Despite a nip in the air, the sidewalks of Las Vegas Boulevard were as packed as ever. Neon lit up the night. Palm trees swayed above the legendary street that pretty much defined Vegas as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Taxis, tour busses, and ritzy stretch limos crept through bumper-to-bumper traffic, giving the vehicles’ occupants plenty of time to take in the sights.
And there was a lot to see. The gaudy grandeur of Sin City seemed to have warped time and space itself, placing a gleaming Egyptian pyramid next door to a shining medieval castle, complete with a drawbridge, spires, and turrets. A ten-story-tall sphinx gazed out over the anachronistic scenery. Emerald laser beams fired from his eyes, causing a man-made lake to boil. According to legend, the sphinx slew all who could not solve its riddles. Some days, Catherine felt like there was a sphinx looking over her shoulder—every hour seemed to bring more riddles than answers.
Brass’s Taurus cruised north past the hotels, casinos, and resorts. Rubbernecking drivers brought traffic to a crawl. The Taurus’s windows were rolled up to keep out both the cold and the exhaust. Riding shotgun next to Brass, Catherine scanned the bustling sidewalks, on the lookout for Craig Gonch. A printout of his driver’s license photo rested in her lap. The photo showed a ruggedly handsome young man with a square chin, wavy brown hair, and blue eyes. Gonch actually managed to look hot in a DMV photo; Catherine couldn’t blame Jill or Gabriella for falling for him. A raffish smile offered no hint that he was a potential stalker-slash-abuser.
They never do, she thought. If there was one thing she had learned, as a CSI and as a woman, it was that faces lied. Unlike evidence.
A life-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty saluted them at the corner of Tropicana. A roller-coaster looped above a glittering facsimile of the Manhattan skyline. A jaded native of Vegas, Catherine easily tuned out the distracting spectacle to focus on the faces on the sidewalk, but without much luck. So far Gonch was nowhere to be seen. She started to wonder if Gabriella had steered them in the wrong direction, or had perhaps tipped Gonch off that they were looking for him. For all they knew, he could have already ducked out of sight.
C’mon, girl, Catherine thought. Don’t let us down.
They had left Gabriella with both Brass’s business card and a number for a domestic-abuse hot-line. Probably a wasted effort on both counts, but at least they had made the effort. Who knows? Maybe it would make a difference somewhere down the road. Gabriella was still young enough to write Gonch off to experience. Catherine thanked God that none of Lindsey’s boyfriends had ever hit her. At least as far as she knew.
The traffic inched along. Stuck behind a slow-moving Deuce bus making frequent stops, they slowly left the south end of the Strip behind. Lady Liberty shrunk out of sight in the rear-view mirror. A giant neon Coca-Cola bottle reminded Catherine that she hadn’t eaten for hours. Her stomach rumbled.
“I figure we go as far as the Sahara,” Brass suggested. “Then turn around and head back down the other side of the street.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. Beyond the Sahara casino, the big-ticket attractions gave way to a less touristy stretch of older motels, bars, and wedding chapels. They were unlikely to find Gonch working that far up the boulevard, if he was even in the vicinity. If what Gabriella had told them was true, he was going to be where the heavy pedestrian traffic was.
In the meantime, they had several more blocks to go before they had to try to turn around. The Venetian mega-resort loomed ahead on the right, further adding to the Strip’s giddy sense of geographical dislocation. No expense had been spared to re-create the postcard-pretty charm and glory of Venice, Italy. Spotlights showed off its ornate marble towers and facade. Singing gondoliers, many of them imported straight from the genuine article, serenaded boat-loads of huddled tourists as they paddled their sleek black gondolas around a sparkling blue lagoon. A paved walkway, flanked by towering white pillars, bridged the pool, connecting the sidewalk to the colonnaded entrance of the Doge’s Palace. Men and women swarmed across the bridge, eager to simulate a European vacation, or perhaps just get a little shopping or gambling in. Security guards in imitation Venetian police uniforms were on hand just in case the party got too rowdy. A multistory hotel rose between the bridge and another palace, which housed the Vegas branch of Madame Tussaud’s.
Great, Catherine thought. Another wax museum.
Three nights had passed since the Shock Treatment shooting and they still couldn’t say for sure whether it had been an accident or not. She wondered if maybe they were wasting their time. Suppose the shooting was just what it had first appeared to be: an unfortunate collision between a sadistic prank and a scared young woman with a gun?
“Say, Jim,” she began, even as she continued to scrutinize the faces outside on the Strip. “What’s your current take on this whole . . . hang on!”
A strapping figure caught her attention. The man, whose chiseled features bore an unmistakable resemblance to the photo on her lap, was handing out flyers on the sidewalk in front of the Venetian. A snug black sweatshirt, advertising a bar named Headlights, showed off his buff physique. Tight jeans and comfortable sneakers were well-suited to traipsing up and down the length of the Strip. He thrust his hand-bills at every passing pedestrian, not taking no for an answer. The flyers were a lurid shade of pink.
Looks like our boy, Catherine thought. According to Gabriella, Craig Gonch now spent his nights drumming up business for the topless place where they met. Not exactly the most promising of careers, but a buck was a buck. Catherine guessed that the gym had paid better. Too bad he couldn’t keep his hands off the clientele.
She rolled down the passenger-side window for a better view. Keen blue eyes compared the flyer guy’s scruffy good looks to the driver’s license photo.
It was a match.
“Over there on the right,” she alerted Brass. “You see him?”
“Roger that.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to ID Gonch as well. “Nice. Good eyes, Willows.”
“Tell it to my optometrist.”
Horns blared behind him as he abruptly pulled over to the curb and hit the brakes. Catherine was already unbuckled and out of the door before Brass killed the ignition. She wasn’t about to let Gonch out of her sight. It would be too easy to lose him again in the neon-charged activity of the Strip. The cold night air came as a jolt after the car’s heated interior. She was glad she had put on a jacket earlier.
Wonder if Gonch has his cell phone on him?
Intent on giving away his flyers, Gonch paid no attention to the parked Taurus. Catherine heard him pushing his spiel on men, women, and families alike. “Hottest girls in town!” he promised. A southern accent carried echoes of the menacing phone call Jill Wooten had recorded. “Open all night, 24/7!”
“Is there a buffet?” a vacationing senior citizen asked.
Brass quickly joined her on the sidewalk. They closed in on Gonch. Catherine let Brass approach from the south, while she circled north to head him off if necessary. Curious passersby parted to let Brass through as he held up his badge.
“Craig Gonch?” he called out. “LVPD.”
Gonch stiffened in alarm. Catherine knew he was going to rabbit even before he hurled an armload of glossy pink flyers in Brass’s face, then bolted from the cop.
“Damn!” Brass swore, batting the tossed handbills away from his face. They fluttered to the ground, littering the pavement with lewd come-ons and snapshots of barely covered silicone. He trampled the flyers beneath his feet as he took off in pursuit. “Give it up, Gonch!” he shouted at the fleeing suspect before calling for backup on his phone. “Suspect is heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard toward Spring Mountain Road!”
Gonch barreled through the crowd. Startled tourists threw themselves backward against the guardrail between the sidewalk and the lagoon. An overweight sightseer, wearing the requisite baseball cap and fanny pack, didn’t get out of the way fast enough and Gonch shoved him aside. The unlucky tourist tumbled onto the ground, spilling the better part of a Big Gulp onto the concrete. “Hey, what’s your problem?” he hollered indignantly. “Douchebag!”
Catherine shared the sentiment. Gonch was rapidly moving up her shit list. He was making this way harder than it had to be.
“That’s far enough, buster.” She moved to block his escape. She unzipped her fleece jacket to reveal the sidearm on her hip. Her hand rested on the grip of the weapon. “Down on the ground . . . now.”
Gonch froze, trapped between Brass and Catherine. She saw Brass coming up behind the fugitive, his scowling face flushed with anger and/or exertion. Huffing and puffing, he looked more than ready to give Gonch the third-degree right there in front of the Venetian. His ragged breathing made Catherine think Brass needed to log in a few more hours at the gym. Too bad we didn’t drag Nick along, she thought. The brawny ex-quarterback was better suited to tackling runaway suspects, as he had proven on more than one occasion. Gonch was lucky not to be on the receiving end of one of Nick’s takedowns.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” she warned.
Gonch looked about frantically, searching for a way out. Any hopes Catherine might have had that he was ready to surrender were dashed when he abandoned the sidewalk for the bridge over the lagoon. He made tracks toward the Venetian. She guessed that he was hoping to lose himself in the crowds swarming the resort’s myriad shops and restaurants. Gonch wove through the people on the bridge, apparently gambling that neither Brass nor Catherine would open fire in such a densely populated area.
A pretty safe bet, she admitted. Her gun remained in its holster.
No way was he going to get away, though. Chasing after him, she called out to the security guards posted at the opposite end of the bridge.
To her relief, the costumed guards surged onto the bridge. Gonch skidded to a halt, once again stuck with nowhere to run. Catherine and Brass sprinted toward him. “This jerk had better be guilty,” Brass panted. “Of something.”
A low railing ran along both sides of the bridge, which arched gracefully over the lagoon. A slightly off-key rendition of “O Sole Mio” wafted up from a gondola passing under the archway. Gonch ran to the rail. He peered over the edge.
Oh, for God’s sake, Catherine thought. Don’t tell me he’s actually going to . . .
Sure enough, he vaulted over the railing. Gravity seized him and he plunged into a half-full gondola just as it emerged from beneath the shadow of the bridge. Watching from above, Catherine honestly couldn’t tell if Gonch had deliberately landed in the gondola or if he had been aiming for the water instead. Either way, the desperate leap for liberty proved a bust. His crash landing capsized the gondola, spilling all concerned into the lagoon, which, thankfully, was a mere four feet deep. A huge splash pelted her face with water droplets. A teenage couple, who only seconds before had been enjoying a romantic boat ride, shrieked as they abruptly found themselves dumped into what was effectively an oversized wading pool. Scrambling to his feet, the soaked gondolier swung his oar at Gonch while swearing furiously in Italian. The wooden pole missed Gonch’s head by a fraction of an inch. He stumbled backward, losing his balance and splashing back down into the pool. Spectators on the shore and bridge hooted and jeered at the free entertainment. The tranquil lagoon was suddenly the hottest show on the Strip.
Catherine just shook her head.
I need a vacation. . . .
Brass joined her at the rail. “Is it just me,” he sighed wearily, “or are these punks getting dumber every year?”
“You do the math.” Catherine wiped the spray from her face. “Half the population is of below average intelligence.”
“Don’t I know it,” Brass said.
They let the Venetian guards do the soggy work of pulling the irate gondolier off Gonch. The guards waded into the lagoon to retrieve the drenched fugitive, who appeared to have finally had the wind knocked out of him. None too gently, they dragged him to the sidewalk. Sirens and flashing lights heralded the arrival of a couple of LVPD patrol cars, responding to Brass’s summons. The wet guards turned Gonch over to the cops, then checked on the upset teenagers, who were complaining loudly about getting dunked. Catherine expected the couple would get some vouchers and other freebies from the Venetian.
“Guess we go read Mr. Gonch his rights,” Brass said. He took a few moments to catch his breath before trudging away from the rail. “Let’s hope this fishing expedition pays off.”
Catherine eyed their dripping quarry. “Well, if not, we can always throw him back into the lagoon.”
“I don’t suppose I can get a towel?”
Gonch shivered in an interrogation room at police headquarters, just up the block from the crime lab. He had exchanged his sodden street clothes for orange jailhouse attire, but his hair was still damp. A sullen expression marred his good looks.
“Forget it,” Catherine said without a trace of sympathy. She and Brass sat opposite Gonch on the other side of a glass-covered metal table. Stark gray walls, devoid of color or warmth, cut them off from the world outside. A horizontal mirror hid a oneway window. A closed-circuit TV camera recorded the proceedings. Just like a Shock Treatment set, actually, but without the deception. This was as real as it got.
Gonch’s antics at the Venetian had turned his interview into an interrogation. Seeing to his comfort was not only the least of Catherine’s concerns, it was pretty much the opposite of what she and Brass were going for. They wanted to sweat the truth out of him.
“Next time,” she advised, “maybe you’ll think twice about going for a moonlight swim instead of cooperating with the police.”
“Screw you.”
Getting dumped into a cold lagoon on a chilly winter night had not done wonders for his mood. A surly tone hinted at his true character.
“See, that’s the kind of attitude that gets you into trouble.” Brass commenced the questioning. “So why did you run anyway?”
“I dunno.”
“You don’t know?” Brass was openly skeptical. “You saying you pulled all that for no reason?”
Gonch’s brow furrowed. You could practically see the wheels turning inside his thick skull as he tried to come up with a semi-plausible explanation for his behavior back on the Strip. “The guards at the Venetian don’t like me soliciting in front of their place. I thought maybe they’d called you.” He snorted indignantly. “Like they own the sidewalk or something.”
“So you jumped off a bridge into a gondola just to avoid being told to move it along?” Brass shook his head. “Sorry. I’m not buying that.”
Catherine had a better theory. “Your attempted getaway wouldn’t have anything to do with the shiner you gave your girlfriend, Gabriella Ruvasso, would it?”
“She walked into a door.” He eyed Catherine suspiciously. “Why? Did she tell you something different?”
“Yeah, actually,” Brass said. “She said she fell down the stairs.”
“Stairs. Door. Whatever.” He leaned back in the chair, smirking. “It was an accident. I don’t remember the details.”
“Yeah, sure.” Brass remained unconvinced. “Well, do you recall making any threatening calls to your ex, Jill Wooten?”
“Jill?” Gonch appeared genuinely startled by the question. Sitting up straight, he gave Brass and Catherine a wary look. “Is that what this is all about? I haven’t talked to that skank for months. She’s old news.”
Catherine wasn’t sure she believed him. “You sure about that?” An open file rested on the table-top in front of her. She leafed through the enclosed documents. “According to these records, it definitely sounds like you were stalking her before. Harassing her at work and at home. Leaving angry notes on her door.” She tapped a xeroxed copy of a police report. “Says here you even tried to force your way into her apartment once.”
“I only wanted to talk to her, that’s all,” he muttered. “It was no big deal. Jill made it sound a whole lot worse than it was, just to get back at me.” A sneer twisted his lips. “Jealous bitch.”
“Oh yeah,” Brass said. Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “You sound like you’re totally over her now.”
“I am!” Gonch insisted. “It’s just that you reminded me of all that old garbage. Brought back some crappy memories, you know?” He scoffed at the file in front of Catherine. “I swear, I haven’t even thought of Jill in forever. Why should I? I’ve got a new girl now.”
“Yes,” Catherine said archly. “We’ve met.”
Gonch either ignored her frosty tone or missed it altogether. “So you’ve seen how smoking she is, right? Way hotter than Jill.”
“She’s pretty all right,” Catherine granted him. “Aside from the black eye.”
“I told you, that was an accident.” He scowled at Catherine, like he wanted to give her a dose of the same medicine. “The point is, why would I still be hung up on my ex when I’ve got action like that waiting for me at home?” A smug expression replaced the scowl. He tipped his chair back, all cocky attitude again. “I’ve traded up.”
To a woman who lets you smack her around, Catherine thought, eager to wipe the smirk from his face. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t be the first guy who didn’t know when to let go, even when he was already seeing someone else.”
Just a few months ago, in fact, a happily remarried insurance salesman had tracked down and stabbed his first wife on what would have been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. In that case, the first cut had indeed been the deepest. Catherine was willing to believe that Gonch was still carrying a chainsaw-sized chip on his shoulder where Jill was concerned. Maybe enough to be a contributing factor in her death.
Somebody had to have made those phone calls.
“I’m telling you, I’m over her!” He got agitated enough to rattle his handcuffs. “Gabby is hotter, better in bed, and, frankly, less of a pain in the ass.” He leaned back and crossed his arms atop his chest. “If you want to know the truth, Jill could really be a buzzkill sometimes. I don’t know why I put up with her as long as I did . . . except for the sex, I guess.”
And they say chivalry is dead, Catherine thought.
“Hey!” A lightbulb finally went off above Gonch’s soggy scalp. “Is this about Jill shooting that guy? On that TV show?”
Brass leaned forward. “You heard about that?”
“Sure! It was all over the news.” He snickered derisively. “I can’t believe they actually punked her like that. Idiot. I always knew her boobs were bigger than her brains.”
Catherine wondered if Gonch had really only just now remembered the Shock Treatment incident. Maybe that was actually why he ran from us, she thought, and not just the fact that he’s been hitting his new squeeze.
“You ever watch that show?” Brass asked.
It dawned on Gonch that he might be in trouble for more than just running from the police. “Sometimes,” he said cautiously. “But why are you asking me about that? I heard what happened. Jill thought she was blowing away some psycho with a chain-saw.”
“Actually, she thought it might be you,” Catherine divulged. “And she pulled the trigger anyway.”
“No shit?” Gonch looked offended, taken aback by the notion that one of his past or present punching bags might actually fight back. “Wow. I guess I got off easy then. Who knew she was that crazy?”
Catherine wasn’t interested in discussing Jill’s mental health. She wanted to know how crazy Gonch was. “You like horror movies, don’t you?”
“Sure. That’s not a crime, is it?” He snorted again. “That’s another way Gabby beats out Jill. She doesn’t mind a good slasher flick. Jill always hated that stuff. Like I said, she could be a real drag sometimes.”
Catherine found it interesting that Gonch knew Jill’s weak spot. “Too easily scared?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Not my problem anymore.”
Brass took another tack. “You own a cell phone, Mr. Gonch?”
“You know I do,” he groused. “Your boys took it off me. Am I going to get it back?”
“Not right away,” she told him. “We’re going to have to take a look at it.”
Maybe Archie could link it to the threatening calls, assuming its immersion in the lagoon hadn’t damaged it too badly. Probably a long shot, she thought, but it pays to be thorough.
“What for?” Gonch complained. “So I have a cell phone. Big whoop. Who doesn’t these days?”
“We’ll ask the questions, Mr. Gonch,” Brass said firmly. He consulted his notebook. “What were you doing at approximately 7:45 on Sunday night?”
Catherine recognized the time. According to Jill’s phone records, that was when she had received the most recent of the anonymous calls, just a few hours before her scheduled job interview . . . the call that may have driven Jill to homicide.
“I dunno. At home, I guess. With Gabby.”
“You make any calls that night?”
“Maybe. I can’t remember.” He tried to figure out where Brass was going with this. “But I didn’t call Jill, no way. Check my phone records if you don’t believe me.”
“We’ll do that,” Catherine said, although she wasn’t sure how much that was going to prove. The problem with cell phones was that they rendered alibis kind of academic in cases like this. If Gonch was behind the calls, he could have made them from almost anywhere. All he needed was just a few private moments when nobody was looking. Even if he really had spent the evening with Gabriella, he could have easily slipped away for the moment to call Jill on a disposable cell phone.
She mentally compared his voice and accent to the threatening call, but, like Jill herself, she couldn’t say for sure that Gonch had been the voice on the phone. It sounded like him, sort of, or maybe just like someone trying to imitate his accent. A more scientific analysis was required before she could reach any definite conclusions, which was where the crime lab came in.
Gonch squirmed impatiently. “Look, are we almost done here?”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere soon,” Brass said. “Not after that ruckus at the Venetian.” In a very real sense, Gonch had done them a favor by getting himself in trouble; as a result, he was in no position to walk away. “Your soggy ass is ours.”
“But right now all we want is your voice.” Catherine produced Gonch’s cell phone and dialed Archie at the A/V lab. When running a voiceprint comparison, it was always best to re-create the original sample as much as possible. In an ideal world, that would involve using the actual phone used by the mystery caller. They couldn’t be sure that was this phone—in fact, it probably wasn’t—but it was worth a shot. In any event, they wanted the sample transmitted via a cell phone.
“My voice?” Gonch parroted.
“That’s right.” She placed the phone to her ear.
Archie picked up at the other end. “Catherine?”
“We’re ready to roll,” she informed him. “You recording this call?”
“I am now,” he said.
“Okay, stay on the line.” She put on her reading glasses and took out a transcript of the latest call. “I’m going to read something to you,” she explained to Gonch, “and I want you to repeat it after me, word for word.”
In theory, an exact word-to-word match would make it much easier for Archie to run a voiceprint comparison despite the caller’s whispery attempt to distort his voice. Just to play it safe, she would have to get Gonch to whisper another sample later on. The more versions Archie had to work with, the better his chances of making a solid identification.
Gonch balked. “And if I don’t?”
“Then you’d better hope your smoking new girlfriend feels like bailing you out sometime soon.” Brass gave Gonch a hard, cold look. “Me, I’d let you rot for awhile. Maybe give you some time to think about the way you treat women.”
Gonch started to sweat. “I don’t know what Jill told you, but you are not going to pin her problems on me. I had nothing to do with that TV show mess.”
Catherine handed him the phone. “Prove it.”
He reached for the transcript in her hand. “Okay. Give it to me. I can read it myself.”
“Forget it,” Catherine said. “That’s not how it works.” Studies had shown that the best voice samples were obtained by having the subject repeat phrases spoken by the examiner rather than letting him or her read it directly from a transcript. For some reason, you got more natural intonations that way. “And don’t try to do anything funny with your voice. Just speak naturally.”
Proper procedure dictated that she get at least three workable samples of Gonch mimicking the anonymous call. She was fully prepared to put him through as many recitations as it took to get Archie some decent exemplars to work with, including a whispered version. Despite their name, “voiceprints” were nowhere near as reliable as fingerprints, but an expert analyst could often narrow a pool of suspects down to just a few probable candidates.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “Whatever it takes to get you off my back.”
“Then repeat after me.” She put on her reading glasses and glanced down at the transcript. “Listen to me, you bitch. . . .”
Gonch flared up again. “I never said that!”
“That’s up to the lab to decide,” she stated calmly. “If you cooperate.”
Brass looked at his watch. “You got all night, Gonch? ’Cause we’re not going anywhere until this gets done.”
“One more time,” Catherine said. “Listen to me, you bitch. . . .”
Gonch mumbled under his breath. “Listen to me, you bitch.”
“Louder and more clearly, please.”
He glared murderously at Catherine. “Listen to me, you bitch.”
“That’s better,” she said with a smirk. “Much more convincing.” She moved on to the next line. “You better watch your back.”
Gonch fumed in his chair, but got with the program.
“You better watch your back. . . .”