So where had it gone? The shot was definitely a through-and-through, leaving a good-sized exit wound on its way out.
Besides, if Torres had spun around so that he faced the house, he should have struck the window-sill with the front of his head, not the back. He might have continued spinning, the trapezius shot even increasing his momentum. But Nick was beginning to think it hadn't gone down that way after all.
He went back to the Yukon and took out a dummy and some trajectory rods with built-in laser pointers. These would help him better visualize Torres's position and locate the bullet.
Getting the dummy placed where he believed Torres had been standing at first, he inserted one of the rods into Torres's thigh. He wished he'd been able to get pictures of Torres's wounds before those guys had spirited him away, but he thought he remembered the positions well enough at least to get close to the mark.
With the dummy and rod in place, he checked the laser beam. It shone straight into the street. Just to make sure. Nick walked over there, waving his hand in front of the beam to check its location. When he reached the street, he looked at where the beam landed in comparison with where the tire marks he'd found against the curb were. Based on that, he adjusted the dummy slightly and repeated the process. The laser ran straight through where the pickup's passenger window would likely have been. No one had mentioned the truck being jacked up, so Nick had to operate on the belief that it was a standard truck.
That part done, he tried to reenact Torres's motions using his own body, then to duplicate what he came up with using the dummy. He imagined the brute force of that big slug's impact, the heat of entry, the shock that Torres must have felt as his thigh muscles were torn away. He would have fallen backward, spinning around -
"Hey, you okay?" One of the tribal cops stood in the yard, a young woman with her hair in a long ponytail, watching him. Nick must have looked as if he was having some kind of seizure.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just trying to re-create one of the shootings."
"Is that what the lasers are for? That's pretty cool."
"That's right," Nick said. "They're for determining trajectory, showing where someone shot from."
"That's awesome." She turned away, as if she was afraid that she had intruded on some personal moment, and walked back to where a clutch of other cops stood together at the edge of the yard.
Nick went back to what he was doing, trying to work out how Torres had spun. But no. That's where the theory fell apart. Now that he acted it out and tried to make the dummy go through the motions, he knew that Torres would not have spun away from the first shot. His damaged leg wouldn't have supported that sort of movement. He would have fallen back, past the window, bounced off the wall, and dropped to the floor.
No matter how Nick tried to make it happen, that second shot, through the trapezius, had not come from the truck. It couldn't have.
Which left only one option: the window.
The people on the porch and inside the house had returned fire, they said. Nick had seen plenty of spent rounds out in the street and beyond to back up that story. He didn't think it would be possible to isolate which one had hit Torres, at least not without a lot of lab time testing each one for his DNA. But when he put the dummy through the paces he had laid out for it, the trajectory rods confirmed his theory. The shoulder shot had to have been fired from inside, behind Torres, and at pretty close range. Torres started to fall forward, hit the porch's front rail, and bounced off that. His legs gave way, and he fell back, striking his head on the windowsill and then slumping to the floor.
Which meant the second shot was an accident, someone pulling the trigger as Torres fell into his line of fire…
Or else someone had intentionally shot the activist from inside the house. Someone he had probably trusted.
Torres had been taken to a clinic by some of his friends. One or more of those "friends" might not be so friendly after all.
Nick tossed the dummy and the rods into the back of the vehicle and approached the young female officer who had spoken to him. "Hey," he said, "can you tell me how to get to that clinic they took Torres to? I've got a few more questions for him."
Being deceitful with fellow cops tied his stomach up in knots. But he was on shaky ground – literally inside a sovereign nation, where he had no authority. He didn't know anyone but Aguirre and didn't know who could be trusted and who couldn't. Domingo had been the chairman, in charge of tribal government, including the police. If they were loyal to him and they thought Torres had something to do with his murder, what might they do to get back at him? Even the cop Aguirre had sent to watch over Torres might be in on the plot.
Torres had trusted whoever shot him in the back. Nick wouldn't make that same mistake. Once the cop had jotted down directions for him, he jumped into the Yukon and tore off down the road, dialing Brass as he went.
Whenever Catherine was called into Conrad Ecklie's office, she knew she was in for bad news. But when Ecklie came to hers – especially when his narrow face had that lovely eggplant coloring to it that it did now – she knew the news would be even worse.
"Have a seat, Conrad," she offered.
"I'll stand. I won't be staying long."
"Suit yourself."
"You went to see Helena Cameron."
She had already guessed that's what this visit was about, had known this chat was coming. She felt the way her daughter, Lindsey, probably felt when Catherine went into her room or took her aside for one of those critical mother-daughter "chats" about hanging out with the wrong people, using a fake ID to get into a club, doing poorly on a test, or committing some other infraction that seemed minor to teenager but major to that teenager's mother. "I did."
"You told her that her son is dead. To be more precise, you told her that her head of security killed her son on her property last night."
"I did tell her that," Catherine said. "Because it's true."
"The way I hear it, you could have been a little more diplomatic about it."
"And just how did you happen to hear it at all, Conrad?"
"I heard about it from the mayor. As in the mayor of Las Vegas. He heard about it from Marvin Coatsworth, Mrs. Cameron's attorney. Do you have any idea how many times the mayor has called me directly over the course of my career?"
"I don't have a clue."
He held out his right hand, fingers splayed. "Not very many times, Cath. Not many times at all. I can count them on this hand, probably. And when he does call me, I don't like it. At all. It's never a good thing."
"I'm sorry you got that call. But I had to see her, and I had to give her that information."
"You didn't have to inform her yourself!" Ecklie argued. His facial color was fading, back to its typical hue, but Catherine could still see a vein in his neck bitching spasmodically. "Need I remind you, you are a CSI, not the lead detective on this case. From now on, if you want to communicate with Mrs. Cameron, you'll do it through Sam Vega, who will talk to Coatsworth. You know how to reach Sam, right?"
'Yes. I do. But Conrad, you've done this job. You know that sometimes you have to see someone in person, to observe a reaction or to check for some physical attribute. No, I'm not a detective, but in this case, seeing her in person was crucial."
"I know that's often the case. It isn't here, not anymore. You've seen her. You know what she looks like. That's all you get." He stared at her for a moment, as if daring her to disagree, to protest. It reminded her of something else Gil had told her about Ecklie once. "Some people avoid conflict, or shy away from a fight," he had said. "But not Conrad. Sometimes I think he seeks them out or intentionally incites them. It might even be good for his mental health – at least he isn't internalizing his anger. But it can be hard on everyone else around him."