Brass in Pocket (7 page)

“What is it? Maybe I did a records search or something on it.”

“Antoinette O'Brady.”

She shook her head, causing her hair to flap into her face. “Nope. I've never heard of her.”

“Not as someone associated with some other case?”

“I just said no.”

“Okay. How about this—have you ever heard of the Rancho Center Motel?”

Camille swallowed. “That's where he… where you said he ate it.”

“That's right. In a room registered in his name. Do you have any idea why he would get a room there?”

“As far as I know the only reasons to go there are to catch something, from dirty needles or diseased hookers.”

“So you have heard of the place.”

“Heard of, yes. Deke never said anything about going there, though. I would have made him wear a body condom.”

“Would he have told you if he was?”

“Like I said, not if he was going there to catch something.”

“We don't think that was the case.” Nick searched for some other angle of questioning that might shed more light on Freeson's relationship to the missing Antoinette. “Do you know his e-mail password?”

“Hell, no. And he doesn't know mine.”

“Did he write down notes? If he was talking on the phone or something? Any kind of pad, or—”

“Ooh, yeah,” Camille interrupted. “There's a notepad somewhere. One of those deals with a spiral binding on top.”

“I didn't see it on his desk.”

“He left it all over the place. One of my jobs was to find wherever it was and put it back on his desk.” She started searching through the drawers of her own desk, which Nick had already glanced in—mostly empty, but she had a phone book, a manicure set, and a plastic container with something frightening beginning to grow inside it shoved into them.

Then she turned over a stack of newspapers on the one visitor's chair, and shoved them off onto the floor. The small notepad had been tucked beneath them. “Here it is!” Camille declared. She handed it to Nick, who flipped through the pages quickly, watching for Antoinette O'Brady's name or initials, or any reference to the Rancho Center. Something in this office had to connect Freeson with Antoinette, and he meant to find it.

On the second to last used page of the notepad, a phone number had been scribbled down, but with no name attached. Nick was about to flip the page, but something about that number struck him. He stopped, stared at it. Definitely familiar. He turned the page, saw nothing of interest on the next one, and turned back.

And realized whose number it was.

To confirm it, he checked his own cell phone's contact list.

Bingo.

He pushed a button and the phone started to ring.

“This is Supervisor Willows,” Catherine said. She had been back at her desk, working on seemingly endless amounts of paperwork as she waited for results from Trace, when her cell phone rang once more. She grabbed it up hoping for an update from Lindsey, but the ring tone was wrong and the name
Nick Stokes
showed on the screen.

“Hey, Catherine.”

“Nick, did you find anything at Deke's office?”

“I don't know yet. Maybe. You know where Brass is tonight?”

“He's off duty, so no, I have no idea. Why?”

“I found his cell number written on a pad in Deke Freeson's office,” Nick said. “On the next to the last page that had any writing on it. He doesn't seem to believe in dating anything except his actual case notes—oh, and bills. But his assistant says he used this notebook all the time, to record phone conversations and that sort of thing. So I'm
guessing he called Brass in the last few days, or had a call from him.”

“That's a little coincidental, maybe, but not necessarily anything more than that. A lot of PIs have occasion to call cops from time to time. And we already know that Deke knew Brass.”

“Because Brass investigated him?”

“They probably knew each other even before that. They were on the force at the same time. Don't read too much into it, Nick, that's all I'm saying. I'll give Brass a courtesy call, tell him what's up, and see what he says.”

“Sounds good.”

“Did you find anything on Antoinette O'Brady?”

“Not a damned thing. It's like she doesn't exist. Freeson's assistant has never heard of her, either.”

“That's what I was afraid of. Keep looking, Nick. I don't think a woman who doesn't exist needs clothes and toothpaste and makeup.”

She had just hung up and was still holding the phone, thinking about the endless forms requiring her attention, when there was a soft knock on her door. She looked up to see Mandy Webster standing there, her stance awkward, with a hesitant half smile on her face. Dark bangs fell across her brow, almost obscuring her right eye. “What is it, Mandy?”

“I've got results on some of those impressions lifted at the motel,” Mandy said. “Interesting ones, maybe.”

“What'd you get?”

“Well, some of them belong to Deke Freeson.”

“Which makes sense,” Catherine said. “Since we know he was in the room.”

“Yeah, no big shocker there. But another one—well, when I got a hit, I ran it again. Same thing the second time.”

“Mandy…”

“It belongs to Captain Brass.”

“Jim Brass?”

“He's the only Captain Brass I know. He was in the motel room. The fingerprint was on the doorknob to the bathroom. There was a partial on the nightstand that might be his, but there's not enough of it to get a positive match.”

“You're right,” Catherine said. “That is interesting. Or it might be, anyway. Do me a favor, Mandy. Let's keep this between us for now, okay?”

Mandy cocked her head, obviously surprised by the request. “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”

When she left, Catherine looked at her phone—still in her hand, but almost forgotten.

She should call Jim and ask him about the phone number and the fingerprints.

She should call Nick and tell him not to say anything about the number he'd found to anyone else.

Instead, she left the paperwork unfinished on her desk and hurried to her car. She wouldn't have minded if she'd never had to go back to the Rancho Center Motel, although she was convinced that was a pipe dream. But she hadn't anticipated going back quite so soon.

It was like waking up from a bad dream, then going back to sleep and finding herself stuck inside the same nightmare.

“Y
OU EVER HEAR OF A
man named Jim Brass?” Nick asked. He had sent Camille Blaise back into the hallway while he called Catherine, then retrieved her. She seemed relieved to be let back into the office.

“Umm, let me see. Nope.”

“You don't like being in the hall?”

“It's, like, boring out there. And kinda scary. These guys have some kind of office down the hall, just past the bathrooms, and they get some freaks through here.”

“What kind of freaks?”

“Like homeless guys, I guess. I know I shouldn't be afraid of them. But I think they look at me and see someone who they could carry around in their pocket. If they have pockets.”

“How old are you, Ms. Blaise?”

“I'm twenty.” She pressed her arms flat against her sides and stuck out her chest, as if standing for
inspection. “Three days ago, in fact. You need to see my license?”

“That shouldn't be necessary. Do you live alone, with parents, or what?”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“I'm just trying to get a clearer picture of Deke's life.”

“I live alone. My parents are back in New Haven.”

“Been in Vegas long?”

“Couple years. Okay, four years, I guess.”

“How did you meet Deke?”

“Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

She took her own chair, rolling it in behind her desk. Suddenly she looked more professional, her mood more serious, even her posture toned down somehow. “I like being an assistant, you know?”

“Compared to what?”

“When I met him I was… well, I was a runaway. I hitched a ride to Vegas, and when I got here I fell in with some bad people. Deke was working a case and he saw me getting beat up by… by this guy.”

By your pimp
, Nick mentally filled in. He kept his mouth shut.

“He broke it up,” she went on. “Broke the guy's arm and jaw, in fact. He took me out for breakfast and by the end of it he offered me a job. Even though I was a mess, with black eyes and blood and snot coming out my nose and lips split open, he thought I had something to offer.”

“I see.”

Camille shook her head again. “No, you don't. You don't see anything except what your cop eyes want to see. He never touched me like you're thinking, in a, you know, sexual way. Never once. He saw that I could be a help to him and he paid me to do work that would help. He gave me as many hours as he could afford. I got my own place and I've stayed straight and out of trouble. For
him
.”

She had read him right, and Nick was sorry for that. He didn't like seeing kids abused, and he hated pimps with a fiery passion. He'd even had a short affair with a prostitute named Kristy Hopkins, until her pimp had murdered her. The fact that Nick had been blamed for the murder had nothing to do with his disdain for their kind—it was a pure, raw anger at bottom-feeders who preyed on the weak and made their living off the labor of others. But he had made an assumption about Camille—a series of them—and he regretted having done so.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Blaise,” he said. “Honestly. I know this is hard on you.”

“And it's going to get harder.” She sniffed. “I don't know what I'm gonna do now. I mean, he can't even write me a letter of recommendation, can he?”

“I guess not.”

“Or answer phone calls about my references.”

“I can write you a letter, Camille.”

A surprised smile lit her face. “You would do that for me?”

“I'd have to be honest. Say I don't know you that well, but in the course of my investigation I learned what you had done for Freeson.”

“Better than a poke in the eye with a burning hot
rod, right?” The smile vanished, replaced by a sidelong look of distrust. “What would you want for it?”

“Nothing. I just want you to get another job you like. Here in Las Vegas or back in New Haven, either one. Or someplace else entirely, if you'd rather. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to move, after this.”

“Vegas, baby,” she said with a grin. “I'm staying put.”

He couldn't deny being glad to hear that. It wasn't that he was interested in her, romantically or sexually. She was definitely not his type, and too young even if she had been. But he wanted to know that the dirty side of Las Vegas didn't have to spit out all the people it chewed up—that there were some who could look it in the eye and survive it, whole and relatively undamaged. He had begun to think Camille Blaise might be one of those.

“One more thing, before I let you go. Can you think of anyone, recently or not, who might have had a grudge against Deke? I've been thinking it's all got something to do with this Antoinette O'Brady, but maybe I'm way off base. Maybe she went on the run because she had witnessed Deke's murder and she's afraid, and Deke was the shooter's only target all along.”

Camille smiled again, not with the wattage displayed last time, but with real satisfaction. “There was this one guy. Penfold… Will Penfold, that's it.”

“Good. Thank you. What's his beef with Freeson?”

“He hired us. He doesn't have a lot of money—he drives a beer truck, for God's sake, for Copper Blade
Beer and Beverage. But he had this idea that he thought would make him, like, a billion dollars. He had this partner he went in on it with, and then he thought the partner was selling him out, meeting with big companies and trying to sell the idea out from under him. He hired us to find out if the partner was really doing what he thought.”

“What was his great idea?”

“Beer-flavored underwear.”

Nick felt his jaw falling open. “You're kidding me.”

Another shake of the head, another flurry of hair. “Nope.”

“Was the partner cheating him?”

“Trying to. Only it turns out nobody was that interested.”

“Imagine that.”

“But Will didn't believe Deke. I mean, when he said there were no buyers for the idea. He thought Deke had been bought off by the partner, and they were splitting the millions that rightfully should have been his. He punched Deke, right in the throat.” She pointed to the visitor's chair. “Came up out of that chair and just laid into him, right in front of me. I was screaming and thought I'd have to call the cops. But Deke just took a couple of punches, then grabbed this guy Penfold, held his arms down, and told him to get the hell out and not come back. Penfold left, and on his way out he said if he found out Deke was in bed with his partner, he would kill him.”

“He wasn't, though,” Nick said. “In bed. Figuratively.”

“Or any other way. But maybe Penfold doesn't
believe that. He might still think there's a million bucks calling his name.”

“For beer-flavored underwear. I'll check Will Penfold out, Camille. Thanks.”

“Thank
you
.”

“For what?”

“For explaining why you asked the question you did. For not assuming I'm some idiot just because I'm young and cuddlesome.”

“I didn't say you were cuddlesome. I don't think I've ever used that word before.”

“You don't need to. I already know I am. But you know what? It turns out that somebody can be adorable and not stupid at the same time. Go figure.”

“Yeah, go figure,” Nick said.

Twenty-five minutes after getting Mandy's news, on top of Nick's, Catherine was back at the Rancho Center Motel, looking at the sign-in log kept by the uniformed officer posted outside the room until she released it. Her signature was on it, as were Nick's and David's. Various other cops, uniformed and detectives, had been in. The guys who had picked up the body for the coroner's office had signed it.