Brass in Pocket (26 page)

She planted her bottom on the floor, feet spread for balance, and braced her right hand with her left. Took a deep breath and let it out again. Squeezed the trigger.

Her weapon thundered and spat smoke and
flame, and Wolfson's leg exploded just above the knee. Blood splashed onto the floor. Wolfson swore, fired a wild round that spanged off a steel support post, and buckled, clutching at the wound. Gunsmoke stung Catherine's nose and eyes.

She rolled away from her position even as Wolfson fell. Someone unloaded two shots where she had just been, and a third chewed into the wood of the shirt-and-tie cube. She risked another glance and saw Tuva standing near Wolfson, staring her way. He saw Catherine and raised his gun. She ducked back just before he fired, and she felt the cube shudder under the impact of his shot.

“Get me out of here, you no-neck bastard!” Wolfson said.

“I gotta find them first,” Tuva said. “I know where that CSI is, but I lost the captain and Mrs. Blago.”

Wolfson swore. Catherine moved away from the cube, ducking around a tall unit that held boys' jeans on one side and little girls' T-shirts and casual tops on the other. Movie, TV, and cartoon characters smiled down at her.

From there, she caught a glimpse of Brass and Antoinette. He had her arm clutched in his left hand, his weapon in his right, and he was backing her toward the front of the store. Brass knew where Wolfson and Tuva were. But he had said there were three of them, and so far she had only seen the two dirty cops. Which meant there was another player somewhere—the one whose voice she didn't know.

Tuva made his move. He charged out of cover with a gun in each hand—probably he had taken
Wolfson's—firing wildly. Brass squeezed off a couple of shots and the big man cried out and went down hard, upending a rack of underwear and socks.

“Come on, Antoinette,” Brass said, pulling her along faster. He made it sound more like a growl than an invitation. Catherine dashed to their side. “There's another one somewhere, right?”

“Somewhere,” Brass said.

“Vic's still in here, I think,” Antoinette said.

“Vic Whendt?”

Brass cocked his head toward Catherine and flashed her a quick grin. “I always knew you were good.”

“Hey, it's what I do.”

“That was some nice shooting, too, Catherine. It's almost like you do this for a living.”

“This is a little outside my usual ballpark. But I'm always up for a change of pace.” In truth, she was shaken, her stomach like bunched fists. She knew this morning would take some time to get over. And they were far from done.

Catherine recognized the danger they were still in. They had to make it out the front door, which meant crossing the open space between the merchandise and the cashier stands, and then past those to the doorway. She slanted her head toward the door, and Brass nodded his assent.

He put one arm over Antoinette's shoulders. Antoinette's head was tilted forward, gaze on the floor, like she was afraid to meet Catherine's eyes. Her body language was submissive, beaten. She wore a low-cut white knit top and tight dark pants more appropriate for a woman half her age, and the coloring
that Catherine had taken for a pattern at first glance, she now realized, was Deke Freeson's dried blood. “I want to get her out of here,” said Brass.

“It'd be easier if we knew where Whendt was.”

“Yeah.”

“Victor Whendt!” she shouted. “Your friends are done. It's time to give it up!”

He didn't respond. As far as she could tell, he had left the store.

But she didn't honestly believe he had. If they got away, then he would be hunted down. If he could finish the three of them, he would have earned Blago's gratitude and he would be rewarded. He could count on a secure retirement, out of the state or out of the country.

There was little downside for Whendt in staying inside the store long enough to kill the three of them.

“So much for that,” Brass said. “He didn't bite.”

Before stepping out into the open space, Catherine tried to scope out Whendt's best shot at them. If he was in one of the aisles, he could swing out at any moment and open fire. But there were three of them, and he would be vulnerable in those first instants before he got his weapon into position, then again after his first shot gave away his location. She thought Whendt would have himself situated someplace from which he could fire as soon as they were in range. At the far end of the store were glass-fronted coolers full of beer, soda, and dairy products. She didn't think he would be hiding in one of those—not for long, anyway—but if he was, she would never spot him from here. Light from the
hanging overhead fixtures glinted off the glass doors, making them opaque from this distance.

Her job was to see things others couldn't. Usually those things were tiny, even microscopic. It was the seeing that was important, though, and the recognition, upon seeing, of what was out of place. A speck of blood, a sliver of skin, the faint parallel tracks of a fingerprint, a hint of soil on the edge of a shard of broken glass. She was good at it, because she had an organized mind that could comprehend patterns. When the pattern was disrupted, she had her target.

Catherine tried to apply the same skills to this situation. She was looking at the macro picture rather than the micro, but the principle was the same. If Whendt was out there, watching for them to step from shelter, possibly already drawing a bead on her head as she hunted for him, his presence would break the pattern of orderly shelves and neat rows.

When the first shots had been fired, people had dropped merchandise in their haste to flee. There hadn't been many people in the store, but Catherine had already seen towels on the floor, a shattered bottle of juice, a spray of colorful greeting cards.

Now she spotted an end cap display of dog food, big fifty-pound bags of it on the bottom shelf, smaller ones above. A couple of the big bags had slid partially onto the floor, and some of the small ones had been piled on top of the large ones remaining in place.

That didn't make sense. If someone had been starting to lift a big bag into a shopping cart when the shooting started, where was the cart? And if they dropped that big bag so that it, and maybe
another one, had slid partway off the shelf, they wouldn't have taken the time to stack small bags on the displaced ones.

And they wouldn't have arranged those small bags in such a way that there was a small gap between them and the back of the shelf.

Catherine ducked back behind the rack that shielded them. “Pet food,” she said quietly. “He's hiding behind some bags of dog food, maybe eighteen inches off the floor. He's got a weapon aimed this way. If we step out, he'll open fire.”

“You got that CSI X-ray vision,” Brass said.

“I try.”

“Stay here,” he told Antoinette. He moved to the edge of the shelf, peered around the edge, and showed just enough of his weapon to get off a shot. He fired. Dog food sprayed onto the floor with a sound like a swift, sudden cloudburst.

“Okay, Whendt!” he called. “Hide-and-seek's over, and you lose. Now throw your weapon out here and show your hands. Do it now!”

In the long silence that followed, Catherine heard sirens approaching.
At last
. Then a .45 automatic skidded out from behind the dog food, spinning across the slick floor. Vic Whendt came out next, hands in the air.

“Put ‘em behind your head,” Brass ordered. “Get on your knees.”

Whendt obeyed. Brass took handcuffs from his pocket and clipped them over Whendt's wrists, holding his weapon on the big man the whole time.

Antoinette waited with Catherine, finally meeting her gaze. There was moisture in her brown eyes
and her lower lip quivered a little, but she squared her shoulders and held her chin up. Not proud, but trying for it. She knew the worst was over, for the moment. She also knew people had died because of her. No matter what had happened between her and Blago, that wouldn't be easy to deal with.

“You okay?” Catherine asked.

“No. Not for a long time,” she said. “But I will be, I think. You know Jim, I take it.”

“Yeah, for years.”

“He's one of the good ones, isn't he?”

“One of the best,” Catherine said. “They don't come much better.”

C
ATHERINE AND
B
RASS
held their badges high and walked through the phalanx of cops approaching the store. Brass turned Victor Whendt over to some of the uniformed officers, then put Antoinette into his unmarked car. Catherine explained that there were still two wounded cops inside, as well as a security guard who was either badly wounded or dead, along with two wounded suspects who were also cops. The police charged into the place, clearing each section, then allowed the paramedics in.

While she waited for Brass, Catherine turned her radio and cell back on. Messages had piled up. Greg Sanders was being checked out by paramedics, having suffered light burns and some bruising and lacerations, but he would be fine. Jesse Dunwood's killer, on the other hand, had not pulled through. Benny Kracsinski's end had come about in the same place as Dunwood's: in an airplane at the Desert View Airport.

Dunwood's death had been more peaceful. Small comfort, but some comfort just the same.

Elsewhere, Nick and Riley were chasing a lead on Dawson Upson. Sam Vega and the LVPD backed them up. Catherine had been informed, but there was little she could do to help at the moment. Anyway, she still needed to talk to Brass.

When Antoinette was in his sedan with the doors closed, Brass sauntered over to where Catherine waited, wearing a hangdog expression. “I guess I owe you an explanation.”

“I guess you do,” she agreed. “And it better be good. I don't mind saying you had me pretty worried.”

He took her elbow and steered her away from where any of the police swarming the area now would be likely to overhear. “I don't know how good it is, but it's the best I've got.”

“Is it the truth?”

“Absolutely.”

Catherine folded her arms over her chest and gave him the same face she showed Lindsey when she came home three hours late. He noted it and turned away. “I had to do one of those press conferences a few weeks ago, with the mayor. You know, when that toddler was found in a packing crate and we were trying to get an ID on her.”

“I remember,” Catherine said. “Inez Balboa.” It had been the worst kind of case.

“Right. Awful thing. Anyway, a couple nights later, I was leaving work, and this woman walked up to me. Blond, nice body, you know. My age. Dressed to show off. She looked vaguely familiar
and I wondered if I'd arrested her once. But as soon as she spoke, I remembered who she was.”

“Antoinette Blago.”

“Except that I knew her as Antoinette O'Brady, most of a lifetime ago.”

“You went to high school together.”

He gave Catherine an appreciative glance. “I should have known you'd figure that out.”

“You should have. Like you said, Jim, we're good at what we do. We know you were in the motel room where Deke Freeson was killed.”

“I'm not surprised. Anyway, she had seen me on TV, at that press conference, and recognized me right off. We dated, back in the day. Pretty hot and heavy for a while there, during my senior year. It turned out that she had a taste for bad boys, and I mean
real
bad. I wasn't enough trouble for her and she dumped me hard. When she came up to me that night, I thought she was coming on to me too, if you get my drift.”

“I get it.”

They started walking across the parking lot, toward Catherine's SUV, still parked down by the gas station near Deke's car and Liz Tavrin's squad car. Brass's shoulders were hunched, his hands buried deep in his pants pockets. His shirt and suit were wrinkled, but he had no doubt worn them all day and all night, so she wasn't surprised. “I figured maybe she wanted to make it up to me, but it didn't take long to realize that a roll in the hay for old time's sake wasn't what she had in mind.”

“That surprises me. Sometimes for old time's sake is the best reason there is.”

He shrugged. “Guess I'm still not bad enough for her. Her latest bad boy, as it turns out, is Emil Blago. You know who he is, right?”

“Who doesn't?”

“He's just about as bad a boy as they get.”

“So I've heard.”

“She's been married to him for twenty-four years now. That's about twenty-three and a half years too long, to hear Antoinette tell it.”

“Why did she stay, then?”

Brass moved his shoulders. “Why does any woman stay in a bad situation? Who knows? She had all the material things she could want. Blago was too fond of booze and dope and he screwed around on her, but he told her he loved her, gave her expensive gifts, nice trips, big parties, lavish presents. But she was always surrounded by crime, fear, and violence… some of it directed at her. She was afraid to stay and even more afraid to go.

“A couple of years ago they moved to Vegas. He called it a fresh start. In some ways it was, she said, but not in every way. The other women became even more numerous and in her face. He had stopped using drugs and drinking so much, but it didn't take long before he started up again. When he used, he got mean. She figured if they were really making a fresh start, then the best way for her to start over was to get out. But she wasn't sure how to get away clean. He had always kept her in the dark where business was concerned, so she didn't know enough details about his criminal activities to turn state's evidence and get into a witness
protection program. Besides, she knew he had people on the police force and, for all she knew, in the district attorney's office and the FBI. She was stuck, with nowhere to go.”

“Until she saw you on TV and recognized her former main squeeze.”