suspect in the murder of Missy Sherman.'
'…What?' Mortenson was astounded; they might have told him Martians were on the rooftop. 'What kinda ridiculous bullshit…'
Regan's eyes were huge; she seemed to be in shock, kind of weaving there, Stevie Wonder-style, under his wing.
Meanwhile, her husband was going strong. 'Is that what my tax dollars go for? So you can come up with some wild-ass asinine theory that Regan killed her own best friend? Jesus!'
'Mr. Mortenson,' Catherine said, 'it's best you just comply.'
He stepped forward, and Regan slipped out from his shielding grasp. 'It's not enough she's lost her best friend…now you have to go and say she killed her? Shit!'
'Mr. Mortenson…,' Brass began.
But the husband was off and away on his rant. 'This is how you treated Alex, isn't it? He cooperates, and then you accuse him! You put him through this same shit, I heard all about it. What, are you just going door to door, accusing people? Maybe it's a conspiracy! Maybe we all did it!'
Finally Mortenson paused to take a breath-Brass had decided to let him blow off some steam-but now the homicide captain waded in.
'Sir,' Brass said, 'let me explain why your wife is our primary suspect.'
'Please! Enlighten me!'
'A blonde hair was found inside the freezer where Missy's body was hidden away; it matched a blonde hair we got from Missy's Lexus.'
Mortenson's mouth was open, but no words came out; and confusion tightened his eyes.
Brass continued: 'We also believe that fingerprints from the freezer and the SUV will match your wife's.'
Mortenson turned to his wife. 'You don't know anything about this, do you, baby?…They're fuckin' crazy. Tell them they're fucking crazy, baby.'
She stared at him. He slipped his big arm around her again, drew her to him. 'This'll go away, baby. We'll make it go away. This is just circumstantial bullshit they're misinterpreting. Don't you worry one little-'
'Let me go!' She wrenched away from him. Then she looked at Brass, her icy eyes huge, wild. 'You have to protect me!'
Her husband winced, as if he were trying to see her through a haze. 'Baby…honey?'
She pointed at him, shaking. 'I won't lie for him any more!…He admitted it, months ago, and I've had to live with it! He did it!'
Mortenson's mouth hung open.
'Don't deny it, Brian. You did it, you know you did it!' She turned pleadingly toward Brass. 'You have to believe me…. He and Missy were having an affair, and he tried to break it off-'
'What?' Mortenson said, apparently bewildered.
'And when Missy threatened to tell Alex, he killed her! That's his blonde hair!'
Her husband looked like an actor who'd walked into the wrong scene in some strange play. 'My…? What…?'
Regan moved from Brass to O'Riley to Catherine, searching their eyes for support, coming up empty.
Finally, standing before Catherine, she said, 'You have to protect me-he said if I ever told anybody, he'd kill me, too! Put a plastic bag over my head and suffocate me!'
'Regan,' Mortenson said, 'what are you saying? What is wrong with you?…She's sick, Officers. Something's wrong with her….'
'She's sick, all right,' Brass said.
Looking at the pretty blonde, blue eyes to blue eyes, Catherine said, 'I'd call your husband's hair more a light brown, Mrs. Mortenson. And, anyway, the hairs we got from Missy's Lexus and the freezer belong to a blonde… woman. A long-haired blonde woman.'
'No…it's not true!' Regan screamed. 'He'll kill me if you don't-'
'Regan,' Brian Mortenson said. He stared at his wife as though he didn't know whether to embrace her or slap her. This seemed to be moving way too fast for him. Finally he managed, 'You're trying to blame me…for your friend's death?'
'She can try to blame you,' Catherine said, 'she can try to blame the Boston Strangler…it's not going to help. You see, your wife doesn't think we know about Sharon Pope.' Catherine turned toward Regan with a tiny smile. 'Lavien Rose?'
Regan's lovely features seemed to wilt. 'No…I…' The woman teetered for a moment, losing her balance, as if the room had begun to spin…
…and then dropped to the floor.
'Regan!' Mortenson shrieked, and he dove to her side, and held her, tenderly, as if she had not, moments before, tried to fit him in a frame for murder.
Brass knelt. 'What's wrong with her? Has she been ill? Does she have a medical problem, a condition?'
'Nothing…nothing serious…. What have you people done to her?…You saw her, she had some kind of mental breakdown….'
Catherine ducked into the first-floor bathroom, then called, 'Jim!'
Brass said to O'Riley, 'Watch them,' and joined Catherine in the bathroom, where she had found the answer on the counter: a small white bottle.
'Ambien,' Catherine said, reading the label. 'Dosage, ten milligrams. If Regan had a full month's supply, that means three hundred milligrams.'
'She killed herself?'
'Maybe. But people've been brought back after taking as much as four hundred milligrams. Ambien's engineered to make it difficult to use for suicide.' Catherine tucked the bottle in her slacks pocket, and they rushed back to the hallway.
'Overdose,' she said, mostly for O'Riley's benefit, dropping to her knees and pushing the husband out of the way. 'Sleeping pills.'
'Oh my God,' Mortenson moaned. 'She has sinus headaches…can't sleep.'
She was having no trouble sleeping now.
Catherine began CPR. 'Let's take her in your car, Jim. Label says it was refilled yesterday, and if she took the whole thing, we don't want to wait for an ambulance-she could be gone.'
But Brass was already halfway out the door.
O'Riley and Mortenson carried Regan, racing to the Taurus. Brass cranked the key as the men loaded the blonde in the back with Catherine. Mortenson tried to climb in back with them, but Catherine pushed him away.
'Hey, I'm her damn husband! I'm going with her.'
'Ride in front, then!'
'I have a right-'
Catherine snapped, 'Do you want to waste time?'
Mortenson climbed in front.
O'Riley gunned his Taurus and pulled up next to Brass. 'I'll lead,' he said. 'That new hospital, St. Rose Dominican, Siena Campus? That's closest.'
Before Brass could answer, O'Riley hit the lights and was off. Brass hit his lights and siren as well and tore off after O'Riley.
Mortenson leaned over the passenger seat, his eyes moist and focused on Regan. Catherine kept up with the compressions, but things did not look good. She gave Regan mouth-to-mouth-once, twice, three times. Then she resumed CPR.
The woman's skin was the color of an overcast sky. She was limp and lifeless, and when Catherine checked, Regan's pulse was weak. Though the young woman still took the occasional breath on her own, those seemed to be coming more and more infrequently.
O'Riley served as lead blocker as Brass twisted the Taurus through traffic. He sawed the wheel and turned onto St. Rose Parkway-former Lake Mead Boulevard-and slammed down the gas again.
