Killing Game Read online

  “Two footprints in the mud,” Sofia said. “But there’s something about them I don’t like.”

  “What’s not to like about a footprint?” Grissom asked innocently, but Sara thought she was finally following him.

  Sofia was new, but she knew enough not to bite. “Take a look, Grissom—andyou tellme. ”

  Squatting at the edge of the flower bed, Grissom studied the footprints. Over his shoulder, Sara looked at them, too: prints were even, and surprisingly well defined, considering the inclement weather last night. The ladder leaned against the house, its feet flat on the wet dirt. Something wasn’t sitting right with her, either; but Sara couldn’t quite nail it…

  “You know,” Grissom said, pointing to the prints, “I don’t like ’em, either.”

  Sofia nodded and Greg inched closer to get a better look.

  “They’re too well defined,” Grissom said. “With last night’s weather, these prints should be a mess.”

  Greg said, “You couldn’t find more perfect prints outside Mann’s Chinese in Hollywood.”

  Grissom glanced up, Greg flinched, but then the supervisor smiled and said, “Aptly put, Greg.”

  Greg grinned.

  Sara wasn’t grinning, but she was nodding herself.

  “They should be deeper, too,” Sofia said.

  “Deeper?” Greg asked.

  “Yes,” Grissom said. “These prints belong to about a size-ten man’s shoes. Judging from the depth of these impressions, he weighed, oh…a hundred pounds.”

  “Child, maybe?” Greg offered.

  “In size tens?”

  “Same with the ladder,” Sara said, gesturing. “If a man of normal weight for the size of these prints had climbed this ladder, the feet would be buried in the mud. And they’re not.”

  “And where’s the mud on the rungs?” Grissom asked, standing. “Only, they’re clean.” Hands on hips, he surveyed the scene, shook his head, smiled slyly. “No. Somebody thinks he…or she…is cute. This is all staged. Inside and outside both. And Ihate cute.”

  “Complete agreement here,” Sofia said. “This is orchestrated, all right.”

  Sara felt a ball of anger forming in her stomach. “Somebody thinks we’re stupid.”

  “Which is the killer’ssecond mistake,” Grissom said, and cast a beatific smile upon his crew. “The first was thinking we’d let anybody get away with what was done to Grace Salfer.”

  2

  Monday, January 24, 6:30P.M .

  CATHERINEWILLOWS WAS RARELY GIVENto interior conflict.

  As an LVPD crime scene investigator, she met conflict—or its aftermath—on her every working day. She had always sought to keep her relationships with both her family and her coworkers straightforward, with no game playing. Though not exactly confrontational, neither was she one to brood. She could face a problem unblinkingly, whether it was a crime she was assigned to solve, or a fellow professional with an attitude, or, for that matter, her daughter Lindsey with a school-related issue.

  Her feelings about Conrad Ecklie—and the change and even turmoil the deputy director had created by dividing up the nightshift team of CSIs—were decidedly mixed. As Gil Grissom’s second-in-command on graveyard, Catherine had developed a dislike for Ecklie, tinged with disrespect, largely due to the man’s political gamesmanship and his jealous attempts to sabotage Grissom, an exemplary crime scene investigator who had—without at all trying—commanded respect and attention not just in Vegas but on the national scene.

  Right now, however, her loyalty for Grissom—who had gone from mentor to partner in a demanding field whose rewards and costs were equally high—had come crashing up against her own needs and goals. She had warned Grissom countless times, had approached him in every conceivable manner, to try to get him to…just a little…“play the game.” To accept and grasp the reality of politics and personalities in a department the size of the Las Vegas Police.

  She hadn’t been alone. Jim Brass, himself a victim of political pressure—Grissom’s supervisor’s chair had once been filled by the homicide detective—had cajoled and pleaded at every step between, trying to get Grissom to come to grips with not just office politics, but city politics. The system claimed casualties every day—Sheriff Brian Mobley, for years the most powerful figure in the department, was gone now—and Grissom’s oblivious, even condescending approach to this personality-driven, hidden-agenda-riddled world had put him on a collision course with his arch-rival: Conrad Ecklie.

  And Catherine found herself in the middle, torn by friendship and loyalty, lured by advancement and self-interest. Ecklie had been fair to her, and even good to her. Rising to shift supervisor meant more pay, more responsibility, and the achievement of a long-held goal. A woman—no matter how skilled and how deserving, despite the system’s paying lip service to equal rights—did not get this kind of opportunity every day.

  Not that the swing shift was ideal: She had seen Lindsey more while working graveyard than she did now. These days she often left for her job before Lindsey got home from school, and Catherine missed those precious evening dinners and helping with the young girl’s homework.

  But if Catherine was ever to achieve her ideal assignment—day-shift supervisor, which gave her both a home lifeand a great job—she would have to play the game herself; she would have to make “nice” with Ecklie. Unlike Grissom, she had the ability to be at least partly a political animal. But did that make her a traitor to her friend and mentor?

  She told herself no—she had warned him time and again, and even Gil admitted that this was a bed he’d made himself. Still, the space between herself and her old night-shift teammates Warrick Brown and Nick Stokes—transferred with her to swing shift—had changed somehow; she was not just their colleague but their boss now, and she found herself wondering if either CSI secretly felt she’d sold out Grissom, who had mentored them as well.

  And when Catherine ran into Sara Sidle, the ice in the air was noticeably brittle. Only Grissom himself—was that Zenlike quiet he projected real, or was he raging within?—had treated her with understanding.

  And when Gil Grissom was the most compassionate person in her world, Catherine knew things had turned upside down….

  The sky hung purple and red-striped as night crept over the mountains like a sneak thief, the breeze carrying a chill warning of real cold to follow, when darkness came. The temperature hovered around fifty and would dip closer to freezing by morning.

  Nick was driving the Tahoe toward North Las Vegas, Catherine in the passenger seat, Warrick in back. Though everything seemed normal enough, she noticed that no one had really spoken since the three had climbed into the SUV—strange, after all this time together, to have a new awkwardness set in.

  Nick’s eyes were glued to the road, headlights on for safety, the beams barely visible in the fading light. He also had the blue flasher on, but no siren, as he wove in and out of traffic heading west on Craig Road. He wore a navy CSI-logo windbreaker and navy slacks, his dark hair cropped close to his skull. As Catherine stole a sideways glance at him, she admired the strong jawline and square chin that, in profile, gave him an aura of strength.

  “What’s the vic’s address?” she asked, as much to break the silence as to gain information.

  Still keeping his dark eyes forward, Nick said, “North Las Vegas—apartment complex, Red Coach Avenue.”

  He blew through the Martin Luther King Boulevard intersection and continued west on Craig.

  They lapsed back into silence and Catherine couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a moment, how Grissom was getting along with his new team—newbie Greg, outsider Sofia and the sometimes troubled Sara. She grabbed the safety handle as Nick made a right, then a quick left and they ended up going west on Red Coach Avenue.

  Where cases in the more affluent areas of Las Vegas proper would draw a small army—three or four squad cars, two or three detectives, an ambulance, maybe even a fire truck or two—in this North Las Vegas neighborhood
, only one lonely NLVPD squad car at the curb, its lights no longer flashing, sat sentinel.

  Nick drew up behind it and a patrolman climbed out of the waiting squad car. Catherine recognized him—Nissen, an officer she’d seen at various North Las Vegas crime scenes over the last several years. On the job for maybe ten years, Nissen typically wore his dark hair short, kept his dark glasses on most of the time, and he had wide-set dark blue eyes when he chose to reveal them. He also normally had a ready smile, which seemed M.I.A., his square-chinned face a grave mask, eyes hooded, the dark glasses dangling from a shirt pocket.

  The rundown three-story white stucco apartment building, with tile-shedding roof, was midblock on a street lined with similar structures, none particularly inviting. In this neighborhood an Extreme Home Makeover would begin with a can of gas and a match. Cars, mostly Rent-A-Wreck refugees, lined the street as if hoping to be stolen, and Catherine wondered who actually parked in the lots around back.

  They were out of the Tahoe and unloading equipment from the rear by the time the uniformed officer strode over to them. Warrick, crime kit in hand, a smile creasing his coffee-colored face, was the first to greet the guy. “Hey, Nissen—what’s up?”

  “Murder,” Nissen said, automatically reaching for the notebook in his pants pocket. “I think the vic’s name is Angela Dearborn.”

  Nissen was a good cop and usually friendly; cutting straight to the crime—no small talk—meant something nasty awaited them inside that stucco shambles.

  “No detective yet?” Nick asked, glancing around.

  Nissen shook his head. “Supposed to be here by now; must be running late.”

  The detective would not be one of their usual LVPD mates, rather a North Las Vegas plainclothes, drawing from a decidedly spotty roster—could be someone young, or seasoned, or a bored old hand playing out his string. With a detective this late to the scene, Catherine’s money was on one of the latter. Unfortunately.

  “Where’s the vic?” Nick asked.

  “Third floor, in the back,” Nissen said. “Apartment twelve. You won’t need a key: door was unlocked when I got here—that’s how I got in. No obvious signs of forced entry.”

  Catherine asked, “What did you say her name was?”

  Without checking notes, Nissen said, “Apartment’s rented to a woman named Angela Dearborn. My guess is that’s her, upstairs.”

  “Who called it in?”

  With a nod back to the building, the officer said, “Next-door neighbor—Nellie Pacquino. Said she heard yelling yesterday evening.”

  “Yesterday,” Catherine said thoughtfully. “So why is she calling it intoday ?”

  “Mrs. Pacquino said she saw the vic every day. She hadn’t seen her neighbor stick her head out of the apartment since Sunday, so finally she got worried enough to make the call.”

  “Would have been nice to have her get concerned a little sooner.” Catherine shook her head. “Were they close?”

  “Not really. They sometimes had coffee together, before they went to work, but it was hit or miss. They left for their jobs about the same time every day, and neither rarely ever misses work. Plus, they got home at about the same time every afternoon, so they’d bump into each other on the stairs, in the hall.”

  “So no coffee, no hallway banter before or after work, and Mrs. Pacquino gets to wondering.”

  “Right. Knocked on her neighbor’s door, got no answer; called over there, same thing. Looks out the window, sees Angie Dearborn’s car is still in the lot back there. Thinks about the yelling, day before.”

  “And finally makes the call,” Catherine said, and sighed. “It’s hell when the cavalry comes, the day after.”

  “My gut?” Nissen asked.

  “Please.”

  “Goddamn frustrating. What might’ve been just another domestic violence call that we coulda broke up turns into something really bad…. All ’cause the neighbor drags her feet, getting involved.”

  Warrick, behind Catherine, offered, “We can’t show upuntil they call, can we?”

  “No,” Nissen said. “No we can’t. But I don’t have to like it.”

  “No you don’t,” Warrick said pleasantly. “But if we beat ourselves up for that every time it happens, who’ll call nine-one-one to stopus ?”

  Finally Nissen flashed his nice smile—just for a moment—and, leaving the officer on the street, the trio walked single-file up the sidewalk, past the dirt yard, to the front door. They were just about to enter when a dark blue Taurus rolled up to the curb—the unmarked police car had a dented front left fender and a broken headlight. And, trained sleuth that she was, Catherine suddenly knew why the detective was running late….

  Climbing out of the car, the plainclothes man looked their way with an apologetic shrug and half-smirk. Catherine was relieved to see who they’d drawn from the NLVPD pool: lean, lanky Marty Larkin, his longish black hair swept back, was coming around the car, looking it over glumly like an insurance adjustor having a bad day.

  Larkin flipped a wave to Nissen, who nodded. Likely the best detective on the North Las Vegas PD, Larkin—not yet forty—was smart, clean, experienced, and it didn’t hurt that he had deep brown eyes and eyebrows that arched in fifty different ways, depending on whether he was being sarcastic, funny, or flirting, the latter something he did fairly often with Catherine, without crossing any professional border.

  This evening, the handsome detective’s mouth was etched in a line so straight it might have been drawn with a ruler. Wearing a black suit with a black shirt and matching tie, he would have looked characteristically sharp if he hadn’t been rubbing at his left leg as he limped up the sidewalk to join them. Some felt Larkin dressedtoo sharp—that citizens might mistake him for a show-biz guy or even a mafioso; but Catherine liked the man—he did the job well and played by the rules.

  “You look like you’ve had a swell day,” Catherine said, with her own arch of an eyebrow.

  Larkin flashed his boyish smile, his eyebrow arching back at her. “I think I just met my future ex-wife.”

  Catherine laughed lightly and said, “Is that right? Love and hate at first sight?”

  The detective shrugged, and embarrassment colored his normally confident face. “Yeah, sometimes it just hits you—like, I was coming north on Allen. At Craig, she turned in front of me.” He pointed back to the fender and headlight. “She said she didn’t hear the siren or see the lights. Listening to her Michael Bublé CD, too loud.”

  Nick grinned, a hand on one hip, crime kit in the other. “Don’t tell me—you let her off with a warning.”

  Larkin shook his head. “Dude, the chief would sonot understand! Hell, I gave her the ticket she deserved!”

  Nick’s smile turned skeptical.

  “Of course, Iam going to let her buy me dinner tomorrow night…to make up for my pain and suffering. And I’ll take care of the damages to my vehicle.”

  “Somehow,” Catherine said, “I think the damages are just about to begin…. Can you interrupt the fascinating story of your love life, to take a look at what promises to be a disturbing crime scene?”

  “Let’s do this thing. And I do apologize for my lateness.”

  Actually, Catherine—despite her businesslike demeanor—had appreciated the brief moment of levity. Based on Nissen’s words and, even more, his manner, she knew that things were about to turn deadly serious.

  Noting twelve metal mailboxes, Catherine figured the three floors meant four flats to a floor, two on each side, the first floor having garden apartments. The stairs from the entranceway to the second floor smelled like urine and wet dog. Curving around to the right, Catherine headed up to a landing, then another right turn and the last flight up to the third floor.

  Cooking smells, something Asian maybe, replaced the foul stairwell, emanating from the apartment immediately to her left, number ten. Nine was across the hall, eleven beyond that, twelve would be the last door on the left. Catherine detected no smell coming from the latter
. The door was shut but not locked (as Officer Nissen had indicated) and they let themselves in.

  Finding usable, meaningful prints on the knob would mean winning the lottery. There was no telling how many people had touched it since the crime, and Nissen had used it to gain entry himself.

  Catherine was first inside; she felt a wave of sadness roll through her. In early years, that wave would have been nausea: now, a miasma of melancholy.

  This happened to her more often than she would like to admit; but she had seen this scenario far too many times. The apartment, little more than a shoe-box with windows, had been trashed: cushions off the sofa, TV smashed on the floor, the victim’s possessions pulverized, shattered and scattered.

  A woman in her early thirties lay in the middle of the mess, an abandoned broken toy.

  One leg bent up at an obscene angle, her arms spread crucifix-style, flesh covered with indigo welts, her auburn hair streaked black/scarlet, her face raw, blood-caked, and purple-bruised, crystalline blue eyes staring sightless at the ceiling. She wore only denim shorts and a white, maroon-spatteredRomanov Hotel & Casino T-shirt. The victim’s nose had been broken, her high cheekbones bashed in, her full lips split, blood caked like cheap lipstick, her teeth broken, some missing, others jagged shards, forming a macabre smile.

  Whoever did this had not just wanted to kill the woman, rather to punish her—make her suffer. If the victim was beaten to death with fists, somebody’s hands would be bruised and scraped, at the very least. If she was battered with a weapon, wherewas it?

  Catherine quickly scouted the rest of the tiny apartment. The living-room curtains over a modest picture window were tight-drawn; an overhead light, already on, provided illumination. This room joined a tiny dining alcove where a table and two chairs lay tossed beneath a low hanging ceiling light, also burning. Beyond that, a tiny galley kitchen also had been thoroughly trashed, its light not on, casting the area in shadows.

  Beyond the living room, to the rear of the apartment, a short hall led to a bedroom that might be generously described as petite, as well as a minuscule bathroom. Both rooms had also been ransacked.