Cold Burn Page 6

  “So she didn’t run off,” Warrick said.

  “Anyway,” Brass went on, “the longer this case dragged on, the harder Vega looked at the husband. This guy came up so clean, water beaded off him.”

  Catherine asked, “What was Sam Vega’s bottom line on the husband?”

  “Sam says Sherman seems like a right guy, who hasn’t done anything weird or different or outa line, since Scotty beamed the poor bastard’s wife to nowhere. No new girlfriend, no attempt to collect on the wife’s life insurance policy, which wasn’t that substantial, anyway—nothing.”

  “How’d he pay for that hacienda?” Warrick asked, with a nod toward the formidable stucco house.

  “Very successful computer consultant,” the detective said. “He’s got some real estate too.”

  Nick asked, “What kinda real estate?”

  “Apartments. Sherman makes good money. Pretty much pool the four of our salaries, and you got his annual income.”

  They stood there, contemplating that.

  Then Catherine said, “Maybe we better stop loitering in the street before somebody in this nice quiet neighborhood calls the cops about the riffraff.”

  They followed Brass to the dark-green front door of the Sherman home; the four of them barely fit on the shallow porch. From the living room, they could hear voices—loud, animated.

  “Movie,” Nick said.

  “Sounds like Bad Boys,” Warrick said.

  “Bad what?” asked Brass, wincing.

  “Bad Boys,” Nick said. “You know, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence—they’re cops…”

  “If they’re cops,” Brass said, “I’m a police dog.”

  Warrick and Nick exchanged he-said-it-not-us glances.

  Smirking sourly, Brass turned back to the door.

  Warrick was listening to the sounds from within. “That’s a high-end sound system. He’s watching a DVD.”

  “I’ll be sure to put that in my report,” Brass said, and rang the doorbell.

  They waited. The loud movie voices ceased, then a few seconds later the door cracked open; one brown eye behind one wire-framed lens peeked cautiously out. “Yes?”

  Brass held up his badge on its necklace. “Mr. Alex Sherman?”

  The eye narrowed, examining the badge; then the door swung open wide, revealing another eye and the rest of his wire-framed glasses, and the rest of him.

  Alex Sherman—six-two, easily, and in his mid-thirties—wore his black hair short, razor cut, and with his high cheekbones, dark brown eyes and straight nose he had a vaguely Indian look, though he was only moderately tanned. In his stocking feet, he wore gray sweatpants and a green tee shirt with a white Michigan State logo; his build said he worked out.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “May we come in?”

  Sherman motioned for them to enter, eagerly, saying, “It’s about Missy, isn’t it? Is it about Missy?”

  They stepped into a foyer with a small, round table next to the door and a framed black-and-white photo of Missy Sherman on top of it.

  “Is there somewhere we can sit down, Mr. Sherman?” Brass asked evasively.

  Anxious, Sherman led them to the right into a living room smaller than the Bellagio casino, though Warrick would’ve needed a tape measure to be sure. A massive wide-screen plasma TV monitor hung on the far wall; beneath it a small cabinet held stereo and video components with speakers scattered strategically around the room. A tan leather sofa ran under the picture window, its matching chair and hassock angled toward the television; to the right of the sofa was an easy chair in rough fabric with a faux Navajo design.

  Sherman sat on the sofa, Brass next to him, while the others fanned out in front of them. Brass quickly identified himself and the CSIs by name.

  “This is about Missy,” Sherman said, “isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Brass said. “We saw a light on upstairs—is someone here with you?”

  “No—I turn that light on so I don’t have to walk up to the bedroom in the dark. Now, what news do you have about my wife?”

  Brass paused; he swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir. Your wife was found—”

  “You’ve found her?” Sherman said, jumping in, dark eyes wide.

  “Her body was found, Mr. Sherman. Early this morning by a park ranger at Lake Mead.”

  “She’s dead,” he said incredulously, clearly not wanting to believe it.

  “She’s dead, yes.”

  Sherman covered his mouth with a hand, and then the tears began. And then he flung his glasses to the end table beside him, hunkered over and began to sob.

  Warrick looked at the floor.

  Catherine handed the man a small packet of tissues. Warrick could only admire her—she was always prepared, wasn’t she?

  After perhaps thirty seconds, Sherman said, “Missy can’t be…why, after all this time…? I thought…I hoped…you hear about amnesia, and…"

  More comments, only semicoherent, tumbled from him, but within another thirty seconds, the sobbing had ceased, and he seemed to have hold of himself.

  Brass asked gently, “Is there someone you’d like us to call for you? You probably shouldn’t be alone now.”

  Sherman’s reply had building anger in it. “I shouldn’t be alone now? I shouldn’t have had to be alone for all these months, but I was! Why didn’t you find her last year? Maybe she’d be alive! She would be here, with me…. Missy’s everything to me. You people, you people…!”

  Catherine stepped forward, hands raised before her. “Mr. Sherman—we’re very sorry for your loss. It’s not good for someone who’s had a blow like this to be alone.”

  Sherman appeared startled that someone had interrupted his tirade, and in such a compassionate manner; and that brought him back.

  In a low, trembling voice, he said, “I’m sorry…I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t be angry with you. I’m sure you did everything you could…. Where’s Detective Vega?”

  “We’re with the night shift,” Warrick said. “Detective Vega works days, right now. He’ll be informed, and I know he’ll be concerned. I’m sure he’ll talk to you.”

  Nodding, lip trembling, Sherman said, “He…He tried…tried very hard.”

  Then Sherman just sat there, collapsed in on himself, like a child trying not to cry.

  How Warrick hated this part of the job. But he knew that Gris would only remind him that the CSIs worked not just for the victims, but for their loved ones. Warrick and his associates couldn’t make the pain of losing a wife or a sister or a friend go away; but at least they could try to provide some answers and—when the system worked the way it was supposed to—a modicum of justice.

  Nick appeared from somewhere with a glass of water and handed it to Sherman, who took a short sip, then a longer drink. Hand shaking, he set the glass on the end table. “Thank you, Officer.”

  Nick just nodded.

  “I love my wife very much,” Sherman finally said. His voice had a quaver, but he had regained some composure. “And for a whole year I’ve had only questions with no answers. I just wanted Missy back alive. I should have known that after this long…Ever see that movie, with John Cleese?”

  Brass frowned at the seeming non sequitur. “Sir?”

  “He’s trying to get somewhere and can’t make it on time, just one damn thing after another…"

  “Clockwise,” Catherine said.

  “Is that what it’s called? Well, in that movie, John Cleese, he says, ‘It’s not the despair…I can handle the despair. It’s the hope!’"

  And Sherman began to laugh, only the laughter turned to tears again. But briefly, this time. “Like the big dope I am, I just kept hoping.”

  “In your position, we all would, Mr. Sherman,” Catherine said. “We all would.”

  “And sir?” Warrick said. “You’ll have plenty of time now, to come to grips with this. Don’t beat yourself up.”

  Catherine glanced at Warrick, a bit of surprise in her express
ion, then said to Sherman, “You will make it through this. And, for what it’s worth, we will be working very hard to find out who did this.”

  Sherman looked up at her, his forehead tightening. “You make it sound…She was killed?”

  Brass said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh my God…oh my God…"

  They let him cry. Warrick watched Catherine and Brass exchanging a series of looks that were a silent conversation about whether they should press on with any questioning, or if Sherman’s grief made that impossible.

  Brass seemed to want to stay at it. To give the man a chance to get himself together.

  The tears slowed, then stopped. Sherman dried his face with some of Catherine’s tissues. “There was a time when I…I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but there was a time I actually wanted her to be dead.”

  Catherine said, “Mr. Sherman, you should—”

  “If her body was found, that at least would mean the end of wondering. I sit here, sometimes all night, watching mindless movies, trying not to think where she might be. The later it was at night, the more horrible the possibilities. Now…now, that it’s finally happened, I have a thousand questions, a million questions. Who would do this to Missy? Why?”

  “This investigation is just starting,” Brass said.

  “It’s not—You don’t consider it just an old case that…"

  “No. It’s very much on the front burner. We hope to be able to answer some of your questions soon.”

  Swallowing hard, turning sideways toward the homicide cop, Sherman asked, “Was she…? Did someone…? Was…?”

  Brass didn’t seem sure what Sherman meant, but Catherine said, “She was not sexually assaulted, Mr. Sherman. She died of suffocation.”

  “Suffocation…Missy?” Leaning forward and grasping Brass’s hands, startling the detective, Sherman implored, “Jesus Christ man, what can you tell me? Where has she been for the last year? Who had her?”

  “She wasn’t strangled, sir,” Catherine said. “We’re not sure of the circumstances, where her suffocation is concerned. But she was not strangled.”

  “And we can’t tell you where she’s been all this time,” the detective said. “But she appears to have been killed shortly after she disappeared.”

  “You said…Lake Mead. A ranger found her?”

  Brass nodded.

  “But that’s…such a public place!” Sherman was growing outraged again. “How could she not be found, in over a year?”

  Catherine stepped forward, crouched in front of the man and touched one of his hands, as if he were a small child she were comforting. “We understand how difficult this is for you, Mr. Sherman. But even though your wife was killed over a year ago, the person who committed that crime—or some associate of the murderer—only this morning placed her body in the park. That makes this a very new, active case…and we need to get right to work.”

  Sherman swallowed, nodded. “Anything you need. Anything.”

  “Well…to begin with, we must ask you to go over this one more time. It’s been a long time since anyone looked at your wife’s case with fresh eyes. And since we didn’t work the case before, maybe we can find something that got overlooked the first time.”

  Gazing at her, his eyes still damp, Sherman nodded that he understood. “Where do we start?”

  Catherine rose and backed up a little, giving Brass some room as the detective took over again. “From the beginning,” he said. He withdrew the small tape recorder from his sportscoat pocket, adding, “And with your permission, we’ll record this interview.”

  Turning sideways again, to look right at the detective, Sherman said, “No problem, Detective uh—what was your name, sir?”

  “Brass.”

  Sherman took several deep breaths; he had another long drink of water. Then he said, “Whatever you need. Ask whatever you need to.”

  “All right. You last saw your wife when?”

  “Thursday, December 6, 2001. That morning, before I went to work.”

  “Was everything all right that morning?”

  Shrugging as he said it, Sherman said, “Fine. Great. We were a happy couple, Detective Brass.”

  “Tell us about that morning.”

  “Well…Missy was going shopping with her friend Regan Mortenson; then they were supposed to finalize plans for the four of us to have dinner and a movie Saturday night.”

  “The four of you?”

  “Missy and me…Regan and her husband, Brian.”

  “You two couples socialized frequently?”

  Sherman nodded. “They’ve been our best friends for, oh…years. I don’t think I would have made it through the last year without them. Regan’s always stopping by to check on me, Brian and I have lunch, oh, twice a week, anyway.”

  “How and when did you meet them?”

  “Missy and Regan went way back. Hell, they were sorority sisters at Michigan State—Tri Delts.”

  Warrick repressed a smile, reflexively remembering the old joke from his days at UNLV. Don’t have a date? Tri Delt.

  “After we moved out here,” Sherman was saying, “Regan came out a year later. They weren’t just sorority sisters, Missy and Regan, they really were like sister sisters. Anyway, Regan met Brian out here, and they got married.”

  “Brian Mortenson,” Brass said, more for his own benefit than Sherman’s.

  “Yes. Great guy. Wonderful guy.”

  “And what does he do?”

  “He’s Events Coordinator for the Las Vegas Convention Center, sets up their programs and conventions…"

  Heavy-duty job, Warrick thought.

  Brass nodded. “And his wife?”

  “Regan? She solicits funding for Las Vegas Arts.”

  “Is that a job, or volunteer work?”

  “Volunteer.”

  “How long have you known Mr. Mortenson?”

  “Oh, ten years, easily…. We met not long after Missy and I moved to Vegas. In fact, we introduced them, Regan and Brian. He and I were playing basketball at the health club we both belonged to; still do. He was sixth man at Bradley, Brian was.”

  Brass shifted on the couch. “Back to the day in question. You say Missy was here when you left for work.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Presumably, then she went shopping with Regan.”

  “No presumably about it. Ask Regan—they went shopping, and had lunch together.”

  “And when did you first suspect something was wrong?”

  “Almost immediately. From when I got home from work, I mean. If Missy wasn’t planning to have supper, she’d have said something. And if there’d been a change of plan, she’d have called on the cell, or at least left me a note.”

  “So you were concerned.”

  “Well…not overly. Didn’t get too worried at first. Her car wasn’t here, I figured she ran up to Albertson’s for something.”

  That was a local grocery chain.

  “Or maybe ran out to get some carry-out,” Sherman was saying. “If she got too busy to fix supper, she’d sometimes stop for Chinese or Italian.”

  Brass nodded. “How long before you started to worry?”

  Sherman considered that. “I waited…maybe an hour. Then I called Regan. She said she hadn’t seen Missy since lunch. I couldn’t think of where she might be.”

  “Then what?”

  “I called our usual take-out places—they hadn’t seen her. I started in on all of her friends that I could think of, and none of them had seen her, either.”

  “Is that when you called the police?”

  “No. I called Regan again, to see what kind of mood Missy’d been in. Regan said normal, fine, real good spirits. And then the paranoia set in…I mean, we were happy, but we had our arguments.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, I’d been on her about credit cards; she was buying a lot of clothes. I handle the finances, and she was kind of, you know, irresponsible at times. I told all this to Detective Vega.�
��

  “You’d had words about it recently?”

  “Not…words. We bickered about it, not the night before she disappeared, but the night before that. Still, that was enough to get me stewing. I even went upstairs to see if her clothes were still in the closet. You know, thinking maybe she’d left me or something—not for real, just ran to her mom’s or one of her sister’s in a huff maybe. But everything was there.”

  “Did you call her family? Her mother, her sisters?”

  He nodded glumly. “None of them had heard from her.”

  “So, Mr. Sherman—when did you call the police?”

  Looking a little uncomfortable, Sherman said, “I heard that you can’t file a missing persons report until someone has been gone twenty-four hours.”

  Brass shook his head. “Not always the case.”

  Sherman shrugged. “Well, that’s what I believed…. So I waited all that night and didn’t call 911 until the next morning.”

  Her voice low, Catherine said to Warrick, “That’s why day shift got it instead of us.”

  Brass was asking, “What did you do that night, while you waited?”

  Sherman sat slumping, his hands loosely clasped. “I…tried to think of where she might go and went driving around looking for her car. First, the grocery store, Albertson’s, the one over here on Maryland Parkway.” He pointed vaguely off to his right. “If she was mad at me, maybe she was driving around the city, pouting…. She could pout, at times. So I just started driving around, all over the place. The Strip. I started with Mandalay Bay where she’d last been seen.”

  “That’s where officers found her car,” Nick put in, “the next day, right?”

  Sherman nodded vigorously. “Yes…but I didn’t see it there. Somehow I missed it.”

  Warrick noted this: the first real inconsistency, the only striking anomaly in the husband’s story, so far.

  “2000 Lexus,” Brass said. “Nice car.”

  “You wouldn’t think I could’ve missed it, but I did. In my defense, I was pretty worked up at this point…frantic. And it is a huge parking lot.”

  Brass nodded. “So, you just drove around all night?”