Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

  “And while you’re doing that,” Warrick said, easily, “I’ll need to fingerprint this machine.”

  Oswalt frowned, glanced around again. “Right now?”

  “I could do it after business hours.”

  “We never close.”

  “Neither do we—so is there a better time than right now? Since I gotta be here anyway, while you’re checking out that slot card?”

  “Uh…your point is well taken. Go right ahead, Mr. Brown.”

  The slot host instructed two guards to stay nearby, then he and the other of his green-jacketed merry men disappeared. Warrick spent about an hour on the machine, at the end of which time he had dozens of prints and doubted that any of them would be of any use. There was just no telling how many people had tried this machine since the killer left.

  Gesturing that burly guard over, Warrick said, “You can tell your boss I’m done.”

  The guard pulled out a walkie-talkie and talked into it. He listened, then turned back to Warrick. “We’re supposed to escort you to the security office.”

  “Fine. And I need to have this machine held for a guy in the bar—can you send a cocktail waitress after him?”

  “Sure thing. How will I know him?”

  “He’ll be the only bald guy with glasses wearing socks and sandals.”

  “All right. Man, you’re certainly thoughtful.”

  “Hey, gamblers got it hard enough already.”

  The other guard was called over to escort Warrick, and the blond Oswalt was waiting for them at the security-office door. “We’ve got your information, Mr. Brown. The man’s name is Peter Randall.”

  Warrick got out his notepad and pencil. “Address?”

  “P.O. Box L-57, 1365 East Horizon in Henderson.”

  Warrick felt a sinking feeling in his gut. He jotted the address down, knowing it would wind up being one of those damn rent-a-mailbox places. “Anything else, Mr. Oswalt?”

  “Not really.”

  Warrick put the notepad away. “We’re going to need to go back a few days, maybe a few weeks, to look for this guy some more—the tapes we have so far don’t give us a look at his face.”

  “He could be a regular customer,” Oswalt admitted.

  “Right. How long to round up those tapes?”

  “I’m short staff, and those tapes are stored—”

  “How long, sir?”

  Oswalt thought about it. “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Can I look at them here?”

  “We’d prefer it if you did.”

  Warrick nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be back.”

  From the car, Warrick called Grissom and told him the name and address. Again Grissom approved him going alone—a killer was on the loose, and trails could go quickly cold.

  The drive to Henderson—a community of stucco-laden homes aligned like green Monopoly houses, many of them behind walls and/or gates—took twenty minutes on the expressway. Just as he thought, the address belonged to a strip mall rent-a-box storefront.

  The mailboxes ran down one wall, a long counter along the opposite one. The girl behind the counter might have been eighteen, her blue smock covering a slipknot T-shirt and faded jeans. Her hair was dishwater blonde and she had a silver stud through her left nostril.

  “Can I help you?” she asked with no enthusiasm.

  “Is the manager here?”

  “No.”

  “Will he be back soon?”

  “She,” the girl corrected. “She just went to lunch.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Yeah, the Dairy Queen around the corner.”

  “Thanks,” Warrick said. “Can you tell me her name?”

  “Laurie.”

  This was like pulling teeth. “Last name?”

  The girl thought for a moment. It seemed to cause her pain. “I dunno.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Never came up.”

  “Yeah. Well. Thanks again.” Meaning it, he said, “You’ve been a big help.”

  With the pep of a zombie, she said, “Come back any time.”

  Warrick walked to the Dairy Queen around the corner, spotted the woman who must be Laurie sitting at a table alone, picking at an order of chicken strips and fries. She wore the same blue smock as the girl back at the store; her brown hair, cut at shoulder length, matched her brown eyes in a narrow, pretty face, and she appeared to be about six months pregnant. He went straight to her. “Laurie?”

  She looked up and, guardedly, asked, “Do I know you?”

  “No, ma’am. My name is Warrick Brown. I’m with the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau.” He showed her his badge. “May I sit and talk to you for a moment?”

  “Well…”

  “It’ll just take a few moments.”

  “I suppose. Can you tell me what this is about?”

  Pulling out one of the plastic-and-metal chairs, Warrick joined her at the small square table. “I need to talk to you about one of your clients.”

  Laurie shook her head. “You know I can’t talk to you about my clients without a warrant. Their privacy is at stake.”

  “This man is a killer and we can’t waste time.”

  That impressed her, but still she shook her head again. “I’m sorry. I just can’t…”

  Warrick interrupted her. “His name is Peter Randall.”

  Her eyes tightened.

  “What is it, Laurie?”

  “Funny you should ask about Mr. Randall. He closed out his account just yesterday.”

  “Can you talk to me, off-the-record, while we’re waiting for a warrant to arrive?”

  Again she looked as if she didn’t know what to do.

  Warrick pulled out his phone, called Grissom, and explained the situation.

  “Sara will be there with a warrant within the hour,” Grissom said. “And I’ll alert Brass.”

  While they waited, Laurie finished her lunch and they returned to the storefront. The nose-stud girl seemed as bored as ever, paying little attention to them as they came to the counter, Warrick staying on the customer side, Laurie going behind it. The woman had decided to cooperate—she asked him several times, “He’s a murderer, right?”—and she pulled Randall’s record right away.

  “His home address?” Warrick asked.

  Laurie looked at the file. “Forty-six fifteen Johnson, here in Henderson.”

  Warrick made a quick call on his cell to dispatch, for directions.

  Moments later, he said, “Damn.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “No Johnson Street or avenue or anything like it in Henderson. That’s a fake address.”

  “Oh. I mean, we don’t check these kind of things. We take our customers at their word.”

  Warrick went to Box L-57. “I know you can’t open this for me, until the warrant arrives. But can you say whether or not Mr. Randall has cleared it out?”

  “I’m afraid he has,” Laurie said. “There’s nothing in it—Mr. Randall emptied it when he closed his account.

  “Shit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Laurie said.

  “You’re just doing what I’m doing.”

  “Huh?”

  He smiled at her. “Our jobs.”

  She smiled back, and the nose-stud girl rolled her eyes.

  Five minutes later, Sara—accompanied by Detective Erin Conroy—turned up with the warrant; he filled them both in on the situation.

  Sara smirked and shook her head. “So, there’s nothing?”

  Warrick shrugged. “We can print the mailbox door, but that’s about it. Looks like a dead end.”

  Conroy said, “I’ll question her…what’s her name?”

  “Laurie,” Warrick said.

  “Last name?”

  Embarrassed, he shrugged again. “Never came up.”

  Conroy just looked at him; then she went over to question the woman and put on the record the things that had been told to Warrick, off.

  Sara sighed and said, “I
gave up running prints for this?”

  “You were tired of doing that, anyway.”

  She tried not to smile, but finally it broke through. “Yeah, I was.”

  “Well, you’re gonna love it when I give you the dozens of prints I got off that slot machine.”

  “More prints. You find anything good?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned in conspiratorially, as Conroy’s questioning echoed in the hollow storefront. “A Dairy Queen, around the corner. Lunch. You buy.”

  She clearly liked the sound of that; but as they were exiting, Sara nudged him in the ribs, saying, “Buy your own damn lunch.”

  Two hours later, back in the office, Warrick had already struck out with “Peter Randall”—an alias, of course—and Sara had run the prints from the casino, which had also proved worthless. And the guy’s mailbox door had failed to yield a single usable print.

  Laurie Miller, the manager, had waited on “Randall” both times he’d been in the store, and her description of him to Detective Conroy was painfully generic: dark glasses, dark baseball cap was all that got added to what the hotel tapes had already told them. A witness sketch would be worked up, but not much hope was held for it.

  Backing up, Warrick decided to see what they could get on the footprints from the hallway.

  Sara used a database that identified the running-shoe design as the probable product of a company called Racers; the match was not exact, due to the imperfect nature of the crime-scene footprint. So Warrick went online and found the number for the corporate office in Oregon.

  “Racers Shoes and Athletic Apparel,” said a perky female voice. “How may I direct your call?”

  “My name is Warrick Brown. I’m with the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. I need to talk to someone about sales of different product lines of your shoes.”

  There was a silence at the other end.

  Finally, Warrick said, “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the voice said. “I had to ask my supervisor how to route your call. I’m going to transfer you to Ms. Kotsay in sales.”

  “Thank you.”

  He heard a phone ring twice, then another female voice—somewhat older, more professional—said, “Sondra Kotsay—how may I help you?”

  Warrick explained the situation.

  “This is a most unusual request, Mr. Brown. We manufacture many lines of shoes.”

  “I know. And we have a tentative match from a database, already. But I could really use your expert confirmation.”

  “Am I going to have to testify?”

  He smiled to himself. “Probably not. I’d just like to fax you a footprint.”

  “Oh,” she said, “well, that would be fine,” and gave him the number.

  He chose not to send her the bloody print he’d highlighted with the Leuco Crystal Violet and instead sent her one from the landing that Grissom had obtained with the electrostatic print lifter.

  A few minutes later, he was asking the woman, “Did you get that?”

  There was a moment of silence on the line, then Sondra came back on the phone. “Came through fine,” she announced. “Give me a little time. I’ll call you back when I’ve got something.”

  How tired he was just dawning on him, Warrick wandered down to the break room and got himself some pineapple juice out of the fridge. He went to see Sara, at her computer, but she wasn’t there. He tracked her down—in all places, at the morgue, standing over Dinglemann’s corpse.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “No…I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Why are we working so hard to find out who killed this guy? Why am I busting my butt to find his killer?” She pointed at the body. “I mean, mob lawyer, getting the scum of the earth off, scot free…”

  “Better not let Gris hear you talking like that.”

  She threw her gaze at him, and it was almost a glare. “I’m not talking to Grissom. I’m talking to you.”

  “You know it’s not for us to decide.” Warrick moved a little closer, so that Dinglemann lay between them. “This guy, he’s past all that now. Good, evil—doesn’t matter. He’s been murdered. That puts him in the next world, if there is one—but his body’s in our world.”

  She thought about that, then she shrugged. “Maybe it is that simple. I don’t know. It’s just…hard for me.”

  “Well, if you can’t divorce yourself from the good and bad, think of the guy who did this. Somebody who takes money to take lives. That bad enough for you?”

  She smiled, just a little. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll do it.”

  His cell phone rang and they both jumped. He almost dropped it in his haste to answer. “Warrick Brown.”

  “Sondra Kotsay, Mr. Brown. I think I can help you.”

  Waving at Sara that he had to take this call, Warrick went back down the hall to his office, grabbed a pad and plopped into his chair.

  The professional voice said, “The print that you faxed us is for our X-15 running shoe.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a line that, I’m sorry to say, has not done very well for us.”

  Warrick knew that the smaller the production run, the better his chances. “How many have been produced?”

  “Before production stopped, just under one million pair.”

  His heart dropping to his stomach, his head drooping, he said, “A million?”

  “I know that sounds daunting, Mr. Brown. But it’s not that bad—at least not for you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Over half were never sold.”

  That helped—sort of. As she gave him her report, he scribbled the information on the pad.

  “And of the remaining half-million,” she said, “only about one hundred pair were sold in the greater Las Vegas area.”

  He was liking the sound of this more and more.

  “The particular size that you gave us, men’s size eleven, sold less than two dozen pair in the Vegas area.”

  The smile split his face nearly in half. “Thank you, Ms. Kotsay. Great work.”

  “Would you like the names and addresses of the retailers that sold them?”

  Would you like to marry me? he thought. “Thank you, Ms. Kotsay—that would be incredibly helpful.”

  She faxed him the list.

  And then Warrick Brown went looking for Grissom.

  8

  As Catherine looked on, Dr. Robbins matched Malachy Fortunato’s dental records against the teeth of the mummy. Both criminalist and coroner were in scrubs, but underneath his, Robbins was in a pinstriped shirt and diagonally striped tie with charcoal slacks; he’d had a court appearance today.

  It was a little before seven P.M.—Catherine in early again, shift not officially beginning till eleven.

  The coroner would study the dental X ray, then bend over the mummy, then straighten to check the X ray, a dance Robbins repeated half a dozen times before waving her over. “Catherine Willows, meet Malachy Fortunato.”

  She smiled. “At long last?”

  Nodding, he said, “At long last—trust me, this is indeed the elusive Mr. Fortunato. We have a textbook dentalwork match.”

  “Well, well,” she said, looking down at the mummy, her hands pressed together as if she were contemplating a fine meal. “Mr. Fortunato, it’s nice to finally meet you…. Now that we know who you are, we’ll see if we can’t find your murderer.”

  The leathery mummy had no reply.

  “Nice work, Doc,” she said, and waved at Robbins on her way through the door.

  “That’s what I do,” he said to the swinging door.

  Out of her scrubs, Catherine ran into Nick, coming out of the lab.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re in early, too, I see.”

  “Hey,” he said. But he looked a little glum. “DNA’s going to take another week—they’re completely backed up in there.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said with a grin. “Dr. Robbins just matched the dental records to
our mummy—Malachy Fortunato.”

  “All right!”

  “You did good with that ring, Nick.”

  “Thanks.”

  They headed into the break room for coffee. Nick poured, asking, “When was the last time this office solved a mob hit?”

  “A week ago never. Surprisingly little of that in Vegas.”

  “Like they say, you don’t defecate where you dine.”

  “I always try not to.” She sipped her coffee, feeling almost giddy. “We’re on a roll, Nick. Let’s get this guy.”

  “Sure—what’s fifteen years between friends?”

  She half-frowned, half-smiled. “You tryin’ to rain on my parade?”

  “No way. No statute of limitations on murder. What do you need from me?”

  She headed out of the break room, coffee cup in hand. “We’ll get to that. First, let’s go tell Grissom what we’ve got.”

  After Warrick explained what they’d turned up at the casino and at the storefront in Henderson, Grissom said, “This still doesn’t prove he’s local.”

  Grissom was behind his desk, jumbles of papers, a pile of binders seemingly about to topple, and an unfinished glass of iced tea cluttering the desk, as well as assorted displayed insect specimens, dead and alive. Warrick sat in one of the two chairs opposite his boss, and Sara leaned against a file cabinet in the corner.

  Sara said, “But the maildrop—”

  Grissom shook his head. “Our man could just be using the maildrop. And who knows how many slot cards he has in how many names, and in how many casinos…in how many towns.”

  “What about the shoe?” Warrick asked.

  Grissom said, “That will help, particularly in ascertaining whether he’s local. But half a million pair were sold nationally, you said.”

  Warrick nodded, unhappily.

  Grissom continued: “For that shoe to be of any real benefit, we’ve got to find the foot that goes in it.”

  Sara smirked. “The guy attached to the foot would also be nice.”

  Warrick sighed and said, “Tomorrow morning, I can start watching the older tapes at the casino. If our man is local, that’s a good place to look.”

  “It is,” Grissom said, nodding. “No luck with the prints? Anything on ‘Peter Randall’?”

  “No and no,” Sara said.