Sam Vega drove onto the Cameron estate just as Catherine was finishing with yet another phone call. She greeted him, and the two of them started toward the house. Dustin Gottlieb opened the door before they reached it. "Does Mr. Coatsworth know you're coming?" he asked, allowing them into the foyer. "He's not here at the moment."
"We just need to see Mrs. Cameron briefly," Sam said.
"Well…"
"It's official business, Mr. Gottlieb." Sam gave Gottlieb a look that conveyed both gravity and weariness in equal proportion, the kind of look that young cops had to practice in the mirror because it would serve them so well over the years.
"Fine, I'll fetch her. Wait here."
"You are good," Catherine murmured after Gottlieb left.
"I try."
Catherine had filled Sam in on everything she had learned but only the shorthand version. He eyed her curiously as they waited. "You sure you've got what you need?" he asked.
"I have enough to know what else I need," she replied. "That's the important thing. You brought the warrant, right?"
He touched the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. Before he could speak again, Drake McCann entered the parlor, followed by Helena Cameron, Craig Stilton, and Dustin Gottlieb. Stilton and McCann got Helena situated on a chair, then turned to Catherine and Sam, who were still standing. Gottlieb leaned against a wall, at some remove from the others.
"Should we ask Marvin Coatsworth to join us?" Stilton asked. "He's just a phone call away."
"That's up to you," Sam said. "For everyone's convenience, we'd like to get this done as quickly as possible."
Helena lifted a weary hand and tapped Stilton's side. "Let it go," she said. "If we need Marvin, we can stop everything until he gets here."
"What can we do for you both, then?" Stilton asked. "You know how hard this whole ordeal has been on Mrs. Cameron."
"Believe me, I know," Catherine assured him. "And we don't mean to make things difficult." She shifted her gaze, addressing Helena directly. "I think you'll feel better after we talk," she said. "I have some of the answers we've been looking for."
Helena looked exhausted, even more so than usual. Her orange-tinged face was drawn, with heavy bags under her bloodshot eyes and a disconcerting quiver to her lower lip. "Answers would be nice," she said in a weak, scratchy voice.
"I'll do what I can," Catherine promised. "First, you should know that we've found Daria." Helena's left hand went to her mouth. "She's alive,' Catherine added quickly, before the old woman could misinterpret. "She's at Desert Palm Hospital. A crime scene investigator found her out in the desert and suffering from exposure, as well as the… the condition that has affected both of you. But now that the doctors know the real source of that condition, they're confident they'll be able to help her. And you, too, Mrs. Cameron. They should be able to get you back to normal."
"I… I don't understand."
"You've been poisoned, Mrs. Cameron. Probably slowly, over a period of time. You're not sick, you and Daria didn't catch the same virus or anything. You're being poisoned, and now that we know what it is, all we have to do is cut off the source and treat it, and you'll be fine."
"That's good news," Stilton said. "If it's true. Although I'm not sure how that could have -"
"It's definitely true, Mr. Stilton," Sam said.
"Oh, thank God," Gottlieb said. He leaned against wall as if his knees had lost their structural integrity. "Thank you, Supervisor Willows."
"When can I see her? Daria?" Helena asked.
"Very soon, as soon as she's stabilized."
"Was she found at a crime scene?" Stilton asked. "You said she was found by a crime scene investigator."
"She was." Catherine answered. "Not the scene of a recent crime but a crime scene just the same. Our investigator followed some directions found among Troy's possessions, and they led him to a cave out in the desert, walled off with rocks. Inside the cave, he found Daria, alive, and someone else – your husband, Mrs. Cameron. Long dead but almost certainly him."
"He… found Bix?"
"That's utterly impossible," Stilton said. "His body would have decomposed after all these years. How could he know?"
"We don't know precisely when he died," Catherine countered. "Only when he disappeared. But in fact, his body was mummified by the dry air and protected by the cave. It's on its way back to our lab to be CT-scanned and DNA-tested. We'll get a positive identification, and I'm sure that will tell us exactly what happened to him."
"That's simply remarkable," Gottlieb said. "You people really are good at your jobs."
"We try to be. There's one more thing, though."
"What now?" Stilton asked. All the news so far hadn't changed his attitude, which was antagonistic. Every word he spat at them was some sort of challenge. "You haven't thrown enough surprises at poor Helena for one day?"
Sam Vega took this one. "Maybe not," he said. "We're pretty sure that when your husband's body is scanned, ma'am, it will turn out that he was shot. Probably with the same weapon that was originally used on your son. Our working theory is that the same person shot them both and left them to die in the desert. But Troy survived, sealed up his father's body with stones in that cave, then made his way back to the city, noting the landmarks along the way. Because of the brain damage he had suffered as a result of that gunshot wound, by the time he reached the city, he didn't remember where the landmarks led, but he never forgot that the destination was an important one. Over all these years, he kept recopying the directions to make sure he never lost them."
"This is all quite remarkable," Stilton said, almost echoing Gottlieb's words and tone but with an undercurrent of impatience. "But if you'll excuse us now, I think Mrs. Cameron could use some time to take this in and process it."
"Now, Craig -" Helena began, but he cut her off with a wave.
"Helena, please, let me take care of you."
"There is one more thing," Sam said, drawing the warrant from his pocket. He pointedly dodged Stilton and handed it to Helena, who then turned it over to Stilton without so much as a glance at it. But at least she had held it in her hand. "That's a warrant to search these premises."
"Searching for what?" Stilton asked.
"Specifically, we'd like to look through Mr. McCann's gun collection."
"Why?" McCann demanded. It was the first word he'd uttered since they had arrived. "You already have the gun I accidentally shot Troy with."
Catherine noted his emphasis on the word accidentally. She didn't doubt the basic truth of his story, and the surveillance video backed it up. But his word choice was strange. She didn't think the shooting was an accident, just that he didn't know the victim's identity. Even then, because there was no way McCann could have known, he wasn't being blamed. Not even by the victim's mother, it seemed. Still, he sounded as if someone was accusing him. "We have our reasons, Mr. McCann," she said.
"Very well," Stilton said. "I suppose there's not much we could do to stop you, even if we had something to hide."
"Which we don't," Helena added.
McCann started toward the door. "My suite is this way," he said. "Come with me."
"You wait here, Helena," Stilton said. "Dustin, stay with her. I'm sure we won't be long."
Helena and Goltlieb stayed put, while Catherine and Sam accompanied McCann and Stilton. McCann led them through the house, outside, and then back in through his private entrance in back. Catherine eyed the tennis court and wondered how long it had been since Helena had played. Maybe not since her husband's disappearance or earlier.
McCann's suite was tidy, but it was obviously a bachelor's lair. Electronics dominated the front room – a bank of video monitors, a large plasma TV, a state-of-the-art audio system. A bookcase held only a handful of books but showcased a number of sports trophies proclaiming his achievements in football, baseball, shooting, and track. Car and sports magazines were fanned out on a coffee table. It almost looked posed, a set for a men's fashion spread. Catherine wondered if he had decorated it himself or if Helena had brought a professional in to design the suite somebody thought McCann should have.
"The guns are back here," he said.
A short, wide hallway separated his living area from his bedroom. One wall of the hallway had been fitted out as a gun cabinet – long guns on racks chest high and above, handguns below, and closed cabinets that probably contained supplies and ammunition below that. It wasn't locked, but then he probably rarely had children in there, if ever, and he was no doubt fairly confident about the estate's security.
"That's everything," he said. "If I knew what you were looking for, maybe I could help."
"If it's here, we'll find it," Sam said. "Why don't you two sit down while we look?"
"We'll stay right here," McCann insisted.
"As long as you're out of the way," Sam said.
Catherine had pulled on latex gloves and was already looking at the handguns. McCann must have had thirty of them, of different calibers and ages, and nearly as many rifles and shotguns. "This is quite a collection," she said.
"Some of the pieces I inherited from my father," McCann explained. "He had a large collection, and when he died, it was split between me and my older brothers. Obviously, I don't use the older ones in my work, but I like to keep them around."
Sam pointed at one of the older revolvers, a.45 with a wooden grip. "That's a beauty," he said.
"That's one of my first pistols," McCann said. "I try to get them all out on the range at least once a year, to keep them in working order, and that one has always been a great weapon. Accurate and dependable."
"Smith and Wesson," Sam said.
"That's right."
"What do you think?" Sam asked Catherine.
"Looks like the best bet," she said.
"It's loaded," Sam noted.
"Of course," McCann said. "An unloaded gun is just a lump of steel. But what do you want it for?"
Catherine gingerly took the gun from the rack and deposited it in a plastic evidence bag. "For ballistics testing," she said.
"Testing for what?"
"To see if this is the weapon that killed Bix Cameron and wounded Troy Cameron."
McCann's face flushed. "What?! But… I didn't shoot Bix! Or Troy. Bix was like a father to me, after mine passed away."
"Still, we have to check it out," she said. "It's old enough, it's on the premises -"
"Which means nothing," Stilton broke in. "Bix Cameron was shot by some Vegas mobster trying to muscle in on his casinos. Everyone knows that."
"Everyone theorizes that," Catherine corrected. "If we knew who did it, that would be different."
Sam was still searching the cabinet, opening drawers and doors.
"Now what?" McCann asked. "You already have my forty-five."
"Gun bluing," Catherine said. "Got any?"
"Of course," McCann said. "I take pride in my collection. I take good care of these, and they take care of me. And of the Cameron family."
"Where is it then?"
McCann pointed at a door on the far right of the cabinet. "In there."
Catherine opened it and found his cleaning supplies and bluing kit. She picked up the bottle of bluing, shook it. "You're almost out," she said.
"I shouldn't be. I just bought it last year."
She unscrewed the plastic cap and looked inside. The bottle was nearly empty. She showed McCann.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"You said you lake good care of your guns. It shows. There's nothing I see that needs bluing."
"That's right. I just told you I bought that bottle last year. I used it on a few pieces that had oxidized a little, had a couple of rust spots. But I didn't use that much."
"I'm really not surprised." Catherine capped the bottle again.
"I don't see what you're getting at," Stilton said.
"Are you a shooter, Mr. Stilton?"
"I have shot, on occasion. Drake and I have been hunting, in fact, but not for, what, several years anyway."
"And we used to go out with Bix sometimes," McCann said. "To the Eastern Sierra, mostly. Sometimes Wyoming or Montana."
"So you're familiar with the use of gun bluing."
"It protects the steel from rusting, I believe."
"That's right," Catherine said, inspecting the bottle's label. "And one of the active ingredients in many types of gun bluing, including this brand, is selenium dioxide."
"So?"
"So, Helena and Daria Cameron's condition is the result of selenium poisoning. Probably small doses, administered over a period of time. The selenium could have come from this bottle."
"That's insane!" McCann shouted. "First you accuse me of shooting Bix, then of poisoning Helena and Daria? Isn't it bad enough that I killed Troy without meaning to? Now you're trying to hang everything on me!"
"No one has accused you of anything. Mr. McCann," Sam said.
"We just need to test this bottle, to see if it's where the poison came from."
Stilton pulled a phone from his pocket. "Keep quiet, Drake. I'm calling Marvin," he said. "If you people are going to make rash accusations, he needs to be here."
"Go ahead, call him," Sam said.
"And I'll make sure that on his way over, he calls the mayor and the chief of police. You people are way out of line here."
"We're only looking for the truth, Mr. Stilton," Catherine said.
"I think you're on a witch hunt."
"Not at all."
Stilton pressed a button on his phone, and Coatsworth answered almost immediately. The two had a hurried conversation, after which Stilton brandished the phone like a knife before pocketing it again. "He's on his way. I think we should go back into the house and wait."
"Whatever you like," Sam said.
Catherine put the bluing into another evidence bag. "Before we rejoin Mrs. Cameron, there's one more thing I'd like to say."
"What's that?" Stilton asked.
"Helena Cameron's finances are in pretty dire shape, I understand."
Stilton raised his head, jutting his chin toward her. "Okay, now you're really out of line. I completely resent that. I know exactly what's going on with every dime she has."
"I'm sure you do," Catherine said. "Your financial situation, by contrast, has never looked better. Mr. McCann, did you know that the bank is about to foreclose on this estate and Daria's condo?"
McCann looked stricken. "No… I had no idea."
"You're lucky your paychecks aren't bouncing. But Mr. Stilton here has been buying up luxury properties around the country, taking advantage of short sales and foreclosure deals. Plus, his stock portfolio is extremely healthy."
"That's all privileged and confidential information," Stilton declared. His face was flushed now, while McCann's had gone pale. "I don't see how you could possibly -"
"Some of it's public record," Catherine said. "Some of it took a warrant. And some we're still checking into. But the general outline of it is correct, isn't it?"
"That can't be true," Helena Cameron said from the doorway. "Is it, Craig?"