Brass shrugged. "Fine-we can let the judge sort it out. What do you think, Kevin? You're young enough to do ten years standing on your head-you won't even be all that old when you get out."
"Captain Brass," Shannon began.
But Sadler shook the attorney's hand off his sleeve and said, surly, "Ask your damn questions."
Brass took the seat next to Sadler. He even smiled a little as he asked, "Kevin-last night you told us you didn't know Owen Pierce…was that true?"
Sadler's forehead tightened in thought.
"I guess ten years isn't such a long time," Brass said, reflectively. "You might even be out in five. They even have a baseball team at Carson City-how is the knee, anyway?"
Sadler got the message, and shook his head, disgustedly. "I only know him that way…Pierce worked on my knee, some. That's it. End of story."
Brass rose, and looked toward the two-way window.
"That's my cue," Warrick said to Grissom.
Moments later Warrick entered the interrogation room waving a clear evidence bag; carrying it over to Sadler, Warrick let him see the bag within the bag, the red triangle winking at him. "How did this end up in Owen Pierce's house, if he was just your physical therapist?"
The attorney said, "Pierce could've got that from anybody. There are countless sources in this town."
Warrick showed the bag to the attorney, now. "But those sources don't use this particular signature…." And now the CSI turned toward the dealer. "Do they, Kevin?"
Sadler turned away from Warrick's gaze.
"Were you paying Pierce in coke, Kevin?" Warrick pressed. "Is that how it worked? Him tradin' you physical therapy for his chemical recreation?"
The dealer settled deeper into sullen silence.
"The hell with this!" Brass said, roaring in off the sidelines. "Kevin can rot in jail for the next decade or so-that's a given." The detective leaned in and grinned terribly at the sulky face. "But I will promise you this, Mr. Sadler-when we put Pierce away for murder, I'll find a way to latch onto you as an accessory."
Brass motioned with his head to Warrick and they headed toward the door.
"Accessory?" Sadler blurted, his eyes wide, batting away his lawyer's hand. "Hey, man I ain't accessory to shit!"
Brass stopped, his hand on the knob. "Did you know Lynn Pierce?"
"I never even met the wife. I was never over there when she around-mostly we did business at his office."
Brass strolled back over. "What kind of business, Kevin?"
Sadler looked at his attorney a beat too long. They had him.
"I seen the papers and TV," Sadler said, tentatively. "Is she…missing or, she dead?"
"Mrs. Pierce?" Brass said, conversationally. "Dead. Cut up with a chain saw."
That stopped Sadler, who blew out some air. "Man, that is cold…. I had nothing to do with that. You sound sure he did it…"
Warrick said, "If he didn't, we want to prove that, too."
Sadler snorted a laugh. "Yeah, right-I forgot all about where the police was into justice and shit."
Tersely, the attorney said, "Kevin, if you must speak…think first. And check with me if you have doubts about-"
"I'm on top of this," Sadler said sharply to Shannon. Looking from Brass to Warrick and back, he said, "That stuff last night…the blade and all-that was goin' no place. You dig? That's just, you know-theater."
Warrick, who still had a small Band-Aid on his neck, said, "Theater."
"Yeah-people got to take this shit serious."
"Dealing, you mean."
Sadler shrugged. "Anyway, I never killed nobody. I scare people if I have to-to buy me, you understand, street cred."
Brass said, "Kevin-when your knee went south, and you dropped out of school, and entered your new line of work…did Owen Pierce help you line up clients by introducing you to certain of his patients?"
"…If I answer that, it'll help clear up this murder? Won't be used to nail my sorry ass to the wall?"
Brass said, "All we want is Lynn Pierce's killer. I'm a homicide captain-I don't do drugs."
"That's a good policy," Sadler admitted. Then, smiling broadly, the dealer said, "It is a sweet deal-his clients, my clients, got a lot in common, y'know: money and pain."
"Are you and Pierce still in business together?"
"Oh yeah, we tight-ain't shit could come between us. I even let him borrow my boat."
Brass's eyes widened. "You've got a boat?"
"Yeah," Sadler said, misreading the detective's reaction. "What, a brother can't own a boat?"
Warrick asked, "What kind of boat is it?"
"Three hundred eighty Supersport. That is one fast motherfucker, man."
Brass again: "And you let Pierce borrow it?"
"Sure…We might come from different places, but, hey-we understand each other, 's all 'bout the benjamins, baby. Hell, he even kept an eye on my crib while I was in the lockup-brought my mail in, let the housekeeper in and shit."
"This was during your recent vacation with the county?"
"Yeah-I only jus' got out. Don't you got that in your computer?"
Leaning in alongside the dealer, Brass said, "Kevin, you seem to have heard about Lynn Pierce's disappearance."
"Yeah. I don't live in a fuckin' cave."
Warrick, seeing where Brass was going, dropped in at the young man's other shoulder. "Then you heard about the body part that was found at Lake Mead?"
"Yeah, sure, I…" Once more, Sadler looked from Warrick to Brass and back again, this time with huge eyes. "Oh, shit…are you sayin' he used my boat to…"
The attorney said, "Kevin, be quiet."
"Your good friend Owen Pierce," Warrick said, "made an accessory-after-the-fact out of you."
"But I was in jail!"
"An accessory doesn't have to be present, just help out-lend a boat, for example."
The attorney said, "Gentlemen, I think my client should confer with me before this goes anywhere else."
But Brass said, "How would you like a pass on the drugs?"
Sadler said, "Hell, yes!"
And his attorney settled back in his chair, silently withdrawing his demand.
"Then," Brass continued, "give us the address and key to your house, and the location of your boat."
Sadler frowned. "Just let you go through all of my shit?"
"That's right-and we don't need a search warrant, do we? After all, you're going to be a witness for the prosecution."
Shannon was way ahead of his client, leaning forward to say to Brass, "And anything you might find, beyond the purview of your murder investigation, goes unseen?"
Brass thought about that, then glanced at the two-way glass.
Moments later, Grissom entered the interrogation room, conferred briefly with Brass, who then said, "We can live with that."
Sadler looked at his attorney, who was smiling. Shannon said, "So can we, gentleman," with a smugness not at all commensurate with how little the lawyer had had to do with the deal.
* * *
Gil Grissom, Jim Brass, Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown-the latter behind the wheel-rode together in one of the black SUV's, their first stop the Quonset hut-style storage building where Sadler kept his speedboat. One of half a dozen adjacent cubicles, the oversized shed was at the far end of a U-Rent-It complex not far from where Sadler lived.
Warrick dusted the metal door handle for prints, but the CSI found nothing; no surprise, as the desert air caused fingerprints to disappear sooner than in more humid climes.
With that pointless task completed, they swung the overhead door up and moved inside to have a look at the drug dealer's very expensive boat. With no electricity in the garage, they compensated with flashlights. Forty-feet long, the sleek white craft was crammed into the shabby space with barely enough room to shut the door, a beautiful woman in a burlap sack. Triple 250 horsepower Mercury motors lined the tail and, as Brass played his beam of light over the engines, he let out a long low appreciative whistle.