Sin City

Her eyebrows rose. 'These are all from tonight?'

'Yeah, sure,' Ty said, as he swept his hand around the bar, a king gesturing to his kingdom. 'Eight cameras-can't be too careful, in this business. One over the door, one on each corner of the stage, two behind the bar, and that one at the end of the hallway. Seems like every other asshole who walks in the place is lookin' to sue me over some goddamn thing or another. Tapes don't lie.'

'Thanks, Ty,' Catherine said, arms filled with the bag, the heft of it reassuring. 'We'll get these back to you.'

'Keep 'em till ten years from Christmas,' he said, 'if it'll help get that son of a bitch.'

Catherine glanced around, to make sure no one was looking, and gave the bar owner a kiss on the stubbly cheek.

Then-once again-she was out of there.

4

ARTHUR AND MILLIE BLAIR LIVED IN AN ANONYMOUS, cookie-cutter white-frame two-story with a well- tended barely sloping lawn on a quiet street in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood not far from the UNLV campus, where Mr. Blair worked. The effect of the Lynn Pierce disappearance on the Blairs was at once apparent, when Brass and Grissom rolled up in the unmarked car: every light in the house was on, lighting the grounds like a prison yard.

To Brass, the Blairs seemed like nice people, salt-of-the-earth church-goers who kept to themselves mostly, worked hard, saved money, raised their only son the best way they knew how. Then, one day, their lives had changed forever-just because of who they were acquainted with.

Happened every day. Somebody had to live next door to JonBenet and her parents; someone had to take the apartment next to Jeffrey Dahmer; John Wayne Gacy had next door neighbors on his quiet street; O.J.'s wife Nicole had girl friends close to her.

Lynn Pierce was Millie's friend, Arthur's too, and had trusted them with the tape that might now be the only link to what Brass still hoped was just a missing persons case, and not a murder. Even though the disappearance was in no way the fault of this nice couple, Brass could see the guilt there on their faces.

He could tell they felt they should know where she'd gone, even though they couldn't possibly have that information. Like most people caught up in a tragedy, the Blairs battled the feeling that somehow, some way, they should have done something, anything, to prevent this terrible situation…and they hadn't.

Yes, they could have come to the authorities with the tape right after Lynn brought it to them; but the Pierce woman had asked them to hold onto it for her. They couldn't have realized she might have anticipated her own murder, and was leaving a smoking gun behind, to identify her killer.

Only right now Brass did not have a murder-just a missing person. Nonetheless, he had brought Gil Grissom along, since at present the criminalist and his people were the only ones really, truly looking for Lynn Pierce.

The couple sat on their tasteful beige couch across from Brass and Grissom. Mr. Blair was in the white shirt, striped tie and gray slacks he'd probably worn to work that day. Nervously, the man pushed his dark-rimmed glasses back up his nose, so thick-lensed they exaggerated his eyes-to comic effect in other circumstances. Next to him, his wife Millie had on black slacks and a black-and-white striped silk blouse-dignified attire, vaguely suggesting mourning. She kept her arms crossed in front of her, clutched to herself, as if they could somehow keep out the problems that now faced them.

Grissom, like a priest in black but without the collar, perched on the edge of a tan La-Z-Boy, as if afraid to sit lest the thing might swallow him whole. Grissom, it seemed to Brass, seemed uncomfortable with comfort. On the other hand, Grissom surely knew as well as Brass that this was not going to be a pleasant interview.

After clearing his throat, Brass asked, 'So, Mrs. Blair, you don't believe that Mrs. Pierce would abandon her husband and daughter?'

'No, I don't.' She looked at him curiously. 'Do you?'

Brass smiled meaninglessly. 'It's not important what I believe, ma'am. What's important is that we find Mrs. Pierce.'

Mrs. Blair unfolded herself a little, revealed the tissue in her right hand, and dabbed at her eyes. 'Lynn would never run off like that, and not tell anyone where she's going. That's just not her. Not at all.'

'Help me get to know her, then.'

'She's…' Mrs. Blair searched for the word.

'…sounds corny but…she's sweet.' The woman glanced toward her husband, who took her hand in his. 'We met a year or so ago, when she joined our church…then our women's Bible study group.'

'You didn't know the Pierces before that?'

'No.' She smiled-it was half melancholy, half nervous. 'I think Lynn had a change of heart, a change of… spirit…direction.'

'I see,' Brass said, not seeing at all. Grissom was looking at the woman as if she were something on a lab slide.

'Before she met the Lord, Lynn had a different set of values, a different social circle…but since she joined our group, she and I became good friends-best friends.'

'Would you say Lynn is reliable? Could she ever be…flighty?'

Mrs. Blair smiled at the absurdity of the thought. 'Oh, Detective Brass, you can always count on Lynn. If she says she's going to do something, she does it.'

'I see.'

'That's why I was so surprised last night when she phoned to tell me she was on her way over- right over-and then never showed up.'

'Tell us about that phone call,' Brass said. 'How did she sound?'

She glanced at her husband; they were holding hands like sweethearts. 'I feel so bad about that…'

'Darling,' Mr. Blair said, 'it's all right.'

His wife went on: 'I've thought and thought about it since last night. I knew at the time she was upset, but I should have heard it then-she sounded distraught. Even terrified, but trying to…you know…hide it a little.'

'You're sure about this?' Brass asked.

She shook her head, sighed. 'I'm not sure about anything, anymore. I've replayed it so many times in my mind, I don't know if she really sounded distraught or if I'm putting my own feelings into it…. I won't lie to you, Detective Brass, I have…nervous problems. Sometimes I take medication.'

Brass glanced at Grissom, but the criminalist's eyes were fixed upon the woman. The detective said, 'Is that right?'

'Yes-Prozac.'

Her husband added, 'A small dosage.'

'Well,' she said. 'Prozac or no Prozac…I think Lynn was distraught. Really and truly.'

'Any idea what was troubling her?'

With a tiny edge of impatience, Arthur Blair said, 'Maybe it was her husband threatening to cut her up in little pieces.'

Brass nodded. 'I don't mean to downplay the tape. But remember, some husbands and wives make those kind of idle threats all the time-'

'We don't,' Mr. Blair said.

Brass continued: 'And, at any rate, that was an argument from the day before. Did you get a sense of what specifically was troubling her the afternoon she called?'

Glumly, Mrs. Blair shook her head. 'No. She didn't tell me what it was, exactly…and I'd have no way of guessing.'

'Was she upset with her husband? I mean, this is a woman who went to the trouble of capturing her husband's verbal abuse on tape, after all.'

'That was my assumption, but when I asked her, directly, if it was another argument with Owen, she kind of…dodged the issue.'

Mr. Blair sat forward. 'It must have been about Owen. Lynn calls Millie all the time when Owen becomes… uh…overbearing.'