short for a policeman, five eight at most, several inches shorter than Brand, with a spreading waistline, emphasised by a belt which was cinched at least or too tight, from which the hem of his blue short-sleeved shirt was escaping. He held the cel phone in his left hand; the other was stretched out in greeting. 'Hi, I'm Thompson Hall; welcome to North Las Vegas.
'Son, son,' he said, with the forced heartiness ofaTexan governor on the stomp, as the agent accepted his handshake, 'why have you been sitting here in silence for all this time? Goddamn, if you had only said how important this thing is, Rosalie would have broken up my meeting, mayor or no mayor. Come on, come on, let's waste no more time. Rosie, fix us up with coffee and doughnuts.'
He handed back the cellphone then led the way into his office and walked round behind his desk. Brand looked around; there was no sign of any other visitor, but, at the back of the room, he saw what could have been an exit door, and so he gave the chief the benefit of the doubt.
Nevertheless, the last of his diplomacy had evaporated around an hour before, and so, as soon as he was seated he launched into the reason for his visit.
'Sander Garrett…'
'Yes, son. I understand from your boss that the Bureau's got a burr up its ass about this guy. To me this is just a run-of-the-mil homicide, so what's the story?'
'What do you know about the man, chief?' the agent asked.
'Zilch,' the man replied, abruptly. 'I know that this is only North Las Vegas, the poor sister of the big city, but this place is still full of retired geezers come here for the golf, the gambling and the girls. Garrett paid his taxes and didn't get into trouble so we had no dealings with him till he got his head blown off.'
'Mr Garrett may have been retired, chief, but as I understand it he was 122 no newcomer to the area. He was a partner in a law firm on the strip, and still went in there occasionally.'
'Is that so?'
'Yes. We've done some follow-up investigation, through the American Bar Association; he's practised law here since nineteen sixty-eight.'
'Goddamn, you say?'
'Goddamn I do, sir. Can you tell me, how was Mr Garrett kil ed?'
Hal picked up a bound file from his desk and tossed it across to Brand. 'See for yourself.'
The policeman watched with malicious amusement as his earnest young visitor opened the file. What he had given him was a close-up colour shot of Sander Garrett, taken on a mortuary table. He saw Brand look at it, then, in what seemed to be an involuntary reflex action, close his eyes. When he opened them again, he seemed to focus on the man's small moustache and on a gold fil ing on one of his front teeth, as if to help him cope with his revulsion. Where the centre ofGarrett's forehead should have been, there was a dark jagged hole, speckled with white dots, which he knew had to be bone fragments.
'Kinda grabs you, kid, doesn't it?' said the police chief. 'That's what a soft-nosed forty-five bullet will do on the way out, if you put the barrel against the skul. Doesn't leave any room for doubt, you might say.
'Garrett was in his kitchen when he was kil ed, fixing his supper. The way my guys read it the shooter just walked in through the back door, which wasn't locked, pul ed out a cannon and shot him through the back of the skul, spreading his fucking brains all over the malted milk and cookies. Then he got on with robbing the place.' Halfway through his graphic description, Rosalie came into the room with coffee and doughnuts, which she laid on the desk; Hal did not pause, nor did she flinch.
As she left, Brand closed the folder. Hal offered him a doughnut, but he declined. 'Did the back door open directly on to the kitchen?'
'No. It opens into a laundry; then you have the kitchen.'
'Was the front door locked?'
'Hell, I don't know. Why you ask?'
'Because we are not convinced that this was an opportunistic burglary, as you have described it. We believe that it ties in with two other recent kil ings. If that is right, the kil er had the skil to come through the door whether it was locked or not.' Brand tapped the folder. 'Are your forensic reports in here, chief?'
'No, that's just the photograph book. But the guy didn't leave any traces. There were no prints, other than the ones left by Garrett, his cleaning lady, and a forty-year-old blonde called Charlene Stacey Garrett was widowed; Stacey was his lady-friend. We thought about her for a while, but we couldn't tie her to it. She's a sales rep and she was out of town at the time.'
'Who claimed the body?' asked the agent
'She did.'
Brand opened the folder once more; he flicked past the morgue photographs and turned to those taken at the crime scene; several showed Garrett face down across his kitchen table, slumped in the midAe of a lake of blood. 'The guy didn't exactly barge in,' he said, quietlyBt
'How do you work that out?' V
'The victim was shot through the back of the head. If he had heard the door open, he'd have turned around. How about the gunshot itself? Did any neighbours hear anything?'
'Nope. The lab said he used a muffler.'
'Just like your average burglar,' murmured Brand. 'He goes out on a job carrying a silenced forty-five.' If Hal picked up his irony, he said nothing.
'So what was taken from the house?'
'Money, Garrett's watch, credit cards and other valuables.'
The FBI agent spun the folder around and pushed it across the desk.
'See the display cabinet in that photograph?' Hal nodded. 'It's ful of Meissen pottery; collectables, very expensive. Those are valuables, yet they were left.'
'Okay,' the chief grunted irritably, 'but they are also very identifiable.
This wasn't no col ector. It was probably some spic crack-head out to feed his habit.'
'So where did he sell the watch? Where did he use the cards?'
'He ain't done that, so far.'
'Let's hope he does,' said Brand, maintaining his patience. 'Those other valuables: what were they?'
'According to Ms Stacey, he took two items. An Apple laptop computer, plus… wait for this… he took a box of very expensive Cuban cigars.'
31
'Come on, Andy.' There was a chal enge in Mario McGuire's voice. 'Tell us the truth. Are you real y looking forward to Dundee?' The jazz quartet was on a break, and so the question carried to everyone in their alcove, some of them seated at two tables pulled together, others standing.
As he spoke he glanced around them all: Maggie, Willie Haggerty, Brian Mackie, Dan Pringle, the two other divisional heads. Detective Superintendents Greg Jay and Willie Michaels, Neil Mcllhenney, Sergeant Sammy Pye and his fiancee, Ruth McConnell, and Karen, the outgoing head ofCID's heavily pregnant wife. The Chief Constable had joined them for supper in La Rusticana, but had ducked out diplomatically, to al ow the serious business to begin.
Martin leaned back against the wal of the Cel ar Bar, his pint glass almost disappearing into his big hand. 'You know, Mario,' he said easily, with a grin, 'you always were a cheeky bastard.'
He slipped an arm around Karen's waist. 'As I think about your question, I can only reply with three of my own. First, how have I stood you lot for so long? Second, what the hell's going to happen if there's a serious crime tonight, since the entire CID command structure's in the process of getting rat-arsed? Third…' He spun his fingers and his glass appeared, empty. '… Who's going to fil this up? It's Deuchar's,' he added, 'in case you've forgotten.'
Sammy Pye picked up the mug containing the remains of their kitty, and the note of the round, and headed off to catch the attention of the big, red-headed manager. 'Are you going to give us the serious answer now, Andy?' asked Maggie Rose. 'Or is it too late for that?'
