Double Dealer

said. Sticking the stack inside his shirt, he returned to the woman. She tried to crawl away but couldn't. Right on top of her, he fired a shot into the back of her head, then one inch below it, a second.

He had just removed the noise suppresser when a car door slammed outside and he saw a man and woman coming up the front stairs. They came to the front door and the man knocked. At first he did nothing. The man knocked again-and announced himself as the police!

Moving slightly to to his right, the killer fired through the door. Then a second shot. He moved back left, saw the woman aiming at the house and the man take off across the front yard. He fired once more at the running man, then the woman yelled-identifying them as police . . . big surprise.

He heard the man shout something from behind their black SUV. Firing through the front window now, he blew out the truck's driver's side window. An encroaching siren, told him there was no point in hanging around here waiting for them to surround him. He pulled on his hood, got to the back door, opened it quietly, then taking a deep breath, took off at a sprint across the backyard.

He thought he heard footsteps advancing behind him, but he couldn't be sure. He vaulted a neighbor's chain link fence, the top of it cutting into his hand. The sudden pain stopped him, but only for a second. Seeing a silhouette running toward him, he turned and took off across the yard jumping the front fence, and then he was gone.

After two hours, they had worked the scene thoroughly, pausing only to watch as the EMTs loaded Marge Kostichek's body onto a gurney and wheeled her out.

Grissom, at the writing table, had found two more bundles of letters from Joy Petty, which Nick bagged, saying, 'This guy is starting to piss me off.'

'Nobody likes to get shot at, Nick,' Grissom said.

'But it's like he's always one jump ahead of us.'

Catherine said, 'He just reads the Sun, is all.'

But a cloud drifted across Grissom's face.

Catherine said, 'What?'

'Nothing,' he said. 'Just a feeling.'

She gave him a small wry smile. 'I thought you didn't believe in feelings-just evidence.'

'This feeling grows out some piece of evidence,' he said, 'or anyway, something I already know, that I just haven't given proper weight. But I will.'

O'Riley bounded in. 'My buddy Tavo called. He got a videotape statement of Joy Petty saying that Marge Kostichek hired the Deuce to kill Malachy Fortunato.'

Grissom and Catherine exchanged wide-eyed glances.

'Just that simple?' Nick asked.

'It's not all good news,' O'Riley said. 'Joy Petty's in the wind.'

'What?' Grissom snapped.

O'Riley shrugged. 'She asked to use the john. She wasn't a suspect, she wasn't even a witness-just a citizen cooperating of her own free will. She smelled the danger. She's gone.'

'Have they checked her house yet?'

'Yes. All her clothes were gone, she even took her cat. Like she'd been ready for this day for years.'

She had been, Catherine thought.

Grissom asked, sharply, 'Well, are they looking for her? She's an accessory after the fact.'

'Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know what kind of priority they put on this-it's not their case. This was just a favor Tavo was doing me.'

'Get your friend on the phone now, Sergeant,' Grissom said. 'We're heading back to home base and in half an hour, I want to be able to download that interview. We need to see this for ourselves.'

'I'll try.'

'Don't try. Do it.'

In just under forty-five minutes, Grissom had assembled Catherine, Nick and O'Riley in his office.

On the computer screen was the image of an interrogation room. Across the table from the camera sat a fortyish woman with shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes and a steeply angled face.

Though the interrogating officer wasn't in the picture, his voice now came through the speaker. 'State your name.'

O'Riley whispered, 'That's my buddy Tavo.'

The woman on screen was already saying, 'Joy Petty.'

Grissom shushed O'Riley.

The off-camera Tavo asked, 'Your address?'

She gave an address in Lakewood.

'You are here of your own volition without coercion?'

She nodded.

'Say yes or no, please.'

'Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm here of my own volition, without no coercion.'

As they watched, the woman before them grew more agitated. She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse.

Tavo must have been looking at his notes, because she had it lighted before he said, 'No smoking, please.'

With a smirk, she stubbed the cigarette out in a black ashtray in front of her.

'You've used other names during your life, correct?'

'Yes. Joy Starr, Joy Luck, and several more other stage names. They called me Monica Leigh in the Swank layout; that's a magazine. The name I was given at birth was Monica Petty.'

Without even thinking about it, she lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. Tavo said nothing. She took a second drag, blew it out through her nose and finally realized she was smoking where she shouldn't be and blotted out the second butt in the ashtray.

Half-annoyed, half-curious, she asked, 'Why is there a goddamnn ashtray if we're not allowed to smoke?'

'It's just always been there,' Tavo told her.

For several minutes Tavo elicited from her the story of Marge Kostichek taking in her in as a runaway, raising her like a daughter (albeit a daughter who worked in her strip club). Catherine wondered if a sexual relationship might have developed between the women, but the officer didn't ask anything along those lines.

Finally, Tavo lowered the boom. 'Ms. Petty, I'm afraid I have bad news for you.'

'What? What is this about, anyway? What is this really about?'

'Marge Kostichek was murdered this evening.'

'No . . . no, you're just saying that to . . .'

Tavo assured her he was telling the truth. 'I'm afraid it was a brutal slaying, Ms. Petty.'

Her lip was trembling. 'Tell me. Tell me. . . . I have a right to know.'

Tavo told her.

'Ms. Petty-do you know who killed Malachy Fortunato in Las Vegas in nineteen hundred eighty-five?'

'I . . . I know what they call him.'

'And what is that?'

'The Deuce. Because of those two head wounds, like Marge got.'

'The Deuce is a professional killer?'

'Yes. I don't know his name, otherwise.'

'Do you know who hired him?'

'. . . I . . . know who hired him, yes.'

'Who?'

The woman seemed fine for a moment, then she collapsed, her head dropping to the table as long, angry sobs erupted from her. Tavo's hand came into the picture, touched her arm. The gesture seemed to give her strength and she wrestled to control her emotions.

'I've . . . I'm sorry.' A sob halted her, but she composed herself again and said, 'I loved him, but Malachy was not a strong man. He didn't have the strength to choose between his wife or me. And neither of us would give