All in a Day
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: Nothing specific, set mid third season.
A/N: Each chapter is told from a different point of view. I owe enormous thanks to M and J who are two wonderful beta readers. Thanks to all those who've read and reviewed.
My fight with Sara, if you can call it that, left me distracted. I had trouble focusing back on the case, only the time pressure we were under helped me to summon up my concentration. I couldn't help but question whether I had made the right call. It had been hard for me to pull the authority card on Sara, but I felt like it was my only choice. It's not like I doubted Sara's professional abilities, but considering what she had been through that day, I was right to assume that she needed some serious downtime. Even I who had been on the emotional sidelines, so to speak, needed a while to fully understand that day. I can't imagine how it must have been for Sara and the others who got more personally involved than I did. Where the investigation was concerned, we were pretty much fishing around. I had grabbed a copy from our files, so that I could read some more on the drive to Mr. Stein's house, where according to his secretary he was right now.
The print-out highlighted the text in which Kevin Stein's name had appeared in Charlotte May's files. It wasn't too clear. He appeared several times in what seemed like a diary entry of her employer, but later on there were descriptions of more personal encounters at her apartment. Had they been lovers? The next item with his name in it was also interesting. It was an entire paragraph about him, her child and money. Apparently from what I could gather from her confused style of writing, she had demanded money for the child from him. Money for the child, I thought, maybe also money for not telling the wife about it.
The house was in one of Vegas' better neighborhoods. The rule: the greener the richer, definitely applied there. Driving through the streets, one would never get the impression that we were living in a desert city.
We rang the door. A woman in her late twenties, at the oldest, opened the door, after showing our badges. Brass came right to business.
"Are you Mrs. Stein?"
"No, I'm a friend of the family." The woman turned and called into the house. "Stephanie, the police are here. They want to talk to you."
Stephanie Stein, a woman in her late thirties appeared at the front door. "Can you keep an eye on the kid please?" She asked her friend who went back inside.
"I'm detective Jim Brass, these are CSIs Brown, Ecklie and Harrington. We need to talk to your husband."
"Kevin isn't here. At this time he's usually at the firm."
"He has already left there. Do you have any idea where he might be?"
"No, I haven't." She shrugged. "In fact, I called his mobile earlier because I wanted to ask him to pick up our son from a friend's on his way home. When he didn't pick up, I figured he was still in a conference at work. Why are you asking? Is there something wrong?" Her voice didn't match what she was saying. She didn't seem overly concerned with her husband's fate.
"To be honest, we don't know that yet for sure. May we come in?"
"Sure." Mrs. Stein let us in.
Mrs. Stein wasn't as worried as I would have expected. In fact I got the impression that she had at least some idea of what was going on or didn't care at all about what happened. I wasn't sure yet which of the two was the case.
"We'd like to have a look at your husband's study. We have a warrant," Ecklie announced.
"It's down the hall." If Mrs. Stein was hiding something, she wasn't concerned with us finding it.
Ecklie and Harrington, the dayshift CSI disappeared off to the study. Brass and I sat down in the living room.
"Do you know a woman named Charlotte May?"
"Charlotte, Charlotte May, I never got her last name. Never know them. You see my husband has had many lady friends over the years. I don't even want to know about them. I met this Charlotte woman at a company party. I'm surprised he got involved with her, she didn't seem his type." That was different for a change. If only every cheated-on spouse would care so little, there'd be a lot less homicides in Vegas.
"Did your husband know that you knew he was having an affair?"
"Christ no, he's trying to hide it, making up stories about overtime and conferences. I stopped buying those years ago." She lit herself a cigarette. Normally excessive smoking indicates that a suspect is nervous, but her demeanor didn't convey that impression. She seemed more or less detached.
"Did you see Charlotte May again after the company party?"
"No, I never saw her again, but my husband was on the phone with her twice in the last couple of weeks. I was surprised, you see, before, he never dared calling his mistresses from home. From what I've heard it wasn't going too well between them. I guess he's dumped her by now."
"How did you know he was on the phone with her?" I wasn't quite following there.
"He was agitated, yelling -hard not to notice him. They were arguing, he called her by name."
"Another question: has your husband ever mentioned the name Daryl Marks?"
"Mhm... I'm not sure, but I think the last time he called this Charlotte woman, he mentioned the name Marks, but that could have been someone else."
"When was this phone call?"
"I don't know, maybe a week ago."
"Did you notice anything unusual about your husband lately?"
"He was home even less than usual, he was very nervous last night. Insisted on the news being left on all evening, he tried calling someone at least twenty times, but they didn't pick up." She sounded like that didn't bother her at all. I still wasn't quite certain what to make of her. Maybe she really did have nothing to hide, or she could have found out about the affair, have killed her husband and now be playing innocent. But the mental calculation didn't fit. Her husband had still been alive an hour ago. Killing someone and getting rid of the evidence would be tough to pull off in such a short time, but hell, I've seen it done before.
"Do you remember which new item he was particularly interested in?" I already guessed the answer.
"The one big thing was this nasty family killing last night." It didn't seem to have interested her very much.
"When he left this morning, did he say anything?"
"I don't know. I get up after he leaves." She lit another cigarette.
"One last question, do you have a joint account with your husband?"
"No, what he does with his money is his business. I've got my own money."
After the interview, which to me felt like a serious waste of precious time, Brass and I joined Ecklie and Harrington in the study.
"What you find so far?" Brass asked
"Didn't find anything -no packing up, clothes still there, no signs of struggle -we even sifted through his waste paper basket. Found zilch." I wondered what the hell the two had been doing all this time, but getting into an argument with Ecklie wasn't a good idea. Then, I spotted the phone standing on a small desk.
"Did anyone check which number he dialed last?" I asked.
"No, not yet." Harrington said his first words.
I bit back another comment about the abilities of certain CSIs and hit redial. It said "Not available", probably a cell phone -another dead end. We weren't going to find the explosives in time. For the first time, it actually occurred to me that the possibility of failure on this case was quite real and frankly the way it looked, that moment also rather probable.
I was frustrated, tired and hungry. The whole trip to the Stein's house seemed nothing but a waste of time at the moment. Later on it would help us piece together what had happened, but for our immediate problem, it was of no help. The only reason we had driven out there had been the lack of any other clues. Decisions made on the basis of desperation are seldom good moves, as far as my experience goes. While I was still looking around the study, trying to find something we had missed, my cell went off, probably the hundredth time since the shift had started. I had already gotten a lot of bad news over the phone that day. This time it was the first really good news.
It was Sara calling. She had figured out where the cultists had planted their bomb. Brass immediately called the PD station to get as many men dispatched to the storage plant as possible. But with the hostage situation and everything else, the PD was already extremely busy. Sheriff Mobley said he'd send someone as soon as possible. Unfortunately there were only forty minutes left until sundown and Brass and I would need at least half an hour to get there. And that was if traffic was on our side. Then I thought I was already stressed out, but it was in fact when things started to accelerate.