Brass in Pocket (23 page)

And she had to pee. Who wouldn't?

It was the covered-in-blood part that spurred Catherine. In Antoinette's place, she would want to clean off as best she could. That meant the sink. And the waste bin.

She pulled the lid off and set it on the floor. Used paper towels and other trash cascaded to the floor. Antoinette would have shoved her trash deep inside, though, to make sure it stayed hidden from casual view.

Catherine reached in, pushing through layer after layer of waste paper until her hand touched a particularly wet clump.

Jackpot
. The paper towels she pulled out were soaked and pink with blood. Wendy Simms could match the blood to Deke Freeson's in no time, Catherine guessed. But she didn't need the lab work at the moment—she was convinced it meant Antoinette had come in here to clean up. Perhaps with the sun coming up, she had begun to feel vulnerable.

She wasn't here now, however, and she had left her wheels behind. If she had another ride, she
might have left the keys behind. So maybe she hadn't gone far.

Catherine left the paper towels on top of the trash, intending to come back and collect them shortly. First she wanted a look at the neighborhood.

Eastern was a busy street, with traffic day and night. If Antoinette had crossed it on foot or walked down its length, she would have been an easy target. Not something Catherine would risk, in her position—not with someone chasing her. Even if she had lost her immediate pursuer, she wouldn't want to show herself that way.

She turned away from the street and then saw it.

Set back from the avenue, behind a wide parking lot, was a Select Stop Mart twenty-four-hour discount department store. That's where Catherine would go if she were in Antoinette's shoes. She would need new clothes. Maybe she was carrying a credit card or some cash. Maybe as part of whatever escape plan they had arranged, Deke had left those in his glove compartment for her.

And perhaps he had left a gun.

“Did your partner go into that store?” she asked Officer Tavrin.

“He might have.”

“Radio him.”

Tavrin tried to raise him on her radio, but he didn't answer. She squinted into the morning sun, shaking her head. “I don't know what's wrong.”

“I'm going to call for backup,” Catherine told the uniformed officer. “And then you and I are going shopping.”

* * *

“Officer Morston?”

“That's right.”

“This is CSI Greg Sanders. You're still at the airport, right?”

“Yeah.”

Greg was silent for a moment as he darted between two trucks that hadn't quite made room for him, despite the flashing lights announcing the urgency of his mission. This was why it was better to have two people in the vehicle, one to drive while the other handled details like communication with the outside world. There hadn't been anyone else available at the lab to join him, but he would meet other cops at the airport.

“Listen, Officer Morston, I need you to do something for me.”

“Okay.”

“Make sure that janitor, Benny Kracsinski, is still there.”

“That's the crippled guy?”

“Let's go with ‘differently abled.'”

“Whatever.”

“Find him and don't let him go anywhere.”

“Should I arrest him?”

“Only if he tries to leave. I'm almost there, and there are some other officers meeting me.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“That's it. I'll see you soon. And thanks.”

Greg had nothing against rookie cops. He wasn't even certain that Morston was a rookie. But he was either new on the job or he'd been in trouble for
something—in any event, he could be spared for a night to nursemaid an empty airplane, so he couldn't be that important.

Which meant Greg didn't trust him to handle the arrest of his murder suspect by himself. He hadn't even been around to keep people away while the plane was processed. Greg had spent hours doing that himself and cutting plastic tubes. He didn't want to let Benny possibly walk on a technicality after all his effort. He wanted to make sure any potential arrest was by the book, start to finish.

With the roadway finally clear ahead of him, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator and raced through the dawn's first light.

N
ICK AND
R
ILEY DIDN'T
worry about fingerprints. The room was full of them; they could see them in the dust. Most undoubtedly belonged to Dawson Upson. They had found no indication that he brought Melinda Spence, or anyone else, into the house. And at this point they weren't trying to identify anyone—they were trying to find people. That changed their search parameters. Nick rifled the desk and closet, looking for a map, a photo, a sketch, anything that might tell them where he took animals to kill them.

“This guy's got to keep souvenirs,” Nick said. “He's a textbook case.”

“Maybe he's not that far along yet,” Riley replied. “He obviously doesn't think much of animals. Could be he wouldn't think to take souvenirs until he's had a human victim. Just keep looking.” She was on her knees, shining a flashlight under his bed, illuminating cobwebs and dust bunnies almost big
enough to conceal corpses. “Then again, maybe he's one of the smart ones. It always strikes me as insane that people intentionally keep evidence of their crimes around.”

“But then it's insane to go around murdering people, too. I don't think this one's too smart.”

“Well, we're here, so he's not as smart as he might be. Then again he's not here, so maybe he's no dummy after all.”

Riley turned around. Nothing under the bed but dust. If she flipped the mattress she might find some porn magazines—at least traditionally that was where she thought people kept them. Porn often figured into the psyches of serial killers, as part of the whole process of objectifying human beings. But Upson was obviously computer literate, so maybe he didn't bother with magazines.

Her light fell on a sneaker. It looked huge, but then guys' shoes usually did to Riley. She sometimes wondered if it was evolution or global warming or something, but most young men these days seemed to wear size eleven or twelve shoes, while her father had worn an eight and a half. She didn't see the evolutionary advantage of clown feet, but maybe there was some aspect of it she was overlooking.

Its mate was behind it, along with some other casual shoes, in a nook across from the bed, between the desk and a bookcase. They were piled up in no particular order. She visualized Upson sitting on the edge of the bed, prying the first shoe off with his other foot and kicking it off into the pile, then doing the same with the next one. She used her light to scan the space between the bed and the pile of
shoes, hoping for some sort of soil or other trace evidence that might signify Upson's whereabouts. The carpet was dirty but nothing in particular stood out.

She moved the shoes out of the nook, setting them neatly beside the desk, and ran her light across the carpet there.

On the carpet, as if it had fallen from a shoe's treads, was a tiny pink something. Riley took forceps from her kit and picked it up, bringing it into the light. It was a flower petal, or part of one, that had been folded and crushed in the grooves of a shoe or boot's tread.

“Nick, help me out with this,” she said. “I haven't been in town long enough to know every flower in Las Vegas.”

“No human on earth has,” Nick said. “The natives aren't that hard to learn, but if there's any plant under the sun that hasn't been imported or grown here in some greenhouse or nursery, I don't know what it would be. Some arctic lichens, maybe.”

“I don't know much about Upson, but I doubt if he's the kind of guy who hangs out around greenhouses.” She showed him the bit of flower petal.

“That one's easy,” he said with a smile. “I thought you were gonna test me.”

“What is it?”

“Desert willow.”

“I think it fell out of one of his shoes.”

“That doesn't help us much. Those suckers are everywhere.”

“Except the desert isn't everywhere, Nick. Not anymore. While you were driving over here, I was watching out the windows. There are a lot more
housing developments in this area than there is open desert.”

“That's true.”

“Is this a kind of scraggly-looking tree with a ton of blossoms?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“I thought so. I saw a bunch of them, about midway between the Empire Casino site and here.”

“But like I said, these aren't rare.”

“Maybe not. But everything's getting rarer except grass and palm trees that don't belong here. And we know where he lives, and where he dumps his prey, so if there are desert willows between the two, I think it's worth a look.”

“Yeah, you could be right, Riley.”

“You see anything better? Find his souvenirs? Maybe a map with ‘X marks the spot' written on it?”

Nick shrugged. “Nothing yet. But there's got to be something.”

“Maybe this is it. Maybe this flower is our best shot. We could vacuum up the soil in the carpet and send it to the trace lab for analysis, but by the time we get any results, Melinda Spence could be dead.”

“Okay, you're right. We're drawing a blank here. Unless Sam's gotten something better out of Mrs. Upson, let's go for a hike in the desert.”

G
REG DIDN'T SEE
Officer Morston anywhere. He parked outside the hangar in which Jesse Dunwood's plane was stored, which was the last place he had seen the cop. In the morning light, the airport lost what little glamour it had owned the night before, when blue runway lights had glowed through the darkness and the illuminated tower had floated above the field like a glowing mirage. Today it just looked dusty, dingy and functional—not at all romantic. No wonder Dunwood took his dates flying at night.

Where the hell was Morston? If he had gone to sleep in the past five minutes, or had taken another break, he would lose his badge. Greg would make sure of it. He didn't want to lose Benny Kracsinski now. He thought with what he had on the guy, he could squeeze a confession out of him. But not if he'd managed to slip away from Officer Morston.

He got out of the Yukon and went into the shadowy
hangar. It was empty, silent. “Officer Morston!” Greg called. His voice seemed to reverberate off the corrugated steel walls and bounce back at him. “Are you in here?”

He was about to walk away when he heard a low groan. “Who's there?” Greg demanded.

Another groan, followed by the awkward scuff of shoes on pavement, came from behind the airplane.

Greg drew his duty weapon.

He didn't even like carrying a gun, much less the possibility of having to use it. But alone here, not knowing who was in the shadows behind that plane, he would use it if he had to. “Come on out,” he said. “Let me see your hands.”

Slowly, Officer Morston staggered into view. He was holding one hand out before him, and had the other clapped to the back of his head. His collar was red, soaked with blood. “It's… it's me. Sanders?”

“Officer Morston? What happened?”

The cop looked at Greg with bleary, haunted eyes. “I don't… I'm not sure. I was on the phone with you, and I thought I heard something in here. I came in to look. The lights were out, but… I heard a noise behind the plane. I went back there, and… then I… I guess someone hit me. Hell of a blow on the back of my skull.”

“How long ago?”

“Just a few minutes. I think I… blacked out for a little while, but not for long.”

“Do you know where Benny is?”

“No… no clue. He's probably the… the bastard who hit me.”

“He might be. Do you need a doctor?”

Officer Morston tried to stand upright, but he swayed on his feet and reached out to the airplane for support. Greg hurried to his side. “Sit down,” he said. “I'm going out to see if I can find him. I'll call the paramedics for you.”

Greg made the 911 call as he stalked the airport grounds. Sirens wailed in the near distance. His backup, no doubt, on the way. He would be glad to see them, but he hadn't known when he made the call that medical assistance would be required.

The sun was higher in the sky now, gleaming down on the runway and blasting off the east-facing windows of the office building. He didn't see Benny Kracsinski anywhere. The morning was quiet, the only noise except for the approaching sirens coming from a small plane revving up as it started across the tarmac from another hangar. It was white with red striping, and its wings ran across the top of the fuselage instead of coming out from underneath it. Greg thought it was a Cessna, but he really didn't pay a lot of attention to the private aircraft industry. His theory was that it was good to have a wide base of knowledge, and even better to know how to look things up when he had to. Airplanes fell into the latter category.

The clatter of running footsteps caught his attention. They came from the direction of the office building. He looked that way, shielded his eyes against the glare coming off the windows, and saw Patti Van Dyke sprinting toward him. Her eyes were huge.

“That's Benny!” she cried. “Stop him!”

“What? Where?” Greg asked.

“In the one-fifty! He can't fly that airplane—he's not licensed! It isn't safe!”

Greg looked at the white plane with red stripes, picking up speed as it rolled down the runway. “Benny's in there?”

“Yes!” Patti reached him and latched on to his arm. Her face was blotched red from effort, and tears glimmered in her eyes. “He can't fly a plane, not unless it's been specially configured for him!”

Greg jerked his arm free of her grip and ran for the department Yukon. He couldn't outrun a taxiing airplane, but if he could outdrive it and block the runway, perhaps he could still stop it. He yanked the door open, slid into the seat, started the big SUV, and slammed it into gear.