But something didn’t smell right. The Summerlin neighborhood in which the Hales lived was lily-white, and she figured that a black man the size of Lawrence Busby would have attracted somebody’s attention. She also couldn’t understand why Busby, who lived a couple of miles from downtown, would be speeding around a residential neighborhood on the far west side of the city.
“Open the car for us, will you, Crawford?” Serena asked. “I’d like to take a look before Busby gets here.”
“Don’t we need a warrant for that?”
Serena shrugged. “That’s a stolen vehicle, according to Mr. Busby. We need to look for evidence of who stole it.”
Crawford popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a stiff narrow wire with a loop at one end, and disengaged the lock on the driver’s door of the Aztek in a few seconds. Taking care not to disturb any prints, he gingerly swung the door open.
Serena peered inside, then squeezed behind the wheel. She looked around. Busby had cleaned up after himself. The interior was spotless, vacuumed clean, no papers or trash. With the tip of a pen, she opened the glove compartment, but found only the owner’s manual inside. She pulled open the ashtray. It was unused.
She heard the back door open.
“Anything up front?” Cordy asked.
“Zip.”
“I’ll check under the seats.”
Serena saw a flashlight beam scooting like a searchlight on the floor.
Cordy whistled. “Come to papa,” he said. “Got a piece of paper here. Looks like a receipt.”
Serena got out of the car and watched Cordy maneuver his arm under the seat. He emerged triumphantly a few seconds later, clutching a two-inch by three-inch white slip in the tiny jaws of a tweezer. He shined the flashlight on the paper, and Serena leaned in with him to get a better look.
The receipt was from a convenience store somewhere near Reno, more than four hundred miles to the north. Six Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a Sprite at eight in the morning. Breakfast of champions. The receipt was dated more than two weeks prior to the accident.
“I reckon that’s Mr. Busby now,” Crawford said, as a second patrol car pulled silently into the lot.
As the car drew closer, Serena could see what looked like a grizzly bear in the front passenger seat. His driver’s license stats didn’t do him justice. Lawrence Busby had to weigh three hundred pounds. He had a moon-shaped face, black hair cut as flat as a pan on top of his skull, and jowls that drooped like the face of a bloodhound. Serena could see a sheen on the man’s ebony face. He was sweating.
“I bet his breasts are bigger than yours, too,” Cordy said, winking.
Serena fought back a grin. She saw Busby reaching for the door handle, and she held up a hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic in its tracks. The woman cop inside the car spoke sharply to Busby, and Serena saw the whites of his eyes get bigger. He put his hands back in his lap. Now he was sweating and scared.
Cordy crooked a finger at the cop in the patrol car, who got out and joined them. Serena approached the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. She left the door open, then used a button to roll down the passenger window. Cordy came over on that side, leaning his elbows on the door.
The car stank. Busby was wearing a gigantic Running Rebels T-shirt, and odor wafted from the wet stains at his pits and under his neck. His legs, like tree trunks, grew out of white shorts. Shifting nervously, he passed gas, then mumbled an apology. His eyes darted back and forth between Serena and Cordy.
“Mr. Busby?” Serena asked. “Is that your car there?”
Busby nodded. His chins swayed.
“How long have you owned it?”
“ ’Bout two months,” Busby mumbled. For a large man, he had a voice so soft that Serena had to strain to hear him.
Cordy jutted his face through the window. “You fit in that car, man? I wouldn’t think you’d fit in that car. What do you do, steer with that gut of yours there?”
Busby looked like he was about to cry.
“That’s enough, Cordy,” Serena said sharply. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Busby?”
“I’m a chef at the Lady Luck downtown.”
“A chef!” Cordy hooted. “They ever wonder why the guests look hungry and you got a big smile on your face?”
Busby meekly shook his head. “I don’t steal nothin’.”
“Do you work any other jobs?” Serena asked. “Anything to bring in a little extra cash?”
“No, I’ve been full-time at the Lady Luck for five years.”
“You ever been to Summerlin, Mr. Busby?”
“That rich place out west? Don’t think so. No reason to.”
“You didn’t go out there last Friday afternoon?” Serena continued.
“No. Like I said, I’ve never been there.” He wiped his forehead with a hand the size of a football. “What’s this all about?”
“This is about the kid you killed, you lying sack of shit,” Cordy told him.
Busby shook his head furiously. His eyes got even bigger and whiter. “I never killed nobody.”
“You ran down a little boy,” Cordy insisted. “Then you ran away like a piece of pussy, didn’t have the balls to tell his mother what you did.”
“You’re crazy,” Busby murmured. He turned to Serena. “He’s crazy. I didn’t do that. No way.”
“You want to tell us how your car got stolen?” Serena asked coolly.
“I parked in the Fremont Street lot downtown last Friday. When I came back, it was gone. I called it in. That’s what happened.”
“This was about eight thirty in the evening?”
“Guess so,” Busby replied. “Sounds about right.”
“And what were you doing downtown?” Serena asked. “Playing the slots?”
“I wasn’t playing, I was working,” Busby said. “Like I told you, I cook sausage and eggs at the Lady Luck.”
“When did you get to work?” Serena asked. She didn’t like where this was going.
“Around noon, like always.”
“You mean you parked the car in the Fremont ramp before noon?” she repeated, just to be sure.
“ ’Course. That’s what I do every day. That’s what I’m saying.”
Serena closed her eyes, feeling sick again. This time it was because she knew they were wrong. He had an alibi. She thought about Cordy teasing the man about his gut and then remembered, too, the tight fit as she slid into the Aztek to search. Wrong, wrong.
“Anybody work with you?” Serena asked. She knew she was wasting her breath. He wasn’t the one.
“Well, yeah, you’ve got a bunch of other cooks and waitresses in and out all day.”
“Did you take any breaks? How about a lunch break in the afternoon?” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it.
“No, I don’t take a lunch break. I work straight through.”
Serena couldn’t help smiling. She eyed the man’s whalelike physique. “Come on, Mr. Busby. No lunch break? You?”
Busby smiled for the first time, too. “The fact is, I’m trying to cut back. And, well, I guess I do have a little snack from time to time on the job.”
Serena sighed. “So tell us what happened to your car.”
“Not much to tell. I left work at the usual time, went back to the lot. No car. I always park in the same spot, so it’s not like I could have lost it. It just wasn’t there.”
“Any relatives have keys to your car?”
“I don’t have much in the way of relatives,” Busby said. “Mama’s dead, Daddy’s in the nursing home. Nobody wanted to marry me looking like this.”
Serena nodded. She felt like shit now, putting this poor man through the ringer. A sad, lonely life, and all she could do was sprinkle in a litde more pain and fear. Then she was going to have to tell him that he couldn’t have his car back tonight
She gestured to Cordy, and the two of them huddled. Cordy popped a piece of gum into his mouth and began chewing loudly. “He didn’t do it,
did he?”
“Nope.”
“So what does that mean?” Cordy asked.
Serena stopped and thought about it The more she did, the less she liked the implications of what they had found. It didn’t feel like an accident anymore. It felt like something much worse.
“Somebody steals a car downtown and then just happens to get into a vicious hit-and-run in a suburb the same afternoon?”
“He killed the kid deliberately,” Cordy concluded.
“It sure feels that way.”
Serena remembered the receipt for the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. She returned to the patrol car, where Busby was waiting, and leaned inside.
“Did you go to Reno last month, Mr. Busby?”
Busby frowned. “No, I’ve never been to Reno. Not ever.”
SIX
Stride waited in Lieutenant Sawhill’s office, swirling coffee in his mug and staring down through the third-floor window at a black cat slinking across the street outside and disappearing into a garbage-strewn backyard. Not long after, a policeman sped by on a mountain bike that looked several sizes too small. His ass hung over the seat, and his knees were almost at his chin. The cat and the cop, both patrolling for rats.
The Homicide Detail was housed in the Downtown Command, Metro’s flagship building, modern and beige, its entrance lined with palm trees. The city fathers had located it in one of the city’s uglier neighborhoods, a few blocks from the downtown casinos, as if the presence of the police headquarters might somehow bring down the surrounding crime rate by osmosis. It wasn’t working.
Stride checked his watch and saw it was almost noon. His stomach was growling. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do more, sleep or eat.
Behind him, the office door opened and closed. Stride nodded at Lester Sawhill, who frowned and pointed a finger at the chair in front of his desk. The phone rang, and Sawhill picked it up. The lieutenant settled himself into his own leather chair, which was so large compared to his small frame that it made him look like a child visiting Daddy’s office. Stride took a seat, too, and waited.
“Good morning, Governor,” Sawhill announced, looking unimpressed, as if he talked to the governor every day.
Serena said she couldn’t remember ever being in Sawhill’s office when he wasn’t on the phone. He liked an audience. It reminded everyone of where he stood in the pecking order.
In Minnesota, Stride had reported to the deputy chief, a leprechaun of a man named Kyle Kinnick-K-2, they called him-who had elephant ears and a reedy voice that sounded like a clarinet played by a six-year-old. Sawhill wasn’t much taller than K-2, but he was a smoother piece of work. He seemed to get a haircut every five days, because the neat trim of his balding brown hair never changed at all. He had a narrow face like a capital V, pockmarked cheeks, and half-glasses that he wore on a chain around his neck when they weren’t pushed down to the little round bulb at the end of his nose.
Sawhill wore a modestly priced gray suit, old but well kept. His uniform. It didn’t matter if it was a July day under, the blistering sun, according to Serena. Sawhill never went so far as to open the collar button of his shirt or loosen the knot in his tie. He never raised his voice, which was toneless but utterly in control. He didn’t seem to have any emotions at all, at least none that made their way onto his face or that lit up his brown eyes.
“That’s a very nice gesture, Governor,” Sawhill said into the phone. He had a pink stress ball on his desk that he squeezed rhythmically, his slim fingers tensing. Every now and then, he studied a fingernail, as if it might need filing.
Stride might as well have been invisible, listening to the one-sided conversation.
It had taken years for Stride to trust K-2, because deep inside, Stride always believed that moving up the ladder in the police bureaucracy meant being a smart politician and giving up the things that made you a good cop. K-2 was different. For him, the cops came first. Stride respected him for his loyalty.
Maybe someday Lester Sawhill would convince him that he, too, was on the side of the angels, but Stride didn’t think so. That wasn’t to say that Sawhill was a bad man. He wasn’t. Stride knew he was intensely moral. A Mormon, like so many senior officials in Sin City. No caffeine. No tobacco. No alcohol. Lots of kids-at least seven, Stride figured, counting up the photographs he saw propped on the bookshelves behind Sawhill’s desk. But Sawhill put God and Vegas first, not his cops.
Stride didn’t know how Sawhill and the other Mormons survived here. They could work in the casinos but not gamble. They were religious in a godless town. He found it strange and a little hypocritical, like a bartender who thinks drinking is evil but doesn’t mind watching others pour poison down their throats.
Sawhill hung up the phone. “That was Governor Durand,” he explained, in case Stride had missed it. “That should give you an idea of the concern that exists over this homicide.”
“I’m aware of that,” Stride replied.
“This is a very public case, Detective,” Sawhill added. “A celebrity murder. The communications department is already fielding press inquiries from around the world.”
Stride could translate Sawhill’s meaning easily enough. If the lieutenant had known it would turn out to be such a high-profile case, he would never have turned it over to his black sheep, the untested detective from Minnesota and his transsexual partner. Not in a million years. Now it was too late to yank them. Unless Stride gave him a reason by screwing up.
“That reminds me,” Sawhill continued. “Direct any media inquiries to the PR office. Okay? You’ve got a case to solve. I don’t want you wasting your time with reporters. That goes for Amanda, too.”
Amanda most of all, Stride thought. Sawhill didn’t want either of them representing the city or, worse, snatching the limelight.
“What’s the status of the investigation? I need to tell the mayor something.”
“We have the perpetrator on film,” Stride said. “He left us his fingerprint. Deliberately. That’s a pretty ballsy move, and not like a hired gun who’s just doing a job.”
Sawhill narrowed his eyes. “Were his prints in the system?”
“No. We couldn’t get a good read on his face, either. He knew where the cameras were. All in all, one cool customer.”
“You’re sure he was after Lane? This wasn’t a random thrill kill?”
“It wasn’t a typical hit. But random? No. He was after MJ. Tracked him and killed him.”
“You have a line on a motive?” Sawhill asked impatiently.
“Drugs, gambling, women. Pick one, you’ve got a motive. But so far no reason to think any of them got him killed.”
“So how do you plan to crack the case?” He was the inquisitor now, probing for a weakness, looking for Stride to give him an excuse to pull him off the murder.
“We’re doing a sketch from what we’ve got, which isn’t much. The Oasis guys are reviewing their entrance tapes for the last month, to see if he was inside casing the joint and may have been a little less careful about keeping his face hidden. We’re backtracking MJ’s route that day and using the sketch to see if anyone spotted the perp when he picked up MJ’s tail. Amanda and I are talking to everyone who knew MJ or saw him recently, to see if we can pick up a thread on who he might have pissed off. And I want to talk to MJ’s father. There was something going on between them. It may be nothing, but it’s the only sign so far that anything was amiss in MJ’s party-boy life.”
Sawhill shook his head. “It might be better if I talked to Walker Lane myself.”
“Why is that?” Stride asked, struggling to betray no irritation in his voice.
“Walker Lane is a wealthy, influential man,” Sawhill said. He sounded like a teacher lecturing a slow student. “The governor himself was the one to break the news to Mr. Lane about the murder. I assume you’re not suggesting Mr. Lane is a suspect?”
“I have no reason to think so,” Stride said, “but a dispute was going on between Walker and MJ. We think they tal
ked an hour before he was killed. It’s possible that MJ was involved in something that led to his death, and Walker might know what it is.”
Sawhill drummed his fingers on his desk. He nodded, looking unhappy. “All right, fine. You do the interview. But tomorrow, not today.” Stride began to protest, and Sawhill waved it aside. “Let’s give Mr. Lane a decent time to grieve. You’ve got plenty of other leads to follow. And kid gloves, Detective. He’s a powerful man who just lost his son.”
“Understood,” Stride said.
“How are you and Amanda getting along?” Sawhill asked. His face was stony, but Stride wondered if the man was hiding a smile.
“No problem. She’s smart. I like her.”
“Ah. Good.”
He sounded disappointed.
Stride barely had time to return from Sawhill’s office when Amanda poked her head around his cubicle wall.
“We’ve got company,” she told him brightly, her eyes twinkling. “Karyn Westermark in the flesh. And I do mean flesh.”
Stride followed Amanda to the third-floor conference room, which sported large windows looking out on the rabbit’s den of cubicles that made up the detective squad.
“Why’d they put her in the fishbowl?” Stride asked.
Amanda just grinned, and Stride understood when he reached the windows and saw that Karyn wore a white dress shirt, unbuttoned, with its flaps tied in a loose bow beneath her breasts, which were in serious danger of spilling out each time she leaned forward. Stride also noticed that most of the detectives had found reasons to take the long way to the kitchen to buy soda, a route that steered them past the windows of the conference room.
He went in and told Amanda to close the blinds.
“Sure, make me the bad guy,” Amanda muttered under her breath.
Karyn stood up and reached across the desk to shake his hand, offering another expansive view of her cleavage. Stride didn’t dare let his eyes drift south, and he saw a faint amusement in Karyn’s face, as if she were enjoying his struggle.
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