21 Weeks: Week 3

by R.A. LaShea

21 Weeks

  WEEK 3

  …

  R.A. LaShea

  21 Weeks: Week 3

  Copyright 2015 R.A. LaShea

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission of the author. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights and buying an authorized edition of this e-book.

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  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Week 4 Teaser

  1 - Four Kings Casino & Hotel East Tower Stairwell - Tuesday, 2:45 p.m.

  Blood marred the cotton fabric of black boxers, turning their cartoony spreads of playing cards and tumbling dice unsightly reds and browns. Waistband obscured by the man’s slightly protruding belly, his novelty underwear’s boastful proclamation that “Tonight, I’m Gonna Get Lucky” looked pretty ironic from where Beck stood on the landing below.

  “Is this what you meant by ‘a break’?” she asked.

  “No, this really wasn’t what I was thinking,” Williams uttered in return.

  First of their week spent buried back in case files, looking for any insight into the mind of a sadistic killer, Beck had encountered some truly horrendous things that day. An eyeball gazing out of someone’s belly button was never something she needed to see, in old crime scene photos or otherwise. Having made it to the period Bishop dubbed the killer’s “Picasso Phase,” the real-life murder before her, gruesome as it may be, was relatively tame.

  “The things people do.”

  Still, it did have its unfortunate aspects.

  Baxton plucking a green casino chip out of one of the man’s numerous stab wounds, Beck pulled her eyes from the sight to survey the stairwell. What she could see of it, at least, through the dozen people waiting around to be told where to go and what to do next. No blood trail leading to the body, the minimal mess there was remained focused around the dead man, which meant they had a murderer with OCD, an anemic vic, or somebody who had some explaining to do.

  “I know you’re kind of doing something there.” Beck leaned over Baxton’s shoulder, and Baxton looked greener than the chip she’d just removed as she reached for a bag from her assistant and dropped it inside. “But before we lose too much time, can we safely assume this guy didn’t wander down here in his boxer shorts and get neatly murdered in the stairwell?”

  “Yes, that’s a safe assumption,” Baxton responded. “He’s been stabbed at least thirty-five times with a two-inch blade. There’s not nearly enough blood, and no spatter. Plus, he’s been dead twelve to thirteen hours, and no one found him in an unlocked stairwell until an hour ago? He was killed someplace else. Find out where that was, and CSU will have better luck there. They’re not going to find anything here.”

  “Are there chips in all of his wounds?” Williams asked.

  “Looks like it,” Baxton said as she dug her long tweezers in after another.

  “Can I see one of those?”

  Looking to Baxton for the okay, the young assistant Beck had dubbed “Mini Baxton” handed an evidence bag up the stairs to where Bishop stood like a sentry on the landing above them.

  “This is a twenty-five-dollar chip,” he declared as the one Baxton was working to extract came free with a sludgy pop. “Is that one the same?”

  “They all appear to be.” Throat clearing, Baxton shifted her gaze from the blood and tissue clinging to the chip’s edges, inhaling a shaky breath and dropping it into the bag when her assistant made it available for her. “We’ll leave the rest in until we get him back.”

  “Mint?” Williams produced the roll from his pocket.

  “Would if I could.” When Baxton held her gloved hands in the air, Beck took the roll, twisting the wrapper down, and leaned over Baxton’s shoulder to pop one into the M.E.’s mouth when she opened it. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Handing the mints back to Williams, Beck was fairly certain it was in all their best interests for Baxton not to throw up on, or in, their murder victim.

  “Nash and I have been looking through old murders,” Williams said. “We’ve been popping these things like painkillers all morning.”

  Not that they had dulled the pain.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Beck asked.

  “There’s bruising on his cheeks. He was gagged at some point.”

  “No surprise there,” Williams said. “If he was still alive when those chips were shoved in him, it had to have been some kind of pain. I imagine he would have made a racket, given the chance. So, what do you think?”

  “I think somebody put more than eight hundred dollars worth of chips into this guy,” Bishop responded as Williams looked up the stairs.

  “Do you want to check the room first?” Williams turned his attention to Beck.

  “Is that okay with you?” Beck too relayed the question up the stairs, and Bishop’s cheeks sank in irritation, as they had every time Beck had requested his permission over the past day and a half. If Bishop was the man in charge, though, Beck certainly didn’t want to step on any authoritative toes.

  Or, maybe, she just really liked irritating Bishop.

  “I think that’s the most logical place to start,” Bishop agreed.

  “Do you want me to call down and get the room number?”

  “No.” Trying to prevent a serious misstep, Bishop slapped the cell phone out of the hand of the proactive uni on the landing next to him, and Baxton looked up as it bounced down the stairs, coming to a stop two steps from her body. “Do you want to make sure we definitely won’t find where this guy was killed?”

  When the uniformed officer, who was just trying to be as helpful as he could, flushed with the embarrassment of being so publicly chastised, Beck knew someone had to tell the poor, bewildered guy why Bishop was being such a raging jackass. Glancing to Williams, she tipped her head in casual reminder that he was the one who wanted to be a supervisor one day, and heard Williams’ barely audible groan as he looked up the stairs.

  “When someone dies in a hotel room, there’s a forty-eight hour mandatory quarantine,” Williams explained. “That’s two nights the hotel can’t rent out the room, and a lot of bad press, so people who die in hotels have a way of relocating themselves before the police are called. Even if you did call down, the front desk staff has probably been told to give you a dummy room number. All it does is gives them warning. It’s better if we just look ourselves.”

  “So, where do you want to start?” Beck looked to Bishop.

  “Hauling a body down stairs is easier than hauling it up, so I’ll start on this floor, and work my way up. You can come with me.” Bishop gave the uni a chance to redeem himself, and, rushing down the steps to retrieve his phone, the young officer was anxious to accept.

  “Then we’ll start at the top.” Beck preferred that assignment anyway. The rooms in this place weren’t exactly going for top-dollar. Last she checked, a budget-conscious tourist could grab a twenty-five-dollar night in the area - a half-decent room for the low, low price of a single, bloody chip stuffed into their vic. For the staff to have gone to the trouble of relocating the crime scene, it had to have been worth their financial while, and the most valuable rooms were always found on the highest floors.

  2 - Four Kings Casino & Hotel East Tower, 17th Floor - Tuesday, 2:55 p.m.

  Business as usual on the top two floors, when the door slid open o
n the 17th, a man in a navy suit, who was just standing about the hallway, deliberately turned his head, as if he hadn’t, in fact, been watching the elevator to see who emerged.

  “Afternoon.” Williams walked right up to him.

  “Good afternoon.” The man smiled a straight-up PR smile, and Beck wondered what exactly an employee trained in public relations was doing waiting outside guest rooms on the 17th floor.

  “I’m Detective Williams. This is Detective Nash. We’re with the Metro Police Department.”

  “You’re here about the man murdered in the stairwell.” The PR man adopted a look of appropriate concern. “It’s tragic, it truly is. I can’t imagine something like this happening in our hotel.”

  “What do you do here, Jeremiah?” Williams had to have pulled the guy’s name off the employee badge pinned to his lapel as Beck took a step in retreat, looking to the nearest doors for specks of blood, debris, or anything else that indicated a body had come through there.

  “Security. Meeting room rentals. Media relations. I handle a little of everything.”

  Beck bet he did.

  “Really a go-to kind of guy, huh?” Williams returned.

  “Yes. I mean… I’m pretty much… trained to… Excuse me.” When Beck got near the door diagonal from his position, Jeremiah’s composure wavered. “I get that you’re the police, but I am going to have to ask you to respect the privacy of our guests. You can’t just listen in at their doors.”

  “Then what are you doing standing around out here?” Williams asked him, and Jeremiah was without response.

  “There are no guests in here.” Beck hoped not, at least. If there were, they had to be as high as Bob Marley during a songwriting session. “Ammonia and vinegar.”

  “Well, you got someone who knows what they’re doing,” Williams said. “That’s a traditional one-two bloodstain knockout. Now, are you going to let us in, or would you rather pay for a new door along with the cleaning fees?”

  “Williams, there’s no need for that.” Tapping her knuckles on the wooden surface, Beck heard the shuffle of the person standing just on the other side. “Whoever’s in there, you can either open the door for us or you can be charged as an accessory when we come through it.”

  Lock popping at once, Beck palmed her gun as she stepped back, glancing to Williams when a large man in white overalls and a cleaning mask filled the doorway.

  “Just like magic,” Williams declared.

  “Get out of the way,” Beck ordered the man in the overalls, finding a second man waiting inside when she covered her nose and mouth and slipped through the doorway. “Goddammit,” she uttered upon seeing how much of the cleaning was already done.

  The men’s work concentrated around the leather couch that faced away from the foot of the king-sized bed, the cushions still looked wet, suds foaming on the carpet and lacquer table nearby.

  “I hope you’re being well compensated, Boys.” Beck reached for her cell. “Because you’re going to be here a while.”

  3 - Four Kings Casino & Hotel East Tower Guest Room - Tuesday, 3:25 p.m.

  “What all have you cleaned?” Sergeant Eaton Dillinger, head of the Las Vegas Crime Scene Unit, wasn’t pleased at having to come out in the field to handle the processing of a Homicide that could have easily been handled by his team if not for the nightmare scenario the Four Kings staff had turned the murder scene into.

  He did seem to enjoy himself a few minutes earlier, though, as he ordered officers to tape off everything from the victim’s room to the 13th floor stairwell, effectively shutting down four floors and forcing the hotel to relocate the people staying on them. Every employee in the place undoubtedly scrambling to make sure their current and incoming guests had somewhere to sleep that night, Beck trusted it was a lesson that would stick.

  “Really, Man?” Beck turned back as Williams shook his head at Jeremiah. “A heart attack, I’ll give you, but you didn’t really think you were going to get away with covering this up, did you?”

  “I was just following orders,” Jeremiah said.

  “You were just following orders. They were just following orders.” Williams gestured to the overalled cleaning crew currently in the process of walking Dillinger through the damage they had done. “Who gave the orders?”

  “We’ve got a hierarchy here,” Jeremiah responded. “Orders get passed down. It’ll be hard to know where they came from originally.”

  Just like always. Verbal commands in the business world were as difficult to track as Sasquatch in the wild. After just a year on the force, Beck had become convinced that was the entire point of a company hierarchy. A well-planned pyramid gave every person on staff someone above them to blame, and peaked with a top dog who could simply deny ever giving the go-ahead, insisting instead it must have come from somewhere below.

  “Detectives, we found the victim’s wallet.”

  Walking over to take it from the tech’s hand, Bishop started going through its contents as he brought it their way.

  “Frederick Gerber. Calgary.” He handed the driver’s license to the uni from the stairwell he’d kept on tap since they located the actual scene of the crime. “Call the Calgary PD. Let them know we’ve got one of their citizens.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The officer slipped out the hotel room door to make the call.

  “Do you have any idea how long this is going to take?” Jeremiah asked. “We are bleeding business here.”

  “Be glad you’re not bleeding blood,” Beck returned. “And that no one dragged you down four stories and dumped you in a stairwell. This is your fault.”

  “Yeah. Made a real mess here, didn’t you?” Bishop agreeing with her felt so contrary to nature, Beck glanced to the window, worried, despite the blue skies outside, lightning would cut through the glass and strike them both down.

  “We’re trying to run a business.”

  “Badly,” Williams uttered. “How did you get the vic down there, anyway? He’s a big man.”

  “I don’t know,” Jeremiah said. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Well, I guess we could take every maid cart and kitchen cart in the hotel into evidence until we figure out what someone did use,” Bishop mused.

  “Don’t forget the guests’ luggage,” Williams added. “A big suitcase with wheels could probably get the vic to the elevator.”

  “Good point,” Bishop said.

  “All right,” Jeremiah declared, as if he was under personal attack by their brainstorm. “If I was going to move someone of Mr. Gerber’s substantial girth, I would probably choose a laundry cart. They’re made of fabric and they’re always filled with fabric, so it would catch the blood. It would also make it easy to get rid of whatever he might have been wrapped in to get him out of the room and down to the stairwell.”

  “And where would this bloody laundry cart end up?” Bishop asked.

  “The basement. Most likely.” Jeremiah forgot for a moment he was denying all involvement. “I doubt it’s still bloody, though. The canvas is removable. Everything in it has probably been washed and bleached by now.”

  “Then, we will be taking all the linens,” Williams said, and Bishop motioned to a CSU tech to relay the information.

  “Okay, I admit, we made a mistake.” Jeremiah realized he’d just made another big one. “Do you have to be so vindictive about it?”

  “Do you understand that you are facing serious charges here?” Bishop turned back from the tech with a look of wrinkled disbelief. “You can get up to twenty years for tampering with evidence.”

  “How was I supposed to know he was murdered? Accidents happen.”

  “He accidentally stabbed himself thirty-five times?” Beck uttered.

  “Hey. I’ve seen some weird stuff in this line of work. Who’s to say?”

  Sadder than Jeremiah’s pathetic excuse for covering up a murder was the fact it would probably fly. Nailing someone for tampering was never easy. The prosecutor had to prove the person did so knowingly.
Which meant proving the person knew a crime had been committed. It was amazing how much the courts didn’t expect civilians to know.

  “Do you recognize this?” Bishop clearly realized threatening Jeremiah with real consequences was a pointless endeavor.

  “It’s a twenty-five-dollar token,” Jeremiah said. “It’s one of ours.”

  “Did you happen to notice the vic was full of them?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “He was missing a few,” Bishop stated, though Beck couldn’t recall Baxton saying that. “Try to take some back before you realized what a mess you were making?”

  “How could I?” Jeremiah stuck to his story. “I didn’t move the body.”

  “Detective Bishop?”

  Peeling his eyes away from Jeremiah, Bishop looked across the room to the CSU tech.

  “The safe is open and dusted,” the tech said. “Looks like someone tried to get inside before us, if you want to take a look.”

  “Doesn’t make a lot of sense. The same perp who stuck eight hundred dollars into this guy tried to rob him?” Beck uttered.

  “Could be he was after something else,” Bishop suggested.

  “Or could be someone tried to get into the safe after they found the body. Not like we haven’t seen that kind of thing before. Like just last week. That you, by chance?” Williams looked to Jeremiah.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” Jeremiah responded. “There’s an override code. If I wanted to steal from a guest, I would just use that. I said IF.” He glared at Williams when Williams seemed to take the statement as proof he was as sleazy as they came.

  “So, there’s an override code, and you let them use tools to get in, possibly contaminating the evidence inside?” Bishop said.

  “No one asked me.”

  “Let’s take a look.” Shaking his head, Bishop just seemed glad to be done with the irritating employee as he walked off.

  “I’ll stay with him.” Williams, evidently, had the same feeling Beck did that Jeremiah would take off and hide somewhere, given any opportunity.

  Nodding in response, Beck wound through the overcrowded hotel room, peering around the safe door as Bishop stared in at its contents. “That is a lot of money,” she declared.

  Rows and rows of green tokens stacked on one side, piles of tokens and cash on the other, it had to have been tens of thousands.

  “Twenty per stack. Sixty stacks. That’s just the twenty-fives,” Bishop said.

  “Williams, twelve hundred times twenty-five,” Beck called.

  “Thirty thousand,” Williams returned a moment later.

  “That is a lot of money,” Bishop concurred.

  But it was the low total. Fewer chips on the other side, they were mostly black, a few purples and greens mixed in for good measure - $100s, $500s, and another short stack of $25s - serving as paperweights over bills that, added all up, had to total upwards of fifty large.

  Narrow space running down the safe’s center, the distinction between the sides was clear, as if they were separate spoils.

  “Did you find anything else in here?” Bishop glanced to the tech.

  Instinct telling her something was amiss, and somewhat familiar, Beck saw her chance fleeting. Reaching into the safe, she palmed a green token from each side of the narrow divide, pocketing them separately as Bishop twisted back.

  “Let’s get them bagged.” When he stood to full height, Beck rose along with him.

  “We’ve also got footprints.”

  Trailing Bishop to where the CSU tech stood at the end of the sofa, Beck looked up as Lieutenant Dillinger came from across the room. Luminol freshly sprayed, Dillinger nodded for a tech to hit the lights, and, as the room fell into relative darkness, blue spots glowed up from the cushions, over the arm of the sofa, and down its side to the floor.

  “Doesn’t look like prints to me,” Bishop said.

  “Well, you won’t track down a killer by them.” Dillinger stole the explanation out of his tech’s mouth. “It’s a shoe scrub. You can see the lines where the killer wiped his feet, so he wouldn’t track blood out. From the length and width of the strokes, a men’s size twelve or thirteen. That one, though…” When Dillinger gestured to the small dots with half-moons six or seven inches in front of them, Beck recognized the prints at once. She had been at many a crime scene where prints just like that led to an unexpected accomplice.

  “Some sort of weapon?” Bishop asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Dillinger responded. “It’s a stiletto.”

  “A stiletto?” Confusion passed over Bishop’s face. “Are you sure?”

  Happy to see it wasn’t just her police work Bishop liked to question, Beck noted Dillinger wasn’t nearly as pleased.

  “I’ve been doing this as long as you have. I know a stiletto print when I see one.”

  Tension, for once, having nothing to do with her, Beck seized the silence that followed as her opportunity to get away. Slipping through the techs as the lights came on, she passed Williams on her way back out into the hallway.

  “Don’t make me chase you.” Williams gave Jeremiah the stern warning as Beck came to a stop ten feet down the hall. Looking back to ensure Jeremiah wasn’t going to try anything stupid as he followed, Williams turned to keep an eye on the antsy go-to guy.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Well, it definitely looks like somebody wanted to make this guy suffer. But there’s at least eighty grand in that safe, another eight hundred in the vic. Stiletto prints.”

  “You think Bishop thinks this is our killer?”

  “I think Bishop wants it to be. What do you think?”

  “I think it looks personal, but we don’t know this killer like Bishop does,” Williams returned. “Stilettos, though? Casino chips? That’s not a serial killer. That’s a quarter of the people in Vegas.”

  “A quarter?” Beck laughed. “You don’t think that number’s a little conservative?”

  “It might be a little.” Williams raised a warning finger to Jeremiah when he shifted in the doorway.

  “I’m just changing position,” Jeremiah huffed, and Beck hoped his discomfort was real.

  Coming out the door beside him, Bishop gave Jeremiah a look that summed up all their feelings toward him before he came down the hall.

  “Did they find anything else?” Beck asked.

  “No. That’s everything.”

  “So, how are we looking at this? Is it our guy?” Williams questioned.

  “Could be.” Bishop gave the same useless response he gave in the cabin with the mob moll. “Maybe not. He’s always worked alone in the past, but he’s been at this for forty years. Maybe he can’t do it on his own anymore, and he found a woman willing to work with him.”

  Well, that was a familiar-sounding tale.

  “Or a drag queen,” Williams suggested.

  “Or a drag queen.” Bishop seemed to seriously consider it for a moment. “It is bizarre, the mafia-style murder, and now this. But he does enjoy a theme.”

  “Picasso.” Beck recalled the images from their unfortunate morning.

  “Exactly,” Bishop said. “Maybe this time he’s trying to make the murders look as if they were committed by others.”

  That was one plausible explanation, Beck acknowledged. Of course, there were others far more likely, like murders happened in Vegas all the time, most of them unrelated and committed by people who weren’t serial killers.

  “They don’t have cameras up here, but we’re getting the feeds from the common areas. Until we do, do you want to take Jeremiah down to the station and see if a change of scenery can help shake anything else out of him? I’ll stay here until CSU is finished.”

  “No problem.” Beck was just ready to be dismissed.

  Nodding his own affirmative, Williams grabbed Jeremiah’s arm on their way back down the hall, and Jeremiah railed about his rights all the way to the elevator doors.

  4 - Four Kin
gs Casino & Hotel Main Floor - Tuesday, 3:40 p.m.

  Emerging on the ground floor, Beck looked to the signs overhead that provided direction to the main parts of the building - restaurants, shops, parking, the west tower of the hotel, and, most essential to her at the moment, the main casino. She had been in the place before, always on assignment, but the last time was a few years ago, and, at heart, these places were all neon-lit mazes.

  “Nash, where are you going? The car is this way.”

  “But the casino is this way.” Beck heard Williams turn to catch up with Jeremiah in tow.

  “Need to get in a few hands of poker?”

  “Not exactly,” she uttered. “Do you want to stay with him, or come with me?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Williams asked. “Somebody has to stay.”

  Statement true, to an extent, Beck glanced to a couple in their mid-fifties who stood against the wall, watching, with goofy grins, as gamblers dropped tokens into slots just outside the casino doors. Following their gazes to the machines, she saw nothing to which she could anchor their flighty, and vocal, captive. Until she glanced down, and realized they had lucked out with permanent stools that were bolted to the floor.

  Grabbing Jeremiah from Williams, Beck moved him forward as she closed a cuff around the PR man’s wrist.

  “What are you doing?” Jeremiah demanded when it became clear to him what was about to happen. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you will get in for this?”

  He may as well have just said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ But Beck really didn’t care who Jeremiah was. Tugging him forward by the connected cuff, she yanked his arm down, closing it around the stainless steel footrest of one bolted stool.

  “You’ll be more comfortable if you sit down.” Reaching into the pocket where she’d seen Jeremiah put his cell phone, Beck snagged it so he couldn’t call for assistance.

  “On the floor?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Unless you prefer to bend,” Beck said.

  “You can’t just leave me handcuffed like this.”

  “You can’t just move a corpse from a crime scene,” Beck uttered. “But here we are. Relax. We won’t be long.” Package secured, she turned toward the casino.

  “Are you really going to leave him handcuffed like that?” Williams asked as he caught up to her.

  “Yeah. Even if he flags down security, they’ll never get here with a key or locksmith before we make it back.”

  “You do have a style, Nash.” Beck wasn’t sure Williams meant it as a compliment as they went through the casino doors and lost sight of their witness. Unconcerned, Beck figured, even if Jeremiah did get free somehow, he worked in the building and lived in the city, so he wouldn’t get far. “It’s a little bit dangerous.”

  “It looks more dangerous than it is,” Beck returned, and, nine times out of ten, it was true.

  “Why couldn’t we bring him with us?”

  “Because we don’t need Jeremiah telling anyone what we’re about to find out,” Beck said as they got in line at the casino cage, where money turned into chips and chips turned back into money.

  “What can I do for you, Pretty Lady?” The cage cashier asked when the window cleared, and stepping up with Williams, Beck showed her badge to the gray-haired man, and his mouth clenched with regret. “Just some friendly banter. A lot of women like it.”

  “I’m sure they do, Hunka Burnin’ Love.” Pulling the chip from her right pocket, Beck placed it on the counter. “Could you check this for me?”

  “It’s ours,” the cashier said as he picked it up.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Looks right. Weight’s right. See, it has the hologram.” Chip turned their way, the lights caught on the 3D image.

  “Do your twenty-fives have RFID?”

  “Yeah.” Leaning back, the cashier waved the chip beneath the scanner, and it proved itself legit with a long beep. “It’s good,” he declared as he plunked it back down on the counter.

  “Now, this one.” Beck passed the second chip - the one taken from the side of the safe with the thirty grand in twenty-five-dollar chips stacked in neat rows - through the window.

  “It’s the same. See. Hologram.”

  “Scan it,” Beck said, and, with some annoyance that his expertise was being called into question, the cashier ran the chip beneath the green light. Gaze narrowing when it made no sound, the cashier ran it again, turning to grab another chip from a nearby tray to ensure the scanner worked, before trying the chip once more.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “It’s counterfeit, isn’t it?”

  “A damn good counterfeit,” the cashier said.

  “When’s your weekly audit?”

  “Friday afternoon.”

  “Don’t say anything to anyone. If there are more floating around in here…” And Beck suspected there were. Many, many more. “They’ll find them then.”

  “No problem.” The cashier was more than happy to accommodate the request, and Beck understood why. It was his, along with his fellow cage cashiers, job to make sure things like this never happened. A few thousand dollars in fakes slipping past them for days, somebody was going to hear about it, and whoever made the discovery was bound to hear it first.

  “Thanks for your help.” Moving away from the window, Beck looked to Williams as he fell in step at her side.

  “Did you take those from the safe?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry. CSU will never know they’re gone.”

  “So, the vic had both real and fake chips in his room?”

  “And he kept them apart, which means he knew which were which. I’ve seen this scheme before. Crook comes in with twenty, fifty thousand dollars in counterfeits. He buys a couple thousand in chips up front, few enough he doesn’t need a rack. Puts them in a pocket. Takes the fakes out of the other. Plays until he breaks even, and cashes out. He’s up double. An hour later, he’s back at the tables and does it again.”

  “And that’s how a criminal turns twenty or fifty thousand in fake chips into twenty or fifty thousand in cash,” Williams concluded. “So, you’re telling me this guy came here to rip off the casino?”

  “Yeah.” Beck nodded.

  “That had to have earned him a few enemies.”

  5 - Beck’s Apartment - Tuesday, 6:00 p.m.

  Vic’s death the pretty obvious result of being stabbed thirty nine times, according to Baxton’s final tally, the only new information they had was that three of those wounds didn’t come from the knife, but from the stiletto Sergeant Dillinger had to convince Bishop was there.

  With Jeremiah remaining as uncooperative as he’d been at the hotel, the lab unable to return any results that day, and the casino taking its sweet time coughing up the video, there was nothing they could do until morning.

  “What’s up?” Leo glanced back as Beck walked through the door.

  Gunfire pummeling her brain before she even made it inside, Beck looked to the TV, watching Leo pick off a soldier, before taking in the gaming system that was occupying prime real estate in her living room.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “House.” Leo cut down another man on the screen in a bloody spray. “I went to get some of my clothes.”

  “Did you see Shelly?”

  “She was at work.”

  “Did you leave the keys?”

  “Why would I do that?” Leo asked.

  “I don’t know.” To provide Shelly with the assurance he couldn’t just show up any time he liked? As a sign of good faith that he respected her decision? “I thought you didn’t like games like that. Thought they bothered you.”

  Too close to the real thing, Leo always said about shoot-em-up games before.

  “It’s not bothering me right now,” he responded.

  “Well, could you turn it down?”

  Pausing mid-kill, Leo chose to turn the game off instead, and Beck realized it was preferable as the thumping in her head weakened to a thrum
. When Leo switched the input back to cable, the news came on, and that too was enough to wear on Beck’s nerves.

  “Did you see this?” Leo gestured to the TV.

  Glancing to it, the image on the screen was the same building in which Beck had spent a large chunk of her afternoon. “Yeah. Up close and personal.”

  “You caught this case?”

  “The body of a guest was found dead in a stairwell. A hotel spokesman says the guest appears to have fallen down the stairs sometime in the night, and there are no signs of foul play.”

  Laugh stuttering out of her at the extent of the lie, Beck wondered how long the hotel actually thought they would be able to maintain it.

  “I’m guessing there were signs of foul play?” Leo said.

  “There was nothing but foul play,” Beck responded. On all sides. Half of it hotel-sanctioned.

  Lifting the remote as the story came to an end, Leo started to power the TV off.

  “Hold on.” Beck stopped him when a familiar face appeared on the screen. The lines in the man’s cheeks smoother than normal, he was clearly struggling to hold his look of composure, just barely keeping it together. “Turn it up.”

  “You haven’t seen this?”

  “Shh.”

  “I vehemently deny these allegations.” Cameras flashing, Representative Gerald Derby made the speech at what appeared to be a planned press conference. “I have fought for the rights of women and children throughout my career. That anyone would accuse me of using my position to take advantage of those who have already been put at the mercy of real abusers and an unfair system is appalling to me. And it is a lie.”

  “Sounds like a politician, doesn’t he?” Leo uttered.

  “No. Not this guy.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Turning on the couch, Leo looked back at Beck. “Didn’t you campaign for him or something?”

  “I volunteered for security when he first ran for office.”

  “Same thing.” Leo shrugged.

  Though it wasn’t exactly, the distinction hardly made a difference. Beck had done it for the same reasons as those who manned the phone banks and canvassed neighborhoods. Because Gerald Derby was a truly decent man, and not politician material at all. He didn’t make false promises, he didn’t say whatever it took to get elected, and, as far as Beck could tell in the few times she had talked to him in person, the man was incapable of lying. He was an honest arrow in a crooked field, so, whatever someone was saying he did, Beck had some confidence he didn’t. Which was saying something. In general, she didn’t put a lot of faith in human nature.

  6 - Metro Homicide - Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.

  “Lab results.” After a morning of repeatedly asking for them, Williams at last returned with the prize.

  “Finally.” Beck pushed up to follow him to the cubicle in the corner, situated away from the other desks, the one Bishop had taken over in his effort to keep their secret investigation a secret.

  “They got results for the chips,” Williams declared as Bishop looked up. “The ones pulled from the vic were fakes, like those bagged from the left side of the safe. The ones taken from the right side were real, just like the cage cashier told us.”

  Bishop’s gaze sliding her way, it was clear he still harbored hard feelings that Beck didn’t tell him her plan until it was done. Personally, Beck thought she’d been cooperative by letting him in on the outcome before CSU could tell him the same thing.

  “The fact that they’re fake certainly explains why someone wouldn’t mind leaving them behind,” he uttered.

  “So, any thoughts as to why this killer would shove counterfeit casino chips into the vic, or have stilettos on hand?” Beck was as careful as she could be with the question.

  “Staged. That’s all I can think,” Bishop said, but the deep sigh that followed the statement indicated he had other thoughts he was keeping to himself. “Did they send the video yet?”

  “Not yet,” Williams answered.

  “Did they say what’s taking so long?”

  “Their attorney is reviewing the warrant.” Williams told it to Bishop exactly as the hotel office manager told it to him.

  “Want us to take a trip back over there and put some pressure on them?” Beck offered.

  “If you think you can.”

  “Pretty sure we can.” In fact, Beck liked to think it was one of her areas of expertise.

  “Go for it.” For an instant, Bishop may have actually been glad she was there.

  “Should we tell Martinez?” Williams asked.

  “Not necessary.” Bishop shook his head. “He said do what we have to do, so do what you have to do.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Though Williams looked slightly concerned at such an open directive, Beck was just relieved to have something proactive to pursue.

  7 - Four Kings Casino & Hotel Lobby - Wednesday, 2:45 p.m.

  “Oh no. No. No.” Jeremiah looked as though he wanted to flee at the sight of them. “You already had me at the station all afternoon yesterday. This is harassment.”

  “It’s hardly harassment,” Williams said. “Why are you even out here? We didn’t ask for you.”

  “Mr. Tolliver is a very busy man,” Jeremiah responded.

  “Too busy to respond to a warrant?”

  “The security team is putting the video together as fast as they can.”

  “Really?” Beck said. “Time stamp Gerber’s arrival. Time stamp two hours after the time of death. Save. Send our way.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Jeremiah said.

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  “You will get it as soon as we have it.”

  “Jeremiah.” Beck took a step closer to him. “I want you to do something for me. I want you to go back to wherever you just came from, and tell your uncle…” Jeremiah looked shocked she had discovered nepotism was alive and well in Sin City. “We have proof that Mr. Gerber was ripping off the casino, and that it had something to do with his murder. You were the one having the crime scene cleaned. You were the one who moved the body. And they were your prints found on one of the chips shoved into our victim.”

  “What?” Jeremiah returned. “That’s impossible.”

  “Just telling you what the lab report says.”

  “I didn’t even touch the body!”

  Several heads turning at his exclamation, Jeremiah tried to smile his way out of it as he looked to the nearby guests, dropping the act as his gaze moved back to Beck.

  “That’s not what this says.” Beck slid the folded paper from her pocket. “You are, at the very least, an accomplice, but, until we get someone better, you are going to be our primary suspect, and you could have hidden evidence anywhere in this place. So, here’s what we’re going to do. While we’re waiting for that video, we are going to turn this entire hotel into a crime scene.”

  “You can’t do that. My uncle is on the phone with his lawyers right now. They said you already overstepped by taping off all the floors.”

  “Well, your uncle’s legal team doesn’t have all the information we have,” Beck uttered as she smoothed the lapel of Jeremiah’s jacket. “Why don’t you go back in there, tell them what I just told you, and see what they have to say now? Go ahead. We’ll wait.”

  Waved away, Jeremiah looked somewhere between disbelieving and furious as he went through the door behind reception from which he’d emerged a few moments before.

  “A little heads-up next time would be great,” Williams uttered.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting Jeremiah again. I had to improvise.”

  “So, what is that?” Williams motioned to the paper in Beck’s hand.

  “No idea. I swiped it from the receptionist’s desk when we were up there, just in case.” Unfolding it, Beck took a look. “Invoice for little lotions. Wow. They really get a steal on those.”

  “Risky.” Williams shook his head.

  “What’s the worst that could happen? Jeremiah grabs it from my hand, pays a bill on time, and
we’re right back where we started.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Williams conceded, but Beck felt sort of bad for making him crazy.

  Williams wasn’t a puritan. She knew that much. He liked the rules for good reason. They gave a cop credibility. They protected the public. They kept the path to higher things clear of unnecessary obstructions. Her aspirations no way near as lofty as his, Beck simply wasn’t as concerned with lasting credibility as she was getting what she needed when she needed it.

  “So, are you putting forth this much effort to get Bishop proof we’re working the right case, or to prove him wrong?” Williams questioned.

  “I’m just trying to figure things out,” Beck responded.

  “That’s a very diplomatic answer.” Williams looked off toward the camera in the corner, recording their every move as they tried to find out more about the moves of their victim. “What about the… you know, the guy you know?”

  Turning toward him, Beck scanned Williams from head to toe, before deciding it was the real Williams asking the question. “Are you actually suggesting I circumvent due process?”

  “I’m just surprised you haven’t yet,” Williams countered.

  “There’s too much security in these places,” Beck told him. “Too high-risk. If Dougie ever gets caught, it’ll be because he tries to infiltrate a place like this.”

  “So, you worry about this asset. I take it he’s more than an asset. He’s a friend?”

  “Yes, he’s a friend,” Beck said.

  “One of your crew growing up?” Williams asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And, since you said ‘if he ever gets caught,’ I assume he doesn’t just do the occasional side job for you and work in coding or some other type of legitimate IT work the rest of the time.”

  “Depends on your definition of legitimate,” Beck said.

  “What does he do?”

  Gaze shifting away, Beck took a measured breath and let it out slowly.

  “Come on, Nash. How are we supposed to trust each other if we can’t be honest?”

  That was easy for him to say. The secrets Williams was keeping weren’t likely to put anyone away for fifteen years for Internet theft.

  “I cheated on my wife.”

  Statement jolting, to say the least, Beck felt slightly unsteady as she moved her eyes back to Williams.

  “Before Adreene was born. I was on a six-month training deployment, and I was young. Stupid. It was just a fling and Sandra never found out about it, but I know. And now you know. Needless to say, anything we talk about stays between us.”

  Not sure if Williams was the most trusting person she had ever met, determined to solidify their connection, or completely insane for giving her the power to topple his entire world, Beck did appreciate the significance of the gesture. She also recognized how much she had asked of Williams over the past two and a half weeks, and how much he had taken in stride.

  “Got any friends in banking?” she asked.

  “I know a few people who work behind counters,” Williams responded. “None with a majority stake.”

  “Did you know U.S. banks charged more than thirty billion dollars in overdraft fees last year?”

  “No. But that sounds like a lot.”

  “Dougie thinks so too,” Beck said. “He refunds a quarter percent of them, and takes one percent off that for his trouble.”

  “Hold up.” Williams held a hand up. “Your friend refunds seventy-five million dollars a year to customers, and pulls in seven hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “Is that how much it is?” Beck responded.

  “Man, I am in the wrong business.” Williams shook his head. “How is he getting away with that? He won’t mess with the casinos, but he’ll hack into banks?”

  “Come on,” Beck returned. “You know these places have more security than banks do. Besides, Dougie figures a quarter of a percent isn’t enough for them to investigate all that hard. And, even if he does get caught, he’ll only have to deal with the police. What kind of muscle do you think they would send if one of these places caught someone stealing from them?”

  “I’d rather not think about it,” Williams replied as Jeremiah made his dour-faced return to the lobby.

  “You’ll have the video within the hour,” he said.

  “Do we need to stay here to make sure?” Williams was right back on his game.

  “You’ll get it.”

  “We’d better.” Tapping the folded lotion invoice against Jeremiah’s chest, Beck watched his eyes follow the paper as it slid into her pocket. “Thanks for your help.”

  Glancing to Williams as they turned for the door, Beck was infinitely grateful Mr. Tolliver was just a casino owner, and clearly not a gambler. If he was a man who had spent much time at his own tables, he surely would have called her bluff.

  8 - Downtown Las Vegas Streets - Wednesday, 3:15 p.m.

  Traffic backed up for half a block as Beck and Williams exited the parking garage onto South 3rd Street, the reason didn’t become apparent until they rounded the block to hit Bonneville where the road turned two-way. Westbound cars at a near standstill, Williams flipped on the lights when drivers kept running the signals in all directions and turning the intersection into a hopeless snarl. Vehicles moving out of the way, he maneuvered through the traffic, getting in line with the cars that had no place else to go but forward.

  It wasn’t far down the road they came upon the cause of the back-up. News vehicles illegally parked in the right two lanes, they were just lucky there had yet to be a major accident.

  “Want to take a time-out and write some citations?” Williams asked.

  “Looks like they’ve got it under control.” Beck watched a uniformed officer order a driver back into his van, and the vehicle move along. Though, that one gone, there was still a quarter-mile of traffic obstruction for the officers to clear.

  “What’s going on? Can you tell?”

  Pulling out her cell, Beck figured it was the more practical option than trying to see through the line of cars and the crowd of people pushing north through the parking lot off the side of the road.

  “Do you know what all’s over there?”

  “The Smith Center,” Williams returned. “Chamber of Commerce. Discovery Children’s Museum.”

  Looking each up in turn, Beck’s jaw clenched when she realized what all the commotion had to be about. “They’re having a benefit to support the Child Abuse Hotline at the children’s museum.”

  “Really?” Williams responded. “You mean, the vultures actually gathered to report on something worthwhile?”

  “Representative Derby is spearheading it.” Pressing the button to power off the display, Beck dropped her cell into her lap. “Nothing a vulture loves more than a fresh wound.”

  “Of course,” Williams uttered. “Makes me sick.”

  “What does? The press, or what they’re saying Derby did?”

  “Both,” Williams said.

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “I think I voted for the guy every time he ran for office, so I sure as hell hope not. But all those shelters he backs and the charities he supports, it would give him plenty of opportunity.”

  “So, a man who dedicates his career to helping women and children is a more likely pervert than most?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Williams said. “I’m just saying, when these kinds of things come out, there’s usually an element of truth to them. And that statement he made, what else was he going to say?”

  A fair enough point. How many guilty men confessed? Not too many. At least, not without a ton more evidence. None of those guilty men were this man, though. Which made it worse for him. A big-hearted politician with a spotless record accused of the worst and most sordid things? It was a media frenzy.

  “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” Beck uttered.

  “What is?” Williams asked.

  “A public figure is accused of something terrible, agai
nst everything he has ever represented. He says nothing, and he’s guilty. He says he didn’t do it, and he’s a liar.”

  9 - Metro Homicide - Wednesday, 3:50 p.m.

  “You’re back.” Bishop was waiting with the impatience of a dog whose owner had stayed late at work as they walked back into the precinct, and Beck was just glad he didn’t try to lick their faces.

  “There was traffic,” Williams said.

  “Video’s coming in.”

  “Wow. That was… time stamp, time stamp, save and send.” Williams glanced Beck’s way.

  “That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “There are twelve hundred cameras on the casino floor alone,” Bishop said.

  “Well, hopefully we won’t need all of them,” Beck stated. If they did, it was going to be a long night.

  “Martinez is getting some recruits from The Academy to help sift through footage. We’ll start with the elevators, since they’re closest to the crime scene. Norwood is getting us set up with six screens in an interview room.”

  “So, what do you want us to do?” Beck asked.

  “We’ve got the footage from the lobby already, if you want to look at that.”

  “I would love to look at that.” Beck didn’t even have to be smartass about it. The sooner they could prove what they all knew - that this victim was killed by someone other than their killer - the sooner they could start looking someplace else.