Dark Ice: A Hard-Boiled Crime Novel: (Dan Reno Private Detective Noir Mystery Series) (Dan Reno Novel Series Book 4)

by Dave Stanton

  The bartender, a skinny, prematurely balding fellow, asked what I was drinking, and I asked him if I could talk to the manager.

  “Regarding what?” he said.

  “Valerie Horvachek. She worked here, right?”

  “Val? Blondie with big, natural knockers? Yeah, but I haven’t seen her for at least a week.”

  “That’s because she was murdered.”

  “What?”

  “Hey,” the burly guy said, injecting himself into the conversation as if his utter badness granted him the right to do so. “What the hell you talking about?”

  I turned my head and looked at him. “I’m investigating the murder of Valerie Horvachek. Did you know her?”

  “She’s not dead. You’re full of shit, man.”

  “Sorry to bring the bad news.”

  “I don’t fucking believe you.”

  “Believe whatever you want. It’s a free country.”

  Apparently that stumped him. While he tried to formulate a reply, the bartender waved his arm and said, “Mike! Mike, come over here.”

  I turned and saw a tall man in dark slacks and a shiny blue button-down shirt stride toward us. His black hair hung to his shoulders, and his face was edged with a neatly trimmed seven-day growth. A sliver chain rested on his chest where his shirt was unbuttoned. His skin was the color of tarnished copper. He was about thirty. An Arab, or maybe a Latino. Or a dark-skinned Italian.

  “This guy says Val is dead,” the bartender said.

  “And you are?” the man named Mike said to me.

  “Reno, private investigations. You’re in charge here?”

  “Yeah,” he said, a hint of superiority creeping into his tone. “I own this club.”

  “I’m impressed,” I lied. “Can we talk in your office?”

  He looked at his watch. “I got five minutes,” he said. Clearly his time was important. He had a business to run. Probably had strippers to hire. He struck me as the type who would insist on up close and personal interviews.

  I followed him behind the bar and down a short hallway. We went through a door on which a name was displayed in gold lettering: Mike Zayas—President.

  It was a big office, a couch along one wall, a tiki bar in the corner, a big TV screen mounted across from the couch. A fancy desk was in another corner, which was where he sat. I stood until he motioned for me to sit in a chair opposite him.

  “Looks like you’re doing well for yourself,” I said. “Business is good, huh?”

  “There’s a lot of money to be made in this industry. But you have to be smart. Most club owners go out of business.”

  “You’re one of the successful ones, I take it.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I won’t comment on how much money I make. Let’s just say I could retire tomorrow if I wanted.” He gave me a moment to process his remark, to let it sink in, as if surely I’d be jealous, and that would set the tone of our little encounter. I played along the best I could, keeping a straight face and resisting the urge to tell him I didn’t give a rat’s ass about his money.

  “Now, what’s this about Val?” he asked. Real casual about it.

  “Dead. Strangled.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “December 24th. How long had she worked here, Mr. Zayas?”

  “A couple shifts,” he said after a moment, measuring his response.

  “Anything you can tell me about her?”

  He shook his head and fixed me with a stare. I’m smarter and tougher than you, it said. “Sorry, I never got to know her.”

  “Anybody else here get to know her?”

  The stare again. “Not that I know of.”

  I crossed my legs and noticed my boots would need to be replaced soon. “Mr. Zayas, were you dating Valerie Horvachek?”

  He laughed. “Where would you get that idea?”

  “She told people she was seeing a man driving a black Corvette.”

  He laughed again, dryly. “Maybe she was having a fantasy.”

  “You’re pretty choosy, huh?”

  “Choosy? Yeah, I am. I don’t bang every piece of trim who works here, if that’s what you’re getting at. Not that I couldn’t if I wanted to.” He nodded and smiled, a smutty glint in his eyes.

  “Did you bang Valerie?”

  “You know what? I really don’t remember.” The shine in his eyes faded. “Actually, it’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “Why would someone want to kill Valerie?”

  “I have no idea.” He looked at his watch again. “Time’s up, my friend.” He stood and opened the door in dismissal.

  “I’ll tell Valerie’s family you expressed your deepest sympathies,” I said.

  “You do that.”

  We walked out and he left me on the main floor. I considered buying a few lap dances and questioning Zayas’s stable of working girls. But it was too loud to have a conversation, and I wasn’t in the mood to be titillated. So I headed to the exit, but just as I reached the door, I was intercepted by the burly man I’d spoken to at the bar. I ignored him and walked outside. He came out behind me.

  “Look, I was asking about Valerie because I liked her,” he said, his tone conciliatory, like he’d made a very conscious decision to not hard-ass me. I stopped under the awning. The rain had paused.

  “How long had you known her?” I said.

  “Just a couple weeks, since she started here.” He had tufts of brown hair rising from the back of his shirt, and held a black leather jacket in his fist.

  “You work here?”

  “No. Is she really dead?”

  “Yes. Someone knocked her out and strangled her.”

  “Where?”

  “Lake Tahoe.”

  “Was she robbed?” A drop of water fell onto his shaved head and ran down the side of his face. He wiped at it and shrugged into his coat.

  “She was found naked. No clothes, no purse.”

  “So, whoever killed her took her stuff.” He zipped his jacket against the cold, the leather tight over his barrel shaped bulk.

  “Looks that way,” I said. “You think she had much worth stealing?”

  He took a pack of smokes from his coat and lit up. His goatee was thick and long and probably dyed to hide the gray. He blew a stream of smoke into the damp air and squinted as if pondering some dilemma.

  “Strippers can make a lot of money,” he said.

  “Did Valerie?”

  He studied the curls of smoke rising from his meaty fingers. “She didn’t share her finances with me.”

  I didn’t say anything. He took another drag off his cigarette, then flicked it out onto the wet pavement.

  “Damn cold out here,” he said, and walked back into the building. As he went in, I turned and checked the lettering on the back of his coat. Blood Bastards, it read.

  • • •

  There was little traffic heading east, and I made good time for about thirty miles. But just as it started getting dark outside of Placerville, it began to snow. The snowflakes swirled in my headlights as I slowed on a long stretch of straight highway notorious for speeding tickets.

  The information I’d gathered on Valerie Horvachek provided insight into her personality and lifestyle, but I still had no clue why she was murdered. Many things were possible if I exercised my imagination, but for now, I was grasping at straws.

  I drove along, my tires crunching over the snow building up on the road. Most murders are motivated by money or love. Was it possible a jealous lover killed her? Sure. Attractive and promiscuous woman meets fatal attraction. Could have even been a customer at the Suave Gentlemen’s Club.

  Most strip joints are crime-ridden holes, teaming with prostitution and drug abuse. A fair percentage of the clientele are criminals—some there to do business, others just to affirm their sexuality by basking in the attention of young, naked women. The biker in the Blood Bastards clan could have been there for either reason, or both. His interest in Valerie might have
been strictly romantic. But I doubted she would have chosen him as a sugar daddy. Seemed like she was more interested in types like Nick Galanis, or Mike Zayas. Regardless, I didn’t consider the biker a suspect, because I’d be the last guy he’d want to talk to if he killed her.

  But that didn’t mean the biker might not have had a financial interest in Valerie. For all I knew, he might have been pimping her. Or using her as a drug mule.

  The same could also apply to Mike Zayas, a man who wore his self-importance and greed like a bad cologne. He acted like owning a men’s club was the holy grail of business achievement. What he didn’t admit was he was taking a fat cut from every act of prostitution performed in the back room. I also thought he was likely tapped into whatever drug trade was occurring at his establishment. Smart businessman, making a lot of money—as long as he stayed out of jail.

  An orange Caltrans snowplow pulled onto the highway and I swerved around it. I wanted to make time while I could. It would be full dark soon, and that meant thirty miles per hour in these conditions. I’d need to drive to Sacramento again soon to talk with Valerie’s friend Christie, and maybe to revisit the Suave Gentlemen’s Club. Next time I’d wait for the weather to cooperate.

  I called Candi and told her I’d be late, and before we hung up, I heard the beep of another call coming in. It was Cody.

  “Dan, I’m in Marcus Grier’s office,” he said, his voice oddly subdued. “They found Terry’s body on the beach down near Camp Richardson.”

  “Her body?”

  There was a long pause, long enough for me to anticipate his next words.

  “She’s been murdered.”

  4

  It was 8:00 P.M. when I came off the grade into South Lake Tahoe. I’d driven through the teeth of the storm, at times barely able to see. Near Echo Summit, I’d lost control on a patch of black ice, my four tires spinning futilely until catching traction an instant before I would have slammed the guardrail. A bulletin on the radio announced the pass had just been closed. If I’d left much later, I’d still be out there, maybe until morning.

  The cellular reception had died before Cody could tell me anything more, and now his phone was going straight to voice mail. I hadn’t had dinner, and my stomach kept telling me to stop and eat, but I drove straight through town until I reached the sheriff’s complex.

  Snowflakes danced silently in the dome of light above the parking lot. The visual effect reminded me of a snow globe I played with as a child. I walked through the flurry, the flakes melting on my face.

  “Marcus Grier, please,” I said to the receptionist behind the bulletproof glass partition separating her from the empty lobby.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Dan Reno.”

  I sat and waited. My relationship with Sheriff Grier was good, but at times uncertain. I’d come to know him well in the three years since I moved from the rat race of San Jose to South Lake Tahoe. Our paths crossed frequently as a result of my investigation and bounty hunting business. Somehow, we’d managed to avoid the resentment and friction that often exists between the police and private eyes. The reason, I believed, was we both despised the individuals that made up the worst of society’s criminal element.

  Grier’s dilemma, like any cop’s, was taking down the bad guys while staying within legal boundaries. Although we never spoke of it, over time he’d found it quite convenient to rely on me to cross the lines that he could not. This had become our unspoken alliance, one that served, to some extent, as a basis for our friendship.

  As for Cody Gibbons, Grier originally hated him. An ex-policemen himself, Cody lived his post-cop life like an exuberant teenager on summer vacation, skirting legal convention and waging a no-holds-barred war against criminals unfortunate enough to find themselves in his sights. Cody viewed the Lake Tahoe area as a home away from home, a perfect retreat when things got too hot, or a bit too boring, in San Jose. While I stretched the rules, when Cody came into town, as he sometimes did to assist me on cases, he outright ignored the law if it impeded his vision of justice. Cody’s approach created obvious problems, but after a bloody affair last fall, I think Grier had begun to see Cody as an asset. A volatile one, but one that was also useful.

  Grier opened the squad room door. He appeared at a truce in his ongoing battle with his weight. Five-ten and once 240, I now put him at 215.

  “Dan,” he said, weariness plain on his face. He was a nine-to-five cop, and I knew he wanted to get home to his wife and two daughters.

  “What’s going on, Marcus? Are you holding Cody Gibbons?”

  “No. He’s free to go.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “Yeah. Come on back, there’s someone you should probably meet.” I followed him past the empty desks to an office. We went in, and Cody was sitting against a wall, talking to a tall, slender man with silver hair and a face that looked like it had seen two lifetimes of sun.

  “Dan Reno, Bill Worley,” Grier said. “Bill just came aboard to head up our plainclothes team.”

  “How’s everthan’, Dan?”

  “All right. Yourself?” I reached out and shook his hand. The skin was dry and cracked.

  “Oh, fair to middlin’.”

  “Your accent—Texas?”

  “That’s right,” he drawled. “El Paso.”

  “You’ll find the winters up here a bit chilly.”

  “You don’t say.” He smiled. He had to be at least sixty.

  The room became quiet for second, then I said, “What happened to Terry?”

  “Someone hit her behind the head and strangled her to death,” Cody said.

  I felt my mouth drop. “Strangled?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “No, sir.” Bill Worley’s blue eyes peered at me from under his leathery brow.

  I sat in the single empty chair in the room. “Valerie Horvachek was the name of the girl strangled a week ago and dumped in the Nevada backwoods.” All three men stared at me.

  “Two women strangled,” Worley said.

  “A serial killer?” Grier ran his fingers over his stubble-like hair.

  “I’ve just been hired to look into Valerie’s death,” I said. “The father wasn’t happy Nick Galanis admitted sleeping with her and is still lead investigator on the case.”

  Worley stood. “Lordy. Reckon we ought to call Douglas County first thing in the morning.”

  “And say what?” Cody said.

  “If we’re searching for the same killer, it only makes sense we work together.”

  I saw Grier wince. “Gibbons,” he said, “I’d like you to stay in town for a day or two. We’ll probably have more questions.”

  Cody stuck his hands in his pockets. I didn’t know what was going through his mind—grief or remorse over Terry’s death, or maybe some sense of guilt, or maybe even relief that the relationship was over.

  “I’ll stick around,” he said.

  • • •

  I drove Cody across the state line and a couple miles into Nevada. I pulled into Chuck’s Place, a dark, funky bar with the best tacos and French fries around. I did my best thinking over tacos and French fries. Good fuel for the brain, especially when I was starving. Add a double margarita on the rocks and I could solve the world’s problems.

  “How’d the cops know to call you?” I asked.

  Cody poured a beer from the pitcher he’d ordered. “They found Terry’s purse in a trash can in a picnic area about fifty yards from her body. Her cell phone was in it. They saw I called her a bunch of times.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists and groaned.

  “You all right, partner?”

  “Yeah. This just ain’t the way I planned to start the new year.”

  “Did Grier or Worley consider you a suspect?”

  “Sure. But I cooperated fully, and if they really thought I did it, they’d have found a reason to hold me.”

  “You’ll be eliminated as a suspect tomorrow anyway.”


  “Why? You sure the killer is the same one who killed Valerie whoever?”

  “Cause of death was the same. Both sexy blondes. Seems pretty obvious.”

  “A serial killer in Lake Tahoe?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Why not?”

  He swallowed and put down the huge cheeseburger in his paw. “They usually like big cities. It’s harder to be anonymous in a smaller town.”

  “I don’t know if the killer lives here. He could have just been in town for a week of vacation.”

  We were silent for a bit, then Cody said, “Terry told me she forgot her meds when we got here. She wasn’t a bad person. I should have driven her straight back to San Jose when she told me that.”

  “Did she ask you to?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for this, Cody.”

  “I was her enabler.”

  “No you weren’t. She was a grownup. She made her own decisions.”

  “She had chemical imbalances. The doctors gave her pills to control her emotions. I took her to Lake Tahoe without her meds to booze it up. I probably deserve to be jailed.”

  “Nonsense. Take it easy, man.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed. He motioned to the bartender. “Double CC, straight up.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed the mass of muscle. “Her problems didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  The bartender set the glass of whiskey on the bar, and Cody held it in his fingers for a contemplative moment before draining it with a flip of his head.

  “You gonna hang around and help me work the case?” I said.

  When he looked at me, there was a heated light in his green eyes, as if a harnessed fuel had been lit.

  “Yes, I believe I will,” he said.

  • • •

  The skies were clearing when we left the bar, the clouds moving fast in the black sky. The temperature had dropped—the cold after the storm. My windshield was caked with frozen snow, and I gave up trying to scrape it off. Cody and I sat in my cab waiting for the defroster to melt the buildup. Every minute I hit my windshield wipers, until finally sections of ice began breaking apart.