Just a short one. Thanks so much for your continued interest! Cathy.

Chapter 46

Brass had been impressed with whoever was driving the Lincoln. The guy was no novice at surveillance. He had maintained a good distance, and if Jim hadn't known to watch for him, he might not have known the guy was there. The driver didn't make any sudden or jerky moves, even when the detective changed lanes or directions suddenly. He was cool and controlled.

Brass figured he could have shaken him, if he'd really wanted to, but that would have involved some maneouvers that had an element of danger to the drivers of other vehicles around them. And he couldn't justify the risk. Not to mention that they could just track him through his sedan's GPS system even if they lost visual confirmation of his whereabouts. So, Brass had just put the Feds out of his mind, and navigated the streets of Las Vegas before ending up on I-15, setting the cruise control, and turning his thoughts inward.

Those thoughts had proved to be fruitful. It was with some excitement that Jim had finally turned the car around and driven straight back to his loft. One thing that had bothered him from the beginning, back to the time of the original murders, had been the lack of eye witnesses. Of course, eye witnesses were notoriuosly unreliable, but sometimes the cops could catch a break. Other than Carina Horwath, the young blonde from the coffee shop who had had the misfortune of witnessing Denny Martens' hit-and-run, there hadn't been a single person who had come forward to say they had noticed anything pertaining to any of the murders, however seemingly small and insignificant.

Because it had been impossible for Horwath to ID the driver of the stolen Durango that had deliberately plowed into Denny, and couldn't even have said the gender of the person driving, she had been unable to give Jim anything useful.

While he was out driving around, thinking about the deaths of Martens, Keeth and Takei, and wondering how the killer had been able to get at them, it had occured to Brass that maybe, just maybe, they might have an eyewitness after all.

Brass knew that Elliott Keeth's death had not been the careless smoking accident that it had initially appeared to be. Somehow, the killer had overpowered Keeth and staged the scene. Keeth had been a huge bear of a man, incredibly strong, and unless their serial murderer was of a similar physique and strength, the idea of his just taking down Keeth in hand-to-hand combat was highly improbable.

But, if the killer had subdued Elliott with drugs, rendering him powerless, it wouldn't matter how brawny he was...or wasn't. Brass didn't believe that the combination of sleeping pills and alcohol in Keeth's system had been intentional. Therefore, he went back to the theory that the killer had drugged Elliott. It made sense to Brass that the perpetrator could have slipped the pills into Keeth's whiskey bottle. But the bottle Jim had retrieved from the scene had been free of contaminants.

Was it too much of a stretch though...assuming Keeth had been drugged in such a fashion...that when his assailant came back to start the fire, he might have taken the bottle with him? Removing the evidence? Planting another instead, in case a forensics investigator did decide to test it? Brass had been intrigued at the thought.

But for all of this to have happened, somehow the killer had to have gotten into Keeth's apartment in the first place. Brass couldn't see Elliott just inviting a stranger into his home to tamper with his pills and alcohol, and then re-admitting him later to kill him. The detective had considered then those individuals that people often give open access to without a second thought.

Like cable guys. That had happened to Nick Stokes, when the guy who had installed his cable became fixated on the criminalist, leading to murder and ending with a terrifying take down in Stokes' home. Then there were phone guys. Plumbers and electricians. In an apartment complex, there would be a maintenance guy. Perhaps their kller had posed as any one of them, in an elaborate masquerade.

Brass had remembered Elliott Keeth's eldery neighbour at the end of the hall. Gladys. The one who had peeked out from behind her door and told Jim and Catherine that they couldn't enter the damaged apartment.

"You don't look like burglars," the woman had said at length.

"No Ma'am," Jim had agreed genially. "We're not burglars."

"Gladys," she told him. "We had a burglar here," she continued. She pushed the door the remainder of the way open, the guarded look slipping from her worn features, seeming to decide that the pair were harmless. Jim guessed her to be in her eighties, stooped from osteoporosis. She wore a thin, cotton housecoat that she pulled tighter around a shapeless dress.

"We're not going to be long," Jim had reassured her. "You have a good day, Ma'am." He'd turned his attention away from her, readying to duck under the caution tape and to enter Keeth's apartment.

"Mr. Keeth, he was the one got robbed," she informed them.

Brass had felt the hair stand up at the back of his neck. He stopped before he could step into the apartment. "When was this?" he had asked, trying to keep his tone casual, though all of his senses were instantly alert, his thoughts racing as fast as his pulse.

"Few weeks. Month maybe. Robbing a police officer! I swear I don't know what this world is coming to."

"I agree, Ma'am. Gladys," he amended. Brass had wondered if anything had been taken. Wondered if Keeth had filed a police report or an insurance claim. "Did anyone see the burglar? Were any other apartments broken into?"

"Not that I know of," she replied.

"Thanks. You take care." This time he had pushed open the door and entered Elliott Keeth's apartment.

At that point, Brass hadn't even had a single thing, save his intuition, to indicate that there was foul play in either Denny Martens' or Elliott Keeth's deaths. When Gladys had first mentioned a burglary, Jim had wondered if that might somehow be related to Keeth's death. The fact that it had been a month prior, and the reality that the whiskey bottle had turned up negative for pharmaceutical residue, had caused Brass to believe at the time that the incident did not have anything to do with later events after all.

But what if it did have something to do with all of this? What if the killer had broken into Keeth's apartment beforehand, to better acquaint himself with the man? The eldery woman had said that the burglary had occured about a month before the fire that had claimed Keeth's life. Annie had told him that the letter Joe Takei had received, the one that had disquieted him enough to show his partner, had shown up about a month before Takei strangled to death, an apparent victim of dangerous autoerotic play.

Their killer had put a lot of thought and planning into the deaths...the murders...of each of the detectives. Was it just a coincidence that a month or so before he was killed, Elliott Keeth had had a burglary? And Gladys had told Brass and Catherine that to the best of her knowledge, Keeth's apartment had been the only unit to have a break-in.

In retrospect, Brass figured that if there had been other incidents in the building, that Gladys would have known. He imagined that she was one of those people who liked to keep tabs on things. Who took a great interest in the goings on around her. He wouldn't be surprised if she spent a great deal of time with her eye to the peephole, every time she heard a door open along the corridor, or every time the elevator stopped on that floor.

Gladys hadn't admitted to seeing anyone enter Keeth's apartment to rob it. But Jim remembered how quickly the old woman had cracked open her door when he and Catherine had arrived outside Elliott's apartment. There was a good chance, he thought, that perhaps she had seen something. Even though she hadn't been willing to divulge that to he and Catherine at the time.

Brass looked up Dana Asmundsen's number at work and called her at her office in Laughlin. Thankfully, time seemed to be healing her wounds, and Elliott Keeth's former girlfriend...significant other, Keeth had amended with a chuckle that afternoon at Coopers...sounded stronger and more self-assured than she had when they had last spoken. Jim hated to stir up her feelings of loss, but he had to speak with her. He identified himself and asked if she had a few moments to talk.

She answered that she did. "Detective Brass, I'm sorry that I haven't gotten back to you before now," Dana apologized. "I did go through most of Elliott's things, but there wasn't any letter like the one that you had asked about. I'm afraid I can't help you with that." She thought, naturally, that that was why he was calling. No longer gripped in the immediate aftermath of grief, she was more curious now about the detective's early inquiries than she had been at the time.

"What was it you were looking for exactly, and why was it that you wanted to know about a letter?" she asked now. At the time of his original call, Brass had given her a vague explanation that he was investigating a case in Vegas involving an old colleague of Keeth's.

This was the hard part. Trying to sidestep questions that in his heart Jim felt she had a right to ask, but knew that he couldn't answer just yet. Instead, he brushed the query aside and asked a question of his own. "That's okay, I'm not really calling about that. I was hoping for some information though, if you don't mind, about a break and enter that occured not long before Elliott's...accident." Brass found it hard to use the innocuous sounding word, for what he knew now was a murder.

There was a long pause on the other end. "I don't understand," Dana Asmundsen spoke slowly. "I thought you were with the Las Vegas police department. Wouldn't this be out of your jurisdiction? It was nothing more than a petty theft anyways. I wouldn't think the police would bother trying to track down and apprehend the culprit. Elliott didn't even make an insurance report, it wasn't worth the deductible and the black mark of having filed a claim. Why are you asking about that now, Detective?" Her tone was polite but firm.

"I'm following a lead on something else, Ms. Asmundsen," he allowed cautiously. "That's really all that I can say right now."

"Does this have something to do with Elliott's accident?" she challenged. "Do you have reason to think his death was anything but an accident?" There was a tension in her voice now, and he could hear the slight raise in pitch.

Brass knew his answering silence, while his mind sought the right words to say, would negate any claims he might make to the contrary. "I'm investigating an old case of Elliott's and I'm following a hunch that the break-in might somehow be related to that case." It wasn't a lie. But the deliberate deception left a bad taste in Jim's mouth.

He had been honest with Amy Martens about his suspicions and the extent of his investigation. But Brass knew Amy, she had been a detective's wife, and he felt he could trust her not to jeopardize the case. Also, she had been the one to bring him the letter from Denny's safe. The letter that had been key to everything that had followed. Jim had felt he owed something to Denny's widow. It wasn't that he didn't trust Dana Asmundsen, he simply didn't know her. Nor was it that he didn't believe she had a right to know that Elliott Keeth had been murdered. When the time was right, he would tell her in person. But for now, Brass believed it was best for everyone if he didn't disclose too much.

Silence again on the other end, while Dana Asmundsen mulled that over. Finally, she seemed to accept his subterfuge. Or at least she decided that she wasn't going to get anything more out of him, and had made up her mind to co-operate regardless. "What did you want to know?" she asked crisply. "I don't know what I can tell you, that wasn't on the police report."

Except that Brass hadn't read that report, and didn't have time now to try to get a copy. Assuming he even could access one in his current state of suspension. "Was it Elliott who discovered there had been a break-in?" Jim asked.

"Yes. He was on days. He came home, and noticed that the door was unlocked. He went inside, and there was a bit of a mess. Like someone had tossed the place, quickly, looking for valuables. There was no one there anymore, they were long gone. He called someone out to dust for prints, but they didn't turn up anything. There wasn't much taken. A portable DVD player. He didn't have a home computer, just the laptop, and he had that with him at work." She spoke as though by rote.

Dana continued. "Some movies. A bit of cash, less than one hundred dollars. A case of silverware that his Grandmother Keeth had left him." She sounded sad for a moment. "Elliott felt really bad about the silverware. He searched local pawnshops for weeks, hoping he might get it back. That was the only thing that he really felt badly about. It was irreplacable because of the sentimental value. It never did turn up."

Brass wondered if the items had been taken just for show, to make it look like an ordinary burglary. And if that was the case, if they hadn't all ended up in a dumpster somewhere.

"He didn't say anything about any files or anything work related being missing," she added. "Elliott didn't seem to think it was connected to his job, or any case he was working, or that it was anything more than just a simple break-in. Probably some junkie looking for something he could sell for drug money."

"Thanks, I appreciate your going over things with me," Jim told her. "Listen, after the break-in, did Elliott talk to the landlord about replacing the lock?"

"No, I don't think so," Dana said hesitantly. "It was scratched up, but still functional. He didn't think the person would be back. Even after being a victim of crime himself, Elliott still had this air of invincibility," she said, her voice a mixture of consternation and fondness. "I don't think he could really believe that it had happened to him in the first place."

On the other end of the line, Jim smiled. He could just imagine Keeth's disbelief and indignation. Brass had noticed over the years that guys in law enforcement seemed to have one of two attitudes towards crime and the world at large. Either they were exceptionally security conscious...going to scrupulous lengths to protect themselves and their families...or they were quite lax. Like Keeth, they had the mindset that there were three distinct groups of people...criminals, cops, and victims. And they were not interchangeable. Jim himself was one of the few who seemed to reach a happy medium. Probably because after his experiences in New Jersey, he knew how easily the lines between the groups could blur.

Having broken into Keeth's apartment once and finding it an easy enough task, if no one had taken steps to better fortify the unit, it was plausible that if the petty crook had actually been their serial killer, that he might have come back again after having familiarized himself with entry and the layout of the unit. The purpose of the second visit much more nefarious than the first.

What if the first trip to Keeth's apartment hadn't really been about committing burglary at all, but geared to learning more about Keeth? A quick look through a medicine cabinet or a bedside table might have uncovered the fact that Elliott was taking a prescription sleep aid. That he kept a stock of whiskey in the apartment. That he smoked inside his home. Not all smokers did these days, Jim knew. It might have set the wheels in motion. Given the killer an idea on how to stage an accidental death that no one would question.

"I know what you mean," Jim said. "A lot of cops are like that. Thanks again for your time, Ms. Asmundsen." They said their goodbyes.

Less than five minutes later, Brass' phone rang. It was Dana Asmundsen. "Call display," she explained briefly at his surprise. "Look," she began perfunctorily, "between the questions about the mysterious letter, and asking about the break-in at his apartment, I believe you think that there's something off about Elliott's death. I don't think this has anything to do with a supposed old case of his. I know you're not going to admit that. But if there is more to it...if it wasn't an accident...I want you to find that out.

"And I just remembered something. We didn't connect it with the break-in originally, and it might have nothing to do with that at all. But about two weeks later, a couple of weeks before his death, Elliott noticed that his spare key was missing. He kept it on a hook in the kitchen. He asked me if I'd lost mine and taken it, or seen it at all, but I hadn't. We figured it had just gotten misplaced, or knocked off the wall and under the stove or something. It was no big deal." She cleared her throat. "But in light of all of your questions...I thought you might want to know."

After the call, Brass was more convinced than ever that the burglary at Keeth's apartment had not been a random occurence. He felt that it was imperative that he talk to Gladys. In person. However slim the odds that she might have seen the thief who had broken into Elliott's apartment, it was his only lead right now. Jim couldn't show up on Abe Harrison's doorstep to question him. But perhaps he could find a way to see Gladys.

She had seemed to accept Brass' self-identification as a police officer readily enough the day of Keeth's funeral, when he and Catherine had stood in the hall outside the burned unit. She hadn't asked to see a badge then. Perhaps, having established himself as a cop already, Gladys would speak with him without requiring further proof.

Even if the elderly woman hadn't seen anything, at least Jim would be doing something. The problem now though, was how to get to her. His FBI shadows would certainly follow him out to Laughlin. Even if they didn't think there was anything suspicious about his taking a two hour jaunt to go visit an old woman, the moment they reported back on what his destination had been, someone would quickly match the building's address to the one where Elliott Keeth had resided. Even Mobley would put two and two together and know that Brass was still working the case. Even if the sheriff wasn't sure what angle the detective was pursuing. And he might well have Jim picked up and unceremoniously booked for obstruction of justice.

In theory, Jim could disable the GPS system, and lose the surveillance team. But those acts would certainly be enough to bring him to the irascible sheriff's attention. And then when Brass eventually did come home, no protestations of innocence would save him from the combined wrath of the LVPD and the FBI. He would need to give the situation some thought.

The midafternoon sun was a molten ball in the pale, almost colourless sky. As he emerged from the dark cool of the underground, and the hot rays slanted through the car's front windshield, Jim was already regretting the shirt and tie. And knew that when the time came he would be loathe to slip into the lined jacket. But he couldn't show up on Gladys' doorstep in a golf shirt and shorts, no matter how much of a potentially record-breaking heatwave this was. Looking professional might be the key to even getting her to talk with him.

Selfishly, Jim hoped that she hadn't been to any of those public awareness seminars for seniors recently, that focused on encouraging trusting older citizens to be more aware of potential dangers and scams, and which taught them about not allowing strangers into their homes, or taking people at face value. Brass had given such talks himself. Ones that made a point of reminding seniors to ask for identification from anyone claiming to be a police officer, emergency personnel, or a utility worker. Letting them know that it was not only all right to call for confirmation before allowing a stranger into their home, but that such action should be routine.

He hoped that Gladys would take none of those steps. And then when this was all over...Jim promised himself he would go back and educate her.

Now he looked out through darkened lenses at the Lincoln parked down the street. Imagining the men inside...heck, maybe they weren't men, maybe they were women, Brass acknowledged, thinking of Sara...glancing disinterestedly his way. He'd have to stop that kind of gender stereotyping he realized, his lips curving in amused self-deprecation.

He turned on the indicator and pulled smoothly out to the left into the flow of traffic. Stepping lightly on the accelerator, Brass adjusted the rear-view mirror, looking back down the street at the apartment, which was slowly growing smaller in the background. He noted with satisfaction that the black sedan was still parked at the curb. Its driver made no move to start the engine and follow him.

Sighing audibly, Jim pulled off the baseball cap, and tossed it into the backseat, running his fingers through his short hair. He checked the car's gas gauge. It was still half full, he could stop later. Adjusting the radio dial, he found a decent station and settled back for the ride to Laughlin.

Brass caught his grin reflecting back at him in the mirror. He didn't think the agents had even looked twice at the teal green Sunfire. Or at the car's driver with the cap pulled low, and the tinted glasses shading the eyes below the brim. He basked in the glow of self-satisfaction. The solution to his dilemma had been so simple in the end.

His neighbour Glen hadn't minded Jim borrowing his car at all. An artist, Glen Roarke was deeply immersed in the creation of a new painting, his easel set up by the oversized loft windows, taking advantage of the wonderful natural light. He had no intentions of going anywhere for the rest of the day, and had been quite happy to hand the detective his keys without question or comment.

And this, Jim knew, putting more distance between himself and the surveillance team, would buy him the time to run out to Laughlin and talk to Gladys. Without having to deal with any fall out from such an excursion. Without, in fact, the FBI, or Sheriff Brian Mobley, even knowing he had ever left his apartment.

It had been a truly lousy day that had started on about as negative a note as Brass could have imagined. But he couldn't help feeling bouyed. Jim might not technically be a cop at this moment, not one on the official payroll. But this was his case. His life. And his gut instinct was taking him to Laughlin where he believed he might catch a break and talk to the first person who knew what their killer looked like.

It was a much more pleasant feeling Jim conceded, as he turned off the A/C and rolled down the window to let the muggy air rush over him, bringing the sounds and smells of the city with it, to reclaim the role of hunter...rather than simply waiting around ineffectually, knowing that you were the hunted.