There was something obscene about how bright and sunny the day had turned out to be. Warrick stood in the sweltering heat outside the warehouse Mari Pacheco had been found behind; the warrant clutched tightly in his hand was so fresh the ink had rubbed off on his latex-covered palm. He was surrounded by four armor- and helmet-clad police officers, readying themselves for entry into the warehouse with a door ram and automatic weapons.
Sam Vega, clad in white dress shirt and Kevlar vest, drew his weapon and motioned for their backup to come forward; ready to see the response he would get to his hail.
"Open up! LVPD! We have a warrant to search the premises!"
He repeated his warning again in Spanish, this time with an open hand pounding on the front door.
"Ábrase! Policía! Tenemos una autorización para buscar las premisas!"
Vega had waved the men with the ram forward when the click of opening door locks was heard and the door swung open to reveal a man dressed in a dirty coverall and holding a clipboard in one hand, a surprised and scared expression on his face, as he stood blinking in the bright late morning sun.
"Policía?" He squinted, his eyes obviously not yet adjusted from emerging from the darkness of the warehouse. "No llamé a policía."
"Parte posteriora del paso, por favor, Señor. Estamos aquí para Ramón Orozco."
The man obeyed Vega's request for him to step back into the warehouse and he held the door open for Vega and the men to enter the warehouse, Warrick right behind them, handing the warrant to Vega to present to the worker.
"Ramón is no here," the man stammered out in broken English. "He no here for many days."
Vega motioned to the uniforms and they spread out into the rest of the building, guns still out and ready for any surprises.
Vega took the man aside and started peppering him with questions in Spanish while Warrick moved into the front area of the warehouse. He scanned his surroundings, taking in the boxes piled practically roof high here in the main storage portion of the building. All were marked in Spanish, Estrella D'Oro Tequila, the wording only varied by the addition of the word superior or clásico on some of them. A handcart stood parked nearby one of the piles of boxes that remained sitting on the floor, a bill of lading sitting splayed out on the top box. A noise drew his attention to the ceiling and his eyes caught the sight of birds flying high above, some sitting on the rafters above.
He dragged his eyes back down and began to search the floor, but not much more than small spots of bird guano marred the gray-painted warehouse floor.
"Hey, Sam. What's our boy's story?"
"Says Orozco hasn't been here for at least three days. And Orozco Senior never comes by here. His name is Oscar Guzman, says he's just a stock man."
Moments later the uniforms emerged from the back bringing with them four other men, all dressed in similar coveralls, and all Hispanic. Warrick noticed immediately that two of the men had bruises on their faces. He cast a glance at Vega who he saw had noted the same thing and had the uniforms separate the two from their co-workers.
Vega approached the two bruised men, Warrick strolling over to join him.
The two men stood with arms crossed, steadfastly staring anywhere but at the cop or the CSI. They were both of good height, the one at least Warrick's height, and well muscled, most likely from all the lifting their jobs required.
"Hablas Inglés?" Vega asked them. No reply. Vega stepped forward facing the taller of the two men, his short stocky frame pulled up to its full height. He poked his finger in the bigger man's chest. "Sus contusiones. Cómo usted las consiguió?"
"Me caí."
"Says he got his bruises falling, Warrick. What do you think?"
Warrick approached the man and made a big show of peering intently at the man's face, at the same time reminding the man that they were the same height as he saw the worker trying to inflate his chest and draw himself up taller. Warrick brought his face in close as he stared at the man's face, grimacing at the odor of cigarettes and garlic that wafted from his mouth. The bruises' source would have been obvious to a first year CSI, the imprint of knuckles on flesh leaving their own distinct signature.
While still in the man's face, not pulling his eyes away from the man Warrick said, "Oh, I don't think so, Sam. Why don't you ask him again? Try asking nicely."
He stayed in the man's face as Vega began to speak to the men in Spanish once more. He didn't have much of a grasp on Spanish but his ears did catch the letters I N S and his translation was confirmed when he saw the dismayed look that came over both workers' faces. The smaller man began to speak up but he quailed at the look his companion was glaring at him; a clear instruction to keep his mouth shut.
"Hey, Sam? Do we have enough to hold these guys on anything? I'd like to get them back to the lab if we can."
"Yeah. I have a feeling if I ask these fine gentlemen to provide any ID they'll be hard-pressed to find any. Thanks to Homeland Security Law I can detain them. But why do you want them back at the lab? These guys aren't gonna say a word to you."
"They don't have to say a word- just open their mouths. Nick's got a fight bite on his knuckles from where he probably clocked one of these fools. I might be able to match up their dental imprints to the photos we have of the bite. It would at least put one of them and Nick in the same place at the time of his assault.
Vega nodded at two of the uniforms and gestured at the two workers, instructing them to go ahead and pack the two up and bring them back to the lab.
"You want the other two, or Oscar?"
"Nah. Nick's knuckles were pretty torn up. He got a piece of whomever he was fighting with. You can do what you want with the others. I'm gonna check out the rest of the warehouse while you talk to them."
He ran back to retrieve the equipment bag he had left outside during the initial stages of the raid, then walked back into the warehouse, pausing for his eyes to readjust from the momentary assault the bright morning sun had made on his pupils prior to his return to the dim light inside the building.
The cavernous interior of the storage area of the warehouse was an unlikely place for anything to have happened. None of the roof-high stacks pf boxes were disturbed; no odor of broken liquor bottles, just the dusty musty smell of the wooden crates and the pungent sourness of bird droppings. He headed towards the back of the building and found a series of doors in the back wall, all blank wood, no labels or signs.
He tried the first and found a typical break room area. Soft drink and snack machines. More overflowing ashtrays, and the walls of the room were a sickly brown from years of tar buildup. Rickety wooden table with four or five plastic chairs pulled up around it.
The next door led to a storage closet used for janitorial equipment. Various plastic bottles crowded shelves on its walls, and large industrial sized mops and brooms leaned against the far wall. He pulled a bottle of luminol and sprayed down the cleaning equipment. He shut the door behind him, plunging the closet into nearly total darkness, his reward for his efforts the blue glow of the mop furthest back in the corner. He unzipped his bag and pulled out his trusty Nikon, his movements familiar and fluid even in the dark, years of experience guiding his hands. He snapped a few shots of the glow, then opened the closet door and snapped more pictures to show the position of the mop in the closet. He then grabbed the mop and hauled it outside, labeled it and gestured for a uniform, asking the cop to take it out back to his Denali.
He then took the bottle and began to spray down the floor, knowing the mop most likely dripped as it was being carried back to the closet. Glowing blue drops lead out the closet door, back out into the warehouse and continued under the next and last closed door at the back of the building. He tried the doorknob and found it locked.
"Hey, Sam!" he yelled over to Vega, still talking to the three remaining workers. "Ask them what's behind this door, and if they have the key."
"Cuál está detrás esa puerta? Quién tiene la llave?"
"Ésa es oficina de Ramón. Él es el único hombre con la llave,"one of the men answered.
"He says it's Ramón's office and Ramón is the only one with a key. But we can take care of that. Thompson, see if you can help CSI Brown out with his locked door."
The uniform nodded and picked up the door ram they hadn't had to use earlier. One good swing and the door to the back office burst through its locks and swung open, halfway hanging off of its hinges. Warrick gave the cop a sideways smile at the fortunate if a bit extreme results of his aid.
He resumed spraying the luminol as the blood drops from the mop continued into a large but Spartan office. Off to the side was a good-sized but utilitarian wooden desk with a leather bound heavy wooden chair pulled up in front of it. A PC, a few years old at most, perched on one corner, the power turned off. The only decorations in the room were a framed photo hanging on the wall, the same picture of Ramón and his father that Warrick had seen in Carlos's home, another tableaux of Day of the Dead dolls, again similar to those from Orozco Senior's house, and a large letter opener with a Day of the Dead grinning skeleton's face.
His spraying brought him into the center of the room where the trail of glowing blood drops increased in frequency until they joined into a solid blood trail, then a stream of blood that coalesced into a large blood pool, its glow showing the swirling strokes the mop made in the blood during the attempt to clean up. Straight streaks lead from the blood pool to end at the feet of the chair parked in front of the desk.
Further spraying showed the telltale glow of blood that had seeped into the old cracked leather of the seat and into the grain of the two left wooden legs. Warrick stopped spraying, the bottle hanging by his side in a lifeless hand as he contemplated the site of his best friend's torture. It was obvious that the chair had been the place Nick had been restrained, the blood pool from the wound in his arm that had cascaded down the side of the chair. Those responsible had no idea that their barely rudimentary efforts at cleanup would be worthless; they were obviously unsophisticated in the ways of criminology, and most likely not used to fearing getting caught.
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind of morbid thoughts and concentrate on the job at hand. His gaze moved from the chair to the desk it sat in front of. His eyes came to rest on the death's head letter opener. It was shaped like a dagger with a nine or ten inch long 'blade' edged on both sides and ending in a pretty severe point. He took the bottle of luminol and gave it a quick spray, the chemical barely touching the metal before erupting into a phosphorescence practically bright enough to read by. He had the weapon used on Nick's arm.
Before he could go any further with his anger he knew he had to finish up and he had to make sure he made no mistakes. He couldn't afford to let anything go; he needed to build this case iron clad. He'd never forgive himself if an error he made meant that Nick's torturers could go free. He picked the Nikon up from where it now rested on his chest and returned to the closet, snapping narrative pictures to show the blood trail from the mop, into the room. He captured the still glowing blood pool and the chair and ended with the letter opener. He gently picked up this same object between latex clad thumb and fingers and placed it into a baggie, then into his equipment bag.
This part of the job done he stood, hands on hips, and scanned the rest of the office. Against the back wall was a door with a one-way emergency bar across its width. He walked over and applied pressure to the two extreme ends of the bar, careful to avoid ruining any prints he might get later, and pushed the door open.
He found himself back where he'd started three days ago, when the moon was high in the sky, reflecting off the body of Mari Pacheco, abandoned on a pile of tequila boxes in the back alley, and he had no idea that his best friend was doing anything but hopefully having a fun time on a date.
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"So, do you still miss it?"
"Huh?"
"The cigarettes. Smoking. You've been playing with that pack for half an hour now. And I know the longing look of an ex-smoker. How long since you quit?"
He looked down where his fingers played with the familiar red Marlboro box that a previous customer had abandoned at the bar. He shook the box and heard the sound of at least three or four cigarettes left in the pack and smiled at Mari's question.
"Wow. You are good. That obvious, huh? Yeah, after college, when I wasn't playing ball anymore and I had started at the lab in Dallas I put on like thirty pounds. Stress. The CSI diet of machine snacks and takeout. So I got the ever so brilliant idea to take up smoking. I mean everyone smoked at the lab. I had a supervisor who smoked in the lab, and Grissom yells at me for eating an apple now," he said with a rueful laugh at the memory of what became of his fruit snack that day. "When the lab went smoke-free in the nineties so did I. But I have to admit I miss it sometimes, especially when I'm drinking."
"Well, I'm glad you quit, T. I would not enjoy this half as much," she said as she moved in closer to plant a firm kiss on his lips.
He murmured back as their lips finally parted, "Well, that makes me doubly glad I quit." He licked his lips, the lingering taste of her kiss the cinnamon sugar of the churro they had been nibbling on there at the bar. While she was technically still on duty, the restaurant was unusually empty for the time of night and they had been able to enjoy each other's company pretty much uninterrupted for the past hour or so.
He glanced around the bar, seeing only a couple much like themselves, speaking quietly and intimately at a corner table, with Alberto tucked into a booth in the opposite corner, his head buried in a book, his busing duties not being needed either.
His gaze returned to Mari who was brushing cinnamon sugar crumbs from the bar's wooden surface into her hand. She brushed them off into the sink behind the bar and refilled his glass withiced tea. They had been seeing each other for a few weeks now and no longer needed the intoxication of tequila to talk and enjoy themselves. Besides, the tequila had strapped his budget and left him with a string of headaches.
He enjoyed watching her graceful movements behind the bar. She always pouted that he only got to see her in her work clothes, but he loved her dressed so simply and comfortably. She barely ever wore makeup, and when she did it was limited to lipstick with a matching shade on her one vanity, the fingernails she tried to keep as neat and polished as she could.
He had asked her one of their nights together why she fussed about her nails so much. She had told him that her previous job was working on the family agave farm in Jalisco; the dirt and sand and rough fibrous plants had wreaked havoc on her hands, and once she got to America she wanted hands like American girls.
He had taken her work-roughened hand and gently forced her fingers open, palm up in his larger hand. He ran a finger over the calluses that roughened the pads of her fingers and palm and she turned away embarrassed until he raised her hand to his lips and planted a soft kiss on each of the roughened areas.
His reminiscing was interrupted by the sound of someone's rapid approach and he looked up to see Mari's younger brother Rey striding in quickly, a rare grin on his usually stoic face. "Mari! 'Berto! Come see what I got!" He stood bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently. Mari gave him a suspicious look but wiped her hands off on a bar cloth and emerged from behind the bar while Alberto reluctantly put his book down on the table and slouched over to where his older brother stood.
Mari gave him a nod and a "C'mon, T. Come with," so he got up from the bar and followed the three outside to where a black late-model Lexus was parked on the street.
It was obviously Rey's recent purchase and an expectant look was plastered on his face. "Isn't it great? It's a 2004, but it was never driven so I got a really good deal on it. 'Berto! Come here. Take a look at the dash. It lights up. And the steering wheel is wrapped in real leather."
He looked over at Mari. Her face was set as she worked her jaw back and forth, a storm cloud of anger building up. He walked over to put a hand on her shoulder but she quickly pulled away and crossed her arms over her chest as she walked over to where Rey sat in the driver's seat, door still open, the dinging warning bell's annoying and hard to ignore insistence adding more tension to the situation.
"De dónde usted consiguió el dinero para el coche, Rey?" Her anger had made her lapse back to her native Spanish and he found himself trying to keep up with her rapid-fire words.
"What does it matter, Mari? We needed a car. So I bought a car. Please, Mari. Come look at it. Please let me enjoy this."
"Enjoy?" she asked incredulously. "Enjoy? Mama and Papa are back in Mexico, working their fingers to the bone. They gave up everything they had to get us here and you want to enjoy a stupid car?"
"Papa is stupid, Mari. If he would've just joined with Tío Carlos and let the Estrella people buy him out then he and Mama would have all the money they needed."
"Don't you ever call Papa stupid, Rey. You have no idea how the tequila companies have hurt our people, forcing them out of jobs, off their land, out of their homes. You know that Tío Carlos broke Mama's heart when he did that. All for what? Money?"
"Yes, Mari. Money! Tío Carlos and Ramón have money. I mean, look at the cars Ramón drives, and that huge mansion he lives in. You and me and 'Berto are living in a two bedroom apartment."
"You know very well where our cousin gets all his money, Rey. And I don't want you involved in that dirty business."
"Mari, we deserve the money as much as Ramón. You should have all the books you want, and 'Berto deserves a future that doesn't involve dirty dishes. There is money in this business, and I can send it home to Mama and Papa. They can sell the farm and live like a king and queen."
"Ramón has been nothing but trouble for Tío Carlos. Thank Heaven that Tía Rosie didn't live to see it. Uncle Carlos is so…so willfully blind to what he does and is always bailing him out. Let me tell you something, Rey. Ramón is on his third strike, and you'd better believe that he'll make sure that when they come down on him he'll push you into the crossfire. He has no loyalty to anyone but himself."
Rey rolled his eyes at his sister, then looked to his brother for support but Alberto stood on the sidewalk, hands balled into fists and shoved into the pockets of his jeans, staring at the ground through his long lank hair.
With a frustrated groan and a choice Spanish expletive or two he reached over and roughly grabbed the car door from under Mari's hand and pulled it shut. She quickly took a step backwards up onto the curb back next to him and he put an arm around her as Rey revved the Lexus's engine and peeled away leaving a cloud of burnt rubber and exhaust hanging in the hot Vegas night air.
Mari turned to him and buried her head in his chest, sobbing now that her anger was spent. He rubbed her back and bent his head down to kiss the top of her head and whisper reassurances in her ear.
"Oh, T. I'm just so scared. He has no idea what kind of trouble he can get into. He's so young and he's right. He deserves more than I can give him. He deserves to have a cool car like other guys have, and a real job. 'Berto, too. I just thought things would be different." Her words dissolved into more tears and he kept his arms wrapped tightly around her, allowing her sobs to quiet. Her crying was brief and the strong self-assured look that first stole his eye was back as she grimly wiped the last of the tears from her face. "We should get back inside. Customers need taking care of and it almost closing time. Berto, venido. Let's go back in." And with that she pulled from his arms and walked resolutely back to the bar, his eyes following her ramrod-straight back until she was out of view.
A noise awakened him. As he dragged himself up out of sleep he listened, only to realize that he was hearing voices from inside his room. Voices he didn't recognize. He opened his eyes blearily and attempted to focus on where the voices were coming from. His eyes alit on the fabric curtain that had been pulled between his bed and the bed near the window, one of the voices that of his still as yet unseen roommate. The other voice sounded like an older woman's. He listened for a while as they talked, their conversation leading him to believe they were a married couple. The woman referred to Sharon and the baby quite often and the man called her 'Dear'.
He squeezed his eyes shut as tears began to once again course down his cheeks. He could still smell her hair and feel the fabric of her blouse under his fingers. As he listened to the couple next to him he became even more depressed. He rolled over onto his side, pulled the blanket up over his shoulder and wrapped the pillow over his ear to block out the sound of what might have beenbut never would be.