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  Again, no argument from Millie on that score. She just nodded, then—almost hiding behind him—she followed her husband up the curving walk to the front door.

  Arthur rang the bell and they waited. After thirty seconds or so, he rang it again, three times in rapid insistent succession. Again they waited almost a half a minute, an endless span to spend standing on a front porch; but this time as Arthur reached for the button, the door jerked open and they found themselves face-to-face with Lynn’s husband—Owen Pierce himself.

  Muscular in his gray Nike sweats, with silver glints in his dark hair, Pierce had striking blue eyes, and a ready, winning smile that displayed many white, straight teeth. Pierce’s face seemed to explode in delight. “Well, Art! Millie! What a nice surprise—what are you doing here? I mean…” He chuckled, apparently embarrassed that that might have sound ungracious. “How are you? We didn’t have plans for dinner or something tonight, did we? Lynn didn’t say anything…”

  The therapist’s grin seemed forced, and his words came too fast and were delivered too loudly. Arthur again considered those drug rumors. “No, no plans tonight, Owen. We were hoping to speak to Lynn.”

  “Lynn?” Pierce frowned in confusion, as if this were a name he’d never heard before.

  “Yes,” Arthur said. “Lynn. You remember, Owen—your wife?”

  An uncomfortable silence followed, as Pierce apparently tried to read Arthur’s words and tone.

  Finally, Millie stepped forward. “Owen, Lynn called me earlier, and said she was coming to see me…then she never showed up.”

  “Oh!” He smiled again, less dazzlingly. “Is that what this is about….”

  Millie said, “It’s just not like her, Owen. She would have called me, if she had a change in plans.”

  Pierce’s smile finally faded and his eyes tightened. “Her brother called. She barely took time to tell me! Something about an illness, and how they needed her there. You know how she jumps to, when her family’s involved. Anyway, she packed a few things and left, lickety split.”

  What a load of bull, Arthur thought. He knew Lynn Pierce wouldn’t leave the city without telling Millie where she was headed, and how long she’d be gone—particularly when Lynn had told Millie she was coming “right over”! Something was definitely not right here.

  Arthur considered the tape in Millie’s purse. Should he confront Pierce about it?

  As Arthur was mulling this, his wife took a step nearer to Pierce, saying, “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you, Owen. Lynn would never…”

  A frown crossed Pierce’s face and Millie fell silent. The expression replacing the phony smile was all too sincere: as if a rock had been lifted and the real Owen had been glimpsed wriggling there in the dirt.

  Over the years, the Blairs had both seen Pierce lose his temper, and it was never a pleasant sight—like a boiler exploding. Arthur took Millie gently if firmly by the arm and turned her toward the car. “Excuse us, Owen. Millie’s just concerned about Lynn, you know how women are.”

  Pierce twitched a sort of grin.

  As the couple moved away, Arthur said, “Hope Lynn has a good trip, Owen. Have her give us a call when she gets back, would you?…Thanks.”

  And all the time he spoke, Arthur steered Millie toward the car at the curb. She did not protest—she knew her place—but when he finally got her in the car, backed out of the driveway, and drove away from Owen Pierce and the castle house, she demanded an explanation.

  “Don’t you worry, darling,” Arthur said. “We’ll do something about that evil bastard.”

  Sometimes, when a swear word slipped out of him, she would scold him. He almost looked forward to the familiarity of it.

  But tonight, she said only, “Good. Good. Good.”

  And she sat beside him in the vehicle, with her fists clenched, the purse in her lap…and that tape, that terrible tape, in the purse.

  2

  CAPTAIN JIM BRASS AMBLED DOWN THE HALL TOWARD THE washed-out aqua warren of offices that served as headquarters for the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau, a coldly modern institutional setting for the number-two crime lab in the country. The sad-eyed detective was sharply attired—gray sports coat over a blue shirt, darker blue tie with gray diagonal stripes, and navy slacks—and his low-key demeanor masked a dogged professionalism.

  A cellophane bag dangled from the detective’s right hand, an audio tape within. Slowing to peer through various half-windowed walls, Brass passed several rooms before he found the CSI graveyard shift supervisor, Gil Grissom, in the break room at a small table, hunkered over a cup of coffee and a pile of papers. Dressed in black and wearing his wire-framed reading glasses, the CSI chief looked like a cross between a gunfighter and a science geek, Brass thought, then realized that that was a pretty accurate mix.

  Grissom—one of the top forensic entomologists in the country, among other things—was in his mid-forties, with his boyishly handsome features seemingly set in a state of perpetual preoccupation. Brass liked Gil, and felt that what some considered coldness in the man was really a self-imposed coolness, a detachment designed to keep the CSI chief’s eye on facts and his emotions in check.

  Brass pulled up a chair. “Latest issue of Cockroach Racing Monthly?”

  Grissom shook his head, and responded as if the detective’s question had been serious. “Staffing reports. Scuttlebutt is the County Board wants to cut the budget for next year.”

  “I heard that, too.” Brass sighed. “Doesn’t election time just bring out the best in people?”

  Grissom gave him a pursed-lipped look that had nothing to do with blowing a kiss.

  “Maybe you need something to put you in a better mood, Gil—like threats of dismemberment.”

  Grissom offered Brass another look, this one piqued with interest.

  Brass held up the plastic baggie and waved it like a hypnotist’s watch, Grissom’s eyes following accordingly. “Among your state-of-the-art, cutting-edge equipment…you got a cassette player?”

  Nodding, rising, removing his glasses, Grissom said, “In my office. What have you got?” He gathered up the pile of papers, the cup of coffee, and led Brass out into the hall.

  The detective fell in alongside Grissom as they moved down the corridor. “Interesting turn of events, just now, out at the front desk.”

  “Really?”

  They moved into Grissom’s office.

  “Really.”

  Brass had only lately ceased to be creeped out by Grissom’s inner sanctum, with its shelves of such jarred oddities as a pickled piglet and various embalmed animal and human organs, and assorted living, crawling creatures—a tarantula, a two-headed scorpion—in glassed-in homes. At least the batteries had finally worn down on the Big Mouth Billy Bass just above Grissom’s office door.

  A desk sat in the middle of the methodically cluttered office, canted at a forty-five-degree angle, two vinyl-covered metal frame chairs in front of it. Brass handed the bag over to Grissom, then plopped into a chair. Behind his desk, Grissom sat and placed the bag on his blotter like a jeweler mounting a stone. From the top righthand drawer, he withdrew a pair of latex gloves and placed them next to the bag.

  “Is this all tease,” Grissom said, hands folded, “or do you plan to put out?”

  Brass sat back, crossed his legs, twitched a non-smile. “This couple comes in tonight, to the front desk. Nice people, late thirties, early forties—straight as they come. He’s in the finance department at UNLV.”

  Grissom nodded.

  “Arthur and Millie Blair. They say their friend, woman named Lynn Pierce, has disappeared…and they think something ‘bad’ has happened to her.”

  Grissom’s eyes tightened, just a little. “How long has Lynn Pierce been missing?”

  Checking his watch, Brass said, “About seven hours.”

  Grissom’s eyes relaxed. “That’s not twenty-four. She may be gone, but she’s not ‘missing,’ yet.”

  Brass shrugged. “Officer at the desk
told ’em the same thing. That’s when they pulled out this tape.”

  Grissom glanced at the bag. “Which is a tape of what?”

  Brass had to smile—Grissom was like a kid waiting to tear into a Christmas present. “Supposedly an argument between Lynn Pierce and her husband.”

  “Husband?”

  Brass pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, filling Grissom in on the particulars—Owen Pierce, successful physical therapist, married eighteen years to the missing woman.

  “Clinic—‘Therapeutic Body Works’—in a strip mall out on Hidden Well Road. East of the Callaway Golf Center.”

  One of Grissom’s eyebrows arched in skeptical curiosity. “And the Blairs are in possession of this tape because…?”

  “This is where it gets good,” Brass said, shifting in the chair. “The Blairs say Mrs. Pierce showed up on their doorstep last night—with this tape in her hot little hand. Mrs. Pierce told her friends the Blairs that she’d hidden a voice-activated tape player in the kitchen. Wanted to prove what kind of verbal abuse she’d been suffering, of late.”

  “I like a victim who provides evidence for us,” Grissom said.

  “Well, then you’ll love Lynn Pierce. Her hidden microphone caught a doozy of an argument, it seems. Anyway, the Blairs said that Mrs. Pierce gave them the tape for safe keeping, then she sat with them and talked and talked about her marital problems, and trouble with their daughter, Lori…”

  “Lori is whose daughter?”

  “The Pierces. But most of all, Lynn was tired of the constant threats of violence her husband had been making.”

  “Let’s hear the tape.”

  Brass held up a palm. “You still haven’t heard the best part.”

  The detective told Grissom about the Blairs going to the Pierce home, where Owen Pierce claimed his wife had gone to visit a sick brother.

  “Is that the best part?” Grissom asked, unimpressed.

  “No—the best part is, while the Blairs are talking to one officer at the front desk, the other officer is taking a phone call from guess who.”

  “Owen Pierce.”

  “Owen Pierce. Calling to report his wife missing. He now claims that she got pissed off after a ‘misunderstanding,’ and he figures she left him, and he doesn’t know where the hell she went.”

  Grissom was sitting forward now. “Did the wife take anything with her?”

  “A couple of uniforms went to the house,” Brass said. “Pierce told them he didn’t see her go. But she took her own car—a ’95 Avalon—also a suitcase, some clothes.”

  “Let’s listen to the tape.”

  Brass raised both eyebrows. “Why don’t we?”

  Slipping on the latex gloves, Grissom removed the tape from the bag. He rose, moved to a small boombox behind the desk, and slid the tape into the holder. After closing the door, he pushed PLAY with a latexed fingertip—Brass noted that Grissom brought the same anal-retentive precision to the simple procedure of playing an audio tape cassette as he would to one of his bizarre experiments involving blood spatter spray patterns or insect eating patterns.

  The sound was somewhat muffled; apparently the couple had been standing across the room from the secreted tape recorder. But the words soon became clear enough, as the Pierces raised their voices in anger.

  “If you don’t stop it, just stop it, I swear I’ll do it! I’ll divorce you!”

  That had been the woman’s voice.

  Now the man’s: “Stop it? Stop what?What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the cocaine, Owen—and your slutty women! I’ve already talked to a lawyer—”

  “You bitch—lousy rotten bitch…go ahead, go ahead and file for divorce. I’ll make sure you don’t get a goddamned thing—including Lori!”

  Brass glanced at Grissom, but the criminalist’s face was blank, his focus complete.

  “Owen…” The woman’s voice had turned pleading. “I just want us to be a…family, again. Do you think what I really want is a divorce?”

  The man’s reply was mostly inaudible, but they heard three words clearly: “…give a fuck.”

  The woman spoke again, and she too was inaudible, but then her voice rose, not in anger, but as a conclusion to a speech: “I just want you and Lori to find the peace that I’ve found serving our Lord!”

  “Oh, Christ! Not that Jesus crap again. I’ve told you a thousand fucking times, Lynn—I believe what I believe.”

  “You don’t believe in anything .”

  “That’s my choice. That’s America. That’s what your forefathers died for, you dumb…”

  At the next word, Grissom shot a look at Brass.

  The man was saying, “You need to give Lori the same space, too, Lynn. She’s a young adult. She deserves a little respect.”

  “She’s a child.”

  “She’s sixteen! Hell, in half the world she’d be married already! Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed!”

  “Owen!”

  “I’m just telling you what I do, what our grown daughter does, is none of your goddamned Bible-beating business.”

  “Maybe…maybe I should get a divorce then.”

  “Knock yourself out…. But remember, you don’t get one dime, not one fucking thing.”

  “Is that right? I hired the best divorce lawyer in town, Owen—and when I get around to telling him about the drugs and the women and you screwing the IRS by skimming off the top of the ‘Body Works’? Well, then we’ll just see who gets custody of Lori!”

  The woman sounded triumphant, Brass thought, and for a moment the husband had no response. The woman’s time on top of the argument didn’t last long.

  “You do,” Pierce said, “and I’ll kill your holier-than thou ass…”

  “Owen! No! Don’t say—”

  “And then I’ll cut you up in little pieces, my darling bride. I will scatter your parts to the four winds, and they will never put Humpty Dumpty back together!”

  The argument lasted only a couple of more minutes, none of it coherently audible—the couple had apparently moved farther away from the hidden machine—before the detective and the criminalist heard the sound of a door slam and then the tape clicked off.

  “What do you think?” Brass asked. “We got enough to go out there? Or is that just the road company of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

  Grissom stood. “I think we need to go out there. Everybody’s in-house, at the moment—let’s take the whole crew.”

  Brass winced. “Don’t you think we should try for a warrant, first?”

  Grissom gave Brass that familiar mock-innocent smile. “Why? Mr. Pierce called the police. He’s concerned about his missing wife. We should help the poor guy, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, who needs a warrant to do that?” Brass said, grinning, climbing out of the chair. “What about the tape?”

  “What tape?”

  “Yeah,” Brass said, eyes narrowing. “Obviously Pierce doesn’t know it exists. No need to tell him that we do.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grissom said. “Let’s go see what there is to see.”

  Ten minutes later, six colleagues—all but Brass in dark FORENSICS windbreakers—met in the underlit parking lot.

  Lanky, loose-limbed, African-American Warrick Brown stood a few inches taller than the athletically brawny Nick Stokes; both men were in their very early thirties.

  Off to one side were the two women on the team, Grissom’s second-in-command, Catherine Willows, and the relatively recent addition, Sara Sidle.

  The Willows woman had a checkered past, Brass knew, but her experience had made her a valuable counterbalance to the overly cool Grissom. Brass had less confidence in Sara Sidle, despite her status as a former Grissom pupil handpicked by Gil for the job. Sidle seemed to be a Grissom-in-the-making, similarly obsessed with work—and with people skills rivaling those of her tactless mentor.

  Grissom filled his peopl
e in, quickly, on the contents of the tape and the potentially missing woman.

  “So we have a verbally abusive husband,” Grissom said, tone as tight as his eyes, “who threatened his wife with dismemberment.”

  “But we’re pretending to help him out,” Warrick said.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Grissom said, sweetly.

  Warrick, Nick, Catherine, and Sara rode in the Tahoe, Grissom rode with Brass in the detective’s Taurus. Just before midnight, they arrived at the castle-like house on the impressive sloping lawn, lights shining out downstairs windows, sending sword-like shafts of light into the dark.

  Brass and Grissom led the way to the front door. The detective rang the bell and had to wait only a moment before the door opened to reveal a muscular man in dark slacks, black T-shirt, and black loafers, dark hair peppered with gray. The man stood before Grissom like a mirror reflection—only, Brass thought, this was Gil Grissom on steroids.

  Brass smiled, mildly. “Mr. Pierce?”

  The man nodded. He seemed anxious. “You’re the police?”

  Touching the badge on his breast pocket, Brass affirmed, “We’re the police—sorry it took us so long to respond to your call…. We had to round our people up.”

  Grissom flicked Pierce an insincere smile. “We’re a full-service operation, Mr…. Pierce, I assume?”

  Still not inviting them in, Pierce nodded.

  Grissom lifted the necklace I.D. “Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Criminalistics. This is Captain Jim Brass, and this is our Criminalistics crew.”

  Pierce regarded the considerable assembly overflowing his front stoop. “Then…you haven’t found my wife?”

  “No, sir,” Grissom said, “I’m sorry, as yet we haven’t.”

  Pierce shook his head. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. I gave all the information to the officer, on the phone. Shouldn’t you be out looking for Lynn, Detective…Griswald, is it?”

  “It’s Grissom, Mr. Pierce, only I’m not a detective. I’m a supervisor of Criminalistics.” He flashed another empty smile. “And we are out looking for your wife. That’s why we’re here. You see, we handle crime scene investigation.”