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

by Dave Stanton

  We drove two miles down the dark, plowed highway back to the casinos. The parking lot at Pistol Pete’s was nearly empty. Looked like all the partiers had packed up their hangovers and dragged themselves home.

  Inside, the casino floor showed no sign of the pervious night’s festivities. The gamblers were sparse, mostly locals. The volume of the slot machines seemed turned down to a pleasant level, almost like backyard chimes.

  Starting at the end of the casino floor, we began questioning the dealers, cocktail waitresses, and bartenders. The good news was all of them had worked last night. The bad news was the place had been so packed and chaotic that even someone dressed like Terry could have escaped notice.

  It wasn’t until we reached the roulette wheel in the center of the casino that a croupier recognized her.

  “Sure,” the man said, his thin mustache from a bygone era. He stared into the picture on Cody’s cell phone. “She was here for a while.” His jaw worked a piece of gum, his hands busy stacking chips.

  “Was she with anyone?” I said.

  “Hard to say, woman like that. She was surrounded by men.”

  “Anyone in particular you remember?” Cody said.

  He paused and adjusted the green visor on his head. “Naw. Not that I saw.”

  We moved to the craps table, where a short Asian stickman was raking chips off the board. Half the table was occupied, mostly low stakes at play.

  “Yah, her. I saw her.” He grasped Cody’s hand and angled it so he could see the phone screen better. “Loud lady, big bosoms, small bets.”

  “She have a man with her?” Cody said.

  “Many men.”

  “Was there any man paying more attention to her than the others?” I asked.

  “Ah. Maybe one. Chopper guy. Like Hell’s Angels. Staring and staring.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Hair long. Tied in back. Blond guy. Not young, though.”

  “How old?” I said.

  “Maybe forty-five. Tattoo of tear on his face.” He touched the corner of his eye.

  The dice clattered on the table and he began paying bets and raking in the losers.

  “How tall?” Cody said, and we waited until he’d made the table right and shoved the dice to the shooter.

  “I don’t know. Taller than me, shorter than you. Average.”

  “Call me if you remember more. It’s important.” I handed him my card. The dice tumbled across the board and came up craps, ending the round.

  “Bad luck guys,” the stickman said. We walked away.

  “Let’s try over here,” I said, turning toward a large bar area adjacent to the gaming tables. A neon sign above the bar advertised it as the OK Corral. There was a stage and perhaps thirty cocktail tables.

  The bartender and two waitresses didn’t recognize her picture. But a younger guy who came out of a backroom did.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, his hands on a dolly stacked with cases of beer. “I saw her last night.”

  “Was she with anyone?”

  “Some guy was buying her a drink.”

  “Describe the guy,” Cody said.

  The kid looked to the ceiling and tilted his head. “Jeez, I don’t remember.”

  “But you remember her,” I said.

  “Hell, yeah. Was she a call girl?”

  “Outstanding,” Cody said.

  It was ten o’clock. We went back out to the card tables and I looked up at the series of dark spheres protruding from the ceiling. The eyes in the sky, the casinos called them, all equipped with security cameras recording the events below.

  “First thing tomorrow, I want to talk to security here about viewing the tapes,” I said

  “They’ll tell us to go pound salt.”

  “Not if we get Marcus Grier involved.”

  “He might tell us to pound salt.”

  “Have a little faith, man. I’m gonna go get some sleep. You should do the same.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  I headed for the exits, but stopped short and saw Cody standing where I had left him, like a six-foot-five, 300-pound Sasquatch pondering his next move. He looked at the elevators across the casino, then sighed and trudged to the bar as if pulled by an undertow he was too weary to resist. I went into the men’s room, came out, and made it almost all the way to the exit before I shook my head and turned around. I didn’t want my buddy drinking alone. I wanted to get home, but I would not desert Cody. Not tonight. I owed him that.

  5

  My head was foggy the next morning. I probably could have slept ten hours but woke after just six, drank a cup of coffee, and went outside to shovel the driveway. Need to snap out of it after a late night? Try clearing a foot of snow off your driveway in ten-degree weather.

  I came back inside, sweating, and drank more coffee while waiting for Candi to get out of the shower. I was tempted to join her. We were still in the stage where I couldn’t get enough of her body. We were also still in the stage where she hadn’t yet uttered a single complaint; not even the slightest disparaging remark about me or my habits. But I knew that wouldn’t last. She was only human, and so was I.

  Still, I was committed to not give her anything to be unhappy about. So far it hadn’t been that hard. I’d trained myself to be tidy over the years. I stayed in good shape, I owned my place free and clear, and I managed to make a decent living. And, I’d curtailed my boozing.

  As far as her habits, the only issue I had was her rearranging the kitchen to the point that half the time I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I’d always kept a bottle of vitamin B and a container of concentrated protein powder next to my coffee pot. Now I was searching through the cupboards, wondering where she possibly could have hidden them.

  “Try the drawer beneath the coffee pot, ding-a-ling,” Candi said from the hallway, stark naked except for a towel on her head.

  “Huh? Oh, okay.” I found the articles and smiled. Just like her to flash me and redirect my blood flow when I knew she had no time for sex. I think she did it so I’d think about her while she was at work. An effective strategy, if that was her intention.

  An hour later, she was gone and Cody pulled into my driveway, his diesel motor rattling loudly. I met him at the door. He wore a sky blue beanie pulled low above his eyes and a thick, army-green winter coat. Steam poured from his mouth as he clapped his hands against the cold.

  “Enjoying the weather?” I asked.

  “Next year I’m going to Cabo for Christmas. I swear to god, it’s eighty and sunny down there right now.” He went and stood near my stove.

  “You sleep all right?”

  “Not really. I think I need to quit trying to make sense of my life.” He stared into the swirling fire behind the stove glass as if the solution might lie within. Then he saw me looking at him, and said, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be fine. Let’s get to work.”

  I’d moved an easel from Candi’s studio out to the main room and pinned up a three-foot square pad of drawing paper she used for sketches. I sat on the arm of the couch and began writing with a black felt tip pen.

  “Early December 24th, Valerie Horvachek knocked unconscious and strangled. Body found in the mountains.” I wrote it out toward the upper left.

  “New Year’s Eve, Terry Molina, strangled, body found on Lake Tahoe shore New Year’s Day.” I wrote it on the right hand side of the pad.

  Under Valerie, I wrote, cocaine, booze.

  From the couch, his elbows on his knees, Cody said, “Put the same for Terry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “From what I heard, Valerie had money problems.” I wrote money issues in her column.

  “Terry wasn’t working. Put the same for her.”

  “The meds you said Terry was taking—”

  “I don’t know exactly. Some form of bipolar, she said.”

  Under Terry I wrote, mental pills.

  “Was Valerie taking anything?” Cody asked.

  “Don’t know. I’ll e-mail her fa
ther.”

  I paused, then wrote promiscuous under Valerie. I looked at Cody. He shifted his hulk, leaning back on the couch. “Same for Terry,” he mumbled.

  Next, I wrote Sacramento in Valerie’s column. “Terry was from San Jose,” Cody said. “I don’t think she ever lived, or spent much time, in Sacramento.”

  “Do you know where she went to high school?”

  “No.”

  “What did you two talk about when you went out?”

  “Not about where she went to high school.”

  “Let’s find out,” I said, making a note under Terry.

  Back on Valerie’s side, I wrote, biker.

  “What’s that about?” Cody asked.

  “A biker at the strip club where she worked asked me about her. Seemed a little more than a casual interest.”

  “And the dice man said a biker type was hounding after Terry,” Cody said. I added biker to Terry’s side.

  Cody stood and looked out my big window facing the mountains. The trees in the meadow beyond my property were hunched under the weight of the recent snowfall. A birch had snapped at the trunk and its tangle of gray branches lay half buried in the powder. “So we got two gals with a few things in common,” Cody said. “Where does that get us?”

  “Nowhere, yet. It’s a starting point.” I reached over and made one more notation under Valerie: Nick Galanis.

  “Cop probably wishes he kept his pecker in his pocket,” Cody said.

  “Maybe. No one seems to consider him a suspect, though.”

  “Does he have an alibi?”

  “Nope. Just his word.”

  I joined Cody and stared out at the landscape. The sky was an icy blue over the ridges, the sun thin and distant.

  “Maybe we should go have a chat with old Saint Nick.” Cody’s lips curled in a tight smile.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  • • •

  We drove to Harrah’s, South Lake Tahoe’s largest casino. Harrah’s was owned by a publicly traded conglomerate that also owned Harvey’s Casino, and had recently acquired Pistol Pete’s. I knew the person who oversaw security for all three operations, a rawhide-tough black woman in her fifties named Joan Wallace.

  We went to the security booth at Harrah’s and asked to speak with Ms. Wallace. Thirty minutes later, a security guard escorted us into the back offices. He led us to a door and knocked quietly.

  “Yes?” barked a voice.

  The guard opened the door and peeked in. “The private detectives, Ms. Wallace.”

  “Let them in, please.”

  Joan Wallace did not greet or acknowledge us when we came into her office. Her eyes were locked on her screen, her fingers clattering on the keyboard. She was not a large woman, nor was she diminutive. Her black hair was threaded with gray, her lips thin for a woman of her race, and her brown skin had a dusty texture to it.

  She hit a final key and turned toward us. “What’s this about, Mr. Reno?” She pronounced my name correctly, though we’d only met twice before, and only briefly on those occasions. Her memory was good, as was her attention to detail, both attributes I appreciated. She was someone whose time I didn’t want to waste. Not that she would let me.

  “Ms. Wallace, my partner, Cody Gibbons.”

  “I remember you, Mr. Gibbons,” she said, her voice flat as yesterday’s beer.

  Before Cody could reply, I said, “You may be aware a guest at Pistol Pete’s was murdered the night before last.”

  “I am.”

  “We have reason to believe the murderer also killed a woman here on Christmas Eve.”

  That got her attention. Her eyes sharpened and her hands became still. “Why do you draw that conclusion?”

  “Two attractive blond women, both knocked out with a blunt object and strangled.”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “We know the latest victim, Terry Molina, was gambling at Pistol Pete’s from roughly 8:00 P.M. onward on New Year’s Eve. We think it’s possible the killer made contact with her there.”

  “And?”

  “We’d like to review your security tapes. We confirmed she was at a roulette table and a craps table and also at a nearby bar, the OK Corral.”

  “We only share our video content with police agencies, at their request.” She turned back to her monitor.

  “I understand. We can return with Marcus Grier if you like.”

  “You’re working with Grier on this?” Her eyes snapped back to me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll call him to verify.”

  “Please do. In the meantime, my goal is to get a serial killer off our streets as soon as possible. I think that benefits everyone.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “Two women were murdered in the same fashion, a week apart.”

  “Has the press been informed of the killings?”

  “Not that I know of. Not by me.”

  She picked up a pen and tapped it in her palm. “Christ, this is the last thing we need,” she grumbled. Lake Tahoe had been hit hard by the recession. One casino closed last year, along with a number of restaurants. The hard-fought-for tourist dollar would dwindle even further if reports of multiple murders showed up in the papers.

  She turned toward me again, her face resolute. “Go ask for Chris Davies at Pistol Pete’s. He’ll give you access.”

  “Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Wallace.”

  “In return, please do what you can keep this quiet.”

  “We’ll be discreet.”

  “Good.”

  She pressed a button and a faint buzz sounded. A moment later, the door opened. The guard who escorted us stood waiting. We rose from our chairs.

  “Mr. Reno?” Ms. Wallace said.

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you’re as good as they say you are.”

  “Like a starving dog on a bone,” Cody said, clapping me on the shoulder.

  For a second she showed a hint of smile, then she nodded her dismissal. The guard walked us down the hall and let us out the door back into the casino.

  “Well done,” Cody said, as we walked past the card tables. “I could hear the attorney in you.”

  “Maybe I’m channeling my old man.”

  “Yeah? I didn’t know you were the spiritual type.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, whatever it takes. Nice job with that dried up old crow.”

  “What, she’s not your type?”

  “She’s not anyone’s type that I know of. Anyway, I’m staying single for a while.”

  “You should consider celibacy. Make your life less complicated.”

  “That’s a sobering thought, and I haven’t even had a drink today.”

  “And it’s already ten A.M. Congratulations.”

  We opened the casino door to a blast of frigid air and hurried down the block to Pistol Pete’s. Before we got there, a gust of wind whipped down the street and pelted us with tiny bullets of ice. I hunched in my coat and ducked my head against the onslaught.

  Inside Pistol Pete’s, a man with sandy hair and a surfer’s tan waited for us under the SECURITY sign next to the cashier’s cage. He wore a short sleeve shirt and a necktie. Average height and a lean athlete’s body. A skier or snowboarder, no doubt.

  “Chris Davies,” he said, shaking hands. “This way, gentlemen.” We followed him up two flights of stairs to a white room lined with racks of electronic consoles and computer monitors. In one corner, the screens were arranged in a semicircle around a keyboard and a high-backed chair. Davies sat there and looked up at us.

  “Tell me the timeframe you want to view.”

  “Eight P.M to one A.M., December 31st,” Cody said.

  “Our systems were upgraded last quarter,” Davies said, his fingers clicking on the keyboard. “We now have twenty cameras recording twenty-four-seven.”

  “How do you store the data?”

  “We download to external drives daily and keep a twelve mont
h repository.” He pointed to a screen showing an overhead diagram of the casino floor. Camera locations were marked with a blinking red arrow indicating the direction the lens was pointed. “Which views do you want to see?”

  I studied the diagram and asked, “Where is the OK Corral?”

  “Here.”

  “These three then,” I said.

  He picked up a phone and gave directions, and five minutes later a kid with a face bumpy with acne brought out a stack of six disks.

  “Three hours per disk, eighteen hours of viewing pleasure,” Davies said. “You can set up at those two terminals.” He pointed to a foldout table along a far wall.

  “Any chance we can take these home?” I said.

  “No, sir.”

  We walked across the room, and I sat in a plastic chair and inserted a disk into the computer in front of me. An overhead view of the roulette table flickered onto the screen. The resolution was grainy and the people around the table moved in jerks and starts, as if frames were missing.

  “Arnold, can you instruct them on the commands?”

  “Sure,” the kid said. He pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose and knelt between where Cody and I sat. “You’re in a default setting now. The video will run at high speed, so you can view an hour in about forty minutes. We also use a compression mode on these disks, which is another reason the image looks poor. But here’s the good news: if you see something you want to examine in more detail, click here. You’ll get a menu that lets you slow to real time, freeze, zoom in, and improve resolution. Try it.”

  “Any audio?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Davies said. “Too much ambient noise for a mic to isolate anything but gibberish.”

  We spent the next few minutes familiarizing ourselves with the commands. Then Davies and the kid left us, and we settled in to examine the hours of monotonous video.

  Two hours later, we’d covered from 8:00 to 11:00 P.M. with no sign of Terry. I leaned back and uncrossed my legs, one of which had fallen asleep. No cop or investigator I’d ever met enjoyed the tedium of surveillance. I rubbed my eyes and turned my attention back to the monitor. Cody suggested lunch, and I was ready to agree when he said, “There she is.”