Title: Afterlife
By: Emily Brunson
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: R
Notes: Several warnings apply for this story. Please note the following. 1) This is a death story, at least in the beginning, and therefore if such things aren't to your taste, be warned. 2) It is also slash, although non-explicit. Use your own discretion. 3) This presupposes a slash relationship between Gil and Nick, although one that takes place primarily only in flashback. The primary basis for the story is case-related. As always, comments welcomed, and my belated thanks to those who had such kind things to say about "Enmity" and "Boucenna's Walk." Hope you enjoy this one as well.
Summary: In the aftermath of Nick's death, wracked by grief and trying desperately to go on, Gil discovers Nick had secrets -- and some of them may threaten Gil, too.
Life means all that it ever meant,
it is the same as it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity,
why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you
somewhere very near
just around the corner.
All is well
(Henry Scott Holland)
The sun still rose in the mornings. Set in the evenings.
Gil stared out the window at the bright, warm spring sunshine and felt his throat tighten. Familiar feeling, status quo, it seemed. Underscoring his certainty: It shouldn't be this way. Things should not simply go forward, as if nothing at all had happened.
It was…improper. That was the right word. Bad form.
And yet things persisted. The traffic was bustling, although it was still two hours shy of actual rush hour. So many people going on with their lives, unaware.
Indecorous. Show some respect. It was the least anyone could do, wasn't it?
"Traffic's a bitch today." Catherine sounded forcefully casual, tapping the brake and glancing in the rear-view mirror. "Must be the construction."
Aren't you going to ask me about it? he thought of saying, but instead he nodded, still watching out the window. There wasn't that much to say, anyway. Nice as those things went, but he had never been so glad to step off a plane at McCarran, walk outside and feel dry, dust-scented air on his skin.
"Is there anything I can do?" Catherine asked quietly.
It made him draw his eyes away from the mindless highway, glance at her. Her mouth was turned down, creases at the corners of her lips aging her, a touch of the fragility he seemed to see everywhere these days. How mutable the world was now. How transient. He shook his head. "Thank you. I'd just like to get home."
"I'd like to schedule a memorial service. For people who couldn't go to the funeral. Is that all right?"
"Of course." He shrugged. "When do you have in mind?"
"A couple of weeks, maybe. I'll need –" She cleared her throat. "If you could help me come up with a list of people. I'll put a notice in the paper, but just in case."
"All right."
They drove in silence the rest of the way. More than once he felt a stirring inside, something wanting to say a few words, make her feel more at ease. She hadn't gone to Dallas; couldn't, for both professional and personal reasons. But that was all right, too. There had been plenty of people there. More than he'd anticipated, quite a few more. Old friends from high school and college, family acquaintances, most he couldn't place and hadn't tried. The cathedral had been packed, hot and muggy and stinking from all the flowers. No, she hadn't been missed.
Instead he watched, and finally grasped the door handle when the car was stopped in his driveway. "Thanks for picking me up. I appreciate it."
She shrugged and put the car in park before reaching over to pop the trunk. "It was the least I could do, Gil," she told him softly.
Outside the car she watched him grab his one suitcase. Bigger than he preferred, but he'd had to bring a suit, after all.
"I'm so sorry, Gil," Catherine said in a thick, tragic voice. Her eyes brimmed with tears. "I know that doesn't help. But I'm sorry."
It didn't help, but he made himself smile. "I know," he told her gently.
The house smelled stale, shut up for eight days. He set his suitcase near the door and walked slowly through the living area, turning on a couple of lamps, opening the blinds. Everything just as he'd left it. They had left it. The book still open on the kitchen table, where he'd placed it before going in to make the coffee he'd never started. The phone had rung, not his cell but the house phone, and there were still beans in the coffee grinder. Waiting patiently to be ground, used up.
There was so much to be done. He stood in the middle of the room, arms limp at his sides. Things to be gone through. Clothes, papers, memorabilia. Gil couldn't wear the clothing; too small, too tight. Even if he'd wanted to. He would need boxes. Call the DAV, arrange to have the clothing picked up. Could some of it be thrown out? How could he tell? What was most important? What should he keep?
He sat down hard on the floor, not even noticing the cold tile underneath his ass. He couldn't do all this. It was too much. How could he be expected to decide? What made him the expert on what should go and what should stay? Everything? Nothing?
And why was it suddenly so hard to breathe? The air had been sucked out of the room, leaving only this dusty stale vacuum. He inhaled, so deeply it made his head spin, and let all the nonexistent air out in a hoarse cry, No, no, it couldn't be done, should not be done, none of this should be happening. Not right, not FAIR, none of it, and something this monstrously wrong wasn't allowed to actually come to pass.
The first sob hurt him, deep inside his chest, like something bronchial and infected. So long since he'd wept over anything at all, too long since he'd allowed it, not even at that horrible funeral, with semi-hysterical parents and so many siblings, so many Stokes to go around, why did it have to be HIS? What kind of grinning winking god had spun that wheel, loaded the game, put in the fix that made it Nick whose body lay in that expensive casket, in whose memory were sent so many lilies and carnations and roses that to his own dying day Gil knew he would loathe all flowers forevermore, forever and ever amen.
He sat on the bare cold floor and hung his head and rediscovered how to cry.
The doorbell awoke him. He blinked blearily, startled to find himself on the couch, unable for a moment to remember when he'd sat here. Sometime after that painful blurred hour of crying, he supposed. His eyes stung, and when he reached up to rub them his fingers didn't recognize his features. Puffy eyes, puffy cheeks. A stranger's grieving face, then. Not his own.
The bell rang again, and he lumbered to his feet. Beyond the open door Warrick stood, handsome face drawn with uncertainty, deepening into alarm as he took in Gil's appearance. "Hey," Warrick said gruffly. "Heard you got back this morning."
Gil nodded, feeling the stiffness in his neck. Sleeping on couches would do that to you. "Come inside?"
Warrick nodded, and gave his puffy eyes another wary look before walking in.
He ground the coffee, without thinking much about when it had been measured. It gave him something to do. Behind him, Warrick didn't settle, prowling around the kitchen, circling the table.
"You coming in tonight?"
Gil shook his head, tapping out the last of the coffee grounds. "Not tonight, no."
"Yeah, I'm off myself. Wanted to see, you know. How you were doing."
"I'm fine." He poured water into the machine. With that done, there wasn't much else to do but turn and face him. "It was – difficult," he added slowly. "Coming back, seeing the house."
Warrick nodded, looking almost grateful at Gil's halting words. "I bet. Listen, I'm sorry I couldn't go to Dallas. I wanted to. You know that."
"It's all right. Really. It was – about what you'd expect."
"Nice?"
"I suppose. Yes."
He turned back to the coffee maker, stricken with flailing discomfort, and Warrick said, "I wanted to tell you, you know. If you want someone to give you a hand with Nick's – stuff. I've done that before. I know how hard it is."
Gil nodded without looking around. "That might be good," he said as calmly as he could. "Yes."
"You want to talk about it? I'm here, Gil. Anything you need."
"Thank you." There was a bump in his voice, and his traitorous eyes stung. He reached up to take two mugs from the shelf. "I'm not sure what there is to say."
"After you left. Brass took it awful hard. We all know there wasn't a thing he could have done, but anyway. You seen him yet?"
His back stiffened. "No," he said more curtly than he meant to. "Not yet."
"Gil, man. Jim couldn't have changed things. You know that, right?"
"Of course. It was – very quick."
"Just –"
"I don't blame him." He turned his head, gave Warrick what he hoped was a level look. "I don't. But he is a – reminder. That's all."
Warrick nodded. "Yeah," he agreed softly. "Guess so."
"You're doing all right? Anything happen while I was gone?"
"Usual crap. Nothing that spectacular." Gil could hear what he wasn't saying. Nothing could top what happened nearly ten days ago.
Ten days. Had it only been that long? Two weeks ago, everything was fine. Not perfect; no, even rosy memory couldn't be that kind. But good, oh yes, good. What had Nick said, the weekend they spent at the vineyard? Was it June? Only two months ago. When they'd had all the time in the world. "Gil, I love my life. I just want you to know that."
He clamped his lips shut over a cry of absolute loss. Jesus, it was never going to end. He could see Nick's body, he could feel for himself that there was no pulse and no respiration, he could evidently bury him, but he could not stop this relentless perfection of memory. Nick's face, flushed with wind and wine, teeth gleaming in the sunlight. His hand on Gil's knee, squeezing with his words. What had he said to that? Something light and meaningless, instead of dropping to his knees and telling Nick that whatever he felt, Gil felt doubly, triply.
If only he'd said it. If only, if only. Did Nick know it, then? Did he?
"Griss?"
He blinked hot tears away and shook his head. "Sorry. I just." Shook his head again.
Warrick nodded, looking miserably awkward.
After another awful moment he got the coffee poured into mugs, and there was something briefly to do with cream and sugar, and Warrick limpingly got the subject changed to a case he was working. Gil fell into it with utter relief. Anything, please God, anything to make me stop thinking. At this rate I'll need a lobotomy soon.
"Anyway, I'm sitting there, right, and this guy just keeps on lying. Keeps on, right in my face. Like I haven't JUST told him exactly how it went down, showed him I knew the truth. He just keeps right on spinning the same story." Warrick shook his head, running a fingertip over the rim of his mug. "People just knock me out sometimes, you know? Hell, he'll probably run for President in a few years, or something." An eloquent snort. "Probably win."
Gil smiled, nodded, tasted his bitter coffee. "I meant to tell you. I ran into someone I believe you know. Dennis Quigley?"
Warrick's eyes widened. "Dennis? What the fuck?"
"He's working in Dallas, special investigator for the DA's office."
"Holy shit." Warrick whistled. "Yeah, I knew he did the law school thing a few years back. SMU, I think. Man. How's he doing?"
"He told me to tell you he hasn't forgotten 1994. I assume you know what that means."
A broad grin split Warrick's face. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. Damn. I need to look him up. Me and him go WAY back."
Gil nodded. "I got that impression."
"Man. Glad you told me. Made my day."
"Glad to pass it along."
Warrick's grin faded. "So you gonna be okay?"
Gil glanced down, staring into his own coffee cup. "Officially? Absolutely."
"Unofficially. This is me, man."
"Unofficially. I will be. Yes."
"You know if you need anything. Anything at all. Not just for you. For Nick."
Gil looked up, seeing the deep pain in Warrick's narrowed eyes. "He'd appreciate that," he said slowly. "As much as I do."
"Any time."
Gil drew a deep breath. "I'll need to sort through his things," he said quietly. "Sometime soon, I suppose. You mentioned, before - Maybe you could – help with that."
"Absolutely."
"Thanks."
The house seemed forlornly empty after Warrick left. He busied himself in the kitchen, washing up and putting away, and then grabbed his suitcase from the foyer and took it into the bedroom. It wasn't until he'd set it near the closet that it occurred to him he'd have to sleep here. Slowly he turned, looked at the neatly made bed. This room, as much as any other, reflected Nick's touch. The feather duvet, Nick's choice and fiendishly expensive, and Gil had to admit, worth every penny. The photograph over the bed. Nick had surprised him with it, a blown-up version of Gil's own work, taken during their only vacation together. Alaska, 2003.
"You been hiding your light under a bushel," Nick proclaimed, after Gil had flushed and dithered about his own work framed and displayed. "You're one hell of a photographer, Gil. Admit it."
It was a good picture. It had been a good trip. Ruthlessly he pushed away the companion thought
there won't be another
and picked up the suitcase, unzipping it with fast motions.
All too soon he had his things put away. Suddenly exhausted, he sank down on the bed. Ridiculous, but he could still smell Nick in here. The cologne he liked, that herbal-smelling soap. Nick always smelled so good. Even sick in bed with the flu, smelled so good Gil sometimes wondered if he could bottle that smell, spray it around, so that he could enjoy it even when Nick wasn't around.
He hadn't changed the sheets since all this began. Too busy, and out of town much of the time.
His heart took a frantic leap in his chest, and he tugged down the duvet, snatched up the left pillow. Nick's pillow. He crushed it against his face. Yes, there was that smell. That aroma like soap and cut grass and the afterthought of rain, Nick's smell.
Hugging the pillow to him, he lay back and closed his eyes.
The morgue is even colder, and completely empty but for one table, and Al Robbins standing guard. As before, he wears street clothing, and Gil wants to snap that it's unprofessional of him, that he should be gloved and gowned. It's improper. Possibly dangerous. Right?
Al shakes his head. His voice sounds liquid, sodden, like he's talking underwater. "You don't need to see this, Gil. Don't put yourself through it."
In the dream he ignores it, gliding to stand by the table. There is a sheet-shrouded form there, and as he looks down the sheet peels itself back.
He can remember a phrase, from some movie the title of which he can't recall. Running like a refrain in his mind: Die early, make a beautiful corpse. Something with James Dean and fast cars in it, maybe. Nick's corpse isn't beautiful. There is nothing dreamlike about this: just hellish clarity. They have not told him the details, but he knows enough. Shotgun blast to the occipital region, point-blank range. Nick has no face, and in fact very little head at all. From the neck down his body is pristine, white and perfect, but from the neck up all that is left is gory ruin.
There is a single tooth in the midst of all the red and gray and white shattered bone. A single tooth that hasn't been blown out like the rest. A molar. No filling; Nick has gorgeous, perfect teeth. He stares at the molar, and hears Al's distant voice, Breathe, Gil, come on, breathe, and the idea pops into Gil's mind: He might not be dead yet. True, the shot has taken out his brainstem, there is no way, but he shudders, mouth filling with bile. What if he hadn't died right away? What if he knew, even for only a handful of seconds? What if he FELT this?
Gil stares down at what remains of Nick's face, and screams.
The memorial was held on a Saturday morning. He thought about not attending. Hadn't he done his duty? Hadn't he gone to Dallas, seen it through? Hadn't he held Nick's sobbing sister's hand, and gallantly fished out fresh tissues when she soaked all the others? He'd endured the stink of roses and the feel of his shirt sticking to his skin, the droning priest's voice and the taste of sour wine on his tongue, and wasn't that sufficient? When would he be done with this? When would it all be over?
But not attending was out of the question, of course, so on Saturday morning he showered and shaved and combed his hair, and dressed in his charcoal suit – the linen, he'd learned his lesson in Highland Park, no more wool – tied his tie, added his UCLA pin because this was the sort of occasion for which the little bit of gold was intended.
His own shadowed eyes regarded him from the perfect reflection of the mirror. He drew a deep breath and buttoned his suit coat, and went to get his keys.
And it wasn't the torture that had been Nick's actual funeral. Not as many people, and no casket, although there were flowers, lots of them. Here, however, there was adequate air conditioning, and the smell wasn't quite the miasma of Dallas. He sat near the end of the front row, in this small church where he had never attended services, although Nick, he knew, had been a fairly active member before his attachment to Gil made him miss more and more Sundays.
It was clear Nick was remembered, and fondly, and there were numerous speakers. Colleagues, of course: Catherine, and Warrick, and Al. Brass was there, but didn't speak. It occurred to Gil, seeing Jim's tired features, that he needed to talk to him. Someday. When it had all begun to be only memory. Maybe next year.
Nick's wounded family had mostly elected not to make the trip, but Cabe and Jamie sat next to him, bookends, Jamie's hand cool and not unwelcome on his wrist. Near the end, Cabe stood to say a few words, thanking them for coming, talking about the memorial funds established in Nick's name. Two of them, both new to Gil. A scholarship back at A&M, for fraternity members. And one for the Audubon Society, of course. He thought about the expensive binoculars at home, and felt tired grief claw at his throat.
He himself said nothing. What was there to say? Nothing, nothing at all. But he shook a great many hands afterward, accepted the plenteous condolences. Agreed that yes, Nick had been a stalwart man, Nick had been good people, yes indeed. And no, he didn't need anything, really, but thank you, it's kind of you to offer. Much appreciated.
There were cookies and soda in the fellowship hall, where he smiled woodenly and wished for alcohol, brandy or bourbon or even tequila, something strong and mind-erasing. Never mind that it wasn't even noon yet. He felt he could pull a real bender today. Might have to, to get through it all.
Cabe, sociable as always, the burgeoning politician, mingled with everyone. But Jamie stood nearby, sipping at a cup of diet Coke that seemed to never get any emptier, and a moment after Gil had wearily shaken yet another well-meaning hand, he saw the tears on her cheeks, and excused himself.
"I'm all right," she said in a strained voice, with a smile that held nothing but sorrow. "Just – thinking, you know?"
He nodded, wishing he could put his arm around her, offer some form of comfort, and knowing he could not. "I know. So am I."
"Have we stayed long enough?" She uttered a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and reached up to wipe her cheeks. "You think?"
"Yes. Yes, I think we have."
"Thank God."
There were some goodbyes, and a promise to go to the house where Cabe would meet them later. Outside he watched Jamie draw a deep breath of dust-perfumed air. "It's not that I don't appreciate them," she blurted. "I do. I just."
He nodded. "Come on. I need a drink."
They didn't speak during the drive home, and once there, he mixed whiskey and ginger ale and watched Jamie down hers before allowing himself to drink. The alcohol ignited in his belly, a hot, welcome spark.
Jamie stood by the desk. "This is his stuff, isn't it?" She reached out to touch the photograph in the silver frame. "I remember when this was taken. Right after Dad was sworn in."
"I haven't touched anything." Gil swallowed whiskey, listened to the clink of ice in the glass. "I suppose I should."
"God, he was such a packrat. I think he kept everything." She pulled out the chair and sat, her gamine face twisted in a rueful smile. She glanced at him. "Do you want me to?"
He inclined his head. "Be my guest. I'm not even sure what's in there."
She pulled open the top drawer. "A whole lot of paper clips," she told him, and uttered a rattled laugh. "Was he afraid of a worldwide shortage or something? Jesus."
He smiled. "I have no idea."
Partly because he was tired, but mostly because the thought of even Nick's sister poring through his personal materials made him feel deeply violated on Nick's behalf, he retreated to his study. It startled him to see that over an hour had passed when Jamie looked in. Her expression was quizzical.
"Gil, there's a lot of financial stuff in here." She hefted a thick set of file folders. "I can do the other things, but I don't do money." She paused and swallowed. "I almost said, 'Just ask Nick, he knows how bad I am with money.' God."
He took the files, frowning. "We talked about a joint account, but we never got around to opening it. I know he had a checking account at my bank, and an IRA. And I believe he had a money-market account somewhere. It's listed in his will." He glanced at the tags, and pursed his lips. "I'm not sure what all these are."
Together they laid out the file folders on his desk. Fighting down another surge of furtive guilt, Gil pulled out one labeled as "insurance." He expected Nick's auto policy, the copies of Gil's homeowner policy, nothing much else. What he found was considerably more.
"Jamie," he breathed, staring at her. "I didn't know this was here."
"What?" She reached out to take the sheets of paper from his hand. A moment's study, and her wide eyes met his. "Life insurance? Nick had a life insurance policy?"
"I didn't even know about this." He sat up sharply, shaking his head. "We talked about this, just a few months ago. I have a policy, but I told him –" He broke off to swallow. "I told him he was too young to worry about it. He must - He must have ignored me."
But Jamie was shaking her head, too. "This policy's dated close to three years ago. You weren't - Nick didn't even move in until last year, right?"
He raised his hands and slumped back in his seat. "He must have had it even before we dated. So why did he want to get another one?"
Her expression was perplexed. "Maybe, you know, your line of work. He wanted to be – prepared."
"The department carries an accidental-death policy on each of us. That's in addition to any private policy we might hold."
"He might have been thinking about canceling this one. Redoing it, something."
He shook his head. "Maybe. But generally that isn't a good idea with life insurance."
Jamie glanced at the papers again. "Okay, but Gil? This –" She cleared her throat. "This is a big policy. Really big. Did you look?"
"No." He waved his hands again. "I don't need the money."
"Not even a half a million dollars?"
He gaped at her, and then snatched the policy from her hands. "A half –" He blinked his eyes hard, but the black-and-white numbers remained steadfastly the same. "Jesus," he breathed.
"Nick had a $500,000 life-insurance policy, and he never even told you about it?" She looked as stunned as he felt. "That's incredible."
He worked some spit into his mouth. "It's excessive," he muttered, clearing his throat roughly. "Why so much? Could he afford this?"
Jamie uttered a high, strained laugh. "I don't even know how you collect on one of these."
"The beneficiary takes the policy in and asks for the money," he told her absently. "They'll kick and scream, and they may want to investigate, but eventually they pay up."
"You're his beneficiary, right?"
"Of his will, yes. But this policy was written before we were a couple."
"Doesn't it say somewhere?"
He flipped through the pages. "Yes." His heart was thudding very fast in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. "It's me."
He looked up. It wasn't the prospect of a tremendous amount of money that made his head feel so disconnected from the rest of his body. That he knew, without question. He'd trade five times that amount to have Nick back, whole and healthy.
But something tickled in his jangled brain, something quiet and determined. The amount was excessive, yes. Far more than would be needed to take care of expenses, that sort of thing. Nick's funeral had been expensive, but the final sum hadn't even come entirely out of Gil's pocket; Nick's parents had footed most of the bill themselves, since they'd done the planning. Gil's only major expense had been transporting the body, a substantial sum but not outrageous, comparatively speaking.
Half a million dollars. It would be enough to pay for every Stokes grandchild to attend the college of his or her choice. Endow a scholarship or two, invest, retire on. But Nick hadn't named his family for beneficiary, but Gil. Gil, who earned a very good salary on top of the substantial inheritance from his father nearly ten years ago. Gil, who patently did not need anything like such a vast bequest from his lover.
Questions popped into his head, immediate and insistent. What had Nick thought this amount of money should cover? What contingency was this intended for? If Nick had known, the answer had died with him on that blisteringly hot evening a mile off the interstate.
And the last question, slower to arrive and the one he felt least capable of answering. What else had Nick planned for, years before his untimely death? What other secrets had he kept?
"Gil?" Jamie's face was pale but composed, her dark eyes wide. "You were a million miles away."
"Sorry." He cleared his throat, trying with partial success to shake off the clinging film of foreboding. "I'm – surprised. Understatement," he added with an awkward smile.
"I've been looking at the rest of this stuff." She shrugged. "I mean, nothing much else. He had a couple of other bank accounts, I think, but if the balances are right there wasn't that much in them. Maybe he just – had a big life-insurance thing."
He nodded slowly. "Maybe."
"You want me to go through the rest of the desk stuff? I think it's mostly just supplies, that kind of thing."
"Sure. Thank you."
She gave him an uncertain look before ducking back into the living room. After she'd gone, he sat very still, staring at the blotter on his desk. Cabe's arrival some time later startled him. Listening to Jamie talking with her brother, Gil put the folders back together, the life insurance on top, and placed them in his own hanging file before going out to see what the next plans were.
On the one-month anniversary of Nick's death, he forced himself to begin going through the closets, both hall and bedroom. Nick's sister had been correct: Nick was – had been – a hoarder in some ways, and had held onto things Gil wondered at now. Clothes that didn't fit, sized for a man not quite as muscular as Nick had gotten; shoes too beat-up to be serviceable; hats and jackets and one moth-eaten wool scarf that appeared both ancient and hand-knitted. Who'd made it for him? One of his many sisters? Who could say now?
He'd planned ahead. No work today, even considering that he'd been a rarity there for the past few weeks. More days off than on, and he didn't much care what it meant. Work was difficult, and not only because Nick's absence was still a gaping wound, not even scabbed-over yet. It went deeper than that. Perhaps the evening of Nick's death, the associations with the morgue, and Robbins and Brass, he wasn't sure. But even that didn't quite cover it.
He didn't care about work now. Work was work - it would be there when he returned, if he returned. There were others, capable, meticulous others, who could fill in in his absence. The truth was that he was in no way irreplaceable. None of them were. As impossible as it sometimes seemed, things could and did go on. And he no longer wanted to be privy to that, to know that things were, in fact, proceeding. He preferred the stasis of this house, the quiet, the solitude. Here, what was left of Nick could stay, if Gil wished it. He could keep Nick's things, preserve those remnants of not only Nick's life but often of his own, as well, and there was no one to tell him it was foolish, or a form of denial. Just himself.
He considered a worn tee shirt displaying Nick's fraternity letters, and wondered if he'd ever go back to work full-time. It might be a good point in his life to do what he'd sometimes toyed with doing. Becoming a consultant, working his own hours. Thanks to Nick and his father, he had more than enough capital to support himself. He could probably live frugally on the interest alone. He didn't have to work. He could pick and choose, a lot or a little, here or elsewhere. In fact nothing tied him to Vegas any longer. He could return to California, or go northwest, or northeast. Didn't much matter now, did it?
He decided not to decide yet, and folded the tee shirt tenderly, laying it on top of a pile of its fellows.
By shortly after noon he'd cleared out the bedroom closet and made good inroads on the hallway. There were six boxes of Nick's clothes, divided by wear rather than type. Two boxes that weren't even quality enough to give away; those he sealed and put aside for a later trip to his storage space. The other four he could take to the DAV, but he'd hold off long enough to see what else accumulated.
Warrick came by at two, the kind of social call Gil had soon grown to look forward to in the weeks since his return from Dallas. "You started without me?" Warrick asked, and crossed his arms. "Man, I told you I'd help."
"I'm counting on it." Gil wiped his hands on his jeans and gestured to the desk. "Jamie went through Nick's papers while she was here. Now it all needs packing up."
"Deal."
It didn't feel as odd this time, watching someone else start opening the drawers in Nick's desk. Just a chore that needed taking care of.
"You want a sandwich? Beer?"
Warrick shook his head and stacked papers on top of the desk. "Already ate. So did Nick really like paper clips, or what?"
Gil smiled, and went to make a sandwich for himself.
Catherine arrived an hour later, with two huge pizzas, and that was so unexpected and welcome that Gil didn't even mind the stalling of their progress. They ate outside, drinking the last of Gil's cold beer, and he talked her into taking the leftovers with her for the staff. "This much?" She snorted. "Greg'll eat this by himself."
"That's all right," Gil said mildly.
Warrick belched ringingly and unapologetically, and stood up. "Better get back to it."
After he went inside, Catherine glanced over at Gil. "You should call Jim," she told him gently.
He met her gaze only briefly, and went back to studying the paper on his beer bottle. "I know."
"He's hurting. He - hasn't gotten over it, not yet." She sighed. "Not that anyone has," she added softly. "But Jim, you know, he loved Nick, too, in his own way. Thought the world of him."
"Yes, he did." Gil drank a tiny sip of beer. "I haven't been ready, I don't think."
"He thinks you blame him."
Maybe I do, Gil thought, and then shook his head. No. Try as he might, he'd never been able to lay this at Jim Brass's feet. It had been fast and ugly and unstoppable, even if Jim had been two feet away instead of two tenths of a mile. The shotgun blast that had taken Nick's life might have been one of two, had Jim been there. Gil might be mourning more than one person now. No. None of it was anyone's fault but the cranked-up teenager's who'd pulled the trigger. And even he was so unquestionably under the influence, it became at best an academic point. None of the finger-pointing would bring Nick back to life.
"I'll go see him. I will."
"Thanks."
"How's Lindsey?"
"She's fine. Busy with soccer."
The small talk felt good. He felt good. Relaxed, kicking back on the patio, belly full, beer tart and cold on his tongue. Maybe it was all right to feel good again. Wouldn't last. But he was grateful for the moment.
All too soon it was over. Catherine left with promises of returning in a few days, and a plea to Gil to call her if he needed anything. Gil shut the door behind her and went to check on Warrick's progress.
"Tell you, this is a nice desk." Warrick was seated on the floor, lap filled with various things he was sorting through.
Gil glanced over and nodded. "He already had that when he moved in. I'm not sure where he got it. You want it?"
Warrick paused, staring at him. "Do I want it?"
"Sure. I've already got my desk. As far as I know that desk has no sentimental value for his family, or his brother or sister would have said something to me when I asked." He shrugged. "I'm happy if you can find some use for it."
Warrick was silent for a moment, and then nodded awkwardly. "Yeah, I mean. I could use it. You bet."
"Then it's yours."
"If you change your mind –"
"I don't think I will."
"But I mean, you know. If you want it back sometime. Just say."
Gil smiled faintly. "All right."
"Thanks, man."
"Any time."
It was some time later, when Warrick was wiggling the top left drawer, that Nick's desk presented another minor mystery.
"Stuck," Warrick said, on his knees, peering beneath the drawer. "Got something jammed up in there."
Gil walked over. "If I hold up the drawer, can you reach it?"
"Not unless I got flat fingers."
"I'll get a coat hanger."
Using the bent hanger, with Gil holding up the drawer as high as it would go inside the runners, Warrick finally chivvied out the object, which turned out to be a wad of mangled duct tape wrapped around a key.
"What kind of key?" Gil asked, frowning and hunkering down next to Warrick.
"Not sure. Looks like a locker key, maybe." Warrick handed it over. "Had it taped to the bottom of the drawer?"
Gil turned the key over in his fingers. "Locker, or safety-deposit box." He met Warrick's questioning eyes. "I have no idea."
Going to the lab felt odd, in spite of the fact he still worked a couple of nights a week. Perhaps because this visit was unofficial, and he was only looking for one person.
He found him outside the DNA lab, in conversation with Greg. Both men glanced at him with similar surprised expressions.
"Hi, Jim," Gil said mildly. "Got a minute?"
Brass met his eyes and nodded. "Sure," was his slow reply. "Gimme just a sec."
"I'll be in my office."
Down the hallway, he stood in his own doorway for a moment, looking around. Would he stay here? The prospect of emptying this crowded room of all his things was daunting. And yet he couldn't stay, not if his nebulous plans for consulting began to firm up.
He was seated at his desk, desultorily checking three days' worth of email, when Brass walked in. "You rang?"
"Hi. Know what this is?"
He held out the key, and Brass took it, frowning slightly. "Too small for a house key, or motor vehicle. Locker, maybe."
"That's not a locker number on it. At least it doesn't appear to be."
"Maybe a safety-deposit box?"
Gil nodded slowly. "My leading suspect."
Brass sat down, but didn't relax, his expression uncomfortably reserved. "You working tonight?"
"No. But yesterday Warrick and I found that key, taped to the underside of one of Nick's desk drawers."
Even in the relatively gentle light of his office, he saw the spasm of pain ripple over Brass's bluff features, before disappearing behind the usual stoicism. The memory of that quick agony made Gil's stomach clench with helpless sympathy. Catherine was correct, as usual. This man was carrying a huge load on his back, and that burden was worse for the fact that it was unnecessary. Nick's death hadn't been Jim's fault. Gil felt like the worst kind of callous sadist for not doing his best to allay that guilt before now.
"Nick have any bank boxes you know of?" Brass sounded hoarse, and he laid the key on the desk as if he'd touched something loathsome.
"Nothing I'm aware of. Do you have any ideas how I might find out where this key fits?"
With a shrug Brass visibly slumped. "The usual ways, I guess. Check with his bank, see what they say. Wherever he had accounts." He produced a leaden smile, chilling in its utter humorlessness. "I'm no expert on locksmithing," he added after a moment. "A fact you no doubt know. Why ask me?"
Gil made himself smile, too, and hoped it wasn't as dead an expression as Jim's. "Ulterior motives. I'd like to invite you to dinner."
It clearly wasn't what Brass expected. His eyes widened, then narrowed. "Now? Tonight?"
"Nothing fancy. How about Luigi's? Pasta sound good?"
Luigi's had been a favorite of Nick's, too, but before Nick had even moved to Las Vegas it had been Brass who introduced Gil to the small, dim trattoria. Early days, when most conversations culminated with arguments, Jim's volatile nature crashing sometimes bitterly against the high wall of Grissom's unflappable intellect. Brass had mellowed since then, and in fairness, Gil had seen more than one instance where his own vaunted follow-the-dots method skewed sometimes violently to one end or another. And it had been Luigi's where he and Brass mended fences over past differences. What better place?
Some flavor of the same thoughts, he knew, were occurring to Jim as well, who slowly nodded. "Sure. But you're buying."
Brass ordered linguine alla vongole, but only picked at his food. Gil tasted his wine, and felt a ripple of sadness, not only at why they were there but what had taken away Jim's appetite, what had stepped between them weeks ago.
"What did you want to talk about?" Brass set his fork on his plate and reached for his own seltzer.
"Anything, nothing. I haven't seen much of you lately. I wanted to change that."
Brass kept his glass in his hand, regarding it with distant interest. "You doing okay?" he asked gruffly.
Gil nodded. "I'm all right, I think. I won't say it's been easy. You of all people know that isn't so. But I'm coping." He put down his own utensils and paused. "How about you?"
"Fine."
"Catherine spoke to me."
"Figures." Brass's mouth turned down in an unhappy scowl. "What'd she say?"
"Nothing I couldn't figure out on my own, once I opened my eyes." Gil sighed. "What happened to Nick wasn't your fault, Jim."
Brass nodded once, lips pursed. "I know."
"Do you?"
"Yeah. I do." A painful pause, and when Gil refused to add anything, Jim said, "But I was there. I could have –"
"What could you have done?" Gil asked flatly. "Stopped Ramos from pulling that trigger? Pushed Nick out of the way? Taken the shot yourself? From a quarter of a mile away?" He shook his head, fighting down a spasm of old, tired pain of his own. "It was a terrible thing, yes. And don't think a moment goes by – a single goddamn moment of each and every day – when I don't wish with all my heart and soul that it hadn't been Nick out there with that kid. But I know as well as I know anything else that it wasn't your fault. Blame the people who made the crank Hector Ramos took that night. Blame anyone, anything, but don't take it on yourself."
For a very long moment Brass didn't reply. When he finally did, it was in a voice Gil barely recognized. "It was open and shut, you know?" Low, husky, tight with something Gil slowly realized was unshed tears. "The case me and Nicky were working. That trip, it was just tying up loose ends. And that kid came out of motherfucking nowhere, Gil. Nowhere at all."
It occurred to him that he didn't want to hear this. He'd never heard Brass's version of events, and that was because he had never wanted to, never wanted to hear about Nick's last living moments on earth. But the companion thought was there, as well. Brass needed to tell him. And maybe, in spite of the pain, Gil needed to hear it.
"Go on," he said softly.
It didn't take long to tell. Their food was cold and mostly untouched, and later on Gil paid with a rueful smile.
"I was talking to the wife, you know. The alibi. And she was caving. You could see it in her eyes, all the time she's saying Yes, I was here, yes, I saw him, inside she knew we had her. Nick's off looking at the car. I didn't give it a second thought." His voice thickened to a harsh croak. "He's walked away a hundred times like that, all of you have, and as long as the site's secure I never cared."
"As far as you knew, it was secure."
"Except it wasn't."
Gil gave a slow, even nod. "No. Not this time."
"I could see her, about to change her story. Finally give it up. And I heard the shot. I mean, I remember it. She jumped, but I jumped higher. Had my sidearm in my hand before I ever thought about it, just automatic, you know? But the shot wasn't hubby, trying to fix the problem of the cop on his doorstep. It was off to the right, way off."
Brass cleared his throat. No professional distance in his eyes now; they were red and watery, and his face was deathly pale but for hot red patches on both cheeks. "I saw the kid first," he said waveringly. "Ramos. Waving that shotgun around. I didn't think, you know, I just fired. Got him in the shoulder, flipped him over on his back. He was laughing," he croaked, and reached for his water again. A sip, and he repeated, "Laughing."
He felt dizzy. As if the room's walls were pushing inward, down, or a big hand pressing on the top of his head.
"I started yelling for Nick, and he doesn't say anything. I mean, I knew. I knew right then. But I kept telling myself, maybe he just wounded him, maybe that shot went wild and he conked Nicky over the head with the shotgun, something. Except right then I knew it was bullshit, I'm running and I'm thinking all this. There's this building, they put –"
He broke off, and this time Gil reached out, clasping his fingers over Brass's wrist. "Don't," he said in a voice as gravelly as Brass's own. "Don't put yourself through it." Don't put me through it.
"You know what I thought about, when I saw him?" The red splotches were gone; Brass was deathly pale. "I thought about you. I thought, How will I ever make this up to Gil? Because I knew, you know, I knew what he – was to you. You were to each other. I saw all that. I knew."
After a moment Gil gave a tired nod. "I know you did, Jim," he whispered.
Brass swallowed convulsively. "All I could think was, how do you say you're sorry for something like this? Sorry? Doesn't even start to cut it. I don't know where to start."
Squeezing his wrist, Gil said, "I guess you start where we are now."
Brass met his eyes, gave a short nod. His too-cold hand covered Gil's, briefly, a short sharp squeeze. "Yeah," he rasped. "Guess so. Excuse me."
Gil watched him make his hunched way to the men's room, and then slowly drew his hand back, laced his fingers together. When the waiter appeared to take their plates, frowning at the uneaten portions, Gil ordered coffee and brandy for both of them. They arrived before Jim returned, eyes redder and puffier, but something restored in his step.
"Good thinking," he said softly, resuming his seat. He lifted his snifter. "What do we toast?"
Gil picked up his brandy. "To Nick, of course," he said, and smiled. "Who we both love, and miss."
Brass swallowed, but nodded gallantly. "To Nick."
The brandy tasted warm and sweet, burning all the way down. Gil regarded his glass, and then grinned. "You remember his first night working?"
Brass snorted. "I remember being amazed he came back the second night."
"No thanks to either of us, I don't think."
For the first time in too long, he heard Jim Brass laugh. An anemic chuckle, but Gil was more than willing to accept it. "You never know, Gil," Jim said.
Nearly a week went by before he did anything with the key. It stayed in the pottery dish by the door, along with his extra set of keys and what had been a third set, then Nick's set, and now his third set again, and a heaped pile of assorted change, after-dinner mints, and old gas receipts.
It wasn't that he forgot it, as such, but shortly after his careful fence-mending with Jim Brass, a case came up that yanked him out of his post-funeral stasis, a puzzling, interesting case, and after six days of overtime and far too much coffee, he re-emerged feeling pleasantly exhausted, fulfilled in a way he belatedly recognized as perfectly familiar. He loved his work. Had perhaps lost sight of that lately, but now he remembered. It was fun. With all its quirks and its glimpses into the worst the human psyche could offer, it was nevertheless the professional equivalent of the roller coasters he so loved, and now he was admittedly tired, but rejuvenated at the same time.
He came home late on a Monday morning, fresh off nearly 48 hours of nonstop fact-chasing, and saw the key. The pain was there - needle-thin icicle sliding easily into his heart - but for the moment, at least, he could handle it.
He tossed the contents of his pockets into the dish, and took out the key. Time to find out what Nick felt was so important it should be hidden away.
A call to the bank he and Nick had both patronized turned up nothing much. Their area branch had no safety-deposit boxes at all. For that, the clerk told him, he'd have to go to the main branch downtown. But the subsequent conversation with that bank was equally fruitless.
"We do have safety-deposit boxes, of course," the woman said in a distracted-sounding voice. "But none of our keys are numbered."
"I see."
"Sorry I couldn't help, sir."
He replaced the receiver, and pondered it. In the midst of calling around, his curiosity had been more than piqued; the urge to know what this key opened had become more of a distinct need. It was Nick's, and no matter what it was, he wanted it, wanted to have everything that had belonged to Nick, had been important to him.
After a few minutes he opened his hanging-file drawer and flipped through the few files he'd retained from Nick's desk. Hadn't Jamie said she'd found bank books for several other accounts? The key could easily be from one of those banks instead.
The file obediently revealed three accounts: one savings, one checking, and one money-market. He automatically dismissed the money market account; Nick was hardly likely to keep anything at a brokerage firm. But the other two were worth a shot.
And like the old saying, third time was the charm. Nick's key, it appeared, opened a safety-deposit box at the main branch of Cooverton Bank and Trust, an old-school bank where Gil had had his first account, back in the salad days of his tenure in Las Vegas. He'd quickly grown tired of inflated fees, and moved to First National, where he remained to date, but he remembered the marble Cooverton edifice.
An hour later, showered and shaved and no longer tired at all, he parked his vehicle in the massive parking lot and went inside. It took half an hour, obedient showing of the will and Nick's death certificate, and two separate discussions with bank officers before he was grudgingly told that yes, as executor of Nick's estate he did have custody of whatever lay inside that box. Feeling guilty as a thief caught red-handed, he followed the stiff-backed woman to the vault, and held the box until she finally left him in peace.
In a curtained alcove he opened Nick's safety-deposit box.
At first he thought it was nothing much. Money, banded stacks of tens and twenties. More than he'd have expected Nick to keep handy: several thousand, at least. A battered address book; what meaning did that have?
Underneath was a heavy 8 ½ by 11" envelope. His hands trembled slightly when he picked it up.
No. If he was going to go through all this, it would be at home, in private, and not in this austere little cubicle. If Nick had secrets – and he was growing more certain by the minute that Nick did in fact have those – this wasn't the place to uncover them.
Besides the letter-sized envelope, there was a sheaf of papers inside a manila folder. The title for Nick's SUV lay on the bottom, startling in its very ordinariness. Gil left the money and the title, took the papers, book, and envelope, and returned the closed box to the unsmiling bank officer.
At the house, he poured a hefty jigger of brandy and sipped it for courage. He was tired now, feeling the stress of nearly two solid days of investigative work, but more than that, raw tension. If Nick had wanted him to know about the contents of that box – of the box's existence at all – he would have told him. He hadn't, and Gil had no idea what that meant. Was this something he even wanted to know? A million possibilities had come and gone in his mind during the drive home. Nick was not a secretive man, not by nature. It was out of character, wildly so.
A sharp spasm of grief curled in his belly. He wanted to ask Nick. Why the secrecy, why could you not trust me with whatever this is?
But there was no one to ask. He drank off the rest of the brandy and sat down, pulling the envelope over.
When he upended it, a lot of things fell out. And for a very long moment he just sat and stared, because to say that it was unexpected was to not even come close to the level of surprise he felt.
Nick's envelope was like something out of a Robert Ludlum novel. Gil felt an absurd giggle rising in his throat, and squelched it with difficulty. Three passports, none of them American. Two Canadian, one Swiss. Driver's licenses, two, one international, the other Texas. Credit cards, half a dozen. And folded neatly in half, a birth certificate.
The Swiss passport, and one of the Canadian, had Nick's photographs in them. But the names weren't Nick Stokes. It was harder not to laugh now, and yet his belly felt flash-frozen with shock, bordering on horror. What in the everlasting FUCK?
He opened the third passport and saw his own picture, and recoiled sharply.
His name was changed, as well. Samuel Williston. Tongue in cheek: Williston had been a noted 19th-century dipterist. Nick's inside joke, maybe? Gil wasn't laughing now. The urge to giggle had become something else entirely.
What was this? The work itself was variable; he recognized the Swiss passport as fake, although not entirely shoddy stuff. Cheap, though. And old; the expiration date was only six years from now. Nick must have gotten it not long after his arrival in Las Vegas. The Canadian passports were far better, and the one for Gil – or Dr. Williston – was even higher quality than Nick's. Or should he say, Brian's, since Nick's name was nowhere to be found.
Nick had a full alternate identity for himself, and most of a second, along with a partial for Gil. Expensive, completely illegal, and utterly unfathomable.
Just having the items piled on his desk made him feel obscurely nervous. He put everything back in the envelope and then sat motionless, his mind reeling. A hundred scenarios came and went, each more lurid than the last. Nick had been in trouble. Nick had been unaccountably paranoid. Nick had done something illegal, and felt the need to cover his tracks. Prepare for outlandish contingencies. Read too many Tom Clancy novels.
But one fact remained without question: Nick had died, violently, less than two months ago. Could his death have been connected with whatever reason he'd had for accumulating thousands of dollars' worth of false identification? How so? The shooting had been random, the perpetrator a nineteen-year-old boy so messed up on methamphetamines that he might have thought he was shooting Saddam Hussein instead of a nice clean-cut Texan.
His stomach was churning on the shot of brandy. He got up and walked stiffly to the bathroom, taking out antacids and chewing up four.
He'd never seen Hector Ramos in the aftermath of the shooting. He hadn't wanted to see him, had been afraid of what he might do if he did see him. Nick's teenage killer, who'd spent six days in the hospital afterward, thanks to Jim Brass's bullet; who'd been arraigned and scheduled for trial on charges of manslaughter; who was now out on bail.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror without really seeing it. It was time to look into the circumstances of Nick's death. Perhaps long overdue.
"I knew you'd do this."
He gazed at her. "Do what?"
Catherine sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her tiny office smelled pleasantly of vanilla, and he saw a new picture of Lindsey on her desk. "What you're doing," she replied evenly. "Asking about Ramos."
"I'm not questioning your conclusions, Catherine. I simply – wanted to know more."
"More about what? It's open and shut. You want a copy of my report? It's all there. I'm not hiding anything from you."
"No, I know that. But if you could go over it with me. That's all I'm asking." He found an awkward half-smile on his face. "As a friend."
Her reproachful look said she recognized a lame-ass manipulative move when she saw one, but would refrain from actually saying it out loud. "All right," she said reluctantly. "What do you want to know?"
"What was he doing there? Nick and Brass were finishing up the Jimenez investigation. Totally unrelated."
"It's a nasty neighborhood. You know that."
"Was it Ramos's neighborhood?"
Catherine gazed at him, and finally said, "No. Not specifically. He lives further east. But that doesn't mean anything, Gil. What are you trying to say? Don't pull this shit on me; tell me."
"I don't know," Gil admitted, shaking his head. "Maybe nothing. I have a funny feeling about it, that's all."
"Of course you do." Her voice softened. "He was your partner. Your lover. And a goddamn druggie blew his head off."
He flinched and looked away. "Jesus, Catherine."
"Ramos doesn't even remember doing it. He doesn't remember getting shot himself."
"What does he remember?" He forced himself to look at her again. "Did he say?"
She shrugged and picked up a pen, clicking it mindlessly. "He says," she replied slowly, "that he remembers that afternoon. He was coming down, hard, and all he wanted was to score. He borrowed the money from his cousin. I'm assuming that's an euphemism for 'stole it.' After that, nothing, until two days later, when he was already recovering from surgery."
"Brass told me Nick wandered off. What was he looking for?"
Catherine spread her hands wide. "We weren't ever sure of that. Gil, it was his case. An old one. Brass was still playing catch-up, remember?"
Nodding, Gil said, "The McPherson case. Nick worked it earlier this year. New evidence came up."
"Right. Rick McPherson, accused in February of engineering a business partner's death. His alibi was his wife, Cheryl; she said he was with her the night of the accident. Valentine's. PD got a call from someone who said he had seen McPherson at the scene."
"But Jim said Nick was looking at the car."
"Nick was still sure that car was the one that hit the partner."
"Was it?"
"Never could prove it. There had been plenty of time for the suspect to get the car repaired."
Gil nodded slowly. "So what happened with the witness?"
"Nothing. He disappeared. And then there was the fire, and that pretty much closed the case, permanently this time."
"Fire?"
"You were – out of town." She shifted in her chair, making a face. "The McPherson's house burned down. Fire marshal said it was faulty wiring in the air-conditioning unit. Mr. and Mrs. McPherson never had a chance. I can show you the autopsy reports if you want."
He looked at her so long she finally shifted again, this time glaring at him. "What? You're looking at me as if I'm not telling you something. That's it, that's all, Gil. There isn't anything else."
"Where's Hector Ramos?"
"Right now? Wait a minute. No, you don't –"
"I just want to speak with him. That's all."
"Gil, there are so many reasons why that's a bad idea, it would take me until next week to list them all." Catherine leaned forward, placing her hands flat on the desk top. "It's an open and shut case," she said distinctly. "And you going and harassing the guy will not help. Get it? Look, if our positions were reversed, I know good and goddamn well you'd be saying the same thing I am."
He allowed a faint smile. "I'm sure I would." He uncrossed his legs and stood. "Thanks for your time."
She sighed. "And what I just said didn't make spit worth of difference, did it?"
"Of course it did."
"But it won't stop you."
He was already walking out the door.
The department's computer obediently spat out Hector Ramos's physical address. One of the perks of supervisory status: Even if you had no official business to do, your particular password gave you access to everything.
He tucked the printout in his pocket.
Forty minutes later he pulled up in front of the indicated house. Just one more small building in a neighborhood of small, run-down buildings. This area was painfully poor: postage-stamp-sized lawns brown from lack of expensive water, roofs in obvious need of repair. Ramos's home was much like its fellows, once painted gaily pink, now faded to a sort of sickly flesh tone, like a washed-out photograph. A brand-new Ford F250 sat in state in the driveway. Gil frowned, seeing it, and opened the gate to walk to the door.
A woman about his own age answered the door, her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Si?"
"Busco a Hector Ramos. ¿Está aquí?"
"Si," she said slowly. "¿Usted policía?"
"No, trabajo para el Las Vegas Crime Lab. Deseo solamente hacer algunas preguntas."
The woman – he assumed Ramos's mother, although he could be wrong – gave a stiff nod. "Okay. Hector!" she called over her shoulder. "¡El policía!
He waited on the doorstep while a muttered conversation went on inside, and then a boy opened the screen. His expression was the same as his mother's: shuttered, suspicious. He would have been a nice-looking kid if not for the acne pocking his features. He was very thin, and his tee shirt and battered jeans hung on him, made for someone four sizes larger. His right arm was in a sling, and white bandages peeked from under the collar of his shirt.
Out of nowhere, rage slammed into him. This – this CHILD – had killed Nick. Fried on so much crystal meth he'd probably been awake for two weeks, laughing as if it had been FUN, and Gil was going to TALK to him? The little shit.
"You a cop?"
Gil shook his head. "Crime Lab," he managed through gritted teeth. "I wanted to ask you a few questions."
Instead of asking him inside, Ramos nodded and came out on the porch. His uncasted hand shoved deep in his pocket, he glanced furtively around. "So ask, man. But I ain't gonna change nothin'."
"I understand you don't remember a lot of what happened the night of August 3rd."
"I remember some."
"Tell me?"
"What's this, man? You don't talk to the other guys?"
A renewed flare of rage exploded in his belly. "Just answer the question," Gil spat.
His tone got him a wary look, and a short nod. "Yeah, okay."
"Do you remember shooting N - Mr. Stokes?"
Ramos sucked on his lower lip, visibly deflating. "Not that part."
"After? Do you remember getting shot?"
A snort. "Yeah, I remember that. Hurt, man." He reached up automatically to touch his right shoulder.
Do you think Nick felt it? Did it hurt him, too? Did he know, at all? The fury in his stomach had become nausea, too, roiling angrily. "What else do you remember?"
"Just the blood, you know? Other shit."
"But not the - shooting."
Something flickered over Ramos's acne-scarred features, something young and scared and confused. "They said I done it," he whispered. "But I don't remember."
"What were you doing there? Is that where you usually go? To buy drugs?"
"No, man." Ramos shook his head vigorously. "Nowhere near."
"So?"
With another nervous look around, Ramos gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I was just doin' somebody a favor, that's all. No big."
His head was echoing emptily. It was terribly hard to focus. "A favor?" Gil asked thickly. "Who?"
"Just this guy. Friend of mine, you know? He had to be someplace, and he asked me could I fill in for him."
Gil looked away, out into the street. The urge to either walk away or strangle the kid where he stood was nearly overwhelming. "I see. And your friend will back you up?"
"Ain't seen him since then. Heard he went up to Reno."
"What was the favor?"
Ramos didn't answer, and finally, reluctantly, Gil looked at him again. His hands were ice-cold. "Tell me," he said woodenly.
"Just supposed to go someplace. Since Johnny couldn't."
Gil swallowed. "Someplace? 45th and Cornell, maybe?"
"I don't remember." The anxiety in Ramos's face grew easier to see. "A black car. That's it, man, that's all I remember. Some guy. I mean, Johnny said I'd get some money, you know? He knew I needed it, needed to make some purchases, and this guy was gonna set me up with it if I'd do what Johnny was supposed to do. Only I dunno what that was." He looked away, chewing busily on his upper lip. "Next thing I know, I shot the other guy. Don't even remember that. But I done it. Right?"
You don't remember it. You don't remember putting the barrel of a shotgun to the nape of Nick's neck, and pulling the trigger. You don't remember murdering the best goddamn thing that ever happened to me.
How could you FORGET that? How is it not burned in your memory for all time, like it is, mine? What kind of subhuman monster ARE you?
Red flashes pulsed in his vision. "Yes, you did," Gil said in a thick voice. "You k- killed him."
"I didn't want to kill nobody," Ramos whispered. His color had gone; he looked green now, horrified. "Man, you gotta believe that. Whatever I done, it was the fucking drugs. I swear to God."
"Where did you get the shotgun? Was it yours?"
Ramos shook his head. "I don't got a gun. Sure no shotgun."
"But your prints were all over it. You must have gotten it from somewhere."
"I don't remember."
"Well, what DO you remember?" Gil snarled. "You don't remember the gun, or why you were there – do you remember Nick? You remember blowing his goddamn HEAD off? Does that ring any bells?"
Ramos drew back several steps, his back pressed against the screen door. "Maybe I oughta call my lawyer," he said shakily. "I told you, man, I don't remember that part."
"Sure you don't." Gil stared at him, spots like solar flares in his peripheral vision. "How nice for you."
"I ain't got nothin' more to say. You wanna talk to me, you call my lawyer, man."
The screen door slapped shut, and a half-second later the door slammed. Distantly Gil heard a bolt being shot, as well.
After a very long moment, he turned stiffly and made his way back to the truck. His muscles ached as if he'd just run ten miles.
Inside the truck, he waited for the pulsing in his vision to stop, and then turned the key in the ignition.
"Sometimes I want to kick your stubborn ass."
Gil smiled faintly and kept on clicking his mouse button, scrolling down. "Nice to see you, too, Jim."
Brass sighed. "I'm surprised you didn't throw a punch while you were at it."
"I considered it."
"What the fuck were you thinking? Gil, you had no business going to Ramos's house. We'll be lucky if he doesn't file harassment charges."
Gil's smile slipped. "I didn't harass him," he said, glancing at Brass. "I asked a few questions. A few more than you or Catherine, by all appearances."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Brass sat down heavily in the other chair, brow furrowed with mixed anger and surprise.
"It means this isn't as cut and dried as you think."
"A little more detail would be appreciated."
Gil pushed the mouse away and leaned back in his chair. "Catherine told me Ramos didn't remember anything of the – incident. But when I asked him, he said he remembered a bit. He remembers you shooting him. And he remembers – the blood."
Brass nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, well, that adds up to pretty much nothing, if you ask me. Tell me he remembers what he did, and I'll get excited."
"So I asked him what he was doing there. Whether or not this was a regular hangout for him. He said no, that he'd never been in that particular area before."
"Probably lying. What difference does it make? I was there, Gil. I saw him."
"You saw him. But you didn't see the shooting." Gil leaned forward and took off his glasses. "Where'd he get the gun? It wasn't his."
"So he says. His prints tell another story."
"Prints, whatever." Gil waved his hand and didn't miss Brass's faintly shocked look. "Picking something up isn't the same as owning it. And shotguns aren't likely to just be lying on the ground, waiting for someone to come along."
Instead of looking angry or frustrated, Brass's expression had changed to one of distinct unease. "Gil, listen to yourself," he said after a pause. "What are you doing here?"
Gil lifted his chin. "Investigating Nick's death."
"From where I sit it sounds like you're grasping at straws. And for what? Does it matter where Ramos got the shotgun? He still pulled the trigger. And good thing I'm a decent shot, or he'd have probably blown me away while he was at it. The kid was out of his mind, so cranked up he was barely walking. And you think it's sinister that he doesn't remember shooting Nick? Christ, he probably wouldn't have recognized his own mother that day."
Gazing at him, Gil said, "A man in a black car."
"Huh?"
"Ramos said he was doing a favor for a friend. Johnny. Johnny, whom he hasn't seen since the – incident." He cleared his throat. "He remembers a man in a black car."
Brass leaned back, bring up a hand to rub his eye. "For God's sake, I drive a black car, you drive a black car. What the hell does –"
"I don't know. But I plan to find out."
"Okay, Gil, let's just put all the cards on the table. All right?" Brass laced his fingers together. "You're losing it. You're jumping at shadows, grasping at straws. The truth is this: You lost your partner two months ago. And you're looking for anything to keep from thinking about how much you miss him."
Stung, Gil recoiled. "Since when did you start practicing psychology?"
"Since you turned into a goddamn loose cannon, that's when," Brass snapped. "Nicky's dead, Gil," he added harshly, pointedly. "Look, I hate saying it, and I know you hate hearing it. But you buried him last month. You think this -–whatever it is – will bring him back? Huh?"
Gil licked his dry lips. "No," he whispered. "No, I don't."
"There might have been a guy in a black car. Sure. Okay. I can go with that. Some guy, who was probably Ramos's dealer, set him up with the shit he was on when he drew a bead on Nick."
"And the shotgun?"
"Could have bought it while he was flying, or stole it. He doesn't remember much else; why would he remember doing that?"
It was logical. It was terribly rational. Gil nodded. "Maybe."
Brass blew a frustrated sigh and flung his hands up. "Maybe? Yeah. A lot more plausible than whatever goddamn conspiracy theory you're cooking up, I'll tell you that much. You're making this complicated, and it isn't. Sometimes things really are exactly what they appear to be. The simplest explanation works."
Gil gave a stiff nod. "Occam's razor?"
"I dunno, Santa's toothbrush, whatever, but what I do know is that you're asking for trouble, Gil. You want to be suspended? You keep pushing at this case, you're asking for censure. And you know it."
"Your opinion," Gil said icily, "is duly noted."
The look Brass gave him wasn't angry. Just tired, and deeply sad, and something else, something anxious and caring. Something he desperately wanted not to see. "Okay, Gil," Brass said finally. "Have it your way. You look tired. Get some rest, okay?"
Gil gave a stiff nod and said nothing, waiting for him to leave.
He made it the rest of the night without doing anything too irrational. It was a near thing, though. The take-it-or-leave-it work attitude he'd felt not so long ago was back, and nothing at the lab seemed fully three-dimensional. All flat surface gloss, no substance. None of it mattered, really. None of it changed anything.
He was gathering his things to leave when Catherine stopped by.
"Heard Brass had a few things to say about your visit with Hector Ramos."
Her voice held no accusation in it, only a weird kind of sympathy for which he had absolutely no patience. He turned sharply, fixing her with a stare. "And I've already heard your opinion on it, so why don't we just drop it?"
Her hands came up, a defensive gesture. She even backed up a step. "Whoa there. Sorry if I reminded you of something you'd rather not remember. But it's my case, all right? Not yours. I do have a vested interest here."
"Not as much as I do," he said immediately, not without some satisfaction. "Never as much as I do."
"Jesus, Gil. You think you're the only one suffering? You think you cornered the market on grieving for Nick?" There were tears in her eyes, out of nowhere, and he hated them, loathed them and her with a sudden ferocity that took him completely by surprise. "I miss him, too, you know that?" she added, shaking her head. "I miss him so goddamn bad. But he's gone, Gil, he isn't coming back."
And just like that, he felt everything fall apart. Curious, how a small part of him sat back, observing, noting the way he wheeled around, turned on her as if she were the enemy, not Ramos, not death itself. Just Catherine.
"I KNOW he's gone!" he bellowed. "God DAMN it, as if you have to REMIND me!"
"Gil, for God's –"
"Why does everyone have to say it? Would you tell me that? You've got all the answers, Catherine, you tell me why you and Brass feel you need to say it over and over again, Nick is DEAD, Nick is GONE!" He drew a whooping gulp of air. "Do you think I hadn't NOTICED? I know! I know I will never, ever see him again! So would you all stop REMINDING me?"
Catherine had backed all the way to the door. Now she gave a slow, minuscule nod. "Sure, Gil," she whispered. "I won't mention it again."
Oddly, her soft tone made him feel frantic, cornered. He gulped another lungful of air, but it didn't help. "I just want to understand, that's all," he said unsteadily. "That's all I want. To understand. Why."
Her expression crumpled, but she didn't say anything. Just watched him while he gathered up his things, and got out of the way when he headed for the door.
There were things he needed to do. Lingering questions, leads that demanded follow-up. But he drove straight home, jaw clenched over simmering anger. Nothing he was doing was that out of character, or indeed so unprofessional. It hadn't been him who'd missed the detail of the man in the black car. Or pursued the idea that Ramos wasn't supposed to even be in the neighborhood where Nick had been shot. It had been the very people who'd jumped all over HIM.
Embarrassed that they hadn't gotten the whole story? It was possible. He yanked the wheel viciously around a meandering Volvo, and shot the driver the finger when he honked. Very possible.
By the time he reached the house, he was trembling with tension and fury and a restless need for action. The kitchen was filthy. Christ, he'd really gone to hell lately, hadn't he? It smelled funny. Fusty, like an old man's apartment.
What had Nick been thinking? Leaving his police companion to wander out of sight, no thought to his own safety. How many times had he done that before? How many times had it almost been the last? Amy Hendler could have been the one. Had it not been for Gil's fortuitous realization in the front yard, she would have been.
Jesus, had he had a real death wish? If so, he'd succeeded. Late, but not for lack of trying.
He bagged up garbage and twisted the ties viciously, and carted six bags to the empty dumpster before stomping back inside. Bleach. That was what the kitchen needed. Environmentally unfriendly and wonderfully sterile. God, every surface was tacky, spotted with old grime.
And the fake IDs? Nick's secrets? What about those? What was going to pop up next week? A wife Nick had never told him about? A child? Christ, maybe that gigantic life-insurance policy was the intended payoff for something. Someone.
He scrubbed until his arm ached, rinsed and then cleaned the sink just as vigorously. Better, a little. The astringent smell of bleach filled his nostrils, drove away the vague mildewy odor.
Nick hadn't had any business skulking around the garage. Six months after the fact? What sort of moron would not have had his vehicle repaired in all that time? Guilty or not, the car wasn't the route to proving it. There were better ways, safer ways. Ways that didn't involve stepping away from a cop escort and walking into a stoner's path.
It didn't have to happen. It was stupid, Christ Jesus it was abysmally stupid of him. Why? Nick might play dumb sometimes, but he wasn't, never, so why now?
He paused, and thought, as if tasting something he'd considered before and hadn't had the nerve: Nick isn't coming back. Ever. He won't walk through that door in a few minutes, a little sweaty and bitching about how it's already so hot and it's not even nine o'clock yet. He won't take his gimme cap off and show me his hair, all sticking up in the front with sweat. He won't grin and peel off his shirt right there in the foyer, because he knows I have a thing for him sweaty. That smooth skin, gleaming with sweat. He never smells bad. He smells like Nick, that gorgeous smell, and I'll never smell it again, he will never BE here again, he's dead, the part of him that made him Nick was gone even before his body finished dying on that concrete garage floor. An instant, and then his brains were spattered all over the place, they found brain matter on the WALL.
He made a harsh, coughing sound, and his flailing hand struck the open bottle of bleach, sending it toppling over and the contents gurgling down the drain. With abstract interest he thought, It's all right, I needed to run some bleach through there anyway.
And then he was sobbing and sliding down to the floor, sitting with his bleach-damp hands turned palm-up, empty.
When the time came that night to go to the lab, he didn't move. He felt vaguely ill, muscles aching, his head pounding nastily. Too ill to go. Definitely. It might be catching.
He pulled up the coverlet and turned on his side, inhaling the scent of the pillow.
It was nearly midnight when Catherine called. Late, if he were off, but this wasn't an off night, he was simply ill. And awake when the phone rang, although lying still, relishing the stillness, the peace of it.
"I'm going to assume you aren't coming in," Catherine said, her tone a little formal.
"I'm coming down with something," he told her drowsily.
"Call me next time? I mean, we're swamped, all right?"
He nodded at the receiver, and gently hung up.
He slept dreamlessly, heavily, and awoke to sunlight and a clogged nose and a deep, throbbing ache in his thighs and calves. His throat was a tender misery. He sat up and coughed dryly, and slowly fumbled for his house shoes.
Later he thought there was something just about his getting sick then. As if his body had decided to reflect his state of mind. Sick at heart, as the saying went, and yes, he was. So sick. Sicker than he could recall ever being.
The cold he treated with aspirin and zinc and vitamin C, sniffed and used up the remains of his solitary box of tissues before going to work on the toilet paper. In the time he and Nick had had together
thirteen months eleven days seventeen hours plus or minus
he'd never been ill, although Nick had caught first a cold, then the flu, last winter. Now he could hear Nick in his mind, as if turning the tables on him: Zinc lozenges, Gil, that's the ticket. Clear you up in no time.
He conquered the cold in a couple of days, just a case of the sniffles after that. But he didn't go back to work. Being sick had given him an excuse to sleep, to rest more than he could remember doing in his life. And getting well - There was always the chance of a relapse, as Nick had done in December. No, better not to chance it.
Running out of toilet paper made him finally decide to go to the store. But the trip exhausted him. He slept six hours with the groceries still sitting in their bags on the kitchen counter, waiting with all patience to be properly put away.
After five days, the doorbell rang. He blinked at the clock by his bed, and when the bell sounded a second time he rolled out of bed and shambled to the door.
"Jesus," Catherine said under her breath. "You look like hell."
Gil rubbed his eyes. "I've been sick."
"I know. I brought supplies." She raised the plastic bags she carried.
"Okay," Gil mumbled. "Come on in."
He sat at the table and watched her put things away, and thought about making coffee. His throat felt much better. But he was so tired.
"Have you been eating anything at all?" Catherine frowned at the contents of his refrigerator, then at him. "You've lost weight, haven't you? How much?"
Weight? He considered it dully, and shrugged. "I don't know."
"Want some coffee? Coffee sounds good," she replied to herself. "You have anything besides whole beans?"
He shook his head.
"Figures."
While she bustled around grinding the beans and cleaning out the coffee pot, he stirred himself enough to get out milk. One sniff, and he hastily put it back, reaching in again for the half-gallon Catherine had brought him.
"Cereal?"
"In the cupboard to your left."
She took out Nick's Cheerios and sliced a banana over a bowlful before taking the milk away from him and sloshing it on top. "Here," she said brusquely, holding out the bowl, a spoon sticking out. "Eat. Put some color back in your cheeks."
Catherine ate a toasted bagel while he worked on the cereal. Funny, but once he started eating he couldn't stop. Ravenous, maybe it had been a while since he'd last bothered to have something to eat. Was it starve a cold, feed a fever, or the other way around? He could never remember.
When he refilled his bowl he caught a tiny smile on Catherine's face. It didn't feel odd to smile back. His cheeks actually felt a little hot. Not fever. Just rueful embarrassment.
Another banana, and he leaned back in his chair, stifling a belch behind his fist.
"Better?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I didn't realize I was that hungry."
"You needed food. You've probably lost ten pounds."
"That's a good thing, actually."
"Not an approved diet plan."
"Maybe not."
Her smile faded. "We missed you this week," she said after an awkward pause. "We – I," she corrected with a quick shake of her head, "was worried about you."
"I'm all right," he said automatically.
"Are you, Gil? Really?"
He met her eyes – kind look, kind woman, perhaps his closest friend, Catherine or Jim, or maybe both – and drew a careful breath. "I – fell apart," he whispered.
Her hand slid across the table, fingers gentle on his own. "I know."
"And I'm not sure I'm – together again. Yet."
"There's no timetable. Take as long as you need."
He turned his own hand palm-up, so that their fingers interlaced. "It's funny," he said in a rusty voice. "It comes in waves. You know? There are times when I think I'm really fine. And then it all – boils up."
"I saw you boiling," she said dryly. "Believe me."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that, you didn't deserve it."
"You've been holding a lot in. Pushing it down. But sometime these things – they gotta come up. Out. It was bound to happen."
"Still."
She gave him a sweet smile. "Apology accepted."
"How are you?"
"Me? Fine."
"Really?"
She rolled her eyes, but her fingers were tight in his. "Yes, really."
"Thanks for the groceries."
"I just got sandwich stuff, fruit, that kind of thing. You want fancy, you get your ass out of bed and get it yourself."
He chuckled and said, "That I can do."
They drank second cups of coffee in mostly silence, companionable, not uncomfortable. Finally Catherine set her mug on the table and looked squarely at him. Her smile had vanished. "You feel up to talking about some things?"
He regarded her, and nodded. "What things?"
"Hector Ramos."
He waited for a return of the rage, or that terrible lancing grief that had prostrated him in the kitchen almost a week ago. When neither came, he gave another, cautious nod. "Sure."
"911 got a call last night, to his address. When the paramedics got there Ramos was in cardiac arrest."
He gaped at her. "He –"
"Medics did their best, but he didn't respond." She sighed. "They pronounced him at Desert Palms, about ten-thirty."
He gave a tight nod. "Overdose?"
"That's Robbins' initial conclusion."
Unsteadily, Gil said, "Not so surprising, I don't suppose. He was a longtime user."
She nodded, but her grim expression deepened. "There's a wrinkle, Gil. He ODed on heroin."
"I thought he used metamphetamines. Crank."
"He did. And cocaine, I think. But there were no track marks on his arms. No skin popping, no nothing. Robbins checked pretty thoroughly."
"Sniffed it?"
"No degrading of the nasal tissues."
Gazing at her, Gil cleared his throat with difficulty. "Do you want me to say it?" he asked.
She shook her head. "You don't have to. It looks suspicious to me, and Jim agrees."
"This wasn't voluntary."
"It's early yet. But no. No, I don't think it was."
A ripple like ice water ran up his spine. He sat up very straight in his chair. "He was murdered," Gil whispered.
"It's a possibility."
He broke her stare, gazing down at the tabletop without seeing it. He closed his eyes briefly, breathing deep and slow. When he looked up, he found her watching him alertly.
"I need a shower," Gil said crisply. "And then maybe you and I and Brass should have a talk."
Catherine nodded. Her expression was utterly relieved. "Yeah," she replied. "I think so."
An hour later the three of them sat in his living room, in awkward silence. Gil took a careful sip of his coffee and glanced at each of them in turn. "Are we all on the same page now?"
Catherine nodded, and Brass gave a tight shrug. "If your page says something's hinky about all this, then yeah. Yeah, we are."
"Everyone involved in any way the evening of Nick's shooting is now dead," Gil said bluntly. "The McPhersons. Hector Ramos."
"Except us," Catherine interjected.
"It still could be coincidence." Brass's features hadn't lost the mulish cast. "It's far from impossible."
"Granted. But if so, it's a hell of a coincidence."
Brass considered, then produced a nod.
"So what do we have?" Gil picked up a pad of ruled paper, clicking his pen. "Four deaths. And two people unaccounted for. The friend, Johnny, and the alleged man in the black car." He drew a little figure, an ad-hoc flow chart. "There's only one person who connects to all of these."
Catherine nodded. "Nick."
"Right. Nick's old case. PD received an anonymous tip, correct? Leading Nick and Jim to speak with the McPhersons that evening."
Brass shifted in his chair. "You think it was bogus."
Gil met his eyes squarely. "I think it was intended to place Nick at that specific location, at that time, yes."
"So you think this was a hit."
"I'm not seeing many other possibilities at this point. There are too many coincidences. A case Nick was familiar with, an unsolved case. A boy who had no business being where he was. A family killed in their own beds only a handful of days later, and the boy dead after I spoke with him?"
"What's the connection?" Catherine's eyes had taken on that light he recognized, the one that said she saw the puzzle, she was hooked. It would have delighted him, any other time. Now it only underscored his own determination. "The McPhersons were in on it? Maybe the promise of a payoff from someone?"
Gil shook his head. "They didn't need to be in on it. Only present. Whoever phoned in that tip chose that case for two reasons: unsolved, and involving Nick in the original investigation. The McPhersons were in a sense hapless victims here."
"That's still leaving a hell of a lot to chance." Brass sighed. "To figure that it would lead to Nick, alone in that garage with Ramos? No backup? Slim chance."
"Agreed. Which leads me to another admitted supposition." He cleared his throat. "How certain are you that Ramos did in fact shoot Nick?"
"I was there, Gil."
"Yes, but again: You didn't see the shooting."
Brass gave a slow nod. "True. But –"
"Ignoring Occam's razor for the moment –" Gil gave Brass a fast half-smile "—how else could it have played out? If we know there were at least two other parties involved?"
Catherine was nodding, too. "Someone else shot Nick? And then put the weapon in Ramos's hands?"
"Could be. Did you test for gunpowder residue?"
Catherine and Brass exchanged an uneasy look. "Open and shut," Brass stated gruffly. "We literally had him red-handed."
Catherine shrugged. "In any case, the hospital sent him straight to surgery. By the time we got to talk with him, it was a day later and he was totally cleaned up."
"True." Gil sighed. "I doubt I'd have done anything differently, had the circumstances not been what they are."
"So if Ramos didn't shoot Nick, who did?"
Gil leaned back, tapping his pen on the paper. "That's the real question, right there."
"That and why Nick?"
"That, too."
"I'm not saying I don't believe you," Brass said heavily. "Because it does make a cracked kind of sense. But I'm stuck on the second question. Believe me, I've taken Nick's case apart, bit by bit. I can't see anything substantive to suggest that it was part of any setup. Nor can I see any reason to suspect that there was more to it than appears."
Gil nodded. "I think you're right. I think whatever is going on here, one thing we can set to the side is any real overt meaning to the McPherson case. It was – an excuse, nothing more."
"And they died for it," Catherine muttered.
"Exactly. Of what may have been arson."
"And we're back where we started."
"Not completely. I want to know who this Johnny character is. Ramos said he'd heard he went to Reno." He glanced at Brass. "Any chance we could get some local law support from that area?"
"Oh, they'll love that," Brass replied dryly. "A junkie named Johnny. That narrows it down."
"I know. But it's a start."
Brass gave a slow nod. "Yeah, I can make a call. But I don't have to tell you we have a snowball's chance of that turning anything up. Too little to go on."
"Which means we need to pursue things more locally. It comes back to Hector's guy in the black car. What did he do? What kind of job did he have for Hector?"
"Killing Nick?"
Gil drew a careful breath. "Except we aren't entirely sure Hector DID kill Nick. In which case, maybe our black-car man set Hector up. Told him to be in that place, at that time. Hector was very open about needing money. I doubt he would have asked too many questions."
"Still just about nothing to go on," Brass told him. "Must be 100,000 black vehicles in this city. No way will we be able to tell which."
"Did he say where he met this guy?" Catherine asked. "An intersection, something?"
Gil shook his head. "No," he admitted. "Nothing so specific."
They said nothing, and after a silent moment he held up a hand. "I agree. There just isn't enough there to pursue."
"Doesn't mean we forget about it," Brass said quietly. "Just – for the moment, that ain't much."
Gil gave him a distracted nod.
"What?" Catherine leaned her elbows on the table, frowning. "You've got that look in your eye."
"It seems to me," Gil said slowly, "that we need to take a step back. See what it is we're missing here."
She made a face. "Like what?"
"On the micro level, our hands are tied. We just don't have enough concrete information to proceed. But we do have something. We know – or at least we theorize, for the moment – that this was about Nick, somehow. Correct?"
They each nodded, Catherine quicker than Brass.
"Looking for some random drug user is a needle in the haystack. But Nick's work is right here, under our noses. Every case he worked."
"That," said Catherine dryly, "is a lotta cases."
Gil nodded. "True. But we can narrow it down."
"How?"
His mouth had gone very dry. "It was early in Nick's time here. Sometime in the first year. No later than mid-1998."
"What was earlier?"
"The connection. What this is about."
Brass snorted. "And you arrived at this theory how?"
"A hunch," Gil said simply. "That's all. More than that I'm not prepared to say."
"Well, that's mysterious." Catherine narrowed her eyes, looking frustrated.
"Let me do some research first. But in the meantime, can you pull the info on any cases Nick worked his first couple of years here?"
She shrugged. "Sure. I can cross-reference. But the actual files will be in the dungeon by now."
"A list will suffice for the moment. Names, dates. That's all I need."
"You're being awfully cryptic."
He gave a faint smile. "Bear with me. I'll explain when I understand it myself."
After they left, he went into his study and sat down at his desk. His heart was beating too fast for walking a few feet, and his hands had gotten cold. With fingers that shook a little, he reached into the bottom drawer and took out Nick's old appointment book.
He hadn't looked at it yet, not closely. A cursory glance, nothing more. Now he opened it carefully. 1998. In January of that year Nick would have celebrated his fourth month on the job, if celebrate were the right word. Ed Blake had still been alive then, hadn't he? The car accident that had killed him and his family had happened around Easter, that year. And Warrick had joined their ranks a couple of months later.
The book was heavily marked in Nick's small, painfully neat hand. Gil swallowed a twinge of sadness, seeing that draftman's handwriting. So familiar.
Impatiently he began flipping through the pages. Even back then, Nick had the same habits, writing just about everything in his Daytimer. He called it his brain, didn't he? Said he couldn't remember to tie his shoes unless he wrote it down. Gil had never been more thankful for Nick's painstaking nature.
January was unrevealing. Nick hadn't put much in his book about any casework, although there were two meetings with Brass, one written so comparatively messily that Gil could imagine Nick had been pissed off when he did it. No surprise; that was a rough winter for Jimbo. Divorce, custody angst. He'd been just about impossible to work with, and hadn't improved for a good eighteen months or so.
Dentist appointment, church functions, birthdays. Nick never forgot to send someone a card. Now Gil saw why.
But none of it was getting him any closer to his hunch. He paged forward, scanning February. Nick had had a date for Valentine's. Someone named Monica. He'd never mentioned her to Gil. Well, guess that one hadn't gone all that spectacularly well. Her loss had been Gil's gain, even if it took a few years to materialize.
In March, nothing much. He'd testified at a couple of trials. Three separate meetings with the then-DA, Johanssen. Must have been a hot case. Was this it? But if so, the actual casework would have been late 1997. No. Not likely.
It went on like that. He was bleary-eyed and the small flicker of hope had died to an ember by the time he came to October. The 2nd, just the initials, E.S., and a time. 8:00. A.m. or p.m.? But Nick wrote out names. He'd written just about everything out before. Why the initials?
The back of the Daytimer held Nick's address book. Gil scanned the S page, and frowned. Nick had obediently written it out here, as usual: Evan Santley. The name was familiar, in a way that suggested while he'd definitely heard it, it wasn't anyone who'd been particularly important to him. But Nick? Who knew?
Santley. Santley. The area code was unfamiliar. He reached out and touched his computer's mouse, clicking on his browser. A quick search told him Santley's area code was in Austin, Texas. A friend, probably. College buddy, something along those lines. Maybe he'd been in town then, met Nick for dinner. Made sense.
What didn't make sense was why Gil himself felt he recognized the name. He went back to the search screen and typed in Santley's name.
The first link made him sit up straighter, frowning. No wonder the name sounded familiar. It had been in the news, even here in Vegas. Texas Attorney General, Evan Santley. A man with a reputation for bulldog vigilance, a Democrat in a state crowded with Republicans. "Saintly" Santley. But he'd been too ruthless for the nickname to carry much power. A saint, Evan Santley had not been. A crusader, a ferociously straight shooter, perhaps.
He'd made a different kind of headline following his death in 1999. Gunned down in his own doorway very late one evening, and the shooter had never been found. No shortage of suspects, that much was certain. Santley had a long list of enemies, from oilmen to cattle ranchers to real estate developers to insurance executives. All had felt the bite of his rigorous ethical standards more than once.
And Nick had what? Met with him? For what?
Feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature in the room, Gil sat back, his hand limp on top of Nick's book. "What were you doing, Nicky?" he whispered, barely aware that he was saying the words out loud. "What was going on in 1998? And what did Evan Santley have to do with it?"
He closed the book finally, letting his fingers linger for just a moment on the leather. Feeling only slightly ridiculous, he raised his hand and kissed his fingers, touching the book again lightly before putting it back in the bottom drawer.
The phone rang while he was in the kitchen, putting on water for tea. His throat was aching, not with sickness, he devoutly hoped, but tired from talking. Nick's lemon-and-honey elixir was just the ticket.
He turned on the burner before walking over to pick up the kitchen extension. For a moment no one answered his hoarse "hello," and he frowned and repeated himself.
"Listen very closely," a man said in a very low tone.
Gil paused. "What?"
"Be very, very careful. You have no idea what you're dabbling in."
Gil's heart kicked in his chest, a jolt of surprise. "Who is this? What are you talking about?"
"Shut up and listen. You've just skimmed the surface, and they're already watching you. You will not be allowed to dig much deeper. Leave it alone, Mr. Grissom. Let it go, and live a long and happy life."
Almost too surprised to say anything, Gil managed, "Dig into what? I don't know what you're talking about. Who is this? Tell me!"
A pause. "Someone who knows whereof they speak," the man finally said. His voice was inflectionless, totally without accent. He sounded like a big-city news anchor. "You need a friend, Mr. Grissom, and you don't have any. Without them, you'll never get past first base. Believe me."
"Why should I believe you? What evidence –"
"Men have died for what you're poking around in. Better men than you. Stay out of this. Trust me; it's the only warning you'll ever get."
"What –"
But he was talking to a dial tone.
The sharp whistle of the tea kettle made him jump so hard he dropped the receiver he'd been holding for the past few minutes. He bent to pick it up and replaced it, and walked mechanically over to turn off the flame under the kettle. And then he simply stood, staring at nothing, heart still jitterbugging in his chest.
"This is everything I could find." Catherine slid a stapled sheaf of papers across the table. "Every case Nick worked from basically his first day through early 1999."
Gil shook his head, eyebrows raised. "That's…more than I'd thought."
"TELL me about it." She blew a gusty sigh and flopped back in her chair. "You know, it doesn't feel like that much until you see it in a list like that. Then you think, 'We do THAT MUCH?' I think we all need raises."
"Too true," he agreed distractedly, already scanning the first page. "Turn up anything interesting? Anything jump out at you?"
"Nothing much."
"It's here," Gil murmured, and turned to the second page. "I know it is."
"Okay, the natural question is now: What's here? What are you looking for?"
He glanced at her over his glasses. "I'll know it when I see it."
"And in case you were wondering? That isn't a lot of help."
"I'm not sure." Gil sucked on his lower lip for a moment, sagging a little in his chair. "An idea. I think based on some things I've uncovered, that Nick was involved in – whatever this was – very early on, almost certainly within the first year of his hiring. I could be wrong, but after last night I don't think I am."
She frowned. "We didn't get much decided last night. What convinced you?"
"It was after you left." He forced what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. "I got a strange phone call. The caller didn't identify himself, but he warned me to stay away from this."
Catherine goggled at him. "Someone warned you off? Jesus."
"I thought about seeing if I could trace the call," he continued evenly. "But that would involve making all of this official, and I'm not quite ready to do that yet."
"Screw making this official. Gil, are you in danger?"
"I'm honestly not sure."
"Are you kidding?" she flared. "We've got four dead bodies, and you aren't SURE?"
He went back to studying the list. "I'm not saying I really want to take any unnecessary risks, Catherine. But this is important, and I'm starting to believe it may be much, much bigger than anything we've yet uncovered. I need to know why this happened. If this is how I do it, then so be it."
"And risk your life at the same time?"
"Nick did," Gil replied simply. "That much I'm certain."
Her cheeks were very pale. "Gil," she said in a thick voice. "Don't make me lose you, too. Please."
Her shaky tone took him by surprise, and he laid the list aside. "It won't come to that," he told her, praying he was correct. "I promise you."
"So you say. Jesus, Gil, what IS all this? What is going on?"
He smiled. "That's what I'm going to find out."
Catherine's list was six pages of a bulleted list, complete with dates, names, and case numbers. After she reluctantly left, he went back to studying it.
Some cases he could automatically dismiss. Simple process of elimination: Anything Nick had worked with anyone still here, was pretty unlikely. Still in his probationary period, Nick had worked primarily with Catherine and with Gil himself, but there had been several cases that Brass assigned to Nick and Ed Blake, or Nick and Rusty Anderson. Ed's death had opened up a vacancy filled by Warrick, and Rusty had left after Thanksgiving that same year, 1998. Gil wasn't completely sure where he was now, although some time ago he'd heard Rusty took a position in Seattle. Probably still there.
Excluding the obvious, that left nearly twenty-five individual investigations to explore. Elimination again: take away the small potatoes. No trick rolls, no break-ins, a few others. He drew a heavy line through more items on the list.
What was left, at that point, were nine cases, six of which Nick had worked with Ed, the remaining three with Rusty. All involved deaths, whether by intent or accident. He wondered briefly about the accidents, and decided to exclude those for the moment, at least. He had a feeling he'd be studying this list again, in any case.
Which left him with four ostensible homicides. All four had been solved, relegated to the court system for trial.
Gnawing on the end of his pen, he read over Catherine's synopses. Case one had involved a husband and wife, murder for a sizeable life-insurance payoff. He shrugged off a dark thought about Nick's own policy and kept going. The husband had been arrested, ultimately, for his wife's murder, and now languished in prison, serving a life sentence. Case two was similar. This time the husband was the victim, and the wife and a boyfriend convicted of engineering the hubby's poisoning. Boyfriend convicted of manslaughter and serving twenty to life; wife serving a life sentence.
The other two cases were nominally less domestic in nature. A murder committed during a robbery attempt, and another involving two business partners and a real-estate deal gone sour. Convictions all around, in the former case the death penalty.
He tapped his fingers on the page, and then sighed, tucking his pen in his breast pocket. Time to descend to the dungeon.
One of the perks of being a supervisor, he'd discovered early on, was that he no longer had to descend to the basement when he needed a look at an inactive or closed file. He delegated. Someone else had to deal with silverfish and dust. He could simply reap the benefits of their search later.
Some wit had nicknamed the cavernous basement the "dungeon," ages ago, and it had stuck. Gil surveyed the rows of file cabinets and shelves, inhaled, and sneezed four times. The dungeon was organized, relatively neat, and he was allergic as hell to some of the contents.
Making a mental note to have someone actually come down here and do something about the dust, he glanced down at Catherine's list and began hunting for the actual physical files.
Two he found quickly, but after half an hour of fruitless searching he decided the other two were either misfiled or missing entirely. Fifteen minutes after that, he located the third, stuffed haphazardly into the wrong year, and he'd put his burden on a long table and given some serious thought to making someone else do the last part of the search when he saw a pile of several files lying on the floor. Worth a look, and the bottom-most file was the fourth he sought. Someone had had it out, sometime, and never bothered to put it away properly. It occurred to him to dust the cover for prints, just to find out who that particular lazy asshole was, but it just might be himself, so he just gritted his teeth and added it to the pile.
Back in his relatively dust-free office, he spread the files on his desk and sighed. He was tired, for some reason, and his head felt as if it had been stuffed full of cotton batting; his allergies were not improving with age. He blew his nose, coughed a couple of times, and opened the first file.
Beyond the initial purely forensics section – fingerprints, trace analysis, ballistics – he found a section of handwritten notes. Photocopies, and Nick's architectural handwriting. Lips curved in a sad smile, Gil snorted a little. Nick's somewhat obsessive habits carried over beyond his Daytimer; these were his case notes, carefully preserved. Two pages of observations, a theory or two, the names and addresses of the witnesses and other sources. All of that information was available in printout form, but trust Nick to copy the originals, just in case. He'd learned the hardcore principles of CYA early on, it seemed.
The case – hubby wiping out the spouse for a juicy life-insurance policy – was fairly straightforward. Nothing in the file, including Nick's notes, suggested anything beyond what he now saw in mostly black and white.
The same was true of the second file, but this one was missing any handwritten notes from Nick. So cut-and-dried that there hadn't been any need, maybe. Certainly it appeared that way, flipping through the slightly yellowed pages.
He hit pay dirt with the third, though.
The victim was a man named Paul Brooks, who had the rotten luck to be home during a break-in. The perpetrator had used a crowbar to bludgeon Brooks to death, an appalling level of violence. From all accounts the investigation was short and tidy; while the accused, a long-time repeat offender named Javier Lewis, had been careful not to leave prints on the items already selected for stealing, the crowbar had given up his secrets. DNA and fingerprint analysis spoke loud and clear. Lewis was arrested less than twenty-four hours after the crime, and ten months later a jury had convicted him and laid down the death penalty.
Gil frowned, flipping through more pages. Autopsy report, trace analysis, a copy of Lewis's substantial track record in the penal system. The man had been a model for recidivism, first arrest at the age of twelve, for stealing a neighbor's car. It was all downhill from there.
Brooks, as far as he could see, had been a very average guy. An accountant with a local branch of a national firm, he had a family, wife and two kids, who were that week luckily out of town visiting relatives in Provo. The housekeeper had discovered Brooks' body the next morning.
He turned more pages, a little impatiently, and found Nick's handwritten notes in the back, behind those of the detective working the case, John Sutter, neatly typed. Sutter's comments were brief and to the point; Nick's were rambling and went on for several pages. Whatever Ed Blake's opinions, he'd kept them to himself on an official level: there were no notes from him.
Gil leaned his chin on his hand. When had Nick stopped writing out his thoughts like this? He certainly hadn't done it the past couple of years. His reports, like Sutter's, were typed and printed in official departmental format, not jotted down in the field. Maybe he hadn't known better yet? Or maybe he simply kept it all to himself, and only later made copies of a more official nature?
Whatever the reason, Gil was glad for Nick's odd habits now. He scanned the first two pages, and then paused over the third. "Lewis – gloves," Nick had printed hastily. "Why fingerprints?"
Flipping back, Gil glanced at the forensics report. Lewis's fingerprints had indeed been all over the crowbar, although no others had been found. He frowned. Nick was saying Lewis had gloves on the whole time? That didn't make a lot of sense.
Nick had gone on to say, "Talk to wife. Reason for trip? Audit – ck records."
There was nothing about an audit in the file. But Brooks had been an accountant; a reference to his professional dealings prior to the murder?
On his last page of notes, Nick had drawn a crude chart, reminiscent of the one Gil himself had made while meeting with Brass and Catherine, at least in execution. The content, however, was decidedly different.
Gil sat back, gnawing his lower lip. The last thing Nick had jotted down was, "Not sure this was a robbery." So had he believed Lewis's actual goal had been the death of Paul Brooks? And if so, why hadn't he pursued it? There was nothing after Lewis's arrest, at least in Nick's notes. If he'd had questions, he hadn't notated them here.
He could feel the jitters in his stomach. There was more to this case than met the eye – he was certain Nick had been certain. But nothing in this file suggested what else that might have been. Nick had been oblique, not writing anything down that was truly substantive. More like reminders to himself, something. But reminders of what, Gil couldn't tell.
He glanced at the fourth file, and then sighed and gathered up all but the Brooks file and stacked them on the table near his desk. It might not be anything. Just Nick being a bulldog, hanging onto a case that hadn't been as complicated as he'd initially believed. It had happened before.
Thinking ruefully once again of Occam's razor, Gil closed the Brooks file and stood, tucking the folder under his arm.
John Sutter lived out past the city limits, on a five-acre plot of land a mile or so off the interstate. Gil pulled up in the gravel driveway and climbed out, squinting behind his sunglasses. The heat slammed into him like a balled-up fist, sweat popping out immediately on his brow.
The house was small and immaculate. Walking to the porch, he noted a brave flowerbed, its inhabitants drooping but still surprisingly green. Someone paid a lot of money to keep those plants watered.
He rang twice, but there was no reply. But the front door was open behind the screen, and he heard a radio playing softly from somewhere. Frowning, he secured the file once more under his arm and stepped off the porch to go around the side of the house.
"Hello?" he called. "Anyone home?"
A rustling behind the Japanese pear, and a tall, heavyset man appeared, wiping his hands on a pair of overalls already burdened with more than their share of red dirt. "Can I help you?" he called, stepping out from what was revealed to be another plant bed, this one pregnant with tomatoes and corn. The corn looked a little tired, but the tomatoes, Gil thought, looked damn good.
Gil stepped forward. "Detective Sutter?"
"Not anymore," Sutter told him, taking off heavy gloves and shaking his head. "Retired two years ago. Disability. Gil Grissom, right?"
Gil nodded "I wasn't sure you'd remember me."
"Hasn't been that long." Sutter stepped over the last of the trailing tomato vines and revealed a distinct limp. He extended a hand to Gil. His fingers were damp and very hot. Hardly surprising, with gloves in this heat. "I'm gonna assume this isn't a social call."
"More official, yes," Gil admitted with a brief half-smile. "I'd like to ask you about a case you worked a few years ago."
"Figured it'd be something like that." Sutter tucked his gloves in his pocket and gestured at the house. "Want to come inside? I try to get an early start these days, but damned if it isn't too hot to work an hour after the sun comes up."
"Nice garden."
"Since my wife died, it's been my hobby, I guess." He led the way to the back porch, right hand absently covering his hip. "We were gonna retire out here. Then I got shot, and she got cancer. A lot of land for one person with a gimpy leg."
Inside, it was cool and dim, revealing utilitarian furniture and few decorative touches. Gil privately thought it was very much a bachelor's house, or a widower.
"Want something to drink? Got coffee, but it's so damn hot I'm having iced tea."
"Tea sounds good."
He followed Sutter into the spare, neat kitchen. "So what's this case you're after?" Sutter asked, going to the refrigerator and taking out a tall plastic pitcher.
"This would have been back in 1998. Paul Brooks was murdered in the course of a robbery attempt in his home."
Still with his back turned, Sutter nodded and got out two glasses. "Javier Lewis, right? I remember that one. You know, that was the fourth time I'd arrested Lewis. Last time, too," he added with satisfaction.
When Sutter sat at the small table, Gil followed suit, taking his glass of tea and tasting it briefly. "Thanks."
Sutter drank half a glass before wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Indoors, his features were younger than they'd appeared under the harsh sunlight. Fifty-five, sixty at the most, Gil judged. Formerly dark hair was slowly going to silver. He hadn't shaved that morning.
"As I recall it," Sutter said, "we wrapped that one up pretty fast. Lewis got the needle a couple of years back, and good riddance, ask me. Any particular reason you're looking into this one now?"
"A long shot." Gil laid the file on the table, tapping it with his fingers. "You worked this case with Nick Stokes, correct?"
"Stokes, yeah." Sutter sighed. "Good kid. Heard what happened. I'm more sorry than I can say."
"Nick left a lot of notes about this case. He didn't seem all that sure it was what it appeared to be."
Sutter gave a slow nod. "Yeah. I remember that."
Gil raised his eyebrows. "Can you walk me through it?"
"Old news, but sure. What I remember of it."
"Anything would help."
Sutter cleared his throat. "Well, let's see. We got the call early, about five that morning. Captain sent me out for a possible homicide. Housekeeper found the body. Poor woman was so scared we had to call an ambulance, afraid she was gonna have a heart attack."
"Go on?"
"It's all in the file. Lewis left his prints all over that crowbar. He hit Brooks so many times all that was left was goo, you know? Hell of a mess." He drank some tea. "Pretty cut and dried, really. Made the arrest the next day, Lewis didn't even put up a fight."
"Did he say why he killed Brooks?"
"Lewis never said a thing except, 'I want a lawyer.'" Sutter snorted. "He knew the drill."
"In his notes," Gil said carefully, "Nick said something about Lewis wearing gloves. There were no fingerprints found, except on the weapon. Did that strike you as strange?"
"The way I figured it, he'd gotten what he wanted already, and Brooks surprised him. Lewis took the gloves off, since he was done. Then he's gotta brain Brooks, so he uses the crowbar, and that's where we got prints."
It was logical. Like so many other things he'd been running into. Gil fought down the urge to heave a sigh. "Nick also wrote down he wasn't sure it was a robbery."
Sutter was silent for a moment, and then leaned back in his chair, setting his tea glass on the table. "Nick had this theory, something kind of out there. He thought this had something to do with the work Brooks was doing. Some kind of audit. A casino."
Gil raised his eyebrows. "A casino audit? There's nothing about that in the file."
"That's because it didn't pan out. Look, whatever Brooks was doing on a professional level, fact is, Lewis just wanted cash and jewelry, and when Brooks interrupted him, he flipped. Killed the guy and ran. When we found him he had tickets to Mexico in his pocket."
Leaning forward, Gil pressed, "What was Nick's theory, exactly? Did he believe Brooks was set up? Lewis?"
"Now everybody knows these audits are set up months in advance. No casino's going to be surprised by some bean-counter showing up. It just doesn't work that way."
"But if it did. This time. What did Nick think Brooks had found out?"
Sutter looked uncomfortable. "You think I know? Look, Nick was a good CSI, smart, a little naïve. Really gung-ho, you know? I didn't want to ignore him, but the thing is, we had our guy already. There was no evidence to support some kind of conspiracy theory. I told him that myself, and hell, he agreed."
"Did he ever tell you the gist of his theory? Anything more specific?" When Sutter didn't immediately reply, Gil added, "Please. It may be important."
"This have anything to do with Stokes getting shot?"
Gil paused. "Possibly. I can't say yet."
Sutter nodded. "All right. Yeah, he told me about it. It's been a while, so I don't remember it all. Something about Brooks sprung an audit on the Horseshoe. That was back when Sal Coppa still owned it. Now you and I know, nothing happened that Coppa didn't know about first." He shrugged. "But Stokes thought for once nobody got warned ahead of time. This time, Brooks just walked in and asked for the books."
"What was the timeline? How long before he was killed?"
After a moment, Sutter said reluctantly, "About a week, maybe ten days."
Gil recoiled. "And you didn't pursue that?"
"Look, Grissom, we had our guy already." Sutter's face had gone pale beneath the tan. "There was no reason to look into it. You don't just investigate somebody like Coppa on a whim, you know that. Jesus, talk about having a death wish."
"Maybe that's just what Paul Brooks did. And maybe this was the result."
"Maybe. But I didn't believe it at the time, and I still don't. I worked this city for twenty-two years, Grissom. Nobody does crap like that. It just isn't done."
Gil nodded slowly. "Did Nick say anything else?"
Sutter finished his glass of tea and shook his head. "I saw him about a week after we made the arrest. Up at the DA's office. I asked him if he had any more crazy theories, you know, and he said, "No, John, you were right. There's nothing else there.'"
"Did you believe him?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
Gil drew a deep breath. "Thanks for your time, Detective. Sorry to interrupt your gardening."
Sutter studied him for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Like I said, too damn hot. What difference could all of this make now, anyway? Coppa's dead. Been pushing up daisies for three years now. The Horseshoe isn't even the Horseshoe anymore."
"If I knew, I'd tell you," Gil said, half-honestly. He pushed back his chair and stood. "Good to see you, John. Take care."
Sutter stood, too, shaking Gil's hand briefly. "Like I said, I'm sorry about Stokes. He was a good man, real good."
Gil nodded. "That he was."
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