21 Weeks: Week 3

by R.A. LaShea

  *****

  Entering the lobby five minutes before the time of his check-in, Frederick Gerber didn’t make much of an impression. If they didn’t know who it was they were looking for, Beck suspected she would have skimmed right over the guy.

  “No one even knows this guy is there.” Williams, too, noticed Gerber’s lack of impact on other lobby patrons. It was probably why he was chosen for the job. Nothing in the man’s history indicating he would have the ability to create a near-perfect counterfeit, the con was, most likely, set up as usual. One person had the skill to make the chips, and that person hired a nondescript, everyday nobody to take the risk and split the pot down the middle.

  “He sure has a wandering eye, though.”

  On the screen, Mr. Gerber slipped off his wedding band, dropping it into his pocket as his gaze followed two young women across the room.

  “I guess we know what happened to his wedding ring,” Williams uttered.

  “But CSU didn’t find a ring,” Beck realized. “Not in the safe, or anywhere else in the room.”

  “So, where did that end up?” Williams asked.

  “That’s a very good question,” Beck said.

  10 - Metro Homicide Interview Room - Wednesday, 4:30 p.m.

  Three screens dominating each side of the long table, a recruit on loan from The Academy perched before each one.

  “We’re going through forty-eight hours of footage?” a guy with dusty brown hair and a suppressed frown asked, and Beck assumed he was missing something of some importance.

  Late in the day when they arrived at the station, the recruits had been told to cancel any plans and be ready to pull an all-nighter, or several-dayer, if that’s what it took. It was a weak form of hazing they’d all had to go through at some point - an endurance test to make sure police hopefuls really wanted a career in law enforcement, where there was only a set schedule if there was no crime.

  “No. You want to be police officers,” Bishop declared. “You need to use some logic so you don’t have to go through forty-eight hours of footage. So, where do you start?”

  Looking to each other, the recruits were clearly reluctant to answer, and Beck felt their pain. Bishop wasn’t exactly the most delightful teacher she could imagine having for any new learning experience.

  “Time of death.”

  “Thank you, Detective Nash.” Bishop sent a silencing glare her way, but, unlike his captive students, Beck wasn’t scared of him. She just wanted to get the band marching across the field. “What goes up must come down. So, you look forward first. Our M.E. puts time of death between 1:30 and 2:45 a.m. We’ll start back at one to be safe. Let’s see who gets on the elevators after that. Okay, go ahead and play it.”

  “What if we miss someone?” A recruit glanced up.

  “That’s going to be far more likely if you’re not looking.” Bishop gestured him back around.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t.” Williams gave the recruit the more consoling answer.

  Though, it could be a long time getting there, Beck realized, as she watched the recruits move at a dragging pace through the footage. She understood that Martinez thought this was a good opportunity, that sifting through all this surveillance, especially from a casino, was a chance that didn’t come around every day. She even got that more eyes should, logically speaking, make lighter work. Each of them pausing every five seconds to look hard at riders who were no more than Vegas regulars, though, Beck was starting to feel as if it would take to the week’s end just to get eyes on a suspect.

  “What about them?” It turned out, it was just over two hours of pacing at the recruits’ backs for the only female they could evidently find at The Academy to turn for confirmation, and Beck looked to the screen.

  “Stilettos and pimpin’ shoes. Looks about right,” Williams said as he came around the table to take in the buff Caucasian man with a half-mohawk, and the tall, slender half black, half Asian woman with long dark hair on the screen.

  “Play it.” Hands going to the back of the recruit’s chair, Beck stared at the couple as Williams stepped in closer.

  Both wearing black, it was impossible to tell if the man and woman had any blood on them. Their body language, though, was plenty suspect. Trying to play it cool - too cool - the man with the mohawk turned his head as other riders stepped aboard a few floors down, and the woman with him looked to her fingernails, pouting at the apparent discovery her black-and-white polka dot manicure had suffered some damage.

  Evading eyewitnesses, that was how Beck would characterize that particular move.

  “Print that.” Going to retrieve it, Beck held the printout up to the other recruits. “Have any of you seen either of these people?”

  “Yeah, I remember him.” The recruit at the far end nodded.

  “Go back and find him,” Bishop said.

  “How about her?” Beck held the image up again, but no one seemed to remember the woman.

  “Got him.” It took only a few minutes for the recruit to rewind far enough, and Beck went down the line to see the mohawked man on his screen.

  “2:02 a.m.,” she noted the timestamp. “Can we split their screens? Take these three forward and these three back?”

  “Go ahead.” Bishop stepped out of the way, the half of him holding out the belief this victim was the one they were waiting for yielding to the half that recognized someone could die while they kept loping in the wrong direction.

  “Everyone start at 2:02 a.m.” Beck showed the recruits on her side of the table how to split their screens and pull in two separate video feeds, as Williams did the same on his side. “You go back, we’ll go forward?”

  “Okay.” Williams nodded his agreement. “Wait, wait, wait. That’s her,” he said within minutes. “Right there.”

  “She has short blonde hair.”

  “It’s still her. You can’t rely on features people can quickly change.” Motioning across the table, Williams took the printout from Beck to compare it to the image on the screen. “See, she’s wearing the same clothes. Facial structure’s the same.”

  “What time do you have?” Beck asked.

  “1:58:43.”

  “So, they took separate elevators three minutes apart,” Beck said. “And the woman changed her hair between going up and coming down.”

  “Print that.” Williams walked to the printer to grab the new printout and held the two images side by side. “And, is it just me, or is her handbag packed a lot fuller going up than it is coming down?”

  “Is that because she’s carrying a wig?” one astute recruit asked.

  “That, and about eight hundred dollars worth of casino chips,” Bishop was forced to accept.

  “So, it’s them?”

  “Not necessarily,” Williams said. “They could be strangers who met in the high rollers’ lounge upstairs. They could be a couple having a fight.”

  “But she changed her hair.”

  “It’s not illegal to change hair,” Williams stated. “We talk to them now, based on this, any good defense attorney is going to want to know why. We need a better reason.”

  “We have to tie them to Gerber,” Bishop said, and, with a nod to Bishop and Williams, Beck switched her recruits back to their original full-screen assignments.

  “Let’s start back at one a.m., and rewind at four times standard speed. We’re looking for the woman in the photo, or Gerber. Either one.” Holding the pictures up, Beck gave the recruits a quick visual reminder, before sliding the printed images onto the table to keep her eyes on the screens.

  “Is this him?” a recruit on Williams’ side questioned, and, sliding down to check, Williams confirmed with a nod.

  “What time?” Beck asked.

  “10:33.”

  “Early night. Let’s keep going back.”

  “Nothing,” Williams declared, and Beck’s side came up equally empty as they made it to early evening.

  “Try the night before,” Bishop advised them.


  “What time?” a recruit asked.

  “Ten again?” Williams said.

  On the same wavelength, Beck nodded her agreement as the recruits moved to the right date and time. Playing too late into the night would have made their vic more conspicuous on the casino floor, something he wouldn’t want to be while trying to rip the place off. But there was also the matter of what time a man like married Mr. Gerber would chance taking a prostitute up to his room.

  “Here he is.” Thirty minutes, and two hours of tape, later, Mr. Gerber at last appeared, and Beck moved behind the recruit who found him as he resumed playing the video at normal speed. The identification spot-on, they watched Mr. Gerber step into the empty elevator, reaching out to hold the doors for a familiar, gazelle-like woman, who stepped aboard and leaned against the wall as if she owned the place.

  “That’s the same woman.” The recruit was stoked at his find.

  “Wonder how he’s planning to pay for her,” Williams uttered as he came to see for himself.

  “She’s a prostitute?” Glancing up at the wide-eyed recruit across the table, he looked completely sincere. “I thought prostitution was illegal in this county.”

  “Oh my God, that’s adorable,” Beck said. “Where did they pick you? A cornfield in Nebraska?”

  Snortle slipping out of him, Williams did manage to stifle the rest of his laughter as his eyes returned to the screen.

  “So, our vic picks up a girl, pays her in fake chips, and the next night she comes back with a friend.” Beck and Williams looked up at Bishop as he faced the facts. “This guy pissed off the wrong hooker.”

  “You’d have been pissed off too,” Williams said.

  “Let’s run them through the system.” Coming forward to direct the show once more, Bishop led the recruits in the process of running facial recognition, and the machine immediately started spitting out results.

  “That’s him. That is definitely him.” Williams pointed to the third man in the first row of possibles. “Larceny. Home invasion. Auto theft. Arnold Perry.” Pulling out his notepad, he wrote down the information from the screen.

  “How about her?” Beck asked.

  “Six possibles,” Bishop uttered. “Four clean. Devonne Carter, picked up twice for solicitation, and Lydia Jenkins, mother of three, arrested during a political protest last year. Let’s go with logic. See if we have any units in the area that can swing by Ms. Carter’s place.”

  Grabbing his phone, Williams stepped away from the table to make the call.

  “And we’ll start in on the casino footage,” Bishop said. “See if we can track more of Gerber’s movements.”

  “Do you need me for that?” Proof positive staring back at her from the screen, Beck could no longer ignore the sinking sensation that had been trying to pull her down all week.

  “You got somewhere you need to be?”

  “There’s something I said I’d do for my brother,” Beck lied, and Bishop frowned at the realization she wasn’t kidding.

  “Do what you have to do.” He shrugged. “We can’t do much else until we get someone down here anyway.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” It was all Beck could give him. Concern quickening her steps, she was almost out the door when Williams caught her.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. “Is it someplace I should be coming with you?”

  “Just an errand.” Beck patted his chest. “Nothing dangerous. I won’t be long.”

  11 - Metro Homicide Interview Room - Wednesday, 9:00 p.m.

  “Breaking news in the case against State Representative Gerald Derby. A source close to this station has uncovered a warrant issued against Representative Derby in France for the sexual abuse of three children while he was on vacation there in 2011.”

  The words from the radio report echoed in Beck’s head as she walked back into the department.

  “Hey. Everything okay?” Williams met her at the interview room door.

  “Fine.” It was easier to look past him than at him, and Beck’s gaze fell on the recruits gathered at one end of the table. “What’s going on here?”

  “Carter wasn’t at her last known, or two previous addresses.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Bishop has them working on a bulletin to send out to the casinos.”

  “How’s that going?”

  Williams’ hiss of response telling the tale, Beck stepped into the room to find out just where the recruits had gone wrong.

  “Everything taken care of?” Bishop eyed her with suspicion.

  Or maybe, knowing where she’d been, it just felt like suspicion to Beck.

  “I did all I could.” Her gaze shifted once again to the recruits. “So, what do you have so far?”

  “Wanted for questioning. Devonne Carter. Possible witness to a homicide,” the female recruit read.

  Watching Bishop’s head shake from the corner of her eye, Beck glanced his way, and, holding a hand up, Bishop offered her the right of way in crushing their youthful naiveté.

  “You can’t tell them that,” Beck said.

  “Why not?” a recruit asked.

  Beck would have liked to have thought she was like them once, all hopeful and harboring the belief the majority of people just wanted to do the right thing.

  “Because casino floor men don’t care about murders that might happen upstairs.”

  The truth was far more apathetic. When terrible things happened, the majority of people just wanted to be left out of it.

  “Should we tell them she’s a prostitute instead?”

  Beck laughed. “Prostitutes bring money to casinos. Tell them that, and they’ll probably put her up in a luxury suite and make sure we never find her.”

  “So, what do we say?”

  “You have to think the way they think,” Beck responded. “Understand what they care about. You make your headline, ‘Possible Token Counterfeiter.’ Below the picture, say, ‘Devonne Carter. Wanted for questioning in connection with counterfeit casino tokens.’ That’s all you’ll need.”

  The recruits glancing to Bishop for confirmation, he nodded the sad truth, and they deleted everything to start again.

  “While we’re waiting for that to work…” Lowering her voice, Beck walked to where Bishop stood against the wall, the frantic thrumming in her nerves demanding she say something. “Could we talk about the other case? We know this guy was in over his head. It seems unlikely -”

  “I’ve been thinking it too.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah.” Bishop nodded as Williams came up at Beck’s shoulder. “Maybe it was a bluff. None of the deaths from last week fit, and this fits less and less. Maybe this is what he wanted, for us to chase after nothing and ignore the murders right in front of us.”

  “Or…” Beck tried to retain some measure of calm. Bishop was, after all, right as far as the old murders were concerned. She didn’t expect him to just come around to her way of thinking all at once. “Maybe the killer was responsible for one of the murders last week, and we are chasing the wrong thing.”

  “There’ve been no other murders, Nash,” Bishop said. “I check with the coroner’s office every day, twice a day. There’s nothing even suspicious enough to pursue.”

  “Maybe the murder hasn’t happened yet,” Beck uttered.

  “Do you know something?” Bishop asked her point-blank, and it was Beck’s chance.

  She could tell them, state her hypothesis, baseless conjecture though it may be. When Bishop said “know,” though, he meant “know.” He didn’t mean feel, speculate, or intuit. They’d had the exact same debate the week before, and, Bishop looking more than ready to fire back the second she opened her mouth, Beck couldn’t see this one going any differently.

  “No,” she said. “I just think we are in a very tight box right now. Maybe if we could get outside of it, we would -”

  “Why don’t we solve the case we know is a murder?” Interrupted, yet again, before sh
e could finish, Beck bit the inside of her jaw to keep from telling Bishop all about it. “Then, we’ll see what we can do about that box.”

  “Sergeant Bishop?” a recruit called out to him, and, gaze lingering on Beck for a moment, Bishop went to take care of the case at hand.

  “Something you want to tell me?” Williams asked.

  “Would it really matter?” Beck uttered as she turned from the room.

  12 - Monte Carlo Casino - Thursday, 11:05 p.m.

  Smoke hanging on the air, Beck took another sip from her glass, though it did little to ease the parched feeling or resultant ache behind her eyes, as she glanced to where Arnold Perry sat at the bar three stools down.

  “What’s taking so long?” Turning on her own stool, she caught Williams’ gaze across the room. “Be more seductive.”

  “I’m being as sexy as I can,” Williams returned over Beck’s earpiece, and, from a distance, Beck watched him smile at the woman sitting at the blackjack table next to him, who either thought Williams was talking to himself or was too sexy to resist. “She only has eyes for the guy rolling the dice.”

  “Can you tell how much he’s up?” Gaze trailing to the craps table, Beck caught the man at the start of another throw, and the crowd went up in cheers, indicating Williams’ competition for Devonne Carter’s attention was only getting richer by the second.

  “Gotta be two hundred grand, at least,” Williams said.

  “So, what do you think? They’re not looking for a john, but a big score?”

  “Probably know they need to get out of town,” Williams reasoned. “A big score would set them up.”

  “We have to make you more desirable.” Setting her glass on the bar, Beck slipped off the stool and onto heels that gave her an extra two inches on the room. “Do you have eyes on Arnold?”

  “Yeah, I see him. He’s not going anywhere until she does.”

  On that assurance, Beck went off to up their ante, eyes scanning the casino floor as she moved in the direction of the cage. Catching a flash of gold from a roulette table, she pulled up next to the man wearing it, as he made another deliberate effort to show off the accessory around his wrist.

  “Hey.” Beck smiled at him.

  “Hey there,” the man returned. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is that a real Rolex?”

  “It sure is.” Turning her way, the man’s free hand slipped over Beck’s hip, brazen fingers coming within an inch of her ass as he flashed the watch in her face.

  “How much did it cost?”

  “Forty-nine thousand dollars,” the man responded loud enough for the entire table to hear. “It’s special edition.”

  “Wow,” Beck uttered. “What an incredible waste of money.” Smile falling instantly from the man’s face, she considered it payback for his liberal hand. “Can I borrow it?”

  “No, you can’t borrow it.” Mr. Ladies’ Man suddenly turning into Mr. Crotchety, he gave Beck a cold shoulder as he turned back to the table.

  Supposing she could have been nicer in order to get what she wanted, Beck trusted the other means she had at her disposal would prove more effective anyway.

  “How about now?” Flipping her badge out, she flashed it with the same flagrance with which the man had put his gold Rolex on display. “And, before you answer, you should know it’s a misdemeanor in the state of Nevada to refuse aid to a police officer.”

  Looking to the man beside him with disbelief and thoughts Beck could only imagine, Rolex Man at last unfastened the garish display of wealth from his wrist.

  “And you.” Eyes drawn to his friend, Beck noticed the gold band embedded with diamonds the man wore. “Your ring.”

  “My grandmother gave me this ring.”

  “I doubt that seriously. Give it to me.” Looking back to make sure everyone was where she left them as the man slowly met the order, Beck gathered the accessories when they were laid before her. “The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department thanks you for your cooperation.”

  “Where are you going with them?”

  “Just stay here. You’ll get them back,” Beck assured them.

  Expensive cargo clutched in her hands as she made way to the cage, she jumped line with apologies, holding her badge up for the cashier to see. “I need half a million in chips on racks.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Get the cage manager. Now. Do it fast.”

  “Where are you?” Williams reminded Beck of the immediacy of their situation as she waited for the cashier to track down her manager.

  “I’m still at the cage. I’ll be right there.”

  “Our high roller just sevened out. He’s in the round to shoot again, but Carter’s making a real play to talk him away from the table.”

  Staring through the metal barrier designed to look more like decoration than a safeguard, Beck tapped her fingers on the counter. They could try to take them where they were, but casino grabs were always risky. There were too many pathways, too many places to hide, and too many people to shoot around. Devonne and Arnold had “runners” written all over them. The chance of them getting away went down ten-fold if they could draw them out of the room first.

  When the cage manager at last appeared, Beck slid her badge across the counter.

  “I need half a million in chips, and I need them now. You’ll get them right back.”

  Hesitating for only a moment, the woman nodded for the cashier to comply.

  “It needs to look real,” Beck said.

  “Four hundred and ninety-six thousand over five racks?”

  “Close enough.” The cage cashier demonstrating her skill by counting out the large sum in record time, Beck stacked the racks as they came through the window. “Thank you.

  “I’m coming up on the far side of the baccarat table. Come get your plunder,” she told Williams as she swept back through the casino a few seconds later, eyes twice as peeled, knowing how many eyes were on her, or, more accurately, the racks of chips she carried.

  “Are they still over there?” she asked when Williams met her out of view of the bar and the craps table.

  “Yeah.” Williams perched the rack he’d brought from the blackjack table atop the others in Beck’s hands, and Beck blinked at the scant supply of chips.

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Like twelve-hundred,” Williams said. “It was taking forever.”

  “At least, it’s not your money,” Beck uttered. Though, she suspected Martinez would be thrilled by the hoops he was going to have to jump through to get the department money back from the casino when they were done. “I’m going back around this way.” Beck put the loaded racks in Williams’ hands once he was adorned with the watch and ring. “If they follow you, I’ll follow them. Reel her in, Stud.”

  Rotating him in the direction of their target, Beck watched Williams walk over to the craps table. Balancing the racks on the rail next to Devonne when he made it there, Williams pulled a fist of five-hundred dollar chips from the top one, using them to tip the boxman, the stickman, and the base dealers who were working the table. The story he spun about playing there earlier was more than believable, and Beck watched Devonne’s gaze follow Williams’ flashy jewelry like a cat chased yarn, before moving down the length of the baccarat table, getting eyes on the scene again as Williams looked to Devonne with, what Beck had to admit was, a rather dashing smile.

  Performance impeccable, when Williams walked off, he took Devonne’s attention with him. Glancing to the bar, Devonne gestured 5-0-0 at Arnold, proving she was as quick on the count as Beck suspected she would be. Nodding for Devonne to follow him, Arnold tossed back the last of his triple bourbon sour and slid down off his stool.

  “You make great bait, Williams.” Beck let him know they were coming as she pulled up in the last position of their disorganized parade. “The cage manager is at the center window.”

  Getting in line, Williams told the woman where the missing chips had gone as he cashed
out, and the manager handed him a bulging bag. Filled with blank receipt paper, it had to look like a whole lot of something to the uninformed. It was enough to lure Devonne and Arnold out of the casino anyway, and Beck trailed them at twenty feet, hanging back at each corner to keep a safe distance in the wide open hallways that led toward the casino’s attached hotel.

  When a main exit presented itself ahead, it was the perfect opportunity for a quick escape, and Devonne and Arnold made their move.

  “Excuse me?” Beck closed some of the distance as Devonne rushed up to stop Williams.

  “Hello again.” Williams turned to Devonne with that same suave smile.

  Stopping by a store window, Beck pretended to admire the crafted glass ornaments on display, as she kept an eye on Arnold where he stopped outside a candy shop and eyed the bag of fake cash in Williams’ hand.

  “You remember me,” Devonne said.

  “How could I forget you?” Williams responded.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, when you looked at me in there, I was pretty sure I knew what you were thinking.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Williams uttered.

  “Are you telling me you’re not looking for a good time?” Devonne asked.

  “Well, I do like a good time.” Williams neglected to mention his idea of a good time was an amusement park with his kids. “To be honest, though, I’d rather have a conversation.”

  “Well, Baby, I am a great listener.” When Devonne’s hand slid through Williams’ short hair, Beck marched their direction, watching Williams reach into his pocket as Arnold closed in for the grab.

  “I’d really rather you do the talking.” Dropping the bag of nothing at his feet, Williams held his badge up, seizing Devonne’s arm as she tried to run, and shrinking back as the woman laid into him with a wail of claws and screeches.

  Commotion drawing plenty of attention, it spurred Arnold into action, and he turned and ran for the door. Kicking off her heels, Beck sprinted full-force after him, plowing into Arnold and falling atop his back as they skidded across the waxed marble floor.

  Arnold’s unrelenting efforts to get up much like riding a bronco, Beck fumbled for the stun gun in her purse, holding it to his neck, and the jolt of electricity subdued the large man enough for Beck to wrench his hands behind his back and get them cuffed.

  “Get back here, you bitch!” Beck only realized Devonne had gotten away when Arnold regained function enough to yell.

  “You got her?” she asked as Williams wrapped the wildly thrashing woman back up by the door.

  “I got her.” Williams put Devonne on the floor far more gently than Beck would have under the circumstances. “It’s all right everyone.” Noticing they had drawn a crowd, Williams paused to hold his badge up. “Metro PD.”

  “I want a lawyer,” Devonne screamed as Williams finally got cuffs on her.

  “Me too,” Arnold said. “I want a lawyer too.”

  “Great.” Williams was wholly sincere. “We will let you make that call in the morning, because I would really like to go home and get some sleep.”

  13 - Beck’s Apartment - Saturday, 5:10 a.m.

  They did it. Of course, they did it. And it didn’t take much prodding to get them to confess. Drawing an admission of guilt out of people who had tenuous relationships wasn’t difficult. They were easy to turn on each other, and Devonne swiveled fast when threatened with the possibility of spending her prettiest years in prison. Not that she wouldn’t still do plenty of time. If nothing else, she had stabbed a man with a stiletto and had his wedding band in her purse. She wasn’t walking away from this, no matter how much she tried to place the blame solely on “Arnie.”

  Case opened, case closed, as they so often were when dealing with loads of evidence and incompetent criminals.

  It was the good criminals they had to worry about.