9

"Nick?"

Mandy stood in the doorway to the office Nick shared with Greg, her head cocked to one side, dark hair hanging across one eye. She had a clipboard in one hand. Nick had been writing down some aspects of his report on Domingo's house and vehicle while they were fresh in his mind, but he put down the pen. "What's up, Mandy?"

"I got a hit," she said, shaking back the stray hairs. "On those impressions you collected from Robert Domingo's Escalade."

"Good," Nick said, glad something was coming easily for a change. His shift had long since ended, but there he was. Mandy, too. Time could mean everything when it came to catching a murderer, and he knew Catherine and Greg were on a case that involved a missing woman. Both were high-priority and meant that shift times were a flexible concept. "Who do they belong to?"

Mandy consulted her clipboard. "A woman named Karina Ochoa. She's nineteen."

"A young woman was in the nightclub with Domingo, according to Brass. She left with him. If it's the same woman, then she had a fake ID."

"She wouldn't be the first. But I don't know anything about that. I do know she's Grey Rock Paiute, and I have an address here, along with her driver's license photo."

"Let's see."

She brought the clipboard to the desk and handed it over. Nick studied the picture closely. He had seen the video Brass brought back from Fracas, but the quality wasn't great, and the woman had long, straight black hair partially obscuring her face. On the video, she could have been almost anybody. The young woman in the photo Mandy showed him might have been the same one. But this was a driver's license picture, straight on, her hair off her face, with an impatient half smile. He couldn't be sure.

"This is great, Mandy. Thanks."

"I live to serve."

"Yeah, right. Could you do me a favor? Get this and the video Brass got at Fracas compared with facial-recognition software, see if we can confirm that they're the same person."

"Sure. I don't think anybody's busy today. That's a joke."

"I got it."

"I figured. Seriously, I'll take care of it."

"You rock."

"I do, don't I?" Mandy laughed and walked away, leaving the driver's license enlargement with Nick. He called Brass and described what he had.

"If FR gives us anything more concrete, I'll let you know."

"Sounds good," Brass said. "I think we should head up there."

"The reservation?"

"I'll call someone on the tribal police, have him meet us. We don't have jurisdiction there."

"That's right, sovereign nation."

"Exactly," Brass said. "So, you ready for some international travel?"

"You know me, I'm ready for anything."

"Then let's pay Miss Ochoa a little visit."

The Grey Rock Paiute tribal police headquarters was in a steel building, painted white, with the tribe's official logo – a sharply peaked grey mountain jutting up through fluffy white clouds against a bright blue sky, all of it contained within a triangle shape – on the wall facing the gravel parking lot. By the lime they had parked Brass's Dodge sedan, a uniformed tribal cop was shuffling across the hot gravel toward them. He was wide, his bulk accentuated by his duty belt with its holster and pouches, and his gut overhung the buckle a little. But he looked sturdy, maybe mid-forties, and he was beaming a smile at them all the way over.

"I was hoping it'd be you," Brass said. "Rico, meet Nick Stokes, with the crime lab. Nicky, Rico Aguirre and I worked a case together a few years ago. How've you been? Looks like your wife's keeping you well fed."

"Can't complain," Officer Aguirre said. He eyed Nick from underneath a sweat-ringed straw cowboy hat and offered his hand. "Well, at least not where she can hear me." He laughed, then added, "No, really, I'm good, Jim. A little crazed today, because of what happened to Chairman Domingo, of course, but that's what the job's about, right? Pleased to meet you, Nick."

Nick shook his hand, the skin callused and hard. "You, too, Rico."

"You can call me Richie," Aguirre said with a grin. His eyes were hooded, not much more than slits, his nose broad and prominent. Deep-cut lines on his face looked like those of someone who laughed a lot. "Most white people do."

The police headquarters was a few miles beyond the reservation's boundary with Las Vegas. The morning sun shone down on rolling hills in shades of tan and brown, some of them dotted with cacti and other succulents, a few of the valleys carpeted in spring wildflowers. In other places, the land was almost as barren as a moonscape. In the distance, beyond the rectangle of headquarters, a purple mountain with a three-pointed peak shouldered up into an azure sky, almost a match for the logo painted on the building. There was beauty all around, but it was the kind of beauty one had to look for, the subtle beauty of a desert springtime.

Aguirre noted Nick's gaze. "What do you think of our land? Did the Great White Father rip us off?"

"I don't know," Nick said. "It's pretty empty, but that's not a bad thing. Maybe you guys got the better end of the deal by not getting the Strip."

Aguirre laughed again. "See, you're only here a few minutes, and you're already thinking like an Indian." He turned to Brass, suddenly all business. "So you want to talk to Karina Ochoa?"

"Do you know her?"

"Jim, I'm Rico Aguirre. I know everybody."

"Is that a fact?"

"No, but I thought maybe you'd buy it anyway. I do know Karina, though."

"That's good, because I tried to get a map to her place online, and it seems the mapping services don't do too well on the reservation."

"'Cause we put a magical protective shield over it."

"Right," Brass said, sounding less than convinced.

"Man, you just can't be fooled." Aguirre addressed Nick. "Most people believe we're all mystical and spiritual and stuff. If I told them I solved a case through diligent police work, they'd think I was full of it, but if I told them I magically made the guilty party appear in a dream, they'd be all over it."

"We're a little more reality-based at the crime lab," Nick said.

"Not that I can't do magic, mind you…"

"Can you keep the day from being hot?" Brass asked. "Because it's starting to feel like it might be a scorcher, and that kind of magic I could go for."

"Sorry, Jim. I can only do so much."

"Okay, then, why don't you start by taking us out to Ochoa's place? If we need you to extract a confession from her magically, we'll let you know."

"That I can manage." Aguirre led them to a white Jeep with tribal police markings, parked in the shade of a spreading mesquite tree. His duty belt creaked as he walked, spinning his key ring on his finger. "Our chariot awaits."

When they were settled inside, he started the Jeep and drove out of the parking lot, turning right on the road Brass and Nick had taken to get there. "What do you want to talk to Karina about? She a witness to something?"

"She might have killed Robert Domingo," Nick said.

Aguirre let the Jeep slip off the side of the road, then corrected his course. "No. You've got the wrong person, then."

"How do you know?"

"I just know Karina. She wouldn't do anything like that."

"People can surprise you, Richie," Brass said.

"That's true. And I don't know her all that well. But from what I do know… it just doesn't sound like her. She's kind of a political type, hangs around with some people who like to make a fuss. But she's liberal, a peacenik type, not someone I can see getting involved in murder. I don't believe she would ever get violent."

"We know she was at a club with Domingo last night," Nick explained. "We know she left with him and went for a ride in his Escalade. Someone smashed in one of the windows with a brick. We think that was her, too, but we're still waiting for DNA results on the epithelials. A little while later, someone smashed his skull with a heavy cigarette lighter."