Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

  So the CSI stepped forward and said, in a friendly manner, “Ms. Jameson—you liked Jenna. She was your friend. Let us do our job. We’re just trying to eliminate you as suspect…that’s all.”

  Tera thought about that, and said, “Yeah, right,” not seeming to believe Catherine, but not as worked up, either.

  Then the dancer was heading quickly up the stairs, ponytail bouncing.

  When Tera was out of sight, Catherine said, “Greg had better come through for us, or we might find ourselves on the crappy end of the lawsuit stick.”

  Conroy sighed. “Thanks for playing diplomat, Catherine—I was kind of stepping over the line, there. And with the mood Mobley’s been in lately, I don’t want any part of pissing off the sheriff.”

  “I hear that,” Sara said.

  But Catherine knew it was worse than just department politics. Detective Erin Conroy had taken in one bum suspect, and doing that a second time could make the case practically impossible to prosecute…if they ever got that far. Any decent defense attorney would make mincemeat of them for arresting two wrong suspects—talk about reasonable doubt—and Jenna Patrick’s killer, whoever he or she might be, would walk smiling into the sunset.

  “Well, if I can’t come up with something solid,” Conroy said to the CSIs as she helped them load up the SUV, “you ladies better find it for me, somewhere in all this evidence we’ve been gathering…and soon.”

  Then the detective went to her Taurus, and Catherine and Sara to their Tahoe, to head back. The sun was coming up, and another shift was over.

  13

  The next night’s shift had barely begun when Warrick Brown stuck his head into Grissom’s office, waving a file folder. “Lil Moe’s real name is Kevin Sadler.”

  Grissom looked up from files of his own. “The pusher you busted? What was that about? Bring me up to speed.”

  Warrick remained in the doorway. “Sadler’s a two-bit dealer, done some county time, never handled enough weight to go the distance.”

  “And this has to do with our case how?”

  Warrick offered up a sly smile. “Sadler stamps his bags with a little red triangle.”

  “Like the bag of coke we found at Pierce’s?”

  “Exactly like.”

  Grissom rocked back. “So—does this mean we have a new suspect?”

  Warrick leaned against the jamb. “You mean, did Owen Pierce hire this scumbag to off his wife? Or maybe did Owen and his connection have a falling out, and Lynn Pierce caught the bad end of it?”

  Impatiently, Grissom said, “Yes.”

  “No,” Warrick said. “Sadler was in lockup for three months—grass bust. Just got out.”

  “Just?”

  “Two days after Lynn Pierce went missing.”

  Grissom made a disgusted face. “Didn’t take him long to jump back into business. Well, at least you got him off the street…. What’s next?”

  “Gris, Little Moe’s not a dead-end.”

  “There’s mo’?”

  Warrick actually laughed. “That wasn’t bad, Gris. Anyway, just two short years ago, Sadler was a baseball player at UNLV. Guess who his physical therapist was?”

  Grissom’s eyes glittered. “Does he live in a castle?”

  “How’s this for a scenario? Kevin Sadler, aka Lil Moe, enters his new, lucrative line of chemical sales. And maybe his physical therapist is not just a member of the Hair Club for men…”

  Grissom frowned thoughtfully. “He’s the president?”

  Warrick shrugged a shoulder. “People who come to massage therapy are hurting—and massage isn’t cheap. Pierce pulls down seventy-five an hour for a session…so he’s obviously attracting a clientele who could afford recreational drugs to help ease their pain.”

  Still frowning, Grissom—already on his feet—asked, “You run this by Brass?”

  “Oh yeah—more important, he’s about to run it past our friend Kevin…which is to say Moe.” Warrick checked his watch. “They should be heading into the interrogation room about…now.”

  Through the two-way glass they could see the slender, dread-locked Sadler, in one of the county’s orange jumpsuits, sitting sullenly at the table, a bandage on his forehead. Seated beside him was Jerry Shannon, the kind of attorney who was glad for whatever scraps the Public Defender’s office could toss his way. Short and malnourished-looking, the attorney looked superficially spiffy in a brown sportcoat, green tie and yellow shirt, which on closer inspection indicated his tailor shop of choice might be Goodwill.

  Brass was on his feet, kind of drifting between Sadler and his attorney, whose arms were folded as he monotoned, “My client has nothing to say.”

  Warrick and Grissom exchanged glances: they’d encountered Shannon before; low-rent, yes, thread-bare, sure…but no fool.

  Brass directed his gaze at Sadler, and with no sympathy, asked, “How’s the ribs?”

  “They hurt like a motherfucker!” Sadler said, and grimaced, his discomfort apparently no pose. “I’m gonna sue your damn asses, police brutality shit…. ”

  The skinny attorney leaned toward his client and touched an orange sleeve. “You don’t have to answer any of the captain’s questions, Kevin—including the supposedly ‘friendly’ ones.”

  “You prefer Kevin, then?” Brass asked. “Not Moe?”

  The dealer looked toward his lawyer, then back at Brass, blankly. Shannon leaned back in his chair, folded his arms again, smiled to himself.

  Brass was saying, “Found a lot of grass on you last night, Kevin—not to mention the coke and the meth, and the pills. County just won’t cover it. This time you’re gonna get a little mo’ yourself…in Carson City.”

  Trading glances with his attorney, Sadler tried to look defiant and unconcerned; but the fear in his eyes was evident.

  “You positive you don’t want to answer a few questions for us? Help us out?”

  “Hell no! You—”

  But Sadler’s attorney had leaned forward and touched that orange sleeve again, silencing his client.

  Pleasantly, Shannon inquired, “And what would be in it for my client? If he ‘helped you out.’ ”

  “That would depend on the answers he gives,” Brass said.

  Shannon shook his head. “You want Kevin to answer your questions, and then you’ll offer us a deal? That’s a little backwards, Captain Brass, isn’t it?”

  Brass shrugged. “Fine—we can let the judge sort it out. What do you think, Kevin? You’re young enough to do ten years standing on your head—you won’t even be all that old when you get out.”

  “Captain Brass,” Shannon began.

  But Sadler shook the attorney’s hand off his sleeve and said, surly, “Ask your damn questions.”

  Brass took the seat next to Sadler. He even smiled a little as he asked, “Kevin—last night you told us you didn’t know Owen Pierce…was that true?”

  Sadler’s forehead tightened in thought.

  “I guess ten years isn’t such a long time,” Brass said, reflectively. “You might even be out in five. They even have a baseball team at Carson City—how is the knee, anyway?”

  Sadler got the message, and shook his head, disgustedly. “I only know him that way…Pierce worked on my knee, some. That’s it. End of story.”

  Brass rose, and looked toward the two-way window.

  “That’s my cue,” Warrick said to Grissom.

  Moments later Warrick entered the interrogation room waving a clear evidence bag; carrying it over to Sadler, Warrick let him see the bag within the bag, the red triangle winking at him. “How did this end up in Owen Pierce’s house, if he was just your physical therapist?”

  The attorney said, “Pierce could’ve got that from anybody. There are countless sources in this town.”

  Warrick showed the bag to the attorney, now. “But those sources don’t use this particular signature…. ” And now the CSI turned toward the dealer. “Do they, Kevin?”

  Sadler turned away from Warrick’s gaze.<
br />
  “Were you paying Pierce in coke, Kevin?” Warrick pressed. “Is that how it worked? Him tradin’ you physical therapy for his chemical recreation?”

  The dealer settled deeper into sullen silence.

  “The hell with this!” Brass said, roaring in off the sidelines. “Kevin can rot in jail for the next decade or so—that’s a given.” The detective leaned in and grinned terribly at the sulky face. “But I will promise you this, Mr. Sadler—when we put Pierce away for murder, I’ll find a way to latch onto you as an accessory.”

  Brass motioned with his head to Warrick and they headed toward the door.

  “Accessory?” Sadler blurted, his eyes wide, batting away his lawyer’s hand. “Hey, man I ain’t accessory to shit!”

  Brass stopped, his hand on the knob. “Did you know Lynn Pierce?”

  “I never even met the wife. I was never over there when she around—mostly we did business at his office.”

  Brass strolled back over. “What kind of business, Kevin?”

  Sadler looked at his attorney a beat too long. They had him.

  “I seen the papers and TV,” Sadler said, tentatively. “Is she…missing or, she dead?”

  “Mrs. Pierce?” Brass said, conversationally. “Dead. Cut up with a chain saw.”

  That stopped Sadler, who blew out some air. “Man, that is cold…. I had nothing to do with that. You sound sure he did it…”

  Warrick said, “If he didn’t, we want to prove that, too.”

  Sadler snorted a laugh. “Yeah, right—I forgot all about where the police was into justice and shit.”

  Tersely, the attorney said, “Kevin, if you must speak…think first. And check with me if you have doubts about—”

  “I’m on top of this,” Sadler said sharply to Shannon. Looking from Brass to Warrick and back, he said, “That stuff last night…the blade and all—that was goin’ no place. You dig? That’s just, you know—theater.”

  Warrick, who still had a small Band-Aid on his neck, said, “Theater.”

  “Yeah—people got to take this shit serious.”

  “Dealing, you mean.”

  Sadler shrugged. “Anyway, I never killed nobody. I scare people if I have to—to buy me, you understand, street cred.”

  Brass said, “Kevin—when your knee went south, and you dropped out of school, and entered your new line of work…did Owen Pierce help you line up clients by introducing you to certain of his patients?”

  “…If I answer that, it’ll help clear up this murder? Won’t be used to nail my sorry ass to the wall?”

  Brass said, “All we want is Lynn Pierce’s killer. I’m a Homicide captain—I don’t do drugs.”

  “That’s a good policy,” Sadler admitted. Then, smiling broadly, the dealer said, “It is a sweet deal—his clients, my clients, got a lot in common, y’know: money and pain.”

  “Are you and Pierce still in business together?”

  “Oh yeah, we tight—ain’t shit could come between us. I even let him borrow my boat.”

  Brass’s eyes widened. “You’ve got a boat?”

  “Yeah,” Sadler said, misreading the detective’s reaction. “What, a brother can’t own a boat?”

  Warrick asked, “What kind of boat is it?”

  “Three hundred eighty Supersport. That is one fast motherfucker, man.”

  Brass again: “And you let Pierce borrow it?”

  “Sure…We might come from different places, but, hey—we understand each other, ’s all ’bout the benjamins, baby. Hell, he even kept an eye on my crib while I was in the lockup—brought my mail in, let the housekeeper in and shit.”

  “This was during your recent vacation with the county?”

  “Yeah—I only jus’ got out. Don’t you got that in your computer?”

  Leaning in alongside the dealer, Brass said, “Kevin, you seem to have heard about Lynn Pierce’s disappearance.”

  “Yeah. I don’t live in a fuckin’ cave.”

  Warrick, seeing where Brass was going, dropped in at the young man’s other shoulder. “Then you heard about the body part that was found at Lake Mead?”

  “Yeah, sure, I…” Once more, Sadler looked from Warrick to Brass and back again, this time with huge eyes. “Oh, shit…are you sayin’ he used my boat to…”

  The attorney said, “Kevin, be quiet.”

  “Your good friend Owen Pierce,” Warrick said, “made an accessory-after-the-fact out of you.”

  “But I was in jail!”

  “An accessory doesn’t have to be present, just help out—lend a boat, for example.”

  The attorney said, “Gentlemen, I think my client should confer with me before this goes anywhere else.”

  But Brass said, “How would you like a pass on the drugs?”

  Sadler said, “Hell, yes!”

  And his attorney settled back in his chair, silently withdrawing his demand.

  “Then,” Brass continued, “give us the address and key to your house, and the location of your boat.”

  Sadler frowned. “Just let you go through all of my shit?”

  “That’s right—and we don’t need a search warrant, do we? After all, you’re going to be a witness for the prosecution.”

  Shannon was way ahead of his client, leaning forward to say to Brass, “And anything you might find, beyond the purview of your murder investigation, goes unseen?”

  Brass thought about that, then glanced at the two-way glass.

  Moments later, Grissom entered the interrogation room, conferred briefly with Brass, who then said, “We can live with that.”

  Sadler looked at his attorney, who was smiling. Shannon said, “So can we, gentleman,” with a smugness not at all commensurate with how little the lawyer had had to do with the deal.

  Gil Grissom, Jim Brass, Nick Stokes, and Warrick Brown—the latter behind the wheel—rode together in one of the black SUV’s, their first stop the Quonset hut-style storage building where Sadler kept his speedboat. One of half a dozen adjacent cubicles, the oversized shed was at the far end of a U-Rent-It complex not far from where Sadler lived.

  Warrick dusted the metal door handle for prints, but the CSI found nothing; no surprise, as the desert air caused fingerprints to disappear sooner than in more humid climes.

  With that pointless task completed, they swung the overhead door up and moved inside to have a look at the drug dealer’s very expensive boat. With no electricity in the garage, they compensated with flashlights. Forty feet long, the sleek white craft was crammed into the shabby space with barely enough room to shut the door, a beautiful woman in a burlap sack. Triple 250-horsepower Mercury motors lined the tail and, as Brass played his beam of light over the engines, he let out a long low appreciative whistle.

  “Fast boat,” he said.

  “If you say so,” Grissom said, eyes on the hunt for something pertinent.

  Nick and Warrick climbed up into the craft while Brass and Grissom remained on the cement floor. Warrick started at the stern, Nick in the bow, and they worked toward the center. To the naked eye, the boat appeared pristine, and the lingering scent of solvent and ammonia suggested a fresh cleaning.

  “When was the last time Sadler had the boat out?” Nick called down.

  Shining his flashlight on his notebook, Brass said, “If our charming cooperative witness can be trusted, right after the Fourth of July. He was in lockup most of the time after that.”

  Nick glanced back at Warrick. “Then where’s the dust?”

  “Boat’s way too clean,” Warrick said, shaking his head. “Ask me, somebody used it, and cleaned it.”

  From below, Grissom said, “Don’t ask yourself—ask the evidence.”

  Nick and Warrick dusted the controls and the wheel for prints. Everything had been wiped. Opening the fish box, Nick shone his beam inside and saw that it too had been hosed clean.

  “There’s nothing here,” Warrick said finally. “There’d be more dust and dirt if it had come straight off the showroo
m floor.”

  “Keep at it,” Grissom said, working the cubicle itself.

  Up in the boat, the indoor/outdoor carpet covering the cockpit floor was a mix of navy, light blue, and white swirls. Even on his hands and knees, with the beam of his light barely six inches off the deck, Warrick doubted he would see anything even if it was there. Fifteen minutes of crawling around later, he had proved himself correct.

  Nick jumped down onto the cement, nimble for the big guy he was. “I don’t know what to say, Grissom.”

  Grissom’s smile was barely there. “Remember the old movies when the Indians were out there, about to attack? ‘It’s quiet…’”

  “ ‘Too quiet,’ ” Nick finished, with a nod. “And this is too clean, way too clean for sitting as long as it’s supposed to…but we can’t find anything.”

  Grissom’s head tilted and an eyebrow hiked. “If a dismembered body was disposed of from the deck of that boat, Nick—what should we expect to find?”

  Nick smiled, nodded, went to Warrick’s field kit, picked out a bottle and tossed it up to him.

  “Luminol, Gris?” Warrick called down. “You don’t really think he cut her up on the boat, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” the supervisor said. “I wasn’t here when it happened…see if anything’s still here that can tell us.”

  Nick walked forward to where Brass stood with his arms crossed.

  “I thought we had the bastard,” said the detective.

  Shrugging, Nick said, “Grissom’s right—the cuter they think they are, the smarter they think they are, the surer a bet that they slipped somewhere.” He looked down, his gaze falling on the end of the trailer. “Anybody dust the hitch?”

  Brass looked at him, a tiny smile beginning at the corners of his mouth. “Not yet.”

  With the luminol sprayed over the cockpit, Warrick turned on the UV light source. He moved from bow to stern on the port side: nothing; going the opposite way on the starboard side, Warrick made it as far as the console before he saw the first glow…

  …a fluorescent dot.

  His breath caught and he froze, willing the tiny green spot to not be a figment of his imagination. Two more drops to the side, one more on the gunnel, and Warrick knew he was seeing the real thing. Retracing his steps to the center of the boat, he opened the fishbox. Though it had appeared clean at first glance, it now had a tiny fluorescent stripe on the bottom, against the back wall. One bag of body parts had leaked, he thought.