another’s judgment, not Catherine’s.

  She went inside to join her colleagues.

  Better th
an an hour went by before a young doctor came out to tell Catherine and Mortenson that “it had been touch and go,” but Regan would be fine. While the woman was still unconscious, Catherine got her DNA swab and she already had Regan’s fingerprints on the Ambien bottle.

  Catherine Willows went home to spend some of what remained of her Sunday with her daughter, and to sleep a few hours, before going in to CSI HQ to process her new evidence. And toward the end of shift, not long before sunup, Catherine found herself back at the hospital with Brass, Nick and Warrick.

  They stood at the foot of the bed where Regan Mortenson lay like a tiny broken doll; tubes ran in and out of her, and she looked frail, and had as yet said nothing. But she was not in a coma. The doctor assured them of that.

  Brian Mortenson stood next to his wife, two hands holding her limp one. No explaining love, Catherine thought. This woman had killed two people, tried to frame her husband for the crimes, and still, several times he had mentioned that he was convinced his wife was suffering from a mental condition; that these things, if she did them, Regan could only have done if she were not in her right mind.

  Brass said, “Mr. Mortenson, we’ve matched Regan’s fingerprints to the freezer and Missy’s Lexus. Her DNA was inside the freezer, in the car and on Missy’s clothes.”

  “No way,” Mortenson said.

  The detective shrugged. “Believe what you like, but the facts tell us your wife killed her best friend.”

  “It’s a lie,” Regan said.

  Her voice was small and cold. Her eyes, finally open, were big and cold.

  Her husband beamed at her. “Baby…darling…you’re going to be fine.”

  “Welcome back to the world, Mrs. Mortenson,” Brass said, and read her her rights.

  Regan stared at the ceiling, the icy blues unreadable; her husband, grasping her hand, might well have not been there, for all she seemed to care.

  “Do you understand these rights, Mrs. Mortenson?”

  “I understand.”

  “Would you like to tell us anything?”

  She turned toward Brass. “I’d like you to tell me something, Detective.”

  “What?”

  “When are visiting hours over?”