"So… this guy you're taking us to see," Brass said, bringing them back around to the subject of Robert Domingo's murder. "What's his story?'
"Calvin Tom," Aguirre said. "He's exactly the kind of case I'm talking about."
"How so?" Nick asked.
"Calvin is part Grey Rock Paiute and part Navajo. That's not an uncommon mix around here. He was raised on the rez and always considered himself Grey Rock. His mom was almost full Grey Rock and had divorced his dad when he was very young. So all the family he knew was here. He never even met his daddy's people. As a young man, he moved away for a few years, worked in Los Angeles for a time, then I think Seattle. Recently, he came back here, to the place he had always thought of as home. When he got here, the whole membership thing was going on. He applied for membership, but he was turned down."
"I bet he wasn't happy about that," Nick said.
"Not a bit. He bitched and moaned, you know. He complained to Domingo, then threatened him."
"Anybody take his threats seriously?" Brass asked.
"They didn't sound serious, according to witnesses. I mean, he was pissed off, no question. But it was all that 'I'm gonna freakin' kill you, Domingo!' stuff. Every cop hears that crap. I'm sure you hear it every day. If we tried to intercede every time someone said he was going to kill somebody else, that's all we'd do."
"Except in this case, somebody did," Brass said.
Aguirre cranked the wheel hard to the right, and the Jeep shot around a corner, fishtailing a little. If he always drives like this, Nick thought, it's a wonder there are enough people left on the reservation to make the membership rolls a problem.
"Somebody did," Aguirre echoed. "And that is why we're going to visit Calvin Tom."
Tom's place was up a little hill, set well back from the road. A couple of scrawny dogs sprawled in the shade of a broken-down, rust-scaled pickup truck outside. The home itself was a double-wide trailer, blue with brown trim, listing to the left where some of the cinder blocks propping it up had started to crumble under its weight. The whole property looked as if a stiff wind could blow it into the next state. "I'm not saying it's a bad place to grow up. I love it here, wouldn't trade it for anything. But like I said," Aguirre reminded them quietly as he parked, "there's a lot of poverty on the rez. You okay with that?"
"I wish it was different," Nick said. "But we're here to investigate a murder. It doesn't matter to me if the people we're talking to are rich as kings or poor as dirt."
Aguirre chuckled. "I'll try to line up a few of those rich suspects," he said, stepping out into the sun and blinking. "Till then, we're gonna have to go with poor."
Nick and Brass followed the tribal cop to the door. One of the dogs perked up and followed their progress with ears raised, while the other just snoozed. Aguirre banged loudly enough to wake someone three houses over. "Calvin doesn't hear so good. Screwed up his ears working construction."
Heavy footsteps sounded behind the door, the floor groaned, and Nick was afraid for an instant that the whole structure would tip over. Then the door swung open. "Yeah?"
"Hey, Calvin," Aguirre said, at a level just this side of a shout. "You doing okay?"
"Fine," Calvin said. He was a big guy, six-five or six-six, almost as broad as the whole doorway. Compared with him, even Richie Aguirre looked petite. He eyed the Las Vegas police through eyes narrowed with naked suspicion. "What do you want?"
"These guys are cops from the city," Aguirre replied. "They have some questions for you."
"I'm Captain Jim Brass, LVPD," Brass said. "Did you kill Robert Domingo?"
"Huh?" Calvin asked.
Brass repeated the question, louder. Calvin Tom cocked his big head toward Brass, then answered him with a sorrowful expression. "I wish I did."
"That right?"
'Yeah. I hate that bastard."
"But you didn't kill him?"
"I just said no, didn't I?"
"That's right, you did. You ever been to his house in the city?"
"I didn't know he had one."
"Where were you last night? Say, from midnight to two a.m.?"
"I was drunk," Tom said. He hadn't had to ponder the question for long.
"Drunk?"
Calvin Tom tugged at the hairs of his left eye brow, already so thin it almost appeared plucked. His cheeks and chin were so smooth that Nick wondered if he had to shave more than twice a week. "I got some drinks at a bar in the city. On the way home, I got sleepy, so I pulled over by the road. That's why my truck isn't here.'
"I'm not following. Why isn't your truck here?" Brass asked.
"A cop brought me home."
Brass met Aguirre's gaze. "Okay, Mr. Tom. Thanks for your time." He turned away from the door and started back toward the Jeep.
"Thanks, Calvin," Aguirre said. "You stay out of trouble now."
"Okay." Calvin Tom slammed his door hard enough to rock the trailer.
"That's it?" Nick asked angrily as they climbed back into the Jeep. "'You didn't do it, did you?' That's how a captain does things?"
"Did you get a load of his feet, Nicky?" Brass asked.
Nick was almost embarrassed to answer. "I, uh, I was still kind of stunned by the rest of him."
"I'm talking Shaquille O'Neal feet. You could raft across Lake Mead in one of his shoes. The footprints you found at the house were, what, eight and a half?"
"Yeah," Nick said. "But that doesn't mean -"
"Sometimes you gotta go with your gut," Brass said. "Mine tells me that if that guy wanted to kill Domingo, he would have squeezed him between his paws until he popped. He wouldn't hit him with something like a cigarette lighter."
"You're probably right about that," Aguirre said. He started the engine and backed away, watching for the dogs the whole time so he didn't run into them. "I remember this one football game when we were in high school. Calvin accidentally made an interception. Nobody passed to him, because he just wasn't that good, but he happened to be standing between the other quarterback and his receiver, and he was like this wall. The ball just fell against him, and he got his hands on it. He started for the end zone, and by the time he got there, I think there were six or seven guys hanging off him. They looked like Christmas ornaments on a tree."
"Still…" Nick said. "Can you check on his story? About a cop bringing him home?"
"Sure." Aguirre said. "Nothing to it. I figured maybe that's what happened when we got there and I didn't see his truck."
"That happens a lot around here?"
"Yeah, once in a while. We don't mind giving people a ride if it's not too busy. Calvin's a big man, but when it comes to drinking, he's a lightweight."
"Tell you what. Nick," Brass said. "If we turn up some physical evidence connecting Calvin to the scene, we can come back here and pick him up. It's not like the guy can hide, right? I think you can see him from space."