"I'm telling you, Detective Brass, I have no idea about a kidnapping or some C.S.I. from Hartford, Connecticut named Ursula Kearns. Do I need to say it again? I don't know the woman at all!" Tanner, the same man that Rick Moren described, claimed innocence about five minutes after Brass questioned him about his motives.
"I'm just a bachelor who owns some crummy night club on the Strip," Tanner added after about a moment of silence, Brass staring angrily back at him. "Detective, I haven't screwed with anybody since my wife divorced me. You have got to believe me!"
"Well, according to your finances, your 'club' seems to be doing well and the ladies that come in seem to like you," Brass replied coolly, trying to keep his frustrations in as his eyes followed the snake's coils on the suspect's neck, watching him squirm in his seat on the other side of the table, ignoring the statements about an ex. "That's far from 'crummy', Mr. Tanner."
"Yeah, but…well, you're right. My club is far from 'crummy'. But, this isn't the point here. Detective, I swear, I had nothing to do with this investigation!"
"Then explain why you ran when you saw us coming. How did you know that Nick Stokes and Margaret O'Keefe were C.S.I.'s undercover?"
"I didn't. I just thought you guys were the cops coming after me. I had some traffic violation a couple of days before out on the Strip and I ran from the cops before they could ticket me because I was in a hurry to get to work and didn't like how I was harassed. I thought you were chasing me around for that."
Sara came into the observation room, seeing Maggie there, watching the scenes with an obvious keen interest. After coming in and hearing Tanner explain about his traffic violation, Sara said to her, "I checked that out. This Quentin Tanner was the club owner who liked to get traffic tickets and ignore them, pleading not guilty to each one. We have the wrong person, if Eric Jacobson was telling us the truth."
"What do you mean?" Maggie turned to Sara, ignoring Brass' repeating questions to Quentin Tanner through his intimidation methods.
"Well, your ex was telling the truth, as far as we know. Witnesses put him on Alloy Street the days he said he was there. The hooker, Lynda, vouched for him and even mentioned – well, a lot more than that, but I won't get into any good details. Now, it's more of a matter of finding out where the real Quentin Tanner is. Or, for that matter, we need to find out where his sister and wife are, if your ex was telling us the truth."
"Anybody check out the residence lately?" Maggie felt a chill down her spine again, but ignored it. "I bet that something can be found on Alloy Street or even on Clark Avenue, like Eric said."
"Mrs. Karen Tanner apparently moved out of her old apartment after her first husband, Jason Napolitano, had…died…and moved to another just down the street," Sara reported with sheer accuracy. "Brass and his men have yet to find out where she and her children – between the ages of five and eleven, according to Child Services – are situated. There are a lot of old backyard apartment unaccounted for on Alloy and many of the residents don't like to tattle of their neighbors, especially when neighborhood battles come often."
"So I remember. So I remember well." Maggie, with Sara following her instantly, then turned back to the interrogation room's action as soon as something new and interesting in the case's development came out of Tanner's mouth when Brass asked about Rick Moren and the White Sands Motel.
"Rick Moren, you say? That name doesn't even ring a bell. I don't know anybody by that name unless you mean that fat guy that owns the cheesy motel down on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Detective, that man's name isn't Rock Moren, in that case. His name is the same as mine, Quentin Tanner. He has a wife and a few stepchildren down on Alloy and has a younger sister named Hannah Tanner on Clark Avenue."
"Are you sure about that, Mr. Tanner?" Brass looked slightly stunned and a little annoyed, as if somebody had slapped him in the face. There was another twist in the case and it wasn't as easy as he thought it was going to be.
"I'm sure, Detective Brass. I can't forget a face."
"You still have not told me how you've meet this…Quentin Tanner."
The club owner looked Brass in the face, honesty blazing in his eyes. "I met him because I had a flat tire and his dirty motel was the first place I could pull into without disturbing traffic on all sides. I pulled in after the car was in control, went inside to the man office and told the man what happened. He was nice enough to help me change the flat, gave me his business card and go back inside. I didn't blame him, though. This Vegas heat is a killer!"
"What next, Mr. Tanner?" Brass sighed as the suspect handed him the business card, as if confirming his story. The detective took one good look at it and tucked it into a folder, to be put into evidence later.
"I followed him inside, since I wanted to get out of the heat. We talked a little about each other. I bitched a bit about my ex-wife and how she emptied out my bank account after our divorce and he talked about his sister, stepchildren and wife and how the wife bitches about her previous husband that was killed in a high school shooting." Tanner looked at Brass skeptically, almost not adding another word to the questioning session before reminding him about the incident at the Vegas high school a few years previously. "The man started it, I heard, and almost got away with it, wanting to disappear for the murders, kidnappings and rapes he committed. I kinda remembered it, too, when it was on the news or something. The man was shot down by a C.S.I. in self-defense, wasn't he?"
"Is this a part of the investigation?" Brass knew that Maggie was listening in behind him and tried to steer the conversation away from her before more people found out about her. He knew that she didn't want more attention than she already had, Nick the least of her problems.
"I don't know, Detective, but that's all I know. I told you that I was innocent of this except maybe the traffic ticket. I should have gotten that one."
"You seem to have a lot of trouble with car and driving."
The club owner smiled. "I usually do. It's like a part of my job."
Brass sighed again and got up from his seat. "Ok, Mr. Tanner, you're free to go. A uniformed officer will escort you out. Just keep yourself available in case we have more questions."
"I plan to be," Tanner replied softly, getting up from his seat on the other side of the table and following Brass out.
"What do you think of that?" Sara asked Maggie sarcastically as the duo left the interrogation room with another police officer. "Your ex was telling the truth after all. And he actually didn't lie about anything so far."
"I think that's the only thing he has right now," Maggie replied back, thinking. "Everything he gave us is his ticket out. So far, so good. He's been released a day now and has been in contact with us. His phone call to Brass should be coming in anytime now."
"Yeah, Eric's a piece of work, but I'm glad he's on our side now. In the meantime, if this Quentin Tanner was just another guy that the motel owner wanted to frame, what was he doing while we're here?"
"He knows we're on his trail, Sara. And if he does, then he's buying time. With that time, what would he do? Get out of sight or destroy the evidence before we get to him. Remember? He knows now that we've connected the dots with this Quentin Tanner and now, he's out the door. He's already back on Alloy Street probably and hiding the rest of the evidence."
"Which is why the White Sands Motel is now a vacant lot," Catherine blurted out as she unexpectedly came into the room, his breath coming in gasps, as if she had been running a long distance.
"What?" Sara raised an eyebrow.
"Grissom just received a call from the fire department. The White Sands Motel has been burned to the ground this afternoon, right after Maggie, Nick and Greg left. The heat didn't help, so the whole building is destroyed, evidence and all."
"Any causalities from this…fire?" Maggie asked quietly, not wanting to know the answer, knowing that somehow, she would not like what Catherine said…trying to keep her own nervous excitement from getting to her.
"Yes, there was, and Doc Robbins has him in the morgue now," Catherine answered uneasily.
"Well, who is it?" Sara asked impatiently, crossing her arms.
"Another murder, we think, but there isn't any evidence yet until we get through the autopsy," the assistant supervisor carefully worded. "The body was a John Doe until his drivers' license was pulled from his wallet and a small amount of D.N.A. positively identified him as Eric Jacobson, our former suspect who was supposed to call Brass in with more information."