CONRAD ECKLIE WAS AN extremely ambitious guy.
Catherine didn’t have a problem with ambition. She had plenty of that herself. But she wasn’t in his league, not in that regard.
When she had first known him, he was a day-shift supervisor at the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Lab, the counterpart to the job she held now as night-shift supervisor. She didn’t know if he would move up from there or not, although she suspected he had his eyes on the commissioner’s job. A guy like him, driven, she wouldn’t put a run for the mayor’s office past him one of these days, even if the lab was hardly a common stepping-stone to that position.
Gil Grissom hadn’t used his supervisor’s job as a rung on any career ladder. He had become night-shift supervisor and stayed in the position until he left. But there had been extenuating circumstances in his departure, most notably an unfinished relationship with former CSI Sara Sidle, which had driven Gil out of the lab and out of Las Vegas. Catherine didn’t expect to leave the city, and as long as she lived there, she had to work, at least until she had put in enough years to get full retirement bennies. So there might come a day, she reasoned, when she would try to follow Ecklie’s career path. At least to some extent. She’d had enough headaches in her life, especially as the single mother of a teenage daughter, to know she didn’t ever want to be the mayor of Las Vegas.Talk about headaches…
So she accepted Ecklie at face value. That didn’t mean she liked the guy. She just didn’t judge his ambitions, the way Gil sometimes had.
No, any problem she had with Conrad Ecklie was because she often found him judgmental and sometimes brusque, even rude when it didn’t seem to serve his goals but just allowed him to feel superior to those he barked at. And if his promotion out of the lab into the position of undersheriff still rankled sometimes, that was because the position was open only because its previous holder, Jeffrey McKeen, had murdered her friend and fellow CSI Warrick Brown. Warrick’s death certainly wasn’t Ecklie’s fault; the whole affair just left a bad taste in her mouth, and there was something unseemly about benefiting from it, even by default.
Gil had often thought that Ecklie put his career ahead of his work. He hadn’t complained about it much, because that wasn’t the kind of man Gil was. But Catherine could read between the lines with Gil, and she knew how he felt. Still, Ecklie had been a damn good CSI once upon a time—even Gil admitted that—and Catherine liked to try to keep that in mind when she had to deal with him.
Especially when, as in this case, he was doing everything in his power to remind her who called the shots.
“People upstairs are very concerned about this case, Catherine,” he said. “And you know as well as I do, when those people take an interest in a case, things can go ugly fast. If the crap rains down on me over this, you can expect showers coming down on you.”
“Trust me, Conrad, I’m taking this very seriously.”
“It’s not simply a matter of serious,” he said. He had called Catherine into his office, the better to impress her with how much bigger it was than hers. She could have had a big one if she had wanted—still not undersheriff big, but upon his departure, Gil’s office had become available, and she was its presumed next occupant. But she hadn’t felt right about taking it, was comfortable where she was, so the big space was now being shared by Nick and Greg and Gil’s irradiated fetal pig. “It’s a matter of keeping in mind the prominence of the Cameron family in Nevada politics.”
“They’re not in politics anymore,” she said, knowing even as the words escaped her lips that it was the wrong thing to say. Politics didn’t always refer to elected office.
“Helena Cameron is past her prime,” Ecklie admitted. “But she has lived a long time, and she has a lot of friends. Her dead husband had a lot of friends. Some of those friends still inhabit the mayor’s office and Carson City.”
Nevada was a curious case, Catherine knew. The bulk of the money and political juice was in the southern tip, the knife blade around Las Vegas that stabbed down between California and Arizona. But the state capital was north in Carson City, almost all the way to Reno, and the governor and legislature still liked to believe they ran the show. By mentioning both places, Ecklie was covering all his bets.
“I understand.”
“Bix was a popular guy here,” Ecklie continued.
“I know. My father knew him.”
“Everybody knew Bix Cameron. There are shoeshine guys working in casinos who still tell stories about him. The thing is, his wife is popular, too. Maybe it’s mostly reflected popularity, still shining off him, but that doesn’t matter. She’s been through enough. Nobody wants to see her hurt.”
“Hurting her is the last thing I want to do.” Catherine knew what Helena Cameron had gone through, and Ecklie understood she knew, so he didn’t elaborate. When Helena’s husband and son had disappeared, a small amount of cocaine was found in Bix’s abandoned car. It was widely believed that Bix had mob connections, however much he had tried to keep his businesses clean, and that the disappearances were mob-related. In those days in Las Vegas, only the mob dealt cocaine, so that clinched it for most people. Their bodies were believed to have been buried in the desert or else worked into the foundation of one of the huge newer casinos.
“That’s good.” Ecklie’s smile wasn’t a thing of great beauty, but it seemed sincere this time. “I’m glad to hear it. So whatever happened between her security guy, what’s his name?”
“McCann.”
“Yeah, him. Between McCann and this homeless guy, whatever went down there, Helena should be kept at arm’s length.”
“Got it.”
“A very, very long arm.”
“The long arm of the law,” Catherine said.
“That’s not the original meaning of the phrase, but it’ll do for now.”
“Understood, Conrad. You want me to keep her clear of it.”
“Exactly.”
Catherine hated what she had to say next.But “had to” means what it means,she thought. “Unless the evidence points at her.”
Ecklie gave her a scowl. She imagined that particular expression had terrified a lot of suspects over the years. She almost felt like confessing to a crime just to get him to turn it off. “Catherine…”
“Conrad, the evidence leads where it leads. You know that. You also know I can’t ignore what it tells me.”
He sighed and wiped his high forehead with his hand. He looked a lot more human than he had a few seconds before. “I know.”
“But I’ll do what I can, within reason, to keep her clear of any fallout.”
“That’s the best I can ask, Catherine. Thanks.”
From Ecklie’s office, Catherine went down to the morgue to check on the autopsy of the man Drake McCann had shot. She didn’t like referring to him as a “homeless guy” or even as John Doe. She wanted to put a real name to him, and the sooner she could do so, the better she would like it. Some cops preferred to use John Doe because it allowed them not to humanize the victims they had to deal with. It was, she thought, a defensive thing. A homicide detective could deal with dozens of deceased individuals in the course of a year, and it could be easier if they were just vics or DBs or John Does rather than Bills and Suzys and Toms.
But the crime lab and the morgue were the last people in line. If they didn’t restore identities to these people, no one would. Sometimes that was as important to her as finding out who killed them in the first place.
“Good morning, Catherine,” Doc Robbins said when she walked in. The morgue, as always, was bracingly cold, but his mood seemed as sunny as ever.
“Doctor,” she said. “How’s it going?”
He waved a scalpel at her. “I was just about to make the coronal mastoid incision,” he said, as cheerfully as if he was discussing going to a play. “You want to glove up and assist?”
Catherine was hard to shock. After so many years as a CSI, she had seen just about everything. But that didn’t mean she went out of her way to see the gory bits. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. “I’ll observe from over here, thanks.”
“Suit yourself, Madam.” Doc Robbins leaned on his crutches, bending forward to get a good view of the top of the John Doe’s head, and made a clean, practiced slice from ear to ear. He set the scalpel down carefully on a tray and peeled the man’s scalp back, exposing his cranium. “No fractures to the cranium,” he said. “Check that—no recent fractures.”
“You mean there’s an old one?”
“That there is. Left parietal bone.”
“From…?”
The coroner held up one bloody gloved hand. “Patience, Catherine. All in due time.”
She knew better than to expect Albert Robbins to rush an autopsy, for her or anybody else. “Sorry.”
Doc Robbins continued his examination at his typical steady pace, checking the interior of the scalp for any damage. “No contusions or lacerations to the scalp,” he said. “Old scarring above the old fracture.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yes, it does. So how’s your night going, Cath?”
“I’ve had better.”
“So has this gentleman.”
Catherine knew that was true. “What’s his overall condition?” she asked.
“The usual, pretty much. The correlation between poor health and homelessness is a complicated one. Issues of mental or physical health can drive people into homelessness, and once homeless, people are at risk for a great many diseases and conditions, so it’s a vicious circle. HIV is more prevalent among the homeless than in the general population, as are communicative diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis. Most homeless deaths are from heart disease and cancer, just as they are for the rest of us, but there are additional complications involved in treating the homeless. Various sorts of substance abuse are common as well. In this gentleman’s case, his arteries are in pretty bad shape, and he’s got some melanoma, no doubt the result of too much exposure to the sun. His teeth are a mess. But even with that old head injury, it looks as if he would have lived a good while longer if he hadn’t been shot.”
Doc Robbins took out a bone saw. Catherine didn’t like the whirring noise or the sharp smell of burning bone, but then she had never liked having cavities filled, either. In the end, the sensations were pretty similar, except that she didn’t have a dentist’s hands digging around in her open mouth or the strange numbing of the novocaine.
For the benefit of the recording made of all autopsies, the coroner described what he was doing and seeing as he went. Every now and then, he looked up and caught Catherine’s eye, and she knew which of his comments were meant for her.
“He’s probably lucky he was shot,” he said.
“Lucky in what way?”
“Most homeless people are never autopsied. Like much else in our society, autopsies tend to be performed on those who are better off—more men than women, more whites than blacks or Hispanics, and so on. And since somewhere around a third of all official causes of death are incorrect—”
“You’re kidding,” Catherine interrupted. “A third?”
“At least. Many CODs are guesswork or are based on faulty or incomplete data. Sometimes they’re simply made up for one reason or another. Overwhelming caseloads, lack of resources, general incompetence—a lot of factors come into play. Anyway, given the number of bodies that are never identified, this gentleman is fortunate that he’s getting an autopsy that will determine his actual cause of death and lucky that he died in this jurisdiction so that every attempt will be made to figure out who he is and to locate his next of kin.”
“That’s job one,” Catherine said. “Somewhere, someone cares about him.”
Doc Robbins nodded his agreement, then bent to the body. “I’m removing the calvarium,” he said. As he spoke, he did so, and he held up the skull’s upper dome so Catherine could see it. “Intact, undamaged.” He bent over again and took a deep whiff of the exposed brain. “He passes the smell test.”
Sometimes odors that wafted out as soon as the brain was revealed could give a coroner important clues to the cause of death. In this case, they didn’t, or Robbins would have said so. Everybody assumed the COD was the two bullets McCann had put into the man’s chest, but none of them was paid to make assumptions. Doc Robbins would get some tissue into toxicology as well, to find out if there was any chemical component to the man’s death.
“This is interesting, however,” he said.
“What is?”
Doc Robbins picked up tongs and reached into the dead man’s skull, digging around with some effort and finally gripping something, and brought it out. “Appears to be a forty-five to me,” he said. “But I’m no ballistics expert.”
“We’ll check it out,” Catherine said.
“I know you will.” He dropped the slug into a clean stainless-steel bowl.
“How long has that been inside him?” she asked.
“That I don’t know, Catherine. But it’s been there for a while. There’s an abundance of scar tissue built up around it, holding it in place between skull and brain.”
“It was pressing against his brain?” Catherine asked, thinking she already knew the answer.
She could tell by the intent gaze he threw her that he understood what she was driving at. “Yes,” he said. “And I’ll have to investigate further, but it’s entirely possible that there was some brain damage as a result.”
“The shooter said he was acting crazy. Mentally unbalanced.”
“That’s not quite how I’d phrase it. But yes, it could be that this old bullet wound affected his personality, his behavior, to the point where the layman would have called him crazy.”
“That,” Catherine said, “might explain a lot.”
“It would answer some questions, wouldn’t it?” Doc Robbins said. “But then again, it seems to raise a lot more…”
Back in the lab, Catherine found Greg Sanders in the layout room with the dead man’s clothing. Greg had dozens of small pieces of paper spread out on the large tabletop, as if a heavy snow had fallen. A snowfall with huge flakes and one that was already as gray and dirty as if it had been plowed and sprayed with exhaust for a week. Every bit of paper looked as if it had been written on and rewritten on and written on again over that.
“To-do lists?” Catherine asked. “These were all in his pockets? He must have crinkled when he walked.”
“They were pretty stuffed. And I don’t know what it all is yet,” Greg admitted. “Most of it I can’t read. Maybe the guy was a doctor, judging from his handwriting.”
Catherine looked more closely at the scraps. Greg was right—the man’s handwriting, if it was his, was cramped, the letters tiny, and with all of the writing over other writing, layer upon layer, it was all essentially illegible.
“We’ll get QD on it,” she said. If anyone could make sense of these notes, or whatever they were, the experts in Questioned Documents could. “I have a feeling if the dead could talk, this guy would have some fascinating stories to tell.”
“If the dead could talk,” Mandy Webster said, having paused at the open door, “it would be the beginning of the zombie uprising, and we’d all be in big trouble.”
Catherine looked over her shoulder at the fingerprint tech. “Looking for something to do?”
“Greg thought maybe I should check some of his paper scraps for fingerprints.”
“I figure the John Doe’s are most likely to be on them,” Greg said. “But even if all we could find were someone else’s, maybe that would still help us figure out who he is.”
“Have at it, then,” Catherine said, gesturing toward the bits strewn across the table. “There are plenty to choose from.”
“I did find one note that’s intriguing,” Greg said while Mandy picked up a few of the scraps with gloved hands and carried them away. “I mean, maybe they’re all intriguing, but I kind of doubt it, except in the most abstract sociological way. But this one is different.” He pointed to a sheet of paper larger than most of the rest, although it had been folded and crumpled down to the same small size as the other bits.
“Does that mean you can read it?”
“Some of it. The pieces of paper are mostly scraps of whatever the guy had available to write on. The margin of a newspaper, the back of an envelope, a cash-register receipt, whatever. Apparently, he had a lot of thoughts he wanted to get down on paper. But this one he carried around for a long time, and at least at one point, it was a contract.”
Catherine was surprised by this revelation. “A contract? What do you mean?”
“I might be using that term a little loosely,” Greg said. “It’s sort of a rental agreement. I can’t read the names on it, because they’ve been written over too many times. But the gist of it is that whoever signed it down at the bottom is agreeing to abide by the rules of some tent city.”
Another surprise. “There are a few tent cities around, and I’ve heard the population has been swelling as more and more homes have been foreclosed. Does it say which one?”
“It doesn’t have a name—at least, not that I can see. But there’s an address at the top, way out on Green Valley Parkway.”
“I’ve seen that place, way out at the edge of the desert.”
“Not quite as close to the edge as it used to be,” Greg pointed out. “Las Vegas has spread into the desert, even there. But yeah, that’s the place. It’s been there for years.”
“That’s right, it’s nothing new. Is there a date on the agreement?”
Greg bent closer and peered at the unfolded, scribbled-over sheet of paper. “May 2004,” he said. “Guy’s been there for a long time. If he still lives there.”
“If. Let’s get this stuff into QD, Greg, and then you can go find out.”