Afterlife

By EB

©2004

Chapter Six

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.

To be continued. 12/9/04