Brass in Pocket by Jeff Mariotte

Hurricane Katrina, when they were trapped in an apartment building that collapsed on them.
    From what little Nick knew about Freeson’s private life, tragedy seemed to buzz around him the way flies did around feces. Nick was surprised the man could still get dates, particularly from some of the beautiful women he had been seen with, considering his lady friends had a history of developing terrible diseases, running into immovable objects while driving fast cars, or otherwise becoming former lady friends in various, usually painful ways. He had been the subject of an investigation once, when someone had noticed that very pattern—Nickremembered that Jim Brass had handled the case, in fact—but it had turned out that Deke Freeson was simply a very unlucky guy.
    Or, to be more precise, any woman who spent too much time with him was unlucky. Brass had told Nick once that he thought Freeson just attracted women on a downward spiral. He moved through Las Vegas’s underbelly, and the people he met were rarely without serious problems. Freeson himself never seemed to suffer, except perhaps emotionally or psychically. He was healthy, had all his original body parts, and no more scars than the average guy. He had made it through the Gulf War and a career on the LVPD after that conflict, and then years as a private investigator, without once getting shot or stabbed or run over.
    Until he had the misfortune to go to a room at the Rancho Center Motel.
That place should be razed
, Nick thought,
and the ground salted where it had stood
. An exorcism might not be out of order. Its continued existence was a blight on the city of Las Vegas, and didn’t say much for humanity in general.
    Freeson’s office was small, a single room upstairs over a coffee shop on Charleston, with two desks and some filing cabinets crammed into it. It didn’t even have a bathroom of its own, but shared one with several other office suites. The little room smelled like sweat and mildew. Freeson had a part-time assistant named Camille Blaise who had come over and opened the office for Nick. She was waiting in the hallway now, reading over the warrant Nick had handed her.
    When she wasn’t around, Freeson used a voicemailsystem provided by the phone company, for which Nick knew he’d have to get the luds. Before he sent her into the hall, he’d had Blaise show him which desk was Freeson’s and give him Freeson’s computer password. There was a flat-screen monitor on the desk. Nick reached under the desk and turned on the computer. Once booted up, he scanned the files, but it looked like he used it mostly for e-mail and web browsing. That was a lot of what PIs did these days, hitting the online databases instead of doing old-fashioned footwork. It was no doubt quicker and more efficient, but Nick thought it eliminated some of the perceived glamour of the profession. It made a PI into just another keyboard jockey, like an accountant or a programmer.
    According to Camille Blaise, Freeson kept all of his records on paper, not on the hard drive. He stuffed his receivables and payables in file folders, except for the most recent ones—piles of credit card receipts and bills were tossed without organization of any kind into a desk drawer. Nick briefly wondered what exactly Camille did for him. She looked like the kind of assistant someone hired at a strip club after a few too many margaritas. Freeson had a week-at-a-glance calendar in his top desk drawer where he jotted notes and appointments—coded ones, it appeared, in most cases, but Nick didn’t see any notes written in a female hand. Nick guessed Freeson met clients downstairs in the coffee shop rather than letting them into his office, which would hardly inspire confidence, whether or not his assistant was around.
    Like Catherine, Nick had heard that Freeson wasa pretty good detective. Which meant he didn’t keep his place this way because he couldn’t