Brass in Pocket (16 page)

“Did you think I haven't been?”

Nick hit the lights and the siren. He couldn't outrun the Mustang, so if Whendt knew how to drive at all, Nick had to hope the obvious accoutrements of law enforcement would persuade him to stop.

Riley grabbed the microphone and called for backup, giving their position and a description of Whendt's car. They had his license plate number. They would catch up to the car, sooner or later, but if it wasn't sooner, there was no guarantee that Whendt would still be in it when they did.

At the corner, Nick braked just enough to slow their forward momentum and slid into the turn. The SUV's rear end started to fishtail, but he leaned on the accelerator and the vehicle straightened.

He heard sirens in the distance, but the chase had already ended. Whendt had boxed himself in. Ahead of him was a railroad track, its gate down, a long freight train lumbering past. Red lights flashed,
out of sync with the lights the crime lab's Yukon threw on the surrounding buildings and bounced off the Mustang's rear window.

Nick cut the siren but left the lights going. Vic Whendt was already opening his door.

“Cancel the backup,” Nick said. “Doesn't look like we'll need it.” Nick drew his weapon, stepped out of the Yukon, and aimed at Whendt's door. “On the ground, now!” he shouted. “Facedown, hands above your head!”

“It's cool!” Whendt called. He assumed the prone position so quickly Nick was sure he had done it before. With Riley covering Whendt, Nick handcuffed him, searched him, and then hoisted him to his feet.

Whendt was clean. No weapons, no drugs. His keys were still in the Mustang's ignition. Nick fished Whendt's wallet from his back pocket. It held a couple hundred dollars in cash, some credit cards, a driver's license, and other assorted plastic. He wore a yellow cotton short-sleeved shirt open over a clean white T-shirt, expensive jeans, and leather loafers. Nick had been hoping for bloodstains, but there weren't any to be seen. He smelled of cologne, not gunpowder.

“Mind telling me what this is all about?” Whendt asked once he was on his feet.

“You should know. You're the one who rabbited.”

“Of course I did. I was driving to work and you took one look at me, then flipped a U-ey and started chasing me. Scared the hell out of me.”

“With lights and siren going,” Nick said.

“Not at first. First you just came after me.
I freaked. When someone starts chasing you down on a city street in the middle of the night, it's nerve-wracking. You didn't hit your siren until after I made the turn, and when you did, I stopped.”

“You stopped because there was a train in your way.”

“Dude, I work around the corner, I know there's a train track here. I just panicked because you looked like a stranger trying to heist me or something.”

“Nick.” Riley gave him a beckoning nod.

“Don't move an inch,” Nick warned Whendt, and then stepped aside so Riley could address him out of the suspect's earshot. He kept his gaze fixed on Whendt and his hand on his weapon, just in case.

“Nick, he does have a point,” Riley said. “He was around the corner before you hit the siren. He did stop at the train tracks, but look where he stopped.”

Nick glanced at the Mustang. She was right. Whendt had pulled out of the traffic lanes and parked on the right shoulder, where a law-abiding citizen would stop for a police car.

“I guess so. But he works for Emil Blago. And he
was
in that motel room.”

“We don't know when or why. And you already might know this, but he's innocent until proven guilty,”

Nick released a sigh. The adrenaline rush from the brief chase would take a while to wear off, but he couldn't deny the validity of Riley's argument. “Okay, okay, fine. I know. I'll dial it down a few notches.”

“Good idea,” she said.

They returned to Whendt, and Nick unlocked the handcuffs. “Sorry, sir, honest mistake,” he said. “Thing is, we did go to Supra looking for you, so when we saw you and you ran… well, you can see how it looked.”

“Looking for me?” Whendt seemed genuinely surprised. Nick had been sure he was on the phone to the guys at the Supra office, being told that the police were looking for him. But that was a supposition, not a fact. And CSIs had to deal in facts. “What for?”

“Do you know someone named Deke Freeson?”

Whendt pressed two fingertips into his left temple, as if suffering a sudden headache. “Doesn't sound familiar.”

“You sure about that? Think before you answer.”

“I hear a lot of names. Maybe I heard that one once, and maybe not. It's not somebody I know personally, though. He in the racing business?”

Nick ignored the question. “You were in a room at the Rancho Center Motel recently. Your boss's wife was in the same room.”

“My boss isn't even married. His name is Frank—”

“I'm talking about Emil Blago.”

“Who?”

“The owner of Supra Racing.”

Whendt cracked a smile. “Oh, him, yeah. I've heard of him. He hardly ever comes around, though. Apparently he owns a lot of businesses in town. He's a busy guy with lots on his plate besides us.”

“So I've heard. You know his wife?”

“Annette, something like that? Seen her a couple times. She's kind of hot, for an old lady.”

“So what were you doing in that motel room?”

“What does anybody do in a motel room? Sleeping.”

“That's all?”

“Mostly all,” Whendt said with a shrug. “I was in a bar not far away. This is, I guess, last Thursday night. Met a woman. We had some drinks, had some laughs. When we were ready to leave, neither of us was in any condition to drive, and we wanted the fun to continue. So we walked over to the motel and got a room.”

“So if I go over their registrations, I'll find your name there?”

He considered the question before answering. “No, I guess not. She paid for the room.”

“What's her name?”

He took even longer with this one. “Janey, Janet, Janice… something like that.”

“Last name?”

Another shrug. “No clue.”

“Nice. You get her phone number? E-mail?”

“It was a bar hookup, man, that's all. And a late one at that.”

“And it's just a big coincidence that Blago's wife was in that same room tonight?”

“I guess it is. Pretty sure there was only one woman in there when I was there, and she wasn't nearly as old as Mrs. Blago.”

Nick caught Riley's eye. “Do you mind if we swab your hands and shirt?” she asked. She had gone back to the Yukon for her field kit.

“What for?”

“Gunshot residue,” she said.

“First you think I'm taking my boss's wife to a motel, and now you think I shot someone? What the hell is going on here?”

“It's a yes or no question, Mr. Whendt,” Nick said. “And if the answer is no, we just might have to hold you while we get a warrant.”

“On what grounds?”

“You did run from us.”

“And I explained why I did that.”

“It'll only take a second,” Riley said.

“Whatever,” Whendt said. “If it gives you a thrill, do it.”

That's not what it's about
, Nick wanted to say.
Putting away bad guys is where we get the thrills, and if you are a bad guy
…

So far, however, Whendt hadn't given them anything to go on. “Where were you earlier this evening?” Nick asked while Riley broke out the swabs. “About eight-forty-five?”

Whendt glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. “I would have been having dinner, I guess. I think we were wrapping up right around then?”

“Where?”

“A friend's house.”

“But there were other people there, who can vouch for you?”

Whendt stood there as Riley swabbed his hands and wrists and the front of his shirt. “Seven of them. That enough? You need sworn affidavits?”

“We'll look into it.” If Whendt was involved in Blago's criminal enterprises, in addition to being employed by his racing company, it wouldn't be
hard for him to round up seven people to provide him an alibi.

“Negative,” Riley said, having tested her swabs. Nick knew if they took Whendt in, they could check further—raid his closet for other clothes he might have worn earlier, look in his hair for traces of gunshot residue invisible to the naked eye but not to a scanning electron microscope. He hadn't given them cause to make an arrest, though, and he'd had the right answer to every question. His attitude had been combative, but his actions compliant.

The fact that Antoinette Blago had been in the same room might be sheer coincidence.

Grissom said there was no such thing as coincidence. But the connections between events could be tenuous, even invisible until something else revealed them, so Nick wasn't sure exactly what the difference was. Grissom would assume a link between Whendt's presence in the motel room and Antoinette's, and so did Nick. But he couldn't yet prove it.

“Okay,” he said at last. “You can go. We might need to talk to you again, though.”

“I'll be looking forward to it,” Whendt said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “This was the highlight of my day, guys.”

Emil Blago's estate was on the northwest side, off Summerlin Parkway in Country Club Hills. A tall, whitewashed wall surrounded it. Through an ornate wrought-iron gate, Catherine could see a veritable tropical jungle, with carefully positioned spotlights beaming up the trunks of towering palms, banana
trees, and other plants utterly out of place in the desert landscape. The entire southwestern United States was suffering an extended drought, and Blago must have been using a small city's worth of water just to keep his garden lush. That alone should have been reason enough to arrest him. The house itself was invisible from the gate, which was probably the reason for the foliage. Crime bosses never wanted to make things easy for their enemies.

The gate, of course, was locked. There had been a guard on duty at the entrance to the development, and she half-expected to find another one here, but she didn't see any. There was an intercom mounted on the wall beside the gate, and a couple of cameras, one high up on either side so they could cover the whole area.

She pushed the intercom button. A male voice responded almost immediately. “Can I help you?”

Catherine showed her badge to the cameras. “Las Vegas Crime Lab,” she said. “I need to talk to Emil Blago.”

“I'm sorry,” the voice said. “Mr. Blago doesn't care to be disturbed at this hour. I'm Paul, Mr. Blago's estate manager. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I'm here on police business. So Mr. Blago can—”

“Have you a warrant?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you a warrant for Mr. Blago's arrest? Or to enter the premises?”

“No,” Catherine said. “I haven't a warrant.”

“I have strict instructions not to disturb Mr. Blago before eight o'clock in the morning,” Paul the estate
manager said. “So unless you have a warrant, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Did I mention that this is a police investigation?”

“Mr. Blago is always happy to cooperate with law enforcement,” Paul said. “So if you'd like to call Mr. Blago's attorney after eight
A.M.
, we can arrange for a visit to the house, or you can meet Mr. Blago at his attorney's office and he'll answer all your questions.”

Catherine was stuck. She could always shoot the lock, but that would probably just get the city sued and her in trouble. Paul was right—without a warrant, she couldn't compel him to open up and let her in. “How about Mrs. Blago?” she tried. “Is she home?”

“I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge that information.”

“Come on, Paul, help me out here. I'm not asking anything complicated. Is she there or isn't she?”

“You'll have to call Mr. Blago's attorney. After eight
A.M.
”

“Yeah, right, I got it,” Catherine said. “After eight.”

“That's correct. Will there be anything else?”

“Anything else? Doesn't that imply that there's been something to begin with?”

Paul chose not to dignify her question with a response. Probably for the best. She wouldn't have either, in his shoes. She was frustrated, but giving this poor sucker a hard time wouldn't make things any better. He already had the unenviable job of staying up late answering Emil Blago's door. Nothing she
could do would make his life worse than that. “Thanks, Paul,” she said. “I'll check in later.”

“Do you know how to reach Mr. Blago's attorney?” he asked.

“I'm sure I can figure it out.”

T
HERE WAS
, C
ATHERINE FOUND
, something about the Las Vegas Strip that she always found stimulating, no matter how many times she drove it, how many hours she spent bogged down in traffic, or how much she knew about the sometimes unsavory truth behind the lights and the glitter. Casinos—not these, but primitive early versions of them, mostly downtown on Fremont Street—had transformed a little watering hole in the middle of a vast and forbidding desert into an international tourist destination. Big casino hotels, the ones that now lined the Strip with reproductions of other destinations—Paris, Venice, New York, Egypt, ancient Rome, the emerald city of Oz, a volcano, a feudal castle—had swollen its fame and created more showrooms for big-name performers, and then still more sophisticated hotels without glitzy, artificial themes created an air of maturity for a city that was still mostly dedicated to allowing adults to live like teenagers,
without responsibility or rules. Legal or not, every sort of activity took place in the city, every imagin-able sexual liaison, every form of gambling, and various other transactions involving weapons and drugs and flesh.