Shock Treatment (19 page)

Brass stopped in front of the second door from the end. “This is it.”

A tarnished metal “9” hung lopsided on the door. A rubber mat said
GO AWAY
instead of
WELCOME
.

Ha-ha,
Catherine thought, unamused.
Sorry. Can't oblige.

“Sounds like he's at home,” Brass observed.

Light seeped through the window curtain and around the edge of the door. A TV was playing inside. She put down her field kit, just in case she needed her hands free, and held back while Brass walked up to the door. He knocked decisively.

Catherine heard someone move on the other side of the thin walls. The TV set turned off abruptly. The curtains parted slightly, then closed again. Whoever was inside seemed in no hurry to answer the door.

Too bad we're not going to take no for answer.

Brass held his badge up to the peephole in the door. “LVPD. Open up.”

The badge did the trick. After a brief pause, the door swung open, just a crack. A chain lock kept it from opening all the way. An apprehensive female voice escaped the apartment.

“Yes?”

The speaker, a young woman, was obviously not Craig Gonch. Through the narrow gap, Catherine glimpsed a pretty girl with curly brown hair, wearing a man's football jersey two sizes too big for her. She looked to be in her early twenties, around Jill Wooten's age, or maybe even younger. The partially
closed door hid most of her face. Only one brown eye was visible. It regarded Brass with obvious trepidation.

“LVPD,” he repeated, lowering his badge. “We're looking for Craig Gonch. Is he here?”

“Why?” she asked uncertainly. She did not seem inclined to unchain the door and ask them in. Her cyclopean gaze darted from Brass to Catherine and back again. “Is something wrong?”

“We just need to ask him some questions,” Brass said. He took hold of the door to keep her from closing it. Leaning forward, he tried to peer past her into the apartment. “He at home?”

“Questions?” the girl echoed. “What about?”

“That's between us and Mr. Gonch,” Brass said gruffly, losing patience with the girl's delaying tactics. He stuck his foot in the door, invading her personal space a few more inches. “Would you mind opening the door, Ms. . . . ?”

“Ruvasso,” the girl supplied. “Gabriella Ruvasso.”

“Thanks.” Brass didn't budge. “Now then, the door?”

She swallowed hard. “Okay.”

He let go of the door so that she could close it enough to give the taut chain a little slack. Catherine half-expected her to slam it shut, but Gabriella just undid the chain as requested. The door finally swung open all the way, revealing the girl in her entirety. The numbered purple jersey hung halfway to her knees. Bare feet with painted toenails shuffled nervously. Long chestnut hair hung over the right side of her face, Veronica Lake–style, although it was unlikely the young woman had ever heard of
the long-dead actress and her trademark peekaboo tresses. Gabriella's slender fingers toyed with the hanging locks, but did not brush them away from her face. A suspicion formed within Catherine's mind.

Wanna bet she's hiding something?

“That's better.” Brass stepped inside before Gabriella could change her mind. Catherine followed him into a cluttered apartment that consisted of a bedroom, a kitchen nook, and a bathroom in the back. The sheets were unmade. Dishes were piled in the sink. Dirty laundry littered the floor. A half-eaten TV dinner rested on a tray on the bed. A cigarette was stubbed out in an ashtray. Smoke rose from the ashes.

The lack of housekeeping was not the first thing Catherine noticed. Instead her gaze was drawn to the horror movie posters tacked up on the walls.
Dawn of the Dead. Friday the 13th
. One poster in particular caught her attention. It was for
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. The original, not the remake.
Who will survive,
the movie's tagline asked luridly,
and what will be left of them?

She and Brass exchanged a look.

Just another weird coincidence, or . . . ?

“Anyway,” he pressed Gabriella. “Is Craig around?”

Unless he was hiding in a closet or under the bed, he obviously wasn't in the small apartment. But perhaps he had just stepped out for a minute?

“No.” She shook her head. “Not right now.”

The sideways motion disturbed her hair. Catherine caught a glimpse of purple. Gabriella saw her looking and hastily rearranged her hair to conceal it.

Catherine recalled the restraining order against Gonch. “Something wrong with your eye?”

“N-no,” she stammered. She backed away, lowering her gaze to avoid meeting Catherine's eyes. “I'm fine.”

“Are you sure?” Catherine stepped forward and, before the girl could protest, gently brushed the hair away, exposing a blackened eye, swollen nearly shut. The deep purple coloration of the bruising suggested that the injury was fairly recent. “'Cause it looks to me like somebody has used you for a punching bag.”

Bastard,
she thought.
No wonder Jill's scared of him.

“Did Craig do that to you?” Brass asked bluntly.

“No! No!” she insisted, hiding the ugly shiner with her hand. “It was a stupid accident. I . . . fell down the stairs.”

“Onto your eye?”

Catherine didn't believe it for a second. She had heard lame excuses like this as far back as her stripper days, from countless abused wives, daughters, and girlfriends. It was almost enough to make her wish that Craig Gonch
had
been wearing the hockey mask when Jill opened fire the other day. From the looks of things, he had it coming.

“Yeah,” Gabriella fibbed. She mustered a transparently bogus smile. “Clumsy, huh?”

“Well, we're still going to need to talk to Craig,” Brass said. “You know where he is?”

“Um . . .” She stalled, no doubt terrified of upsetting Gonch by squealing on him. “I'm not sure.”

Brass gave her a stern look. “Ms. Ruvasso, I'm losing patience.”

“You won't tell him I told you?”

“That won't be necessary,” Catherine assured her.

Gabriella wrung her hands together, caught in a bind. Catherine regreted putting her on the spot like this, but protecting Gonch was only going to hurt Gabriella in the long run. They were probably doing her a favor, especially if they ended up putting Gonch away for a while.

“Okay,” the girl relented. She lowered her voice, looking around nervously as though afraid someone might see her talking to the police. “He's at work.”

“That's more like it.” Brass pulled out a notebook and pen. “And where would that be?”

The layout room, which was located across the hall from the garage, was an ideal spot to sift through the evidence. The spacious light table provided plenty of room to spread everything out, which was why Nick preferred it to the more modest expanse of his own desk. Crime photos, documenting various ongoing cases, plastered the walls. One wall currently featured a gallery of screen captures from the
Shock Treatment
footage, while an adjacent wall, which had been staked out by Ray and Sara for their own case, was occupied by enlarged photos of snakes, fangs, and a nasty-looking bite wound.

Greg wandered over to inspect the reptilian mug shots. “Snakes,” he quipped, doing his best Harrison Ford impression. “Why did it have to be snakes?”

“Beats me,” Nick said. Despite his involvement with the Matt Novak case, he was aware of the bizarre snake massage incident Sara and Ray were investigating. It had been hard to miss the influx of
live serpents into the lab. Frankly, he didn't feel too bad about not pulling that case. “At least none of our suspects have scales and fangs.”

“You haven't seen the chupacabra episode,” Greg said. Leaving the snake board behind, he went back to the light table as the two men got down to the business at hand. Matt Novak's personal effects and clothing, taken off his body, were laid atop the illuminated glass surface. A hair and fiber specialist, Nick always gave such items special attention. You never knew what sort of evidence people were carrying around on their person, often without even knowing it. Warrick, he recalled, had once apprehended a child murderer thanks to dog hairs found on the vic's sweater.

Warrick. . . .

Thinking of his deceased friend and colleague elicited a familiar pang. Warrick had been gone for two years now, murdered by a corrupt undersheriff, but the memory still stung. It was a reminder that their job could be a dangerous one. The night shift had lost at least two CSIs to violence since Nick had joined the team. That was two too many.

Shaking off the melancholy ruminations, he surveyed Matt Novak's final costume: a plastic hockey mask, novelty contact lenses, a flannel shirt, denim overalls stained with both real and fake blood, work gloves, underwear, socks, and combat boots. Matching bullet holes, in the front and back of the shirt, testified to his COD. For the first time in the history of
Shock Treatment,
Nick gathered, someone had not been firing blanks.

In addition to the clothing, David Phillips had
also found a concealed miniature microphone, no doubt intended to pick up any ferocious bellows or growls. Novak's pockets had contained a key chain, a roll of Life Savers, and a handful of small change. A quick count revealed that he had died with exactly forty-nine cents on his person.

Not even enough for a candy bar.

Interviews with his coworkers had constructed a rough biographical portrait of the dead man. Divorced with no children, Novak had lived alone in a bungalow in Los Angeles. Along with the rest of the crew, he'd been booked into a low-budget motel north of the Strip for the duration of the Vegas shoot. A search of Novak's shared hotel room, which Nick had conducted while Greg and Catherine were exploring Roger Park's trailer, had found nothing suspicious. If necessary, the CSIs could ask their counterparts in L.A. to conduct a search of Novak's permanent residence, but so far the evidence didn't appear to justify imposing on them. Nor did it seem worth a road trip on Nick's part. The shooting had taken place in Vegas. Chances were, all the evidence was here.

Greg sorted through the smaller items. Latex gloves protected them from contamination. “You say this stuff was actually on him when he was shot?”

“Yep,” Nick replied. “All his belongings from a locker in the dressing room trailer are over there.” He cocked his thumb at a labeled cardboard box sitting at the other end of the table. “His regular clothes, his wallet, cell phone, room key, etcetera.” Archie had already confirmed that the phone was
not the one used to terrorize Jill Wooten. “Everything he was going to need when he was through playing boogeyman for the evening.”

“Doesn't sound too promising,” Greg said.

“Probably not,” Nick agreed. “One funny thing, though. He seemed to be in the market for a new sports car . . . and not a cheap one. He had brochures for Porsches, Lamborghinis, BMWs. Real high-end, pricy stuff. I'm not sure how much saying ‘boo' on cable pays, but I'm guessing he was shopping out of his price range. Like he had come into some serious money, or was expecting to.”

“Well, Catherine did say he thought he was a shoo-in to be the new lead in
Officer Zombie,
” Greg recalled. “Maybe he was counting his chickens early? Or just window shopping.”

“I suppose.” Nick shrugged. “It might not mean anything, but I thought I'd mention it.”

“Hey, you never know,” Greg said. “It's like you always told me. Sometimes it's the little things, that don't seem worth noticing, that break a case wide open.” He looked over the mundane residue of Matt Novak's last night on earth. “Makes sense . . . except why did he hang onto his keys? Wouldn't he leave that in the locker with the rest of his stuff? I mean, I doubt he was planning to drive back to his motel room dressed as a chainsaw maniac.”

“Good point,” Nick said. He picked up the keychain, which was a miniature replica of an Academy Award. Only a couple of metal keys were attached to the ring. “Especially since his car and apartment are back in L.A. Why was he carrying these keys at all?”

Greg scratched his head. “Maybe it's some sort of lucky charm?”

“Could be,” Nick admitted. Back when he had played college football for Texas A&M, he had known plenty of players with personal totems and rituals of their own. There had been this one guy who always ate a raw onion before a big game, and another guy who kept a photo of a bulldozer taped to the inside of his helmet. It was possible that Novak's key chain had possessed special significance to him. Actors were supposed to be superstitious. “If so, it sure didn't bring him much luck the other night.”

Greg snorted. “You can say that again.”

Nick took a closer look at the tiny plastic Oscar.
Talk about wishful thinking,
he thought. According to the Internet Movie Database, Novak's acting credits weren't exactly award-worthy, unless they had started handing out Oscars for scaring innocent reality show victims. Noting a seam in the plastic, he realized there was a removable cap on one end. He pulled it off to reveal a metallic USB connector protruding from the base of the ersatz Oscar.

“Hey, take a look. It's actually a flash drive.”

“Okay, now
that's
interesting.” Greg regarded the portable storage device with budding excitement. “What data could be so important that Novak would want to carry it with him everywhere, even when he was impersonating a chainsaw killer?”

“Let's find out,” Nick said. “Go get your laptop.”

Wasting no time, Greg returned a moment later with his work laptop. Nick felt a tremor of anticipation, like they were definitely on to something. He
plugged the drive into the computer's USB port. On the screen, a solitary file showed up in the G drive.