permission, we'll record this interview.'
Turning sideways again, to look right at the detective, Sherman said, 'No problem, Detective uh-what was your name, sir?'
'Brass.'
Sherman took several deep breaths; he had another long drink of water. Then he said, 'Whatever you need. Ask whatever you need to.'
'All right. You last saw your wife when?'
'Thursday, December 6, 2001. That morning, before I went to work.'
'Was everything all right that morning?'
Shrugging as he said it, Sherman said, 'Fine. Great. We were a happy couple, Detective Brass.'
'Tell us about that morning.'
'Well…Missy was going shopping with her friend Regan Mortenson; then they were supposed to finalize plans for the four of us to have dinner and a movie Saturday night.'
'The four of you?'
'Missy and me…Regan and her husband, Brian.'
'You two couples socialized frequently?'
Sherman nodded. 'They've been our best friends for, oh…years. I don't think I would have made it through the last year without them. Regan's always stopping by to check on me, Brian and I have lunch, oh, twice a week, anyway.'
'How and when did you meet them?'
'Missy and Regan went way back. Hell, they were sorority sisters at Michigan State-Tri Delts.'
Warrick repressed a smile, reflexively remembering the old joke from his days at UNLV. Don't have a date? Tri Delt.
'After we moved out here,' Sherman was saying, 'Regan came out a year later. They weren't just sorority sisters, Missy and Regan, they really were like sister sisters. Anyway, Regan met Brian out here, and they got married.'
'Brian Mortenson,' Brass said, more for his own benefit than Sherman's.
'Yes. Great guy. Wonderful guy.'
'And what does he do?'
'He's Events Coordinator for the Las Vegas Convention Center, sets up their programs and conventions…'
Brass nodded. 'And his wife?'
'Regan? She solicits funding for Las Vegas Arts.'
'Is that a job, or volunteer work?'
'Volunteer.'
'How long have you known Mr. Mortenson?'
'Oh, ten years, easily…. We met not long after Missy and I moved to Vegas. In fact, we introduced them, Regan and Brian. He and I were playing basketball at the health club we both belonged to; still do. He was sixth man at Bradley, Brian was.'
Brass shifted on the couch. 'Back to the day in question. You say Missy was here when you left for work.'
'That's right.'
'Presumably, then she went shopping with Regan.'
'No presumably about it. Ask Regan-they went shopping, and had lunch together.'
'And when did you first suspect something was wrong?'
'Almost immediately. From when I got home from work, I mean. If Missy wasn't planning to have supper, she'd have said something. And if there'd been a change of plan, she'd have called on the cell, or at least left me a note.'
'So you were concerned.'
'Well…not overly. Didn't get too worried at first. Her car wasn't here, I figured she ran up to Albertson's for something.'
That was a local grocery chain.
'Or maybe ran out to get some carry-out,' Sherman was saying. 'If she got too busy to fix supper, she'd sometimes stop for Chinese or Italian.'
Brass nodded. 'How long before you started to worry?'
Sherman considered that. 'I waited…maybe an hour. Then I called Regan. She said she hadn't seen Missy since lunch. I couldn't think of where she might be.'
'Then what?'
'I called our usual take-out places-they hadn't seen her. I started in on all of her friends that I could think of, and none of them had seen her, either.'
'Is that when you called the police?'
'No. I called Regan again, to see what kind of mood Missy'd been in. Regan said normal, fine, real good spirits. And then the paranoia set in…I mean, we were happy, but we had our arguments.'
'Such as?'
'Well, I'd been on her about credit cards; she was buying a lot of clothes. I handle the finances, and she was kind of, you know, irresponsible at times. I told all this to Detective Vega.'
'You'd had words about it recently?'
'Not…words. We bickered about it, not the night before she disappeared, but the night before that. Still, that was enough to get me stewing. I even went upstairs to see if her clothes were still in the closet. You know, thinking maybe she'd left me or something-not for real, just ran to her mom's or one of her sister's in a huff maybe. But everything was there.'
'Did you call her family? Her mother, her sisters?'
He nodded glumly. 'None of them had heard from her.'
'So, Mr. Sherman-when did you call the police?'
Looking a little uncomfortable, Sherman said, 'I heard that you can't file a missing persons report until someone has been gone twenty-four hours.'
Brass shook his head. 'Not always the case.'
Sherman shrugged. 'Well, that's what I believed…. So I waited all that night and didn't call 911 until the next morning.'
Her voice low, Catherine said to Warrick, 'That's why day shift got it instead of us.'
Brass was asking, 'What did you do that night, while you waited?'
Sherman sat slumping, his hands loosely clasped. 'I…tried to think of where she might go and went driving around looking for her car. First, the grocery store, Albertson's, the one over here on Maryland Parkway.' He pointed vaguely off to his right. 'If she was mad at me, maybe she was driving around the city, pouting…. She could pout, at times. So I just started driving around, all over the place. The Strip. I started with Mandalay Bay where she'd last been seen.'
'That's where officers found her car,' Nick put in, 'the next day, right?'
Sherman nodded vigorously. 'Yes…but I didn't see it there. Somehow I missed it.'
Warrick noted this: the first real inconsistency, the only striking anomaly in the husband's story, so far.
'2000 Lexus,' Brass said. 'Nice car.'
'You wouldn't think I could've missed it, but I did. In my defense, I was pretty worked up at this point… frantic. And it is a huge parking lot.'
Brass nodded. 'So, you just drove around all night?'
'Not all night. Only till about ten…and then I came home. I suppose I hoped that she'd've come home while I was out…but, of course, she hadn't.'
'So what did you do then?'
'What I always do when I want to get my mind off my troubles-put in a movie.' He sat up and a faint near- smile crossed his lips. 'Missy and me, we're kind of movie buffs…. You can see the home theater here, pretty
