"Protesting against Domingo's chairmanship?"
She kneaded her hands together. "Against anything related to him. His lifestyle, his policies, everything. I mean, a few people on the rez have plenty of money, but most of us don't. He always seemed to represent the ones who do, and he ignored the rest of us."
"Okay," Brass said. "I guess that makes him a politician. Par for the course. That still doesn't explain -"
"I'm getting to that! I wanted to see if the things they said about him were true, about his houses and his spending and all that. So I watched him for a while. When I heard he was going to Fracas, I dressed up and went there, arranged to meet him."
"A little face time with a constituent. What happened then?"
"And I guess it was all true. He dropped, like, a grand or something, buying drinks for people. Champagne and whatnot. I played nice, you know, stroking his thigh and purring like some damn cat, and he thought he was going to score with me. He sent the others away and paid attention to me for a while, you know, telling me how pretty I am and all. He thought he was pretty smooth. I left with him, got into his Caddy, and then while he was driving, I just laid into him. I went off about his spending our money. Grey Rock money, on women and strangers and whatever, about his car and his houses and how he was always ignoring the little people. You should have seen how fast his attitude changed. All of a sudden, he knew he wasn't getting any, and he got pissed off. I was a spy, he said. Wanted to know who I was working for. I told him no one, everyone, the whole tribe. He was stealing our money, and he needed to stop it."
"I don't imagine he liked that," Brass said. Her brown skin had flushed as she relived her anger. She let out a deep breath, trying to cool down a bit. "Not at all. He stopped the car and told me to get out. We had only gone a few blocks. This was close to the Strip, you know, over near where Fracas is on Sahara. There was this construction site where he put me out, so before he drove away, I grabbed a brick off the ground and threw it at the car. It went right through the side window."
"So we've seen," Brass admitted.
"He yelled something at me and drove away. That was the last I seen him. He was alive then."
"So you never saw his house. The one in town."
"Hell no," she declared. "I walked back to the club, got in my junker, and drove home. Breaking his window was good enough for me. I didn't even expect to do that, but I didn't like the way he was talking to me."
"Did you call anybody on your way home. Karina?" Aguirre asked. "Is anyone able to back up your story?"
"I didn't call anyone," she replied. "I just came home. My mom can tell you what time I got in. She knew I was pissed, too, but I didn't tell her about Domingo." She glanced at the closed interior door, which Nick could tell wasn't much thicker than a sheet of paper. "I guess she knows now."
"Okay, Karina," Brass said. "Tell you what, we'll keep looking into this. You stay close to home in case we need to talk again, all right?"
"Yeah," she said. She looked relieved somehow, as if she had been wanting to tell her story to somebody but didn't know who. "Yeah, I'll be right here."
"One more thing. Miss Ochoa," Nick said. "I need to collect the clothes you wore last night."
"To the club?"
"That's right."
"They're in my room, in the hamper."
"Can you get them, please?"
Aguirre nodded again, and she left the room. The three police officers waited silently until she came back carrying a bundle of black clothing. Nick unfolded a big paper bag and put the bundle in. "Thank you," he said.
Whoever had killed Domingo should have been covered in blood. Nick hadn't smelled any when she handed him the clothes, just perfume and sweat.
"Thanks, Miss Ochoa," Brass said, standing up. "Either we or Officer Aguirre here will be in touch soon."
"See how I can barely contain my excitement?" she said. She shot Aguirre a look as if she considered him a traitor, and the three cops went out the front door.
"See what I mean?" Aguirre asked when he was back behind the wheel. Nick was in the back again, with Karina's clothing on the empty seat beside him.
"What? I saw an angry young woman who didn't think twice before throwing a brick through a man's car window," Brass said.
"But she's no murderer," Aguirre countered. "She destroyed property, and even that's rare for her. She had to be pushed hard to get to that point. Karina's not a firebrand, not any kind of real troublemaker. She's had a few run-ins with us, but always minor beefs, trespassing because she's carrying a picket sign on private property, that kind of thing. Maybe a couple of drunk-and-disorderlies, at parties and the like."
"Well, Nick here will check out her clothes, and if we find any traces of her presence in the house, then we'll have to have another conversation."
"Understood."
"In the meantime," Brass said, "is there anyplace to grab a late breakfast around here? I'm starving."
10
The Western Las Vegas University campus still felt like home. Ray knew every walkway, every window, every landscaped planter, all of it as familiar as if he had never left. Even the call of a mockingbird that roosted in a tree in one of the landscaped areas sounded like a hail from an old friend. Sunshine filtered through the trees and cast mottled shadows on concrete walkways.
Only a few students were around this early, most of them wearing jeans, backpacks slung over one shoulder. They hurried to classes or lounged on wooden benches. Couples held hands and leaned their heads together. A few people clutched paper to-go coffee cups as if they held the elixir of life itself.
Ray guessed that whenever he got around to retiring, the campus might, in his memory, be his favorite workplace. The crime lab was endlessly fascinating, with new challenges every day and interesting people to work with. At the hospital, he had felt fulfilled by the prospect of saving lives and helping the sick and distraught at every patient he lost. But as a university professor, he had the satisfaction of helping to mold young minds, to instill in people an early love of learning that they would carry with them the rest of their lives. Students loved to challenge their professors, to test their intellectual wings, to throw off the tethers of old ideas, so he was constantly being confronted, and the intellectual stimulation that provided kept him forever engaged and excited. In the campus environment, he could count on each day bringing at least one student who was convinced that Ray knew nothing of the world, and that kind of adventure was worth its weight in dead bodies and ninhydrin.
But his new life, his new career, came with a certain amount of adventure of its own. On campus, he didn't usually have guns pointed at him or have the opportunity to put murderers in prison. The guns he could do without, but the knowledge that every shift he worked left the world a little safer was hard to beat.
Still, walking across campus sent a blade of nostalgia right through his heart, and it brought with it an undeniable longing for times gone by. He couldn't split himself in three, though: one to work at the hospital, one to teach, and one to perform crime-scene investigation. Failing that, he had to take one job at a time, and for now, he was a CSI.
Ray went into the history department's building, stepping into the cool hush of an air-conditioned hallway, and headed toward an office he had visited many times. He was looking for Keith Hyatt, who taught American history with an emphasis on the Western United States and Native American issues, and whose wife Ysabel was Grey Rock Paiute. Not only did he hope for some explanation of what "Quantum" might mean in relation to the late Chairman Domingo, but he also hoped that Keith could offer some insight into any other tribal issues that might have led to murder. Domingo's slaying wasn't necessarily connected to his role as chairman – it might have been a simple break-in gone bad – but the possibility couldn't be discounted.