E xiting the break room with a cup of coffee, Catherine almost bumped into O’Riley, who was bounding up to her, a file folder in hand.

“Well, hello,” she said.

Grinning, O’Riley said eagerly, “I’ve got a buddy in LAPD. Tavo Alverez.”

“Good for you, Sergeant.”

“Good for all of us—he tracked down Joy Petty.”

“Great! Walk with me…I’ve got to catch up with Nick…. ”

O’Riley did. “Tavo stopped by the Petty woman’s place in Lakewood—she’s unemployed right now, but I guess she’s mostly a waitress. Unmarried, lives with a guy, a truck driver.”

“Okay, she’s alive and well—but is she Joy Starr?”

“Oh yeah, sure, she admitted that freely. Tavo said she seemed kinda proud of her days in ‘show business,’ once upon a time. Joy Starr, Monica Petty, Joy Petty—one gal.”

Catherine stopped, their footsteps on the hard hallway floor like gunshots that trailed off. Her gaze locked with O’Riley’s less-than-alert sagacious stare. “Now that we’ve confirmed that, we need to have Joy Petty interviewed in more depth.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I can work this through Tavo—he’s a good guy.”

“Can you fly over there, or even drive?”

“I think we’re better off usin’ Tavo. I mean, he’s willing, and he’s tops.”

“Then get back in touch with him,” Catherine said, walking again, heading toward the lab where Nicky worked. “We need Joy Petty interviewed in detail about her relationship with Marge Kostichek.”

“Okay, but Tavo phoned me from the site of a homicide, to give me that much. I mean, it is L.A.—they do have a crime of their own go down, sometimes.”

“Stay on him, Sarge.”

“Will do. Here.” He handed her the folder. “Background check on Gerry Hoskins.”

“Good!”

Another shrug. “Seems to be a right guy, got his own contracting business—you know, remodeling and stuff.”

“Thanks, O’Riley. Fine job.”

He smiled and headed off. Catherine caught up with Nick in the lab where he was already poring over the fingerprints.

“What do we know?” she asked as she came up next to him.

“It’s looking like Gerry Hoskins is in the clear.” Nick sat on a stool before a computer monitor whose screen displayed two fingerprints, one from Joy Starr’s note to Fortunato, the other from Hoskins’s fingerprint card. “This is not his print.”

Catherine nodded and held up the file folder. “O’Riley just gave me this. Hoskins’s background check.”

“What’s it say?”

She opened the folder, gave its contents a quick scan, saying, “Carpenter, got his own business, lived in Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska till, seven years ago. Got divorced, moved here, been relatively successful, moved in with Annie Fortunato…” She did the math. “…five and a half years ago.”

“Okay,” Nick said, “one down.”

Catherine filled him in on what O’Riley had told her about Joy Petty.

“An in-depth interview with her could really fill in some blanks,” Nick said.

“We won’t know until O’Riley’s guy gets back, and that could be hours. For now, we stay at it.”

The next print he brought up belonged to Annie Fortunato.

“The wife’s prints don’t match the forged note, either,” Nick said.

Silently, Catherine gave thanks; she had hoped that Annie Fortu-nato was innocent. Grissom could preach science, science, science all he wanted: these were still human beings they were dealing with.

And the CSIs were human, too—even Grissom. Probably.

“This print, though,” Nick said, bringing up a third one, “is a very definite match. Textbook.”

Catherine leaned in. “The former owner of the strip club?”

“Yeah—Marge Kostichek.” Nick’s smile was bittersweet; he shook his head. “I’m almost sorry—the salty old girl is a real character.”

“Character or not,” Catherine said, studying the screen, “she wrote that note to Malachy Fortunato.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think it really was written for Malachy to read, do you?”

“No. Our friend Mr. Fortunato was probably tucked away under that trailer, by then—a fresher corpse than when we found him, but a corpse.”

“But why would Marge sign Joy Starr’s name to a note like that? What motive would the old girl have for killing Fortunato?”

“Having him killed,” Catherine reminded him. “Working strip clubs in a mobbed-up town like Vegas used to be, Marge might well have access to somebody like the Deuce.”

Nick just sat there, absorbing it all; finally he said, “I think we need a search warrant.”

“Oh yeah.”

Hopping off his stool, Nick asked, “We better round up O’Riley—seen him lately?”

“Just,” Catherine said. “He’s probably back in the bullpen by now…. You get your field kit organized, and I’ll go tell Grissom what we’re up to—and see if he can’t find a judge to get us that warrant.”

 

Ten minutes later, Catherine and Nick were moving quickly into the detectives’ bullpen. Two rows of desks lined the outer walls and another ran down the center, detectives in busted and battered swivel chairs behind gray metal desks about the color of Malachy Fortunato’s desiccated flesh. The skells, miscreants, and marks that made up their clientele sat in hard straightback metal chairs bolted to the floor, to prevent their use as weapons.

O’Riley was nowhere to be seen; his desk—the third one from the back on the far wall—looked like an aircraft carrier. His in-out baskets served as the tower, his phone perched on the corner like a parked fighter, and the desk top was as clean as a deserted flight deck.

Nick ran a finger over the surface and said, “I wonder if he does windows?”

Catherine called to Sanchez, the detective at the desk behind O’Riley’s. “Where’s he hiding?”

Without looking up from his one-finger typing, Sanchez said, “Do I look like his mother?”

“Just around the eyes and when you smile.”

The detective graced her with a sarcastic smirk and resumed his hunt-and-pecking.

“Leave him a note,” Nick said to her. “And we’ll page him from the car.”

There wasn’t so much as a Post-it on that spotless desk top. She turned to Sanchez. “You got a…”

A small pad came flying at her and she caught it.

“Thanks.” She wrote the Post-it, stuck in right on the phone, then, without looking, tossed the pad over Sanchez’s way, heading out of the bullpen with Nick on her heels. When driven by a sense of urgency like this, Catherine felt frustrated by the minutiae of daily existence.

They were halfway to the suspect’s house when Catherine’s cell phone rang. “Willows,” she said.

“It’s O’Riley. I got your page, and I got your note. I’m on my way. Somebody had to pick up the search warrant, y’know.”

“Ah. You’re leaving the courthouse?”

“Yeah, what am I…maybe five minutes behind you?”

“Yep. You want us to wait for you, Sarge?”

Nick stopped for a red light. “O’Riley?”

She nodded.

“Has he got the warrant?”

She nodded again.

“Tell him he better hurry if he wants to be there when we question her.”

O’Riley’s voice said in her ear, “I heard that. You tell him to wait till I get there.”

And O’Riley clicked off.

Matter of factly, Catherine said to Nick, “He wants us to wait for him.”

“Damn.”

“It’s procedure, Nick. His job—not ours.”

“But it’s our case…. ”

As the light turned green and Nick eased the Tahoe into the intersection, he shook his head. Ahead of them the sun was just dipping below the horizon leaving behind a trail of purple and orange that danced against fluffy cumulus.

“He wants us to wait for him,” Catherine repeated, not liking it any better than Nick, but accepting it.

Nick shrugged elaborately. “I don’t see why. The old girl likes me. We’ll just chat with her until O’Riley shows. Loosen her up.”

Catherine said nothing.

Five minutes later, Nick pulled the Tahoe up in front of Marge Kostichek’s tiny paint-peeling bungalow. Darkness had all but consumed dusk, but no lights shone in the windows. For some nameless reason, Catherine felt a strange twinge in the pit of her stomach.

Nick opened the door of the SUV and unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Let’s wait for O’Riley,” she said reasonably. “How long can it take him to get here?”

“Why wait?”

“We should wait for O’Riley. We don’t have a warrant.”

But then they were going up the walk, and were at the front door, where Nick knocked. He threw her one of those dazzlers. “It’ll be fine.”

This is wrong, Catherine thought; she was the senior investigator on the unit—she should put her foot down. But the truth was, she was as anxious as Nick to follow this lead; and she knew that once O’Riley got here, she herself would take the investigative lead, anyway.

So why this apprehension, these butterflies?

No answer to Nick’s knock, so he tried again and called, “Ms. Kostichek? It’s Nick from the crime lab!”

Through the curtained window, Catherine saw a figure move in the gloomy grayness, someone with something in his or her hand—was that shape…a gun?

She shoved Nick off the porch to the left, her momentum carrying her with him just as a bullet exploded through the door and sailed off into the night. Another round made its small awful thunder and a second shot drilled through the door, at a lower trajectory, and spanged off the sidewalk.

Catherine and Nick lay sprawled in the dead brown bushes to the left of the front door.

“You all right?” she asked.

Shaken, startled, Nick managed, “I think so. How did you…”

She rolled off the shrubbery, pistol in her hand—she didn’t even remember drawing it—and she said to Nick, “Head for the truck—I got your back…stay low.” She lay on the lawn, gun trained on the front door.

Nick, shaken, was clearly afraid, but concerned for her. “I’ll cover you. Never mind the Tahoe—just get the hell out of here.”

“Damnit, Nick—we don’t leave, we contain the scene. Get behind the truck, and call this in. Now, move!”

This time Nick didn’t argue—he rolled out of the bushes, got to his knees, then blasted off like a sprinter coming out of the blocks, keeping low as he raced across the front yard.

Another shot splintered through the door and Catherine wanted to return fire, but who would she be shooting at? She couldn’t blindly shoot at the house.

“Put your weapon down!” she yelled, remaining on her stomach, on the grass, handgun aimed at the doorway. “Come out with your hands high, and empty!”

Nothing.

Nick was already behind the Tahoe, his own pistol in hand. A distant siren wailed and Catherine knew help was on the way. Some neighbor had called 911.

“Come on, Cath,” Nick yelled. “I’ve got you…”

But a bullet cracked the night and shattered its way through the window and smashed the driver’s side window of the Tahoe.

Nick ducked and Catherine took the opportunity to roll left, come up running, and plaster herself against the side of the house. Her heart pounding, gunshots echoing in her ringing ears, she glanced out front to make sure Nick was all right. She couldn’t see him.

“Nicky—you okay?” she yelled.

“Peachy!”

The siren grew. Sliding along the clapboard side of the bungalow, she made her way toward the back. Only two windows were on this side of the house, the living room picture window, and one in what might be a back bedroom. She tried to see in the edge of the shattered picture window, around the border of the curtain, but it was just too damn dark. She was moving along the side of the house when she heard a car squeal to a halt in front—O’Riley.

“What the hell!” O’Riley was saying, and Nicky’s voice, softer, the words not making their way to her. Then another three shots cracked from out front—O’Riley drawing fire now.

She took a hesitant step around the corner. If she could slip in through the back door, maybe she could get the drop on the old woman—if that was who’d been firing on them. Ducking down below a window, Catherine took a second step, then the back door flew open and she froze as a tall figure—male figure—in head-to-toe black bolted out the door and sprinted across the yard. Her pistol came up automatically, but she saw no weapon in the man’s hands and did not fire.

She took off after him.

The perp ran with the easy grace of an athlete, but Catherine managed to keep pace with him for half a block before he vaulted a chain link fence, stopping for a split second on the other side, then speeding across the yard, jumping the fence on the other side before disappearing into the night.

“Damnit,” she said, stopped at the first fence. She holstered the weapon, and walked back to the house, still trying to catch her breath.

When she got back out front, she found O’Riley pacing in the yard, talking to two uniformed officers, whose black-and-white at the curb, with its longbar, painted the night blue and red.

“Where’s Nick?” she asked him.

O’Riley pointed. “Inside…. The woman’s dead.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “It’s ugly in there, Catherine—double-tapped, just like Fortunato and Dingelmann.”

She filled him in quickly, about the perp’s escape, and he turned to the uniformed men, to start the search, and she went inside to help Nick process the scene.

Marge Kostichek lay facedown on the shabby living room rug, a large purple welt on her left cheek, her eyes mercifully closed. A gag made from a scarf encircled her head, blocking her mouth. A large crimson stain stood out where her mouth was. So much blood was on the floor, it was hard to find a place to stand without compromising the evidence.

“It’s him,” Nick said, his complexion a sickly white. “He got to Kostichek before we could. He even cut off her fingertips, like Fortu-nato. Two of them anyway—we must have interrupted him.” He swallowed thickly. “Judging from the gag, I think she bit through her tongue.”

They heard another vehicle squeal to a halt outside. Within seconds, Grissom—his black attire not unlike the perp’s—stood in the doorway.

“What were you doing here without O’Riley?” he demanded.

“O’Riley was on his way with the search warrant,” Catherine said, covering. “We had no way of knowing the Deuce would be here.”

“Tell me,” Grissom said, and Catherine filled him in, in detail.

Then Grissom took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do the scene and see if maybe we can find a way to get this guy.”

Catherine pointed to the floor. “If he’s still using the same gun, these shell casings will be a great start.”

Expressing his agreement with a nod, he jerked his cell phone out and punched speed-dial. “…Jim, get over to Hyde’s house, now. Someone just killed Marge Kostichek…. I know—maybe he’s on his way home right now…. Not yet, we’re doing that now.” He hit END, then turned to Catherine and Nick. “Find us what we need.”

Catherine was already bagging shell casings.

Grissom, clearly pissed, said, “I don’t like murders on my watch.” At the front doorway, O’Riley—keeping out of the way of the crime scene investigation—called Catherine over. Grissom came along.

O’Riley said to them, “I got a little good news—my man Tavo in L.A. just interviewed Joy Petty.”

Catherine and Grissom exchanged glances, the latter prompting, “And?”

“Seems the Kostichek woman took Joy in as a runaway, raised her like a daughter. Joy says her ‘mom’ considered Malachy Fortunato a ‘bad influence’—you know, a married man, a degenerate gambler, with the mob nipping at his heels. After Malachy disappeared, Joy says she was afraid the mob had killed him, so she took off, to protect herself.”

Grissom asked, “Where is Joy now?”

“Still there at the stationhouse with Tavo—my LAPD contact.”

“Have him take another run at her—but this time tell her about Marge’s murder.”

Catherine glanced at Grissom quizzically.

“Yeah?” O’Riley said. “Why?”

But now Catherine had caught up with her boss, saying, “Because Joy might stop protecting her mom, if she knows her mom is dead…particularly if she knows how her mom died.”

O’Riley looked from one of them to the other. “No details spared?”

“None,” Grissom said. “The LAPD uses digital tape for their interviews, right?”

“I think so. I mean, we do.”

“Good. Tell your man Tavo I’m gonna want this interview sent up to our server, toot sweet, so we can download it.”

O’Riley nodded and ambled out.

Grissom pitched in with them, as they looked for footprints first. Nick used the electrostatic dust print lifter and pulled up a running-shoe print from the linoleum floor in the kitchen. Next they photographed the body, the living room, the kitchen, and an open drawer that Catherine found in a back bedroom.

With Grissom’s help, they fingerprinted everything the killer might have touched. While Nick did the flat surfaces, Catherine used Mikrosil to print the doorknobs, but she had seen the killer wearing gloves when she chased him. She didn’t expect to get much and they didn’t. She bagged all of Marge’s shoes so they could later prove that none of them matched the print they got from the kitchen. Catherine found nothing in her search of the backyard or the alley. Then, shining her mini-flash on the top of the chain link fence, she saw something glimmer.

Moving closer, she found a few strands of black fiber and a small patch of blood. She snapped some photos and then, using a pair of wire cutters, snipped two of the ends off the top of the fence and deposited them in evidence bags.

She shared this with Grissom, who had spent much of his time in the house supervising their work, but also snooping around on his own.

“Come with me,” Grissom said, and in the kitchen he pointed out a knife almost out of its holder on the counter, and, on the floor, a few drops of blood and some strands of gray hair.

Then Catherine followed Grissom into the living room, where he pointed out a suspiciously clear area on the cluttered writing desk—had something been taken?

Now Grissom was staring, apparently at the wall. “You think you know how this went down,” Catherine said, knowing that look.

“Yes,” he said.

 

The Deuce knew they would never let up now. All he could do was cover his tracks as much as possible. He’d seen the article in the Las Vegas Sun and knew they had stumbled onto Fortunato’s mummified body. If the cops had that, how long until they found the woman?

The old woman didn’t think he knew about the younger one, but he did. It was his business to know. The stripper had been sleeping with the mark, so damn right he knew about her. According to the phone book, the old woman, Kostichek, still lived where she always had. That made it easier. He had no idea where the stripper was, but he would find out. That was part of the reason for his visit to the old woman.

He parked a couple of blocks away in the parking lot of a grocery store, no point in getting careless now. Taking his time, he walked a block and a half before cutting up the alley behind her house. Even though the sun had started to set, it still beat down on him, his black clothes absorbing the heat like a sponge, and he felt the sweat beginning to pool at the small of his back, behind his knees, and under his arms. A lighter color would have been cooler, but he knew he’d be here past dark and he might want to leave without being seen, so he wore the black.

He came up behind the house, pulling on black leather gloves as he edged closer. Looking around carefully, he tried to make sure no one saw him as he took the silencer from his pocket and screwed it on the handgun. Then he knocked lightly on her back door, stepping to one side so she would have to open both the inside door and the screen to see him. Reaching around, he knocked again, louder this time.

“Jesus jones, I’m coming!” she yelled.

The woman opened the door, said, “Who’s there?” and then opened the screen and saw him.

She tried to pull the door shut, but he was much stronger, and jammed himself into the frame. Ducking back inside, she tried to close the inner door in his face, but again he overpowered her. She fell back against the stove, turned, and reached for a knife from the block on the counter. He pressed the silenced snout of the automatic to her cheek and she froze.

Raising the noise-suppressed weapon, he cracked her across the face and she collapsed to the floor. Grabbing her by the hair, he dragged her, struggling, into the living room.

“Where is she?” he asked, crouching over her.

The old woman seemed confused. “Who?”

“The stripper—where is she?”

“Go to hell!”

Casually, he pulled a pair of garden clippers from his pocket. “I’m going to find out anyway. You can make this easy, or hard.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but her jaw set and she said nothing.

“Hard it is,” he said. Putting down the clippers, he picked up one of her scarves off the back of a chair. He gagged her with it, then picked up the clippers and closed them around the pinky of her left hand.

Tears running down her cheeks now, her sobs fighting to get out through the gag, she closed her eyes.

“This little piggy…” He tightened the clippers’ grip on her finger, blood leaked out around the edges. “Are you sure it has to be this way?”

She said nothing, sobs still wracking her body.

“…goes to market.” The clippers closed with the angry crack of her fingertip snapping off.

Her scream was louder than he would have expected with the gag and she tried to crawl away, but he cuffed her alongside the head, grabbed a handful of hair and jerked her back. She wailed now, her right hand coming up to cup the left one as she watched blood stream down her hand.

Only risk was, he knew, she might pass out from pain and shock…but she was a tough old bird.

Batting away her good hand, he closed the clippers on her ring finger. “This little piggy stayed home…ready to tell me? Just nod.”

She shook her head, defiant, but this time she screamed into the gag before he did it. That didn’t stop him. He heard the same crack and watched the fingertip fall to the floor.

“Ready now?”

The old woman curled into a ball and tried to protect her hand, but he jerked her hand up, closed the clippers around the middle finger. Her eyes went wide and wild, and, using her good hand, she pointed toward the desk.

“What?” he asked.

She couldn’t speak; the gag was bloody. She’d bit through her tongue, so taking the gag off would not aid clarity.

“You’re telling me the information is in the desk?”

Weakly, she nodded.

He went to the desk and looked back at the old woman. He picked up piles of mail until lifting one rubber-banded stack of letters made the woman nod. Joy Petty, the return address 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 him up, either. He had a tender touch, Malachy. But he was selfish, and weak, too—that’s what led him to embezzle from the Sandmound, you know…the casino where he worked.”

Tavo said nothing, letting her tell it in her own time, in her own way.

“I stripped at a bar called Swingers. I’d been there since the owner, Marge Kostichek, took me in when I was fifteen. Marge knew that once the mob found out Mal was embezzling they’d kill him, and anybody who had anything to do with him. So, she beat them to the punch.

“She hired this guy who did these mob hits. I don’t know how she knew about him, how to contact him; I heard Swingers was a money laundry for some mob guys…I just heard that, you know…so maybe that was how. Anyway, hiring this guy cost her most of the money she’d saved over the years. The rest she gave to me along with a bus ticket to L.A.”

“Excuse me, Ms. Petty—I want to remind you that I did advise you of your rights.”

“I know you did. See, I didn’t know Marge did it, till years later. I thought…I thought the mobsters had Malachy killed. And Marge told me I was in danger, too, and put me on that bus. And I went willingly. I was scared shitless, believe me.”

“So…you stayed in touch with Marge over the years?”

“Yes—we wrote to each other regularly. She even came out to visit a few times.”

“Have you been back to Las Vegas?”

“I’m not that brave.”

“So how did you come to find out the truth?”

“Maybe five years later, when she visited me. I was in Reseda at the time. We spent a long evening, drinking, reminiscing…and she spilled her guts. I think she felt guilty about it. I think she’d been carrying it around, and she told me how about, and cried and cried and begged me to forgive her.”

“Did you?”

“Sure. She did it to save me, she thought—those mobsters mighta killed me, too, and Mal’s wife…I mean, if they thought one of us was in on it, the embezzling?”

“I see.”

“Do you? End of the day, I loved her a hell of a lot more than I did that candy ass Malachy…. Listen, Officer—I need to use the restroom.”

And that was the end of the taped interview.

O’Riley covered for his pal Tavo in L.A. “Hey, she wasn’t under arrest or anything. She came in voluntarily. He let his guard down. By the time he got a female officer to check the john, and hunted down his partner, they were fifteen minutes behind her, easy.”

“Plenty of time,” Nick said, “for Joy to pack up and get out of Dodge…but why? Why did she run?”

Grissom was staring at the blank screen.

“Running is all she knows how to do,” Catherine said, with an open-handed gesture. “That’s what she’s done her whole life. It started at fifteen when she ran from her parents, and she’s never stopped since.”

“And Marge Kostichek was just trying to help the poor girl,” Nick said, bleakly.

“You don’t win Mother of the Year,” Grissom said, “by hiring a hitman to commit first-degree murder.”