Shock Treatment (21 page)

“Forget it,” Catherine said without a trace of sympathy. She and Brass sat opposite Gonch on the other side of a glass-covered metal table. Stark gray walls, devoid of color or warmth, cut them off from the world outside. A horizontal mirror hid a oneway window. A closed-circuit TV camera recorded the proceedings. Just like a
Shock Treatment
set, actually, but without the deception. This was as real as it got.

Gonch's antics at the Venetian had turned his interview into an interrogation. Seeing to his comfort was not only the least of Catherine's concerns, it was pretty much the opposite of what she and Brass were going for. They wanted to sweat the truth out of him.

“Next time,” she advised, “maybe you'll think twice about going for a moonlight swim instead of cooperating with the police.”

“Screw you.”

Getting dumped into a cold lagoon on a chilly winter night had not done wonders for his mood. A surly tone hinted at his true character.

“See, that's the kind of attitude that gets you into trouble.” Brass commenced the questioning. “So why did you run anyway?”

“I dunno.”

“You don't know?” Brass was openly skeptical. “You saying you pulled all that for no reason?”

Gonch's brow furrowed. You could practically see
the wheels turning inside his thick skull as he tried to come up with a semi-plausible explanation for his behavior back on the Strip. “The guards at the Venetian don't like me soliciting in front of their place. I thought maybe they'd called you.” He snorted indignantly. “Like they own the sidewalk or something.”

“So you jumped off a bridge into a gondola just to avoid being told to move it along?” Brass shook his head. “Sorry. I'm not buying that.”

Catherine had a better theory. “Your attempted getaway wouldn't have anything to do with the shiner you gave your girlfriend, Gabriella Ruvasso, would it?”

“She walked into a door.” He eyed Catherine suspiciously. “Why? Did she tell you something different?”

“Yeah, actually,” Brass said. “She said she fell down the stairs.”

“Stairs. Door. Whatever.” He leaned back in the chair, smirking. “It was an accident. I don't remember the details.”

“Yeah, sure.” Brass remained unconvinced. “Well, do you recall making any threatening calls to your ex, Jill Wooten?”

“Jill?” Gonch appeared genuinely startled by the question. Sitting up straight, he gave Brass and Catherine a wary look. “Is
that
what this is all about? I haven't talked to that skank for months. She's old news.”

Catherine wasn't sure she believed him. “You sure about that?” An open file rested on the table-top in front of her. She leafed through the enclosed
documents. “According to these records, it definitely sounds like you were stalking her before. Harassing her at work and at home. Leaving angry notes on her door.” She tapped a xeroxed copy of a police report. “Says here you even tried to force your way into her apartment once.”

“I only wanted to talk to her, that's all,” he muttered. “It was no big deal. Jill made it sound a whole lot worse than it was, just to get back at me.” A sneer twisted his lips. “Jealous bitch.”

“Oh yeah,” Brass said. Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “You sound like you're totally over her now.”

“I am!” Gonch insisted. “It's just that you reminded me of all that old garbage. Brought back some crappy memories, you know?” He scoffed at the file in front of Catherine. “I swear, I haven't even thought of Jill in forever. Why should I? I've got a new girl now.”

“Yes,” Catherine said archly. “We've met.”

Gonch either ignored her frosty tone or missed it altogether. “So you've seen how smoking she is, right? Way hotter than Jill.”

“She's pretty all right,” Catherine granted him. “Aside from the black eye.”

“I told you, that was an accident.” He scowled at Catherine, like he wanted to give her a dose of the same medicine. “The point is, why would I still be hung up on my ex when I've got action like that waiting for me at home?” A smug expression replaced the scowl. He tipped his chair back, all cocky attitude again. “I've traded up.”

To a woman who lets you smack her around,
Catherine thought, eager to wipe the smirk from his face.
“I don't know. You wouldn't be the first guy who didn't know when to let go, even when he was already seeing someone else.”

Just a few months ago, in fact, a happily remarried insurance salesman had tracked down and stabbed his first wife on what would have been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. In that case, the first cut had indeed been the deepest. Catherine was willing to believe that Gonch was still carrying a chainsaw-sized chip on his shoulder where Jill was concerned. Maybe enough to be a contributing factor in her death.

Somebody
had to have made those phone calls.

“I'm telling you, I'm over her!” He got agitated enough to rattle his handcuffs. “Gabby is hotter, better in bed, and, frankly, less of a pain in the ass.” He leaned back and crossed his arms atop his chest. “If you want to know the truth, Jill could really be a buzzkill sometimes. I don't know why I put up with her as long as I did . . . except for the sex, I guess.”

And they say chivalry is dead,
Catherine thought.

“Hey!” A lightbulb finally went off above Gonch's soggy scalp. “Is this about Jill shooting that guy? On that TV show?”

Brass leaned forward. “You heard about that?”

“Sure! It was all over the news.” He snickered derisively. “I can't believe they actually punked her like that. Idiot. I always knew her boobs were bigger than her brains.”

Catherine wondered if Gonch had really only just now remembered the
Shock Treatment
incident.
Maybe that was actually why he ran from us,
she thought,
and not just the fact that he's been hitting his new squeeze.

“You ever watch that show?” Brass asked.

It dawned on Gonch that he might be in trouble for more than just running from the police. “Sometimes,” he said cautiously. “But why are you asking me about that? I heard what happened. Jill thought she was blowing away some psycho with a chain-saw.”

“Actually, she thought it might be you,” Catherine divulged. “And she pulled the trigger anyway.”

“No shit?” Gonch looked offended, taken aback by the notion that one of his past or present punching bags might actually fight back. “Wow. I guess I got off easy then. Who knew she was that crazy?”

Catherine wasn't interested in discussing Jill's mental health. She wanted to know how crazy Gonch was. “You like horror movies, don't you?”

“Sure. That's not a crime, is it?” He snorted again. “That's another way Gabby beats out Jill. She doesn't mind a good slasher flick. Jill always hated that stuff. Like I said, she could be a real drag sometimes.”

Catherine found it interesting that Gonch knew Jill's weak spot. “Too easily scared?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Not my problem anymore.”

Brass took another tack. “You own a cell phone, Mr. Gonch?”

“You know I do,” he groused. “Your boys took it off me. Am I going to get it back?”

“Not right away,” she told him. “We're going to have to take a look at it.”

Maybe Archie could link it to the threatening calls, assuming its immersion in the lagoon hadn't
damaged it too badly.
Probably a long shot,
she thought,
but it pays to be thorough.

“What for?” Gonch complained. “So I have a cell phone. Big whoop. Who doesn't these days?”

“We'll ask the questions, Mr. Gonch,” Brass said firmly. He consulted his notebook. “What were you doing at approximately 7:45 on Sunday night?”

Catherine recognized the time. According to Jill's phone records, that was when she had received the most recent of the anonymous calls, just a few hours before her scheduled job interview . . . the call that may have driven Jill to homicide.

“I dunno. At home, I guess. With Gabby.”

“You make any calls that night?”

“Maybe. I can't remember.” He tried to figure out where Brass was going with this. “But I didn't call Jill, no way. Check my phone records if you don't believe me.”

“We'll do that,” Catherine said, although she wasn't sure how much that was going to prove. The problem with cell phones was that they rendered alibis kind of academic in cases like this. If Gonch was behind the calls, he could have made them from almost anywhere. All he needed was just a few private moments when nobody was looking. Even if he really had spent the evening with Gabriella, he could have easily slipped away for the moment to call Jill on a disposable cell phone.

She mentally compared his voice and accent to the threatening call, but, like Jill herself, she couldn't say for sure that Gonch had been the voice on the phone. It sounded like him, sort of, or maybe just like someone trying to imitate his accent. A
more scientific analysis was required before she could reach any definite conclusions, which was where the crime lab came in.

Gonch squirmed impatiently. “Look, are we almost done here?”

“Oh, you're not going anywhere soon,” Brass said. “Not after that ruckus at the Venetian.” In a very real sense, Gonch had done them a favor by getting himself in trouble; as a result, he was in no position to walk away. “Your soggy ass is ours.”

“But right now all we want is your voice.” Catherine produced Gonch's cell phone and dialed Archie at the A/V lab. When running a voiceprint comparison, it was always best to re-create the original sample as much as possible. In an ideal world, that would involve using the actual phone used by the mystery caller. They couldn't be sure that was this phone—in fact, it probably wasn't—but it was worth a shot. In any event, they wanted the sample transmitted via a cell phone.

“My voice?” Gonch parroted.

“That's right.” She placed the phone to her ear.

Archie picked up at the other end. “Catherine?”

“We're ready to roll,” she informed him. “You recording this call?”

“I am now,” he said.

“Okay, stay on the line.” She put on her reading glasses and took out a transcript of the latest call. “I'm going to read something to you,” she explained to Gonch, “and I want you to repeat it after me, word for word.”

In theory, an exact word-to-word match would make it much easier for Archie to run a voiceprint
comparison despite the caller's whispery attempt to distort his voice. Just to play it safe, she would have to get Gonch to whisper another sample later on. The more versions Archie had to work with, the better his chances of making a solid identification.

Gonch balked. “And if I don't?”

“Then you'd better hope your smoking new girlfriend feels like bailing you out sometime soon.” Brass gave Gonch a hard, cold look. “Me, I'd let you rot for awhile. Maybe give you some time to think about the way you treat women.”

Gonch started to sweat. “I don't know what Jill told you, but you are not going to pin her problems on me. I had nothing to do with that TV show mess.”

Catherine handed him the phone. “Prove it.”

He reached for the transcript in her hand. “Okay. Give it to me. I can read it myself.”

“Forget it,” Catherine said. “That's not how it works.” Studies had shown that the best voice samples were obtained by having the subject repeat phrases spoken by the examiner rather than letting him or her read it directly from a transcript. For some reason, you got more natural intonations that way. “And don't try to do anything funny with your voice. Just speak naturally.”

Proper procedure dictated that she get at least three workable samples of Gonch mimicking the anonymous call. She was fully prepared to put him through as many recitations as it took to get Archie some decent exemplars to work with, including a whispered version. Despite their name, “voiceprints” were nowhere near as reliable as fingerprints, but an
expert analyst could often narrow a pool of suspects down to just a few probable candidates.

“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “Whatever it takes to get you off my back.”

“Then repeat after me.” She put on her reading glasses and glanced down at the transcript. “Listen to me, you bitch. . . .”

Gonch flared up again. “I never said that!”

“That's up to the lab to decide,” she stated calmly. “If you cooperate.”

Brass looked at his watch. “You got all night, Gonch? 'Cause we're not going anywhere until this gets done.”

“One more time,” Catherine said. “Listen to me, you bitch. . . .”

Gonch mumbled under his breath. “Listen to me, you bitch.”

“Louder and more clearly, please.”

He glared murderously at Catherine. “Listen to me,
you bitch
.”

“That's better,” she said with a smirk. “Much more convincing.” She moved on to the next line. “You better watch your back.”

Gonch fumed in his chair, but got with the program.

“You better watch your back. . . .”

“V
ISITORS ARE BY
appointment only,” Chip LaReue drawled. “But I suppose I can make an exception in your case.”

The LaReue Reptile Farm was located along a dirt road on the outskirts of town. A chain-link fence, topped with razor wire, enclosed the complex, which consisted of a large barnlike structure adjacent to a smaller adobe residence. A pick-up truck was parked out front. The professional snake dealer had been strolling toward the barn when Ray and Sara had arrived in the Denali shortly after sunrise. He'd changed course to meet them in the middle of the driveway. The morning sun beat down on them. It was already looking to be a warm day.

Ray put away his ID. “You don't seem surprised to see us, Mr. LaReue.”