Act Four
"Grandpa Got Run Over by a Reindeer"
By the time Greg arrived at the Bailey house out in Seven Hills, not all the merry music blaring from his radio could counter the fact that Sara was indeed right: no one in Vegas had a clue what to do when it came to driving in the snow. Not that Greg would ever give her the satisfaction of telling her so.
At least he hadn't had any trouble finding the house. While Sin City normally decked itself out in neon shades, there weren't exactly all that many three times life-size Santa and his sleigh rooftop displays. The Griswold's certainly had nothing on this guy; Greg swore they probably could see the thing from outer space.
He for one simply stood there stunned for a moment.
The scene was just so - wrong.
Jolly old Saint Nick beamed over the chaos of flashing cruiser lights, fluttering crime scene tape, and attendant onlookers gathered about gawking just like he was, not to mention the herd of fallen reindeer scattered everywhere.
Nor had Nick been pulling his leg. Not if it really was the body assistant medical examiner David Philips was kneeling beside. Grandpa really had got run over by a reindeer. Rudolph apparently, to judge by the still blinking red nose.
Still shaking his head at the sight, Greg slipped under the yellow tape.
At the sudden loud crack, scrape, then whistle, Greg spun just in time to spy the flaming fireball of a falling reindeer plummet to the ground behind him.
"What the -"
"Comet," Dave simply submitted utterly nonplussed.
Comet? Greg mouthed as several uniforms set about attacking the blaze.
"Need to get that power off. Now!" One of them called.
As if on cue, the bright lights crashed to black, leaving an unnerving deep darkness behind.
Greg clicked on the Maglite from his vest and set down his case before proceeding to shoot all the usual locator shots.
This done, Dave indicated the hefty heavy duty plastic figure. "Give me a hand."
It took a minute for the two of them to wrestle Rudolph off the victim. In the process the deer's head popped loose bouncing off into the snow, only to inexplicably land smile up.
"So wrong..." Greg muttered under his breath.
The previously pinned, as yet unidentified, mature male certainly looked old enough to be somebody's grandpa, if the tightly cropped white hair was any indication. How he ended up under the reindeer was at this point anybody's guess.
But it was the pair of pruning shears the dead man grasped in his ungloved hands that really had the duo stumped.
"What do you think?" Suggested Dave, "he was just trying to take a little off the top?"
xxxxxxx
Usually Metro's morgue proved a fairly peaceful sort of place; the dead far too busy being dead to make much of a ruckus. Early that Christmas morning however found the place positively rocking.
Greg pushed open the doors to find Dave and Doc Robbins jamming to Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run."
Dave belted, "Said Santa to a boy child, 'What have you been longing for?'"
Doc replied, "'All I want for Christmas is a rock and roll electric guitar.' And away went Rudolph a whizzing like a shooting star."
Together they chorused, "Run, run, Rudolph, Santa's got to make it to town..." only to trail off at the sight of Greg still standing in the doorway, though neither looked the least bit sheepish or embarrassed to be caught.
"Talk about a captive audience," Greg grinned, motioning to the dead body before them. "Practicing to take the act on the road? I can see it now. All up in lights: Doctor Death and the Stiffs."
Doc shrugged. "Got to get it in while I can. Judy's moratorium on Christmas music starts tomorrow."
"Thought you'd be home all snug in your bed."
"Had to see this for myself."
"Attack of the killer reindeer." Dave practically beamed. "Has to be a first. Even for Vegas."
"Turns out Rudolph was the least of his problems," Robbins intoned. Reverting to task, Doc motioned for Dave to shut off the music and Greg to come join him at the autopsy table. "Was dead before he hit the ground. Official C.O.D: sudden cardiac arrest."
"Resultant from...?" Greg asked knowing all too well that sudden cardiac arrest was the convenient catch-all for all sorts of actual events.
"Shock."
"Since when does Christmas scare someone to death?"
"Electric shock," clarified Doc. "As in 240 volts."
From behind them Dave let out a laconic, "Current kills."
Greg had a hard time keeping the surprise from his: "Victim was electrocuted?"
"Mr. Cylde Potter was indeed."
Taking up one of the victim's gnarled hands, Doc turned it palm up, the better for Greg to examine.
"See the leathery discolorations? That's your point of entry."
This made sense well enough. Only one problem. Greg gave Potter's exposed feet a puzzled look.
"But his feet are fine."
"Current didn't exit through his feet."
At Doc's nod, Dave rolled up the sheet to reveal the victim's charred left knee.
"Classic low-voltage burn. Current followed the path of least resistance straight through his heart. Sent him into ventricular fibrillation. Technically 'a chaotic asynchronous fractionated activity of the heart.'"
"In English, Doc?"
"When a sudden shock throws off the heart's regular rhythm, the muscles twitch rather than contract, causing the heart to loose it's ability to pump blood. Once that happens -"
Greg could fill in the blanks from there. "Plenty of electricity at the scene. Place was lit up like The Strip on steroids when we got there."
"Wouldn't take much. The heart has a pretty low threshold when it comes to current," Doc explained. "Theoretically a nine volt or even a triple-A battery applied directly to the heart could kill you. At normal household amperage, 25-40 milliseconds is enough to trigger arrhythmia. Go into v-fib for more than a couple of seconds and -"
"Lights out. Permanently," finished Dave.
"But wouldn't a jolt like that throw you?"
Robbins shook his head. "Only in the movies. At 240 volts, the grab reflex kicks in."
"Which is why he still had the shears in his hands when we found him."
This earned Greg a knowing nod.
"Only way he was going to let those go was to pry them from his cold dead hands.
"What was he doing with clippers on the roof anyway?" asked Doc.
While Dave joked, "Didn't come in with a bag of toys, so I'm thinking he wasn't headed down the chimney," Greg only echoed, "Roof?"
"Postmortem fractures of the neck and back are consistent with a fall from twenty to thirty feet. Unless you found him near a ladder, roof's my best guess."
Knowing this meant a return trip to Summerlin through the snow, Greg groaned.
xxxxxxx
He wasn't the only one.
Captain Brass drained yet another paper cup's worth of crappy cop coffee, almost desperately wishing it was spiked with something a lot stronger than sugar. With a reluctant sigh of his own, he gave his next interviewee a further once over through the window.
However decked out in a flashing Rudolph sweater Brass wouldn't be caught dead in either for love or money, tall, lanky Harry Bailey looked like he'd lost that festive feeling.
"So," he demanded before Brass had fully made it through the door. "When are my lights getting turned back on?"
"Guy's dead. More important than a couple of lights, don't you think?"
Bailey let out a snide, "A quarter of a million isn't a couple of lights."
"And electrocution is no joke."
"You see me laughing?"
Brass set a plain manilla folder on the table. "So we went back. Had a look. Make sure the display wasn't defective."
"Not possible," insisted Bailey, the pride unmistakeable in his: "Laid the cable myself. Electrician - NV Energy - fifteen years. I know how to run cable."
"Must be a heck of an employee discount to power that many lights. Or you just angling for job security?"
Bailey made no reply to this; didn't matter, Brass didn't really expect one.
"Funny," he added, flicking the file open. "You never mentioned having a beef with the victim."
He placed a printout of the victim's I.D. in front of Bailey.
"A Clyde Potter. Sixty-eight. And your next door neighbor."
"And the biggest Scrooge you'd ever meet," countered Harry. "Wouldn't know Christmas if it -"
"Ran over him with a reindeer?" finished Brass. "Anyway - Neighbors say they saw the two of you arguing outside your house just last night. Said it got a little heated. And apparently it wasn't the first time."
"Potter had a beef with me. Every year it's the same thing: complain, complain, complain. Thanksgiving through New Years. The lights kept him up at night. Too many cars in the neighborhood. Too many people, too. Couldn't stand to see so many people enjoying themselves if you ask me."
"He ever do anything more than just complain?"
"Yeah, he used to shut them off every time I'd leave the house. Had to move the controls into the garage last year. And last week I found him lurking around the fuse box."
"Hence the hefty Master lock," concluded Brass, flipping him the photo of a banged up fuse box secured with a large formidable brass lock. "Any chance you installed something else? Some sort of booby trap? Would be a piece of cake for a qualified electrician like yourself."
"Do I look stupid?" asked Bailey. The good captain opted not to answer. "You don't play around with electricity. You do, you end up dead."
"Like Potter."
"Exactly."
Brass let the sudden silence stretch on.
"Look," Bailey insisted, having come to the conclusion that nothing he'd said in the past few minutes helped his case. "I didn't do anything wrong. I certainly had nothing to do with him ending up dead. I'm the victim here. Or aren't trespassing and the wanton destruction of private property a crime anymore?"
Brass decided to ignored this, too.
"Apparently," the captain patiently began, "when he couldn't get into the fuse box, Potter decided on a more direct approach."
xxxxxxx
Several hours earlier, a furious Clyde Potter stormed to the rear of Bailey's Summerlin house. Further enraged at finding the fuse box locked, he set to wailing on it with his heavy duty flashlight. All to no avail.
Still furious, he stalked back home, proceeded to lug a ladder from his garage; slammed it against Bailey's siding. Still cursing under his breath, he selected a set of hedge clippers from his neatly organized tool rack.
Shears in hand, he climbed, then stomped across the roof, nearly slipping once or twice on the unexpected snow as he searched for a patch of cable he could get his cutters under.
Finally find one, he knelt to set about cutting. Only the shears couldn't cut clean through the thick cabling. He continued to work, repeatedly scissoring through it until -
Spark!
Electricity from the line raced through the metal clippers into the body via his gloveless hands. Unobstructed, it zoomed through blood vessels, struck the heart, sent the organ into sluggish chaos, all before ultimately speeding down his leg and out through his snow-soaked slacks.
Clippers now firmly in hand, the now dead Clyde Potter toppled forward, sliding in the snow down the slope of the roof. One foot caught on, then tugged free a tethered cord as he went.
Which was when gravity pitched in at its usual force of 9.8 meters per second squared. Not only did Potter pitch over the edge of the roof, his snagged shoe tugged several of the reindeer along with him, Rudolf leading the fray.
The resultant crash woke half the neighborhood.
xxxxxxx
Back in the equally icy interrogation room, a cold Harry Bailey cooly concluded, "Death by stupid."
Brass frowned. "Wouldn't even crack my top ten."
"Got what he deserved if you ask me."
The captain hadn't.
"You don't sound all that sorry."
"Like I told you," Bailey maintained. "I didn't do anything wrong here -"
Jim Brass shook his head. So much for peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
xxxxxxx
"Guy's right," Greg reluctantly agreed, finally having finished regaling Nick and Sara about the night's misadventures as they sat huddled around one of the few populated tables at Frank's, the three in the midst of indulging as they were in a holiday tradition of their own: the celebratory post holiday shift from hell meal.
"Technically, the only thing Bailey's guilty of is bad taste."
"And if that were illegal, you'd have to lock up three quarters of the city," said Nick.
"Well, that and global warming," countered Sara. "At least all those lights at the Springs Preserve are 100% solar powered."
"But a quarter of a million lights?" Nick asked still incredulous.
Greg quipped, "Maybe he never got that Lite Brite he wanted for Christmas."
Anything was possible. It was Vegas after all.
Over Frank's loudspeakers Perry Como crooned, "There's no place like home for the holidays."
A pretty young waitress stopped to pour coffee into their upturned mugs. Both Nick and Greg eye her with interest. Sara only smirked. Some things never changed.
However true, this didn't keep Sara from let out a not entirely discrete cough.
She lifted her mug in salute. "To surviving Christmas."
"Surviving Christmas," the guys chorused as they all clicked cups.
"Again," Greg sighed with relief. Unnecessarily picking up his menu - the menu at Frank's hadn't changed since they had started going there more than a decade before - he asked, "We expecting anyone else?"
Nick replied, "Finn said she had somewhere to be. She didn't say. I didn't ask."
In reality, Julie Finlay had driven out to the desert. Finally finding a spot she liked, she pulled off the side of the road, shut down her engine and got out of her car.
Tugging her coat a bit tighter about herself, she smiled, enjoying the peace and quiet of a now starlit silent night and thinking that perhaps there was still as yet a bit of peace on earth to be found after all.
"What about Morgan?" Greg asked, trying and failing to conceal his hopeful tone.
"Was headed out with her dad, last time I saw her," Nick replied, happy as he'd been to see that the two had been arm-in-arm and laughing as they went.
"Russell ask for a raincheck," said Sara, more statement than question.
It didn't take a level three investigator to work out where the boss had gone and the welcome he would find when he got there.
Sara had imagined it rather close to reality. As he pulled into his drive, Russell found his wife Barb perched on their front porch steaming cup of coffee in hand, contentedly taking in the way the holiday lights glistened against the snow as she waited for her husband to come home.
With a grin of his own, he bounded up the stairs. Before either could say anything, he dangled a fresh sprig of mistletoe over their heads.
Not that he needed it.
Sara tried not to be too jealous at the thought.
"Please tell me you did not get that from out of evidence," she said at the sight of Greg whipping out his own spray of mistletoe.
"Nope. Just thought it might come in handy."
"Don't look a me," Sara insisted.
Greg gave the waitress another unmistakably approving glance.
"Keep dreaming there, Romeo," chucked Nick. "She's way out of your league."
Sensing an argument might be in the offing, Sara cut in with a knowing, "You do know that mistletoe wasn't always a license for unlimited kissing."
"No, hadn't heard that," Nick replied equally as urbane. "But since when are you such a philematologist? You know - a person who studies kissing?"
"I've got a guess," interjected Greg.
Sara ignored them both.
"Originally, you plucked a berry from the sprig after each kiss," she continued, reaching across the table to remove first one berry and then another. "The kissing only lasted as long as the berries held out."
When they looked askance at her continuing to denude the rest of the twig, she smirked, "Someone's got to keep you out of trouble." She turned to Nick. "You." Then faced Greg. "More than you."
"Hey!" Greg protested.
Nick gave Greg a hearty pat on the back and an utterly unapologetic, "Truth hurts, man."
Nick was about to tell Sara that perhaps he really didn't want to know how she knew all that, when the bell over Frank's front door let out a joyful tinkle.
Sara, the last of the berries pinched between forefinger and thumb, peered up.
From the way her face instantly brightened, the guys didn't even have to turn around to know who'd come through the door.
Overhead, Como concluded:
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
If you want to be happy in a million ways
For the holidays, you can't be home, sweet home.
No place indeed.
xxxxxxx
Curious to see what happens next? See Special.
xxxxxxx
P.S. If you were more nice than naughty this year, you might, just might, find something else in your stocking soon...