by Evans, J R
There were a lot of names to remember. Matt was going to need to make flash cards. He smiled back at her. “Things seem lively.”
Amber jiggled her cocktail shaker with a flourish and then poured a line of shots. “We booked a bachelor party.”
“That seems dangerous,” said Matt. “How many weddings have we ended?”
“The wife booked this one,” said Amber. “She gave us some specific instructions. They have boundaries. But there’s always wiggle room.” She gave a teasing grin as she loaded the shots onto a serving tray.
“Is Christy with a client?” Matt asked.
“No, she has an appointment coming up, though.” Amber stepped out from behind the bar and lifted her tray. “She’s probably prepping the party room.”
Matt walked down the hall, the thumping music receding a bit. Now it just sounded like a racing heartbeat. He decided he was going to figure this place out. It seemed to be working on autopilot, but he felt kind of useless, like a freeloader. Which he was, he supposed. So far he hadn’t really done anything useful to contribute to the business. He thought he was going to start by getting the finances in order, but now that was in the hands of a nine-year-old. Maybe Christy would have some ideas. She seemed to know this place inside and out.
Matt opened the door to the party room. “Hey, Christy, Adam was—”
Erica cut him off. “You keep walking in on me. Makes me think you’re hoping for another free peek.”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed near one of the nightstands. The silver tray that normally held the room’s champagne glasses had been cleared off . . . to make room for the line of cocaine. Next to the tray was a small brass cylinder that somehow looked familiar to Matt. Erica held a glass straw between her fingers like a cigarette. There was no powder on her nose but half the line was gone.
Matt wasn’t quite sure how to react. “Is that . . . ?”
“Coke?” Erica suggested. “Yes. You want some?” She offered him the straw.
Today she was dressed like a stewardess. Not a modern unisex stewardess but more like a fantasy stewardess from the sixties who might refill your scotch before accepting your membership to the mile-high club. Somehow she made it look intimidating. Maybe it was the uniform.
“No,” said Matt, and because he couldn’t think of a real excuse, he added, “I had a big lunch.”
She stood, smirked, then she slowly bent over to the tray and put the straw up to her nose. She gave him an exaggerated wink before holding one nostril closed and sniffing up the last of the powder. She threw the straw and the cylinder into a clutch purse, and then used one finger to wipe up the last traces of dust. She stepped over to Matt and offered her finger to his mouth.
“Seems like you don’t know what you’re doing here,” she said.
Matt looked down at her finger, not daring to move his head. “Christy said Quent didn’t really allow drugs.”
She rubbed her fingers together until the powder was gone. “Well, you’re not Quent.”
She reached down and took one of Matt’s hands. He started to pull back but stopped when she raised an eyebrow. She was either scolding him or challenging him. Either way, he gave in, and she guided his hand up the side of her body and then over her breast. There was a lot of polyester between his hand and her skin, but he could still feel her nipple, already stiff.
“In fact, you don’t seem to be anybody. You’re just kinda along for the ride, aren’t you?”
He swallowed. “I’m somebody.”
“You sure?” she asked. She pushed into him a little and ground her hips forward. “Anyway, who do you think I got this stuff from?”
Matt could feel himself getting hard. She pulled back her hips and then pressed forward again, starting a rhythm. It began to match the thumping music from the parlor. He would be crazy to leave right now. It was a bad idea to stay but crazy to leave. Her free hand slipped past his waistband and found his ass. She squeezed it as she bit her lip and gave a little moan. It looked like a move she practiced and used all the time. Matt didn’t care. The last time he’d had sex it was after last call at a bar in California. Everybody who had still been at the bar had scrambled to make friends as quickly as possible. It had seemed more like an act of desperation then. Now somebody was literally trying to get into his pants.
Then she looked up at him. Her eyes were glazed over, and she seemed to be focusing on something well behind him. She wasn’t really there, and she didn’t really want to be with him. He was just another customer, which meant there was something she wanted from him.
Matt pulled back. He was painfully aware of the bulge in his pants. He had been on the run long enough to get a feel for how stupid he was being at any given moment. If he was being a typical dumb guy, he usually just went with it, figuring he could fix the fallout later. When he moved past that into how-are-you-not-dead-yet stupidity, his self-preservation kicked in. Fight or flight. It was usually flight.
“I better go,” he said.
She didn’t look surprised or disappointed. “Yeah, that sounds like you.”
Matt retreated to the hallway.
At the end of the hallway there was a door that led to the backyard. It wasn’t much of a yard, though. Weeds pushed up through the pea gravel, and paint flaked off an old storage shed. Matt closed the door behind him and sat on one of the three steps leading down to a patch of nothing. He stared at the empty space.
“What’s got you all moody?”
He looked up to find Christy leaning against the house, her arms crossed. She flicked the ash off a cigarette and blew smoke out the corner of her mouth.
Matt really needed to start looking around more when he opened doors. These women seemed to be ambushing him everywhere he went. “Nothing,” he said. It didn’t sound convincing at all so he added, “Everything.”
Christy pressed the cigarette to her mouth. “Yeah. Me too.”
Matt had never seen Christy smoke before, and she never smelled like she did. After his encounter with Erica, though, he certainly wasn’t going to call her on it. Instead, they just hung out in silence for a couple of minutes, Christy smoking and Matt throwing little pieces of gravel toward the shed.
He pointed his chin toward the shed. “What’s that?”
“Not sure what it used to be,” she said. “Quent used it as storage.”
“Do we have much to store?” Matt asked.
“When people set down roots they always end up dumping a bunch of crap they thought they needed,” she said.
Matt flicked another stone. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Of course you don’t know,” said Christy. “You’ve been here less than a week.”
“What if I can’t? People shouldn’t have to rely on me.”
Christy bent down and stubbed out her cigarette in the dirt. “I asked myself that same question every day for a year after Adam was born. Sometimes I still ask myself. People get used to weird shit. This whole city proves that.”
Matt stood as she came over to the steps. “Adam wants to watch TV. He’s done with his homework. And he might be my accountant now.”
Christy led the way back inside and gave a soft laugh. “He probably deserves some milk and cookies, then.”
16
Laura Deans, aka Vicki, had been laid bare on the metal autopsy table. Her eyes still stared up in wonder. The medical examiner had made multiple attempts to close them but had only been successful for a minute or two before they slowly pried open on their own. Dani had worked with this ME—Garret—a number of times, but this was the first time she had seen him express any emotion about a case. He kept delaying his report to the sergeant, saying he needed to do more tests or wait for more results, but Dani guessed he was just in over his head with this one.
“You still with me there, Garret?” asked Dwayne.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s just really fucked up.”
Dwayne looked up from his notepad. “I know.”<
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“No, I mean, really fucked up,” Garret reiterated. “Who would do something like this?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Dani.
The autopsy had been completed, but it was hard to tell where Garret might have made his incisions. He must have spent hours getting the skin back in place, and with the blood washed off, the pattern of the cuts were made clear. Or the cut, according to the report that Dani had read.
Garret was sitting on a stool next to the table. He still wore his scrubs, but his paper mask was hanging around his neck. He just stared at the body. “The cut was so intricate. The blood was drained in seconds,” Garret said. “And it was drained evenly.”
“What does that mean?” asked Dwayne.
The ME reached up to touch his chin with a finger but then realized at the last second that he was still wearing his gloves. “The entire cut, following these patterns . . .” His finger traced a swirling line in the air. “It would need to be made in seconds.”
“That’s impossible,” said Dani.
Garret nodded. “That’s right.”
Dwayne was actually being pretty patient with Garret. People had been hounding the sergeant all day asking for quotes or updates on the case—the mayor’s office, the sheriff, the local news station, the Guardian Angels. They all wanted answers. He was good at fending them off, or if that failed, having Dani fend them off. Still, she could tell that Dwayne wanted answers just as much as the Guardian Angels. And so far, Garret had provided more questions than answers.
“What made the cut?” asked Dwayne.
“Some fucking psycho.” Garret said. He said it under his breath, but it was loud enough for them to hear.
Dwayne raised an eyebrow. “Got that part. But what did he use?”
Garret held up a box cutter. It looked like it had just been pulled out of the package. It was the standard kind that took disposable blades—simple, gray, utilitarian.
“One of these,” Garret said. “New. Or very well cleaned. There was no residue of anything in the wounds. Except . . .” Garret trailed off and looked a little queasy.
“Except what?” asked Dwayne.
“You can still smell the strawberries,” said Garret. “Even through the blood and . . . stuff. Strawberries or something. In the ink.”
“Fluffleberry,” said Dani. “We think it’s called Fluffleberry.”
Dani held up the evidence bag containing the pen from the crime scene and offered it to Garret. The pen still had blood on it, but it had been dusted for fingerprints. Garret didn’t take the pen all the way out of the bag, but he used two gloved fingers to pop the cap off. Then he held the purplish-pink marker up to his nose. He took a quick sniff and then a longer one. From the look on his face it was the same smell.
She thought he was going to vomit, but then he let out a shallow, wet burp. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m a professional.”
Dani was skeptical, but then again, at least he wasn’t wearing a toothpaste mustache.
“What about these patterns?” she asked.
“Well, they don’t have any medical significance. The killer wasn’t aiming for any particular vital organs or arteries. He still hit several, of course, though he didn’t take anything with him that I could find. No souvenirs.”
Dwayne jotted down some notes. “Then why do it? Anger?”
“Like I said, the cut was careful and precise,” said Garret. “I don’t think it could have been done in a rage.”
“Maybe he got off on it,” said Dwayne.
“He didn’t leave any . . . fluids behind,” said Garret. “I did find a hair that didn’t belong to the victim, though. It’s prepped for DNA profiling.”
“Great. Let me know when you have the results,” said Dwayne. “Hopefully we’ll have something to compare it with soon.”
“Do you have a suspect?” asked Garret.
Dwayne didn’t answer. He clicked his ballpoint pen closed with a thumb and flipped his notebook shut. “Rush order. I’ll sign off on it.”
They had more than a suspect. They had the killer dead to rights. And they were ready to move in on him.
An hour later, the sergeant introduced Dani to a conference room full of sheriff’s deputies and police officers. There were no rivalries here. Everybody played ball for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The LVMPD or “Metro” was a joint police force that serviced both the city of Las Vegas and Clark County. The group in this conference room had been assigned to a special-investigation task force specifically created to catch Laura Deans’s murderer. Some were liaisons to other departments, to keep them informed and help chop through red tape; others were more directly involved. One of them was the sheriff of Clark County. All of them were staring at Dani.
Dwayne introduced her as the lead investigative specialist, so she guessed that made it official. She tapped a button on her laptop, and the projection screen behind her filled with a blurry image of a man looking furtively over his shoulder as he walked away from a motel parking lot. It was the best they could get from the ATM across the street.
“We’re looking for a guy named Stephen Foster,” she said. “Age thirty-five. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Five foot seven and about one hundred sixty pounds. In this picture, anyway.” She tapped again, and the image was replaced with a mug shot from about ten years ago. The man looked a lot younger, though. Prison must not have agreed with him. “This was him when he first went in for burglary and possession of narcotics.” She tapped again, and a second mug shot filled the screen. “Here he is again two years later for more of the same.” Another tap and another mug shot. “And again three years after that.”
Stephen Foster had aged with each shot. He didn’t look hardened or more dangerous, just more desperate. His clothes and hairstyle were basically the same in each picture. In the final one, his eyes looked hollow and lost, like he’d just woken up from a dream and didn’t know where he was.
“He’s currently out on parole . . . for good behavior.” She didn’t mean it as a joke, but it still got a few chuckles.
Her next series of pictures showed a number of crime-scene markers next to dark smudges or smeared blood on cheap motel furniture. “Several fingerprints from the crime scene match Foster’s record in the NCIC database.” She showed a picture of the Fluffleberry marker. “We don’t have a murder weapon, but we do have Foster’s fingerprints on the pen used to draw on the victim’s body. And we do know what kind of murder weapon to look for.” Her final image was of a simple gray box cutter, blade extended.
Dani looked over at Dwayne to see if he wanted to add anything. He just nodded for her to keep going.
“Foster’s landlord says he hasn’t seen him around for several days now,” said Dani. “His previous employer said he fired Foster the day before Laura Deans was murdered. He also said he caught Foster masturbating in the women’s bathroom.” Dani cringed as she said it, waiting for the inevitable lewd comment. It didn’t come, and she relaxed a bit. “This guy is obviously broken, and he’ll probably kill again if he can. So we won’t let him. We know who he is. We have numbers on our side. He’s alone, and he’s no criminal mastermind.”
* * *
The rest of the day was spent mobilizing Metro on a countywide manhunt, which to Dani, seemed more like being an air traffic controller than a cop. Scheduling was a nightmare, and it meant more work for everybody, especially her. Dwayne volunteered his squad to coordinate the effort, so as the lead investigative specialist, Dani was on the phone a lot. She went over her briefing half a dozen more times with different branches of Metro, and her inspirational speech at the end became more and more cranky as the day wore on.
Still, Foster was one man in a city of over two million people. Apparently, things weren’t going to happen over night. To prove the point, Dwayne sent Dani home just after midnight. She was reluctant to go. Reports of the manhunt—and about three cups of coffee—had her wired as she got in her car. She knew s
he should go home and at least veg out for a bit, even if she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she talked herself into another way to unwind.
Dani started her car but didn’t drive off. She tapped her phone to wake it up. Then she tapped into her messaging app and flipped the phone sideways to use the keyboard. Erica’s name autocorrected to AbjectErica as she typed out a text with her thumbs.
Dani5oh: U up?
AbjectErica: Duh! It’s not dawn o’clock yet.
Dani5oh: Working?
AbjectErica: Depends on you. Have you met Translantica? She could be your pre-flight entertainment.
Dani5oh: It would be nice to just see Erica.
AbjectErica: Sure. lol
AbjectErica: You ok?
Dani5oh: Rough week.
AbjectErica: I have the cure for that. Coming over? It’s pretty slow tonight.
Dani5oh: How about your place?
AbjectErica: We could do that. The place is a mess, though.
Dani5oh: Sounds perfect.
AbjectErica: Give me 30 mins.
Dani5oh: See u there.
AbjectErica: :-) xxx
* * *
Erica lived in a condo close to the Strip. It was ridiculously expensive, but then Erica’s paycheck was probably three times what Dani’s was. Also, Erica wasn’t putting anything into retirement just yet. She was focused on the here and now, as long as here and now looked like the cover of a fashion magazine. Dani worried about her sometimes. What they had together was barely more than a series of one-night stands, but she still felt like they had a connection. Like maybe they shared some kind of inside joke about how relationships really worked.
Erica opened the door in her bathrobe. It was a chocolate-colored satin, so soft that the little belt holding it closed had a hard time staying in a knot, or Erica had left it loose on purpose, more likely. The condo wasn’t big, but it was very nice. The recessed lighting was dimmed, and the Strip glowed off in the distance through the living room window. Dani could hear the shower running in the background, and wisps of steam were escaping through the partially opened bathroom door into the hallway.