SEAN VOET LOOKED like an unlikely rebel.
When Brass rang the doorbell of his ground floor apartment in a brick apartment building, painted aqua and named Tradewinds Apts., the man who answered the door did so on one leg. He supported himself on wooden crutches festooned with colorful stickers and phrases written in marker. His left leg, Brass noted, was leaning against a threadbare couch in the living room behind him. The prosthetic went up to mid-thigh.
Voet’s arms and shoulders looked to be in pretty good shape, though his left forearm was more scar tissue than skin. His desert camo fatigue shirt hung open, displaying a distinct paunch and a latticework of scars climbing his chest. His hair was straight, brushing his collar in the back, more gray than brown. He looked at Brass through thick-lensed, metal-framed glasses and wiped a lock of hair off his forehead. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Brass showed badge and ID. “I’m Captain Brass, LVPD.”
“You outrank me,” Voet said. “I never made it past specialist.” He tapped his left thigh. “The war ended for me before I had much of a chance to move up.”
“Which one?” Brass asked. “Vietnam for me.”
“Desert Storm.” Voet replied. “Third Squadron, Second Armored Cav. At 74 Easting, our Bradley took fire from the Republican Guard—bastards were eager to surrender in some places, but not there. They crippled us, then opened up on us with the seventy-three millimeter gun of a Russian-made BMP-1. Scored a direct hit. Two guys were KIA, and I was—well, you can see. Guys were scraping me up to put me in a body bag when I surprised them by not being dead.”
“Sorry,” Brass said. He truly was. Soldiers who went to war knew the risks going in—it was what they had signed up for. But he always preferred them to come home in one piece, and upright. Too often, it didn’t happen that way.
“Is what it is,” Voet said. He made his way back over to the couch, sat down beside the leg. “Damn thing itches sometimes, especially if I’ve been on it all day.”
“While demonstrating outside a cable news office, for example.”
“That’s right.” Voet glared at him, chin angled up. Defiant. “Something on your mind, Cap?”
“I respect your service, Mr. Voet. And I would defend your right to protest until my dying day. But these e-mails you sent to Dennis Daniels . . .” He drew some printouts from an inner jacket pocket, scanned down the first page. “This is choice. ‘Your head should be on a pole to warn the other lapdogs of industry not to screw with the American people.’ Or how about this one? ‘When we’re done with you there won’t be enough left to fill an airplane barf bag.’ Come on, Sean, you really think that’s an appropriate thing to say to anybody?”
“It is if that’s the way I feel.”
“You really want to kill Daniels?”
Voet shook his head, clearing that wayward lock from his eyes. “Okay, it’s hyperbole, for the most part. I’m trying to make a point, all right? Guys like this, they pretend to be on the side of the people. But when push comes to shove, they’re carrying water for Wall Street, for the coal companies and the oil companies and the big defense companies, just like the rest of them.”
“It’s a free country. Nobody’s making you watch DCN or any other channel.”
“No. But they can use their power to influence elections, and that does affect all of us.”
“You got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Dude, I gave my leg for this country. I spent nine months at Walter Reed after I was finally stateside. Long enough for a woman to have a baby, right? Only in my case, it was me who was being born. Reborn. I had been headed for a middle-American, middle-class life. I had a wife and a dog waiting for me in Columbus, Ohio. But while I was at Walter Reed, my wife sold the dog and divorced me and moved to Rhode Island with a truck driver.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, while I was there, I realized a few things. Walter Reed was a dump then. Nobody took care of you guys when you came back from Nam, and no one was looking out for us, either. This country had decided that wars shouldn’t happen, so even when they do, most people try to pretend they’re not real. If they accidentally see anything on the evening news, they imagine it’s a movie, and Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck is the grunt on the screen taking fire. We don’t ask the country to make any sacrifices, or even to acknowledge the effort. We run our wars off the books, passing on the cost to future generations instead of paying for them with new taxes or spending cuts.”
“I’m with you so far,” Brass said. He needn’t have bothered; Voet was wound up and would have continued without the prompt.
“So I came to the conclusion that we just shouldn’t have any more wars. I mean, if we’re not going to take them seriously. Why not just disband the armed forces, pull everybody out of Iraq and Afghanistan? We can beef up the Coast Guard and the Border Patrol, in case anybody tries to attack us. But as for playing policeman to the world? There’s no stomach for it anymore. We’re better off not funding a military than sending people out to die for a country that won’t even acknowledge the sacrifice.”
“So that’s your beef with Daniels?”
“I moved to Vegas after I got out of Walter Reed. Figured what better place to start life over? There was nothing left for me in Columbus. So here I am, and there’s Daniels, just another cog in the machine, pushing for programs that dump more taxpayer money into the military-industrial system that chews up people like me and spits us out. As long as he backs bills that raise taxes instead of slashing the military budget, I will keep protesting him.”
“And threatening his life,” Brass reminded him. “Because he’s in town, and it’s convenient for you.”
“Like I said, the threats are hyperbole. I’m trying to make a point, to get his attention.”
“So when you said you’d bury him up to his eyeballs in the desert and let the rattlesnakes and scorpions get him—”
“I mean, how can you take that seriously? Especially now that you’ve met me? I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dig a hole with just one leg, but let me tell you, it ain’t easy.”
“I’m sure.”
“What else did I say in those? Something about tying him to my rear axle by his ankles and driving to Guatemala, right?”
“I think that was in there.”
“Come on, man.”
“Some of your threats are pretty far out there, Sean, I’ll give you that. But there are others. ‘I’ll kill you.’ ‘I’ll rip your lungs out.’ ‘I’ll cut you into pieces and drop them in a shark tank.’ Those are more believable, and more sinister. You sure had Mrs. Daniels concerned.”
“I’m not a genuinely violent man, Cap. I used to be, but after Desert Storm I gave that shit up. Now I talk a good game, but that’s it. I’m just trying to scare the dude.”
Brass had not been invited to sit, but he parked himself on the arm of a big, overstuffed chair. “Where were you last night? Midnight to one, say?”
Voet barked a short laugh. “Here. What, you think maybe I was out dancing?”
“Dancing would be better than here, unless you’ve got a witness.”
“Just me and the tube. I don’t sleep much these days, Cap. Lots of late movies. Last night I spent time with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich.”
“Kismet?” Brass asked.
“No, I looked in the program guide.” Voet laughed again. He sounded like a strangled seal. “See, kismet means fate or destiny, and—”
“I know what it means.”
“Yeah, I was watching Kismet. Fell asleep during it, in fact.”
Brass nodded. “I’ve seen it, so I’m not surprised. It’s better than the Howard Keel remake, though. Still, Sean, that’s a pretty weak alibi.”
“It’s what I got.”
Voet had not been the only person who had threatened Daniels, not by a long shot. He had been one of the most persistent, however, and he had been local. And he’d been photographed at the demonstrations on multiple occasions. Those factors were the ones that had set off Joanna Daniels’s radar, and Brass’s as well. The next most frequent threat-maker lived in Kentucky, and had been making similar threats toward people in industry and politics since 1979. Brass had a couple of other Las Vegas residents to check out—and of course, it was possible that the bomber had traveled to the city to pull off his attack, or was one of the quiet ones who didn’t broadcast his intentions. Those sorts would have to be dealt with through a wider-ranging investigation, and increased security around Daniels.
Brass considered himself a pretty fair judge of people. The impression he got from Voet was that the man was telling the truth. He was opinionated, maybe obnoxiously so. He sent messages without thinking them through. But he was most likely harmless. At any rate, although his alibi was weak, failing the discovery of some evidence placing him at one or more of the crime scenes, it was good enough.
“Okay, Sean,” Brass said. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“What’s that, Cap?”
“Stop threatening people. If you have a cause, then work for it all you want, but don’t threaten the lives of people you disagree with.”
“I’ll try, Cap. I honestly will.”
“One more thing, Sean?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop calling me Cap.”