Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

The FBI agent’s face turned white and he was trembling as he moved his hand away. Brass moved toward Culpepper, fist poised to coldcock him; but Grissom stepped between them.

  “Calm down, everybody,” Grissom said. Then he turned to the devastated FBI man.

  The younger marshal holding on to his arm, Hyde said, “You’re in charge, Culpepper—remember, you’re in charge!”

  “Agent Culpepper,” Grissom said, “either we’re going to walk out of here with Hyde in our custody, or you can go downstairs with us and face the media. How do you think you’re going to explain to the American people that you’re aiding and abetting a murderer? Obstruction is nothing compared to accessory after the fact.”

  Culpepper seemed to wilt there in front of them.

  Hyde said, “Goddamnit, Culpepper—they’re bluffing!”

  Time seemed to stop as the two men stared at each other, like gunfighters on a Western street; but Grissom had already won, without using any weapon but his wits.

  “Fine,” the agent said to Grissom. “Take him.”

  Hyde, realizing he’d just been sold out, tried to make a break for it, yanking himself free from the younger marshal’s grip, running toward the gathering crowd at the end of the hallway. But he didn’t get six feet before Warrick and Nick grabbed him on either side. Before he could do more than wrestle around a little, Robinson had his hands cuffed behind him.

  “Smart decision, Agent Culpepper,” Grissom said. “It’s just sad when a man of your capabilities goes tilting at windmills.”

  “Go to hell, Grissom.”

  Grissom cocked his head. “Is that any way to talk to a ‘brother’ officer?”

  Culpepper muttered, “Next time,” then turned on his heels and headed quickly down the corridor, almost on the run—away from the crowd.

  And his witness.

  “Culpepper!” Hyde yelled. “What, you’re gonna leave me hanging?”

  “Actually,” Brass said, “it’s lethal injection.”

  “Cul-pepper!” he wailed.

  But Culpepper was gone.

  Ambling up to Grissom’s side, Catherine said, “You know for somebody who smiles as much as he does, Culpepper doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.”

  “He’s lucky I didn’t cap his ass,” Robinson said, “goin’ for that gun…”

  The older marshal extended his hand to Grissom. “Nice piece of work, even if we were on the receiving end of some of it…. I’m sorry, what was your name?”

  Warrick—who had one of Hyde’s arms—said, “Why, that’s the Lone Ranger,” and Nick—who had Hyde’s other arm—grinned big.

  Smiling, their boss said to the marshal, “Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau.”

  As they shook hands, the marshal said, “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Grissom.” He nodded toward Hyde, who stood between Warrick and Nick with his head low. “We’ve been babysitting that stuck-up prick for too long. It’ll be good to see him pay for his crimes, for a change.”

  “See what we can do.”

  Then the marshal turned to his young partner, saying, “Come on, Ken—we better get goin’. We’re gonna be filling out reports on this one for the next hundred years.”

  Not as enthusiastic as his partner, the younger marshal followed the more experienced man up the hallway with a frown, apparently trying to assess how much damage he had just done to his career.

  Brass moved in front of Hyde, gave him a nice wide smile. “You have the right to remain silent…”

  “Well,” Catherine said to Grissom. “You got him—you happy?”

  “We got him,” Grissom corrected. “And, yes, I’m very happy.”

  “You don’t look happy.”

  “Well, I am.”

  The killer had been stopped, he was thinking; but what a swath of carnage this sociopath had cut….

  As Nick and Warrick led the prisoner toward the elevator—with Robinson accompanying them—Brass, Sara, Catherine, and Grissom all fell in behind.

  As they waited for the elevator, Catherine asked Grissom, “So—what do we do now?”

  Everyone except Hyde looked Grissom’s way.

  Bestowing them all a smile, Grissom said, “Let’s go back where it’s warm.”

  CSI:

  Crime Scene Investigation™

  Sin City

  For Chris Kaufmann—

  the CSI who saw the body

  M.A.C. and M.V.C.

  “When two objects come into contact,

  there is a material exchange

  from each to the other.”

  —EDMUND LOCARD, 1910

  Father of Forensic Science

  Las Vegas—like New York and rust—never sleeps. From dusk till dawn, the sprawl of the city and its glittering neon jewelery enliven the desert landscape, competing with a million stars, all of them so tiny compared to Siegfried and Roy. From the fabled “Strip” of Las Vegas Boulevard to the world’s tallest eyesore—the Stratosphere—Vegas throbs to its own 24/7 pulse, hammering into the wee-est of wee hours.

  If such modern monuments as the Luxor and Bellagio indicate a certain triumph of man over nature, this shimmer of wholesome sin is nonetheless contained by a desert landscape, including mountains (almost) as green as money, as peaceful as the Strip is not. And a slumbering city—as normal as any urban sprawl, people living, working, loving, dying—exists in the reality of Vegas off the Strip, away from Fremont Street, a world where couples occasionally marry in a real chapel, as opposed to a neon-trimmed storefront where the pastor is Elvis, and “gambling” means getting to work five minutes late, or eating fried food, or cheating on your wife, or maybe trying to get away with murder, figurative or literal.

  Nonetheless, as Sinatra said of New York, New York (the town, not the resort), Las Vegas, Nevada, indeed does not sleep. This is a city where, for many a citizen, working nights is the norm, from a pit boss at the Flamingo to a counter clerk at a convenience store, from an exotic dancer in a live nude girls club to a criminalist working the graveyard shift.

  1

  Millie Blair hated spending nights alone. She had always been anxious, and even being reborn in the blood of Christ hadn’t helped. Nor did the nature of her husband Arthur’s job, which sometimes meant long evenings waiting for him to get home.

  Tonight, Millie couldn’t seem to stop wringing her hands. Her collar-length brunette hair, now graying in streaks, framed a pleasant, almost pretty oval face tanned by days of outdoor sports—playing golf or tennis with friends from the church—and she looked young for forty. A petite five-four and still fit, she knew her husband continued to find her attractive, due in part to her rejection of the frumpy attire many of her friends had descended to in middle age. Tonight she wore navy slacks with a white silk blouse and an understated string of pearls.

  Millie was glad Arthur still found her desirable—there was no sin in marital sex, after all, and love was a blessed thing between husband and wife—but she was less than pleased with her appearance, noting unmistakable signs of aging in her unforgiving makeup mirror, of late. Frown lines were digging tiny trenches at the corners of her mouth—the anxiety, again—and although she tried to compensate with lipstick, her lips seemed thinner, and her dark blue eyes could take on a glittering, glazed hardness when she was upset…like now.

  Moving to the window, she nervously pulled back the curtains, peered out into the purple night like a pioneer woman checking for Indians, saw nothing moving, then resumed her pacing. Tonight her anxiety had a rational basis—Millie had heard something terribly disturbing yesterday…an audiotape of an argument between a certain married couple.

  It was as if some desert creature had curled up in her stomach and died there—or rather refused to die, writhing spasmodically in the pit of her belly. Millie knew something was wrong, dreadfully wrong, with her best friend, Lynn Pierce. A member of Millie’s church, Lynn seemed to have fallen off the planet since the two women had spoken, at around four P.M. this afternoon.
>
  “Mil,” Lynn had said, something ragged in her voice, “I need to see you…I need to see you right away.”

  “Is it Owen again?” Millie asked, the words tumbling out. “Another argument? Has he threatened you? Has he—”

  “I can’t talk right now.”

  Something in Lynn’s throat caught—a sob? A gasp? How strange the way fear and sadness could blur.

  Millie had clutched the phone as if hauling her drowning friend up out of treacherous waters. “Oh, Lynn, what is it? How can I help?”

  “I…I’ll tell you in person. When I see you.”

  “Well that’s fine, dear. Don’t you worry—Art and I are here for you. You just come right over.”

  “Is Arthur there now?”

  “No, I meant…moral support. Is it that bad, that Arthur isn’t here? Are you…frightened? Should I call Art and have him—”

  “No! No. It’ll be fine. I’ll be right over.”

  “Good. Good girl.”

  “On my way. Fifteen minutes tops.”

  Those had been Lynn’s last words before the women hung up.

  Lynn Pierce—the most reliable, responsible person Millie knew—had not kept her word; she had not come “right over.” Fifteen minutes passed, half an hour, an hour, and more.

  Millie called the Pierce house and got only the answering machine.

  Okay, maybe Millie was an anxious, excitable woman; all right, maybe she did have a melodramatic streak. Pastor Dan said Millie just had a good heart, that she truly cared about people, that her worry came from a good place.

  This worry for Lynn may have come from a good place, but Millie feared Lynn had gone to a very bad place. She had a sick, sick feeling she would never see her best friend again.

  As such troubled, troublesome thoughts roiled in her mind like a gathering thunderstorm, Millie paced and fretted and wrung her hands and waited for her husband Arthur to get home. Art would know what to do—he always did. In the meantime, Millie fiddled with her wedding ring, and concocted tragic scenarios in her mind, periodically chiding herself that Lynn had only been missing a few hours, after all.

  But that tape.

  That terrible tape she and Arthur had heard last night….

  Millie perked up momentarily when Gary, their son, came home. Seventeen, a senior, Gary—a slender boy with Arthur’s black hair and her oval face—had his own car and more and more now, his own life.

  Their son kept to himself and barely spoke to them—though he was not sullen, really. He attended church with them willingly, always ready to raise his hands to the Lord. That told Millie he must still be a good boy.

  For a time she and Arthur had been worried about their son, when Gary was dating that wild Karlson girl with her nose rings and pierced tongue and tattooed ankle and cigarettes. Lately he’d started dating Lori—Lynn’s daughter, a good girl, active in the church like her mom.

  He was shuffling up the stairs—his bedroom was on the second floor—when she paused in her pacing to ask, “And how was school?”

  He had his backpack on as he stood there, dutifully, answering with a shrug.

  From the bottom of the stairs, she asked, “Didn’t you have a test today? Biology, wasn’t it?”

  Another shrug.

  “Did you do well?”

  One more shrug.

  “Your father’s going to be late tonight. You want to wait to eat with us, or…?”

  Now he was starting up the stairs again. “I’ll nuke something.”

  “I can make you macaroni, or—”

  “Nuke is fine.”

  “All right.”

  He flicked a smile at her, before disappearing around the hallway, going toward his bedroom, the door of which was always closed, lately.

  Growing up seemed to be hard on Gary, and she wished that she and Arthur could help; but this afternoon’s taciturn behavior was all too typical of late. Gary barely seemed to acknowledge them, bestowing occasional cursory words and a multitude of shrugs. Still, his grades remained good, so maybe this was just part of growing up. A child slipping away from his parents into his own life was apparently part of God’s plan.

  But the problem of coping with Gary, Millie realized, was something to be worried about after this mess with Lynn got cleared up. The woman let out a long breath of relief as she peeked through the drapes and watched Arthur’s Lexus ease into the driveway.

  Finally.

  A moment later she heard the bang of the car door, the hum of the garage door opener, and—at last!—Arthur stepped into the kitchen.

  Stocky, only a couple of inches taller than his wife, a black-haired fire hydrant of a man, Arthur Blair—like Millie—had retained a youthful demeanor. Even though he was older than his wife (forty-four), his hair stayed free of gray; God had blessed him with good genes and without his wife’s anxious streak. Black-framed Coke-bottle glasses turned his brown eyes buggy, but Millie’s husband remained a handsome man.

  Arthur had first met coed Millie (“Never call me Mildred!”) Evans at a frat party back in their undergraduate days. A sorority sister and a little wild, she had dressed like, and looked like, that sexy slender Pat Benatar, all curly black hair and spandex, and she took his breath away. Immediately recognizing that she was out of his league, the bookish Arthur wouldn’t have said a word to her if she hadn’t struck up a conversation at the keg. Throughout the course of the evening they’d exchanged glances, but no further words. He could tell she was disappointed in him, but he’d been just too shy to do anything about it, at first; and then, pretty soon, he’d been too drunk….

  The next semester they’d had an Econ class together and she had recognized a familiar face and sat down next to him. Now, twenty years later, she still hadn’t left his side.

  Walking through the kitchen, Arthur moved into the dining room, set his briefcase on the table, tossed his suit jacket onto a chair and passed straight into the living room to find Millie standing in the middle of the room, holding herself as if she were freezing. Her face seemed drained of color, her eyes filigreed red. She’d clearly been crying….

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asked, moving to her, taking her into his arms.

  Arthur knew his anxious wife might have been upset about anything or nothing; but he always took her distress seriously. He loved her.

  “It…it’s Lynn,” she said, sobs breaking loose as he hugged and patted her.

  It was as if his arms had broken some sort of dam and she cried uncontrollably for a very long time before she finally reined in her emotions enough to speak coherently.

  Arthur held her at arm’s length. “What’s wrong, baby? What about Lynn? Has that tape got you going…?”

  “Not the tape…I mean, yes the tape, but no…” Gulping back a last sob, Millie said, “She phoned this afternoon, about four—real upset. Said she had to see me, talk to me. Said she was on her way over.”

  “Well, what did she have to say, once she got here?”

  “Arthur, that’s just it—she never showed up!”

  She told him about trying to call, getting the machine, and how she just knew Lynn had “disappeared.”

  Her husband shook his head, dismissive of the problem but not of her. “Honey, it could be anything. There’s no point in getting all worked up…at least, not until we know what happened.”

  She stepped out of his embrace. Her eyes moved to the drawer handle of the end table across the room. His gaze followed hers—they both knew what lay in that shallow drawer: the tape. That awful audiotape that they had played last night….

  “Just because…” He stopped. “…this doesn’t mean…necessarily…”

  She drew in a deep breath, calming herself, or trying to. “I know, I know…It’s just that…well, you know if she’d been delayed, she would have called, Arthur. Certainly by now she would have called.”

  He knew she was right. After a sigh and a nod, he asked, “Is Gary home?”

  She nodded back. “In his ro
om, of course. Behind the closed door.”

  “It’s normal.”

  “He…sort of gave me the silent treatment again.”

  “Really?”

  “Well. No. He was polite…I guess.”

  Arthur walked to the foot of the stairs and called up. “Gary!”

  Silence.

  A curtness came into Arthur’s voice, now: “Gary!”

  The clean-cut young man peeked around the hallway corner, as if he’d been hiding there all the while. “Yes, sir?”

  “Your mother and I are going out. You okay with getting your own dinner?”

  “Yes, sir. Already told mom I would microwave something. Anyway, I have to go into work for a couple of hours. Maybe I’ll just grab something on the way.”

  “Well, that’ll be fine, son…. We’ll see you later.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The boy disappeared again.

  Millie, shaking her head, said, “All I get are shrugs. I can’t believe how he opens up to you. He really respects you, Art.”

  Arthur said nothing, still staring up the stairs at where his boy had been. He wondered if his son’s respect was real or just for show—assuming the kid even knew the difference. Arthur had had the same kind of relationship with his own father, always “yes sirring” and “no sirring,” thinking he was doing it just to stay on the old man’s good side, then eventually finding out that he really did respect his father. He hoped Gary would some day feel that way about him…even if the boy didn’t do so now.

  He turned to his wife. “Come on, sweetie,” he said. “And get your coat. Some bite in the air, tonight.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked, even as she followed his directions, pulling a light jacket from the front closet. Also navy blue, the jacket didn’t quite match her slacks and she hoped at night no one would notice.

  “I think we’ll drop by at our good friends, the Pierce’s.”

  She didn’t argue. For a woman with an anxious streak, Millie could be strong, even fearless, particularly when the two of them were together. Arthur realized going over to the Pierces was the course of action she’d wanted all along, she just hadn’t wanted to be the one to suggest it.