Flipping the laptop screen down, Brass rubbed his hands across his tired eyes. They were making the darned things smaller and smaller all of the time. Just like cell phones. The only problem was, his eyes weren't getting any younger and his fingers weren't reducing in size proportionately. They were still normal sized people living in a tiny technical world. For a moment he thought longingly of big, heavy phones that had to plug into the wall, and comfortable holes that you had to place your finger into to dial. Of receivers that actually stretched from your ear to your mouth. Of big typewriters with large keys. Or even further back...gasp!...pens and paper.
They still called it 'paperwork' but it really wasn't anymore. Just form after electronic form that had to be filled in with meticulous detail from the beginning to end of every case. Truth be told, there were some upsides. No more 'fill this out in triplicate'. Triplicate could be easily created with a touch or two of the mouse. It was just that the darned constant glow of the screen seemed to irritate him sometimes. He needed a break.
Brass pushed the chair back from his desk, and rose to his feet. He figured he'd grab a coffee, but not that swill that could be found in the breakroom. There was a twenty-four hour coffee and donut shop around the corner. It was not a fluke that they'd chosen to locate within steps of the city's largest police station. Brass knew that even if they never had a single civilian customer there were enough uniforms to keep the place in the black. Some stereotypes had a good basis in reality.
The moment that he stepped into the front office, intending to let Sherry know that he was going to be out of the building for ten or fifteen, Brass knew that something was up. There were a group of cops standing near her desk, everyone looking sombre. What now? he wondered, not really wanting to know.
O'Reilly saw him first, and held his gaze, shaking his head sadly. The other detective ran a hand through his close-cropped, grizzled, military style cut, and raised his bulky frame from where it had rested against a bank of filing cabinets. "Just got some bad news," he said quietly. "Call came in from the Laughlin PD. Elliott Keeth is dead."
Brass's gut spasmed as the blood in his veins turned to ice. Every one of his senses began to sound an alarm. He pictured Denny Martens' body, battered by the SUV, lying in the middle of the street. Two cops, two men that he had known, dead in a short span of time. All of his instincts about Denny's death, that had remained buried but had not been entirely assuaged, surged to the fore. First Denny, now Elliott. "Hit and run?" Brass guessed, his dark eyes narrowing.
O'Reilly looked confused, and tilted his head to the left. "Hit and run?" he repeated uncertainly. "No. There was a fire. Looks like he fell asleep smoking." He studied the other detective curiously.
It was Brass's turn to look confused. He had been so sure that O'Reilly was going to confirm his suspicion that Keeth had died in the same seemingly accidental manner that Martens had. But the two deaths had been unrelated. Martens'...a vehicular accident. Keeth's...careless smoking. Brass felt his grief turn to anger. What a stupid, senseless way to go. He wondered if Keeth had had a smoke detector. Or if, as was so often the case in fire tragedies, he had one but the batteries had been dead.
Brass remembered talking to Keeth in Coopers. He recalled that the other man had mentioned a girlfriend. Significant other, Keeth had amended with a chuckle. "What about the girlfriend? Is she okay?"
"I never heard anything about a girlfriend, or about any other victim," O'Reilly reported. "You'd have to check with Laughlin though. It just happened tonight. I don't even know if next of kin has been notified. Someone in Laughlin broke protocol. They knew he used to work here, and gave us a courtesy call. I don't think the fire department has even investigated the premises yet, or even whether or not they're still on the scene."
O'Reilly sighed. "Apparently the only way to identify the body was through dental, and the coroner did that right away from the records in Keeth's file. Pushed to get it done fast, because it was Keeth's address, and of course the guys there were pretty upset, and wanted to confirm if it was him."
Other voices joined the conversation, some who remembered working with Keeth reminiscing about him, and others who hadn't known him talking more generally about what a shame it was, to lose a life from such a preventable death. But Brass barely heard them.
Brass had two pictures of Keeth in his mind. One, of the man he had worked with years ago, the loud, gregarious giant who could always make him laugh. The Keeth who used to tease him at crime scenes, trying to alleviate the tension when sometimes things were too hateful and horrible to comtemplate, by doing his best impression of Dr. McCoy of Star Trek fame. He'd turn to Brass and his bass voice would boom out, "He's dead, Jim!"
And even though it was such a lame joke, Keeth never seemed to tire of it, and would resurrect it those times when he sensed his partner needed something to combat the ugliness of human nature. And even though others on the scene might raise eyebrows, or roll their eyes, and even though an outsider might be shocked at their irreverence, Brass had always chuckled at the words.
The other Keeth was the Elliott that Jim had run into at Coopers last month. The one whose parting words to him had been, "Helluva thing, death. You just never know when your number is gonna be up." Neither of them knowing how prescient that comment had been. A harbinger of Keeth's own limited time on earth. Brass swallowed hard at the realization, as the hairs at the back of his neck stood on end.
Coffee was the last thing on his mind, but Brass felt the need to get out of the building, into the open night air, and since he had already been planning to walk over to the donut shop, that was what he did. He ordered a large black coffee...none of that frou frou flavoured stuff for him...and sat at one of the tables. The cup sat untouched while Brass's thoughts swirled.
Memories of old friends. He thought about how close he once been to both men, Denny and Elliott. When he'd worked with them, the relationship and bond that had formed had been so strong and meaningful. In those days, they had shared everything. When you worked with another cop, when you gelled, you trusted one another implicity. Depended on one another for your lives. So it had been with both Martens and Keeth.
Brass reminisced about shared confidences from those days. About Denny's dreams for his family. Of Keeth's sorrow that his second marriage was deeply troubled. How could they go from being so close, to not ever getting together, or even picking up the phone for a quick call to touch base? It wasn't just him, Brass knew. It was the same for many people's friendships. The natural ebb and flow of life.
Sometimes, at a certain point in your life, circumstances threw you together with someone, and you got really close. And then when things changed, when there was physical distance between you, and that daily interaction whittled away, that closeness dissipated. It was still there, Brass guessed, on some level. The loss of both men cut him. And even though it had been years since he'd had that closeness with either of him, and even though the relationships had changed, he mourned what they had once shared and the men he had known.
Deep thoughts, Brass chided himself, reaching now for the cup, only to find that his coffee had cooled. The self-deprecation cast his mind back to a case that he had worked with Nick Stokes. He had been standing watch while Nicky had been going over the bedroom of a homicide victim. The woman had kept a tape recorder on the table beside the bed, and Stokes had conjectured what it might be for.
Brass had told him that perhaps she used it to record things that came to her in the night. Without thinking, he'd announced that he kept one beside his bed, in case during the night, while he slept or dreamed, important things came to him. Nick had given him a look of incredulity that had hurt.
'What?' he had asked Nicky, crossing his hands at the wrists, and giving a mock pout, 'I can't have deep thoughts?' And then Brass had laughed as though it had all been a joke, and Nick had gotten a chagrined look to know his leg had been pulled.
The thing of it was that Brass hadn't been joking. Not entirely, anways. He didn't keep a tape recorder next to his bed, but he did have a notebook there. Because sometimes, in the deep of night, when he was more relaxed and not trying too hard, things did come to him. Details of a case. Something he might have overlooked. Questions that should be recorded before they were lost to the light of day.
Brass wasn't the braniac that Gil Grissom was, he'd be the first to admit that. But he'd done well in college, where he'd gone on an academic scholarship. And there was more to him that the guy with the gun who was the muscle, who secured the scenes, and slapped on the handcuffs, and interrogated the suspects. He'd play the role though, and let the CSIs shine as the brains of the operation. He had nothing to prove to anyone.
Brass took the cup to the men's room, pouring the liquid down the sink, rather than tossing the full cup into one of the waste receptacles by the shop's front doors, where it would leak through the bag and make a mess for someone else to clean up. He paused in front of the mirror, examining the face that stared back at him.
He had five decades under his belt, and the craggy, deeply-lined puss to prove it. Heck, even his eyebrows were turning grey now. How many more years were there in his future? Did everyone have a pre-ordained purpose, an already charted out lifespan, or was it all just fate? "Helluva thing, death. You just never know when your number is gonna be up."
He entered the lobby of the precinct and was hailed at once by the jovial voice of Brian Mobley. The good sheriff was in high spirits tonight. Brass wondered why the other man was even here. Not working, certainly, Mobley never worked nights.
"Hey, Captain," Mobley said, dropping an arm over Brass's shoulders. His words were tainted with alcohol, but Brass wouldn't say the other man was drunk. "I was just on my way back from the Rampart. The mayor, his missus and I were taking in a new theatrical show. Rainbow. Kind of artsy, but a good time. I recommend it."
"Yeah? That's great," Brass acknowledged, unobtrusively shrugging the sheriff's arm from his back.
"Anyhow, we're going out on the mayor's yacht tomorrow, and it occured to me that perhaps Miss Laval would like to join us. I thought I had her number in my office, but can't seem to find it. I know that you hang around with Grissom and those CSIs a lot. You don't happen to have it by any chance, do you?" Mobley looked at him with expectant hope.
Brass was surprised that the sheriff hadn't made a move on the writer before now, after his obvious interest at the Kellerman's party. Or that he hadn't already secured her number and staked out her accommodations. He could just imagine Cecilia trapped on a boat with Mobley while he fawned all over her. She would hate that, Brass thought angrily.
He was about to suggest to Mobley that he just leave the writer in peace, but bit back the words. What business was it of his? Maybe Cecilia would like to go out with Brian Mobley. It was no concern of Jim's. Brass thought Mobley was a first class asshole, but hey he thought Conrad Ecklie was an asshole and look what a wonderful, warm and attractive woman Ecklie was married to. Either way, it had nothing to do with him.
As far as Brass knew, Cecilia still wasn't back at CSI. He hadn't been speaking with her though, or with Catherine, since Monday, even though he had wondered how Cecilia was doing. It was now Thursday night. Catherine Willows probably had Cecilia's phone number, Brass guessed. But he didn't see why he should volunteer that information. "No," he said curtly, "I don't."
Mobley shrugged. "I'll just get it from Janice in the morning, I suppose."
The sheriff seemed to have forgotten, or perhaps was unaware, that Cecilia was spending time with the graveyard shift now, and that he could call there looking for her. Well, that was Brian's problem. Brass regarded the other man coolly. "We got word tonight that a Laughlin detective, ex-LVPD, old friend of mine, was killed off-duty in a fire," he told Mobley. "Elliott Keeth."
Mobley looked thoughtful. "Keeth? Don't think I know him." The sheriff started to leave then turned back. "Sorry to hear that though," he remembered to say.
Brass's lips drew up in a sneer at the insincerity. "Thanks." He tried to imagine the gentle and compassionate Cecilia Laval with a self-centred, shallow jerk like Mobley. She deserved better than that.
"Well, night Captain," Mobley smiled, whistling to himself as he strode out of the lobby.
Brass just shook his head as he watched Mobley go. The talk of Grissom and the CSIs reminded Brass that he should let Grissom and Catherine know about Elliott Keeth's death. They had both known Keeth and worked with him at one time too. He reached for his cell phone, then hesitated. This was the kind of news that should be shared in person, not over the phone. He would run over to the lab and see if they were there.
Once more the coincidence of losing both men, niggled at Brass. The idea that there was something deeper, something malevolent here, continued to plague him. He would have to find out everything he could about Elliott's death. Was it really careless smoking...or was it arson? And if the two deaths were indeed not accidents, how were they connected? And why?