Miller the Medic, who I’d forgotten was there, weighed in. “She needs a CT scan.”
“Then we’ll run her through surveillance,” I said.
“Davis.” My husband looked confused. “He’s going to jail, she’s going to the hospital.”
I stood. I wondered how to word it. “No one’s going anywhere. Someone in this building’s been shot.” Eddie raised his bandaged hand. Everyone ignored him. “Someone did the shooting, someone knocked Danielle out, and Jug Dooley is missing. Until we know what happened, we can’t send Danielle to the hospital to remember.”
“That’s me? Danielle?” She poked her own chest. “How do y’all know me? How do I know y’all?”
I pulled Bradley aside. “She’ll snap out of it any minute. If she says the wrong thing to the wrong person, we’ll never make it out before the storm. We can’t let her go alone. The minute we leave, we’ll take her straight to a hospital ourselves.”
“What are you not telling me, Davis?”
My phone rang. It was Bianca Sanders. “For one thing,” I said, “Bianca is upstairs. She doesn’t know a hurricane is coming.”
Bradley’s head tipped back. He closed his eyes.
How much worse would it get?
As it turned out, a lot.
* * *
Bradley, after somberly examining the bloody trail that led to the Disaster elevator behind the waterfall, decided it was time to clear the casino. Especially of our daughters. He dispatched Miller the Medic to dig through the clinic cupboards on Disaster for any emergency medical equipment that would assist in diagnosing Danielle, then sent my mother and our drippy girls to our twenty-ninth floor Bellissimo home with Fantasy. “Leave your radio on, get them there safely, and come right back.”
“Got it.” She patted the gun at her hip.
“Caroline,” Bradley said to my mother, “Fantasy will make sure you’re locked in and will set the alarm. Don’t unlock the doors for anyone or anything.”
Bex and Quinn danced around Mother. “Grammy! Grammy! Grammy!”
She took a little hand in each of hers. “Let’s go get Grammy’s girls in dry clothes.” She cut her eyes at me. “Before they catch their death of cold.”
(As if I’d sanctioned the fountain swim.)
Everyone left, and we were down to four.
Danielle, holding the compress to her head, said, “How long have I been in Vegas?”
“Baby, we’re in Biloxi,” Eddie the Idiot said. “We’re at our high school reunion.”
Her lip curled. “I didn’t go to high school with you.”
Oh, brother.
She tried to stand. I reluctantly helped her, having not made physical contact with Danielle before that day since the last time we’d played tag on the playground. Except the time I accidentally shot her. And that was long ago. Water under the Pine Apple bridge. I settled her in a Mucho Dinero chair. I reached for her missing shoe and passed it to her. “Thank you.” And she said it sweetly.
Danielle didn’t do sweet.
Bradley towered over Eddie Crawford. “Who let you out of the drunk tank?”
“A policeman.”
“Then what?” he asked.
“Then we told him we had to go to our room before we went to jail.”
“We have a room?” Danielle asked.
“Then what?” Bradley asked.
“He said okay if we’d do him a favor.”
“A police officer asked you for a favor?” I didn’t believe it.
“Shut up, Davis,” Eddie said.
“Eddie? Speak to my wife like that again—”
I stepped between my ex-ex-husband and my real husband, exactly where I hoped to never be again ever. “Then what, Eddie?”
“Then we took a shortcut through the casino.”
“There is no shortcut through the casino from the dungeon to the hotel,” Bradley said. “What was the officer’s name?”
“It wasn’t happy hour,” Eddie said. “Not like ‘Hey, man, I’m Eddie. What’s your name? Is your wife hot?’”
I could see a vein pulsing in my real husband’s neck. He asked the next question slowly. “How did he open the door to the locked casino, Eddie?”
“With a computer. The computer had a picture of your kids on it. At least Davis says they’re your kids. If I was you, I’d look into it.”
My head dropped, and Bradley’s tipped back. I exhaled every bit of air in my lungs while he sharply inhaled. Eddie had no idea what bad news he’d delivered, not that he ever delivered any other kind. Someone within the Biloxi police department had my laptop? And knew the lockdown code? How? Why?
So far past hiccups.
“Was he wearing boots?” I asked.
Eddie was supremely offended. “Why would I be looking at his shoes? You know good and well I’m not gay, Davis.”
“Let’s move on,” Bradley said.
“I’m not gay, man.”
“Eddie,” Bradley said, “let it go. Let’s get back to whose idea it was to go through the casino and do the officer a favor on your way to your hotel room.”
Eddie scratched his head with his bandaged hand. “Is that a question?”
My husband turned. Walked a few feet. Gathered himself. Turned around. Walked back. “Eddie, how did you talk the officer into going to your hotel room?”
“I told him we left Bacon in it.”
“You have bacon in your room?” I jumped in. “Who cares?”
“We care, thank you very much.” He indicated Danielle cared too. She shrugged back that she, in fact, did not care. “Bacon is our pig.”
“Whose pig?” Danielle apparently cared a little. “We have a pig? Me and you? I work at a pig and I own a pig? What’s my deal with pigs?”
Why would they name a pig Bacon?
How did they get a pig named Bacon past the front desk?
We had a pig named Bacon in a guest room of an evacuated hotel?
“Then what?” Bradley asked.
“Then somebody shot me.” Eddie displayed his bandaged hand. As if we could forget. “All I was doing was trying to get my pig when somebody killed Danielle and shot me.”
“If you’re talking about me—” Danielle waved “—I’m not dead.”
“Then what?” Bradley rolled an I-don’t-have-all-day hand.
“I don’t know.” Eddie shrugged. “One minute we were on our way to get our pig, and the next minute Danielle was dead, and I was shot.”
“Hello?” Danielle waved again.
“We need to know what happened between those two events, Eddie,” I said.
“I want to know too,” Danielle said.
We were getting nowhere. Bradley turned to me. “Where are the cash carts?”
His words took a second to register, and when they did, they hit me like a bus. The events of the afternoon—the shot ringing out, the blood, and of all things, my mother—had wiped out my memories of the day. I’d forgotten all about dropping the slot machines and filling the cash carts. “Did you not come in the front door?”
Bradley scratched his neck. “Yes.”
Eddie and Danielle were talking about the pig. He told her pigs were her spirit animal. She asked if Bacon was a boy or girl, a miniature pig or a pot-bellied pig. He told her Bacon was a girl, a mini mulefoot girl. She asked what color Bacon was. He said, “Do you really not know our pig, Danielle? She’s our baby. She’s black and white and she talks like this.” He made a noise somewhere between asphyxia and a lawn mower.
My real husband waved a hand in my face. “The cash carts?”
I’d been using the pig time to think, trying to place the cash cart pieces. “You ran right by them,” I said. “Or right through them, actually. We parked them against the front door.”
“I came
through the front door, Davis, and there were no cash carts. Did Fantasy move them?”
“She could have?” Although I knew as the words left my lips she couldn’t have.
Out of breath, Fantasy returned. “Bex, Quinn, and your mother are safe and secure.” Then, “Davis, did you move the cash carts?”
I shook my head slowly.
“Then who did?” she asked. “Where are they? Who moved the cash carts?”
Bradley and I locked eyes. The look that passed between us was along the lines of someone on the police force having access to our casino combined with missing cash carts meant we might not be able to evacuate.
Had we been so distracted we missed someone moving eight cash carts?
Wait.
There were ten cash carts.
“There are still two cash carts on the east wall.” I pointed.
“Could someone have moved the cash carts at the door to the east wall?” Fantasy asked.
“Who would do that?” I answered. “Who was here to do that? When? And why? And wouldn’t we have heard them?”
“Stay with these two, Fantasy.” Bradley reached for my hand.
“Fantasy,” Eddie the Idiot said, “help me up.”
“Help yourself up, Eddie.”
Bradley and I crossed the casino in record time. We flew by the main entrance—doors wide open, no cash carts in sight. We ran to the east wall to find the two that were supposed to be there gone too, and in their place, a dead police officer. His right pant leg was saturated in blood, all the way to the bloody boot on his foot.
I’m not sure how long we stood there, frozen in place.
“How did this even happen?” Bradley finally asked.
“Femoral artery.” I bent down and checked the officer for a pulse I knew he didn’t have. “It was his blood that Danielle fell in. He was shot over there and bled out on the way over here.”
Bradley pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Hold on.” I put an arm out.
“We have to call it in to the police,” Bradley said. “He’s one of theirs.”
“Maybe not, Bradley. Where’s his badge?” I asked. “Where’s his duty belt? Where’s his tactical gear?” I looked up at my husband. “And why hasn’t Biloxi PD beaten down our door to find their man?”
“Who is he?” Bradley crouched on the other side of the dead man. “Should we look in his pockets?”
“Hold on.” Finding my phone, I swiped past the endless text messages that had piled up, then past endless apps I didn’t need until I found the one I did—Mobile Biometrics. I stretched out the man’s limp arm, slid my phone under his right index finger, snapped his fingerprint, then ran it. “We could be here all night if he doesn’t have a record. His prints won’t be in the system.” I’d no sooner said it than my phone beeped a hit, but not in the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Wells Cannon’s fingerprints hit in our system. I clicked on his name and almost went blind trying to learn more about him from a five-inch screen. He was a master plumber, current employer, Wrench It Up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Previous employer, Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, from December 2005 until October 2017. The dead man was an original Stormer. And a master plumber. His personnel file, which wasn’t easy to locate on my phone, said he’d turned in his notice just after Hurricane Nate missed us. In his exit interview, he said he was moving to Michigan for a job as a plumbing agent, whatever that was.
Michigan. We had Michigan in the house. The soccer moms who’d missed their flight. As well as a new master plumber on the Storm team.
This was a heist. A hurricane heist.
Well planned, far ahead of Hurricane Kevin.
A heist that was, in fact, waiting on a Hurricane Kevin.
Which meant we could probably find the shooter on our own Storm team, and the missing money might be somewhere in the plumbing.
FIVE
We heard Fantasy from across the casino. “Have you found the cash carts?”
Neither of us had recovered enough to tell her we hadn’t.
“Hey,” she yelled again. “Danielle says she’s okay to walk, so I’m taking them to get their pig.”
“His pig.” Danielle’s voice echoed across the empty casino.
“We still have to call it in,” Bradley said to me.
From what sounded like the middle of the casino, Fantasy said, “Do you want me to put these two on the road with their pig?”
“NO!” we answered together. Not just yet.
“We rode with Jug,” Eddie yelled, like any of us cared.
“Okay. Do you want me to bring them back here with the pig?” Fantasy’s voice sounded closer.
“No,” Bradley said. “Keep them with you. Them and their pig. And don’t come back here.”
I whispered over the fake officer, “Should we get him out of this uniform before we call it in, Bradley?”
“I don’t want to keep them with me.” Fantasy sounded even closer. Close enough for us to hear her say, at a somewhat normal volume, “Shut up, Eddie.”
“Are you suggesting we strip a dead man, Davis?” Bradley asked.
“Hey!” It sounded like Fantasy was headed straight for us.
“Bradley, do you want to call it in or do you want me to?”
He stood, ran his hands through his hair, then fell into a Double Double Gold chair. “Are we going to tell the police who he is? What we know?”
“We can’t,” I said. “If we do that, we won’t be able to evacuate. We need to tell them we were closing the casino and found a dead man.” Which was the truth. “We don’t have to tell them we know who he is.”
“Then you call it in,” he said.
That was because between the two of us, I was the better liar.
“HEY!”
“Hold on, Fantasy!” I tipped my head back and yelled over the slot machines. “We’re dealing with something over here!” I speed dialed from the contact list on my phone. I dialed the police station, but an agent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency answered on the first ring. After I established there was truly no one else I could speak to, I gave him the line: we were closing the casino and found a dead body.
“Natural causes?” the agent asked.
“I’m not sure.”
I was very sure.
“Has the crime scene been secured?” FEMA asked. “Are there witnesses? Have their statements been taken? Does anyone need medical attention?”
“What is going on over here?” Fantasy was only a row or two of slot machines away.
Before I could decide who to answer, the FEMA agent or Fantasy, he told me to stay right where I was, he was on his way, then he hung up. Bradley stood up. And paced circles around the dead man. I leaned up and barely rolled him, both ways—no exit wound—then patted him down, because if the dead man had my gun, I sure didn’t want to explain how he got it to FEMA. Fantasy showed up, Eddie and Danielle not far behind her. She took one look at the scene, spun, and said, “Stop right where you are, Eddie. You too, Danielle.”
“Is Davis naked?” Eddie asked. “Because I can tell you right now, that’s no big deal.”
“You are so, so, so rude,” Danielle said.
We heard the click of Fantasy racking one in the chamber.
Eddie and Danielle shut up.
Over her shoulder, Fantasy said, “I guess we don’t get to evacuate.”
Bradley said, “Not tonight.”
Which still left the hope of evacuating the next morning.
“I’ll take them to get their pig and their things and we’ll meet you on Disaster.”
“Round up Jug and bring him too,” I said.
“Who?” she asked. “What?”
“Jug, their friend,” I said. “He’s probably in hi
s hotel room drinking or sleeping.”
“Or both,” Eddie the Idiot said.
Fantasy gave him a shove. “I’ll see you on Disaster.”
“We’ll be a minute,” I said. “We’re waiting on FEMA.”
“FEMA?”
* * *
Thirteen minutes and another frantic tour of the casino not finding a single cash cart later, our wait was over. FEMA arrived. Which meant the agent either had wings, had been waiting on our call, or had been parked around the corner. His name was Laverne Goosed, two syllables, pronounced goose-ed. He wore a blue windbreaker with FEMA splashed across the back in big gold letters, he looked to be in his mid-fifties, maybe early seventies, and he was the physical opposite of my husband. Bradley was tall, just over six feet. The top of Laverne Goosed’s head barely reached Bradley’s shoulders. Bradley was muscular; Laverne was…pliable. Bradley’s hair was blonde, gold, really, to Goosed’s wispy patches of colorless hair. Bradley’s eyes were sky blue, and Goosed’s were so far back in his head I couldn’t really see them. What I could see was yellow. Bradley was, in a word, strong. Laverne Goosed was, in a word, flustered: he was sweating, winded, flushed, and way out of his element.
He flashed his badge; the introductions were quick.
“You’re from the South Carolina office?”
We were FEMA Atlanta; Bradley didn’t trust him.
“Atlanta,” he said.
“And Wilson’s declared a state of emergency?”
Wilson. Vernon R. Our governor.
“Pending,” he said. “Any minute.”
“We’re not under FEMA’s jurisdiction until he does,” Bradley said.
He mopped his brow with the sleeve of his FEMA jacket. “Listen,” he said. “My name is Laverne. How’d you like to be saddled with that all your life? I’m a real estate agent, and the last deal I closed was during Obama’s first term. My wife left me for a forty-year-old boat captain, I’m on medication for raging claustrophobia, and I have a fungus on the soles of my feet even the Mayo Clinic can’t touch. I’ve had this job a week, and the only reason they hired me was because I scored higher on the Emergency Management Institute pre-employment test than anyone who’s ever taken it. I was pulled out of training and sent here with a front team, because the federal government wanted boots on the ground to avoid any more bad Gulf press. I can assure you, if anyone thought you were going to get even one drop of rain, they wouldn’t have sent me. Your police department is all over this city fueling their vehicles, stockpiling bottled water, passing out peanut butter, setting up shelters, and trying to take care of their own families. A chain-smoking ninety-year-old dispatch officer told me to sit at the casino help desk at the station and answer the phone if it rang. He said it wouldn’t because all the casinos were closed. Well, it rang and here I am. But let’s be clear. This is your show. You call the shots. I’m here to help. Do you want help or not?”
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