Jeff Mariotte - Blood Quantum

He worked his way across the edge of the floor, between the dancers and the booths. At the back of the room, which was far larger inside than it had appeared from the parking lot, a bartender worked at a tall, sleek metallic bar. Behind him were glass shelves, lit from underneath to throw colorful reflections on the mirrored surface backing it. The bartender was short and lithe, wearing a dark shirt with three buttons open and the sleeves rolled back over his forearms, and he moved with economical precision. He looked as if he had been doing this job for a hundred years, although he couldn't have been older than thirty.

He greeted Brass with a friendly grin. "What's shakin', boss?"

Brass badged him. "You probably knew that already, though."

"Had a feeling," the guy said. He was toweling off glasses he had already washed.

"Apparently, I give off a vibe."

"Lots of people do. Some are worse than others. At least you don't give off a creepy vibe or a sicko one."

"You get a lot of those in here?"

"Get all kinds in here. I've worked at some other places in town, too. Lot of nice people in Vegas, lot of decent tourists, and then there are those people that you just know you're gonna see turn up on one of those true-crime shows."

"I meet my share of those," Brass admitted. So far, except for the music and the possibly unsavory activity that could have been taking place in those dark booths, he liked the place. Or he liked the people working there, which basically came down to the same thing. Every joint played the same music and served the same drinks; it was the people who created an atmosphere that was either welcoming or off-putting. These folks seemed as if they'd be entertaining to hang out with for an hour or two.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked.

"Just a tall cool glass of information."

The bartender put down his towel, placed his hands on the back edge of the bar, and leaned forward a little so Brass wouldn't have to shout over the music. "Yeah? What do you need?"

"Robert Domingo. You know him?"

"He comes in sometimes."

"How well do you know him?"

"Well enough not to expect to retire on his tips."

"That's probably handy information to have."

"It is when you live on tips."

"He was here tonight," Brass said. He didn't phrase it as a question, but the bartender answered anyway.

"Yeah, he was in earlier. For a while."

"Ran up a big tab."

"I guess, yeah. Big for some people. Not for others."

"Seemed like he tipped all right."

"The dollar amount was decent," the bartender said. "But it was almost exactly fifteen percent."

"But that's standard, right?"

"You don't retire on standard. In this town, one high roller who has a good night can give you a good month. But a few guys like Domingo can make you have to choose between rent and groceries."

"At least he didn't stiff you."

The bartender grinned again. "There's that."

"So who did he spend this money on?"

"He bought some bottles of champagne. A couple rounds for everyone at the bar, although he bought those when there weren't a lot of people at the bar. He took a booth for a while, and people sat with him as long as he was buying. That kind hang around every club – they can sniff out who's spreading the booze around, and they'll be your best friend until you close out your tab. It doesn't take long to rack up a thousand-dollar tab if you have expensive tastes."

"And he did?"

"Always."

"He's a regular, I take it?"

"Like I said, he comes in sometimes. And he may not be a great tipper, but he also might not appreciate me talking about his personal habits with the cops."

"I think he's beyond caring about that."

The bartender's face went dark. "No shit? What happened?"

"He might not appreciate me talking about his personal situation with a bartender."

"I gotcha," the man said.

"Point is, he isn't going to be a good tipper or a bad tipper anymore. So feel free to talk about him as much as you want."

"Okay, what else do you want to know?"

"Anybody in particular who spent time with him tonight who comes to mind? Did he get into any altercations, disagreements? Anybody threaten him?"

"No and no. He was Mr. Happy tonight. All smiles and big laughs and 'Pour my friends another drink!' He had plenty of friends tonight, let me tell you."

"As long as he was buying."

"He was buying almost up until he left. I guess at the end, the last forty minutes or so, the last champagne bottle ran out and the crowd dissipated. Then it was just him and this one girl."

"Who was she?"

"I didn't know her."

"Did he leave with her?"

"I wasn't really paying attention. But now that you mention it, I think he did. You think she…?" The bartender made a slicing motion across his throat.

"You never know," Brass replied.

"Dude, that's messed up."

"It's not considered the ideal way to end a pleasant evening."

"Not at all."

"Can you describe the girl?"

"Pretty. Black hair, dark eyes. She wore black, I think."

" Lot of that going around."

"Yeah, it's kind of the uniform. I guess I can't describe her that well, but you can see the video if you want."

"There's video?"

"Seven cameras."

Brass liked the sound of that. "Show me."

The bartender picked up a phone. "I need someone to cover me here for a minute," he said. He spoke briefly into the receiver, then hung up. "Just a sec."

"So you have no idea who this girl might have been?" Brass asked while they waited.

"Not a clue. She looked Native American to me. Straight hair, darker skin. But I'm no expert. I can tell you one thing."

"What's that?"

"Man, was she a hottie. I never saw her before, but I wouldn't mind seeing her again."

Conrad Ecklie was an extremely ambitious guy.

Catherine didn't have a problem with ambition. She had plenty of that herself. But she wasn't in his league, not in that regard.

When she had first known him, he was a day-shift supervisor at the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Lab, the counterpart to the job she held now as night-shift supervisor. She didn't know if he would move up from there or not, although she suspected he had his eyes on the commissioner's job. A guy like him, driven, she wouldn't put a run for the mayor's office past him one of these days, even if the lab was hardly a common stepping-stone to that position.

Gil Grissom hadn't used his supervisor's job as a rung on any career ladder. He had become night-shift supervisor and stayed in the position until he left. But there had been extenuating circumstances in his departure, most notably an unfinished relationship with former CSI Sara Sidle, which had driven Gil out of the lab and out of Las Vegas. Catherine didn't expect to leave the city, and as long as she lived there, she had to work, at least until she had put in enough years to get full retirement bennies. So there might come a day, she reasoned, when she would try to follow Ecklie's career path. At least to some extent. She'd had enough headaches in her life, especially as the single mother of a teenage daughter, to know she didn't ever want to be the mayor of Las Vegas. Talk about headaches…

So she accepted Ecklie at face value. That didn't mean she liked the guy. She just didn't judge his ambitions, the way Gil sometimes had.

No, any problem she had with Conrad Ecklie was because she often found him judgmental and sometimes brusque, even rude when it didn't seem to serve his goals but just allowed him to feel superior to those he barked at. And if his promotion out of the lab into the position of undersheriff still rankled sometimes, that was because the position was open only because its previous holder, Jeffrey McKeen, had murdered her friend and fellow CSI Warrick Brown. Warrick's death certainly wasn't Ecklie's fault; the whole affair just left a bad taste in her mouth, and there was something unseemly about benefiting from it, even by default.