Brass in Pocket by Jeff Mariotte Page B

about this—have you ever heard of the Rancho Center Motel?”
    Camille swallowed. “That’s where he… where you said he ate it.”
    â€œThat’s right. In a room registered in his name. Do you have any idea why he would get a room there?”
    â€œAs far as I know the only reasons to go there are to catch something, from dirty needles or diseased hookers.”
    â€œSo you have heard of the place.”
    â€œHeard of, yes. Deke never said anything about going there, though. I would have made him wear a body condom.”
    â€œWould he have told you if he was?”
    â€œLike I said, not if he was going there to catch something.”
    â€œWe don’t think that was the case.” Nick searched for some other angle of questioning that might shed more light on Freeson’s relationship to the missing Antoinette. “Do you know his e-mail password?”
    â€œHell, no. And he doesn’t know mine.”
    â€œDid he write down notes? If he was talking on the phone or something? Any kind of pad, or—”
    â€œOoh, yeah,” Camille interrupted. “There’s a notepad somewhere. One of those deals with a spiral binding on top.”
    â€œI didn’t see it on his desk.”
    â€œHe left it all over the place. One of my jobs was to find wherever it was and put it back on his desk.” She started searching through the drawers of her own desk, which Nick had already glanced in—mostly empty, but she had a phone book, a manicure set, and a plastic container with something frightening beginning to grow inside it shoved into them.
    Then she turned over a stack of newspapers on the one visitor’s chair, and shoved them off onto the floor. The small notepad had been tucked beneath them. “Here it is!” Camille declared. She handed it to Nick, who flipped through the pages quickly, watching for Antoinette O’Brady’s name or initials, or any reference to the Rancho Center. Something in this office had to connect Freeson with Antoinette, and he meant to find it.
    On the second to last used page of the notepad, a phone number had been scribbled down, but with no name attached. Nick was about to flip the page, but something about that number struck him. He stopped, stared at it. Definitely familiar. He turned the page, saw nothing of interest on the next one, and turned back.
    And realized whose number it was.
    To confirm it, he checked his own cell phone’s contact list.
    Bingo.
    He pushed a button and the phone started to ring.
    â€œThis is Supervisor Willows,” Catherine said. She had been back at her desk, working on seemingly endless amounts of paperwork as she waited for results from Trace, when her cell phone rang once more. She grabbed it up hoping for an update from Lindsey, but the ring tone was wrong and the name
Nick Stokes
showed on the screen.
    â€œHey, Catherine.”
    â€œNick, did you find anything at Deke’s office?”
    â€œI don’t know yet. Maybe. You know where Brass is tonight?”
    â€œHe’s off duty, so no, I have no idea. Why?”
    â€œI found his cell number written on a pad in Deke Freeson’s office,” Nick said. “On the next to the last page that had any writing on it. He doesn’t seem to believe in dating anything except his actual case notes—oh, and bills. But his assistant says he used this notebook all the time, to record phone conversations and that sort of thing. So I’mguessing he called Brass in the last few days, or had a call from him.”
    â€œThat’s a little coincidental, maybe, but not necessarily anything more than that. A lot of PIs have occasion to call cops from time to time. And we already know that Deke knew Brass.”
    â€œBecause Brass investigated him?”
    â€œThey probably knew each other even before that. They were on the force at the same time. Don’t read too much into it, Nick, that’s all