by L. T. Ryan
“Everyone ready?” Howerton asked. The group checked off one by one. He clicked his radio. “What’s it like in the hallway?”
“You are all clear,” the person on the other end replied.
Howerton pointed at the panel. One of the security guards inserted a key. The doors slid open.
It took some restraint to stop from powering past the men and reaching the room first. Over and over in my head, I told myself, “Not my op.” Howerton knew what he was doing. His team had been trained well, I’m sure. The security detail could handle anything Lavelle threw at us. I just needed to go with the flow and let this all work itself out.
Gotta admit, I was curious to find out how this group had come together like this. The shock of seeing Lavelle’s mistress and wife hugging still blew my mind. We were wading into deep shit. I had a feeling it was gonna get even deeper.
We reached the room. One security guard took the lead, with the agents right behind him. Howerton had gestured for me to take a step back. I ignored him. The security guard at the door held up his left hand and counted down from five. When he made a fist, he waved his master card over the lock. The click that followed almost sounded like a gunshot. That’s how tense the scene was.
When the door crashed open, I expected to hear shouting and screaming and maybe even a fight. The shouting happened, but it fell silent almost the moment it began.
“What is it?” I pushed forward, past the lingering security guard in the back. Past two of the FBI agents. I settled in next to Howerton and stared at the mess before us. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Howerton stepped over the body on the floor, knelt near David Lavelle’s bloodied head. He donned a pair of blue gloves, then felt Lavelle’s neck for a pulse. I didn’t need to hear his words to know, but they hit me with the impact of a Mac truck, anyway.
“He’s dead.”
21
I stood over the body of David Lavelle, looking down at the guy I’d spoken with thirty hours ago at his dining table. A man I thought I might have something in common with. A shared pain. A shared hope of seeing our kids alive again.
And now he was dead.
Howerton glanced up at me, his eyes wide, head swiveling side to side. “This what you expected to find?”
I squatted down to his level. “I wasn’t sure what we’d see in here, but the dead man didn’t make my short list.”
Howerton gestured toward one of the other agents. “Let’s get the floor secured. We need to notify LVPD, too. This is their territory.” He returned his gaze to me. “They’re probably gonna want a statement from you.”
“Assumed as much.” I had already begun thinking about what I would say. Thing was, even with Lavelle dead on the floor, I knew I needed to move forward. His wife and Liliana might be in danger. The kids could be close by, being held captive. I needed Bridget down here. Now.
Howerton rose and walked the perimeter of the room, a suite with a separate bedroom. “Whoever he was here with, they left in a hurry.”
I got up and joined him in the bedroom. Clothes were strewn about the floor and on the unmade bed. Not in the way that a robber would tear things up searching for higher value items. Rather, the way someone who needed to leave five minutes ago would pack. Taking their items and tossing them into a suitcase.
Sorting through the clothing, one thing stood out.
“It’s all adult sizes,” I said.
Howerton appeared to take in the room again through another filter. It would look different if kids had been present and they were forced to leave in a hurry. Little kids make and leave messes behind. There were no sippy cups. No apple sauce pouches on the dresser or littering the floor. No toys, books, puzzles, anything a normal person would bring to keep kids entertained.
Howerton stood in the bathroom doorway. He turned toward me. “There weren’t any kids here. I mean, if there were…”
“Place would look entirely different.”
His face twisted and his stare seemed distant, as if he were recalling something.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We didn’t see anything.”
“How do you mean?”
“We had eyes on this hall. David Lavelle returned to the room and nothing happened for twenty minutes. No one else entered the room. And sure as hell, no one left. Who did this? Who killed him?”
“Maybe while we were in the elevator?”
Howerton shook his head. “I got a guy downstairs who was watching the entire time. If someone had exited the room, we would have diverted and taken them in. That was the plan from the beginning. No surprises.”
“Nothing about this makes sense, Howerton. After first talking with Lavelle, I wasn’t sure about him. And seeing him sell his car and get on a plane to Vegas didn’t do him any favors. Not in my mind. At first, after running into Liliana in the airport, I assumed this was his rendezvous with her. They’d spend a day or so here, then disappear. But why would his mistress hug his wife? Why would they all be in the same hotel?”
Howerton couldn’t offer anything more than a shrug. Finally, he walked me out of the suite. We’d already trounced around it and disturbed potential evidence. Best leave it to the local PD to process it from there.
The security guards and Howerton’s two agents remained behind, waiting for the police to show up. A few more members of security were on the floor now, blocking access in and escorting guests from their room to the stairwell.
One peeled off to take us down to the lobby in the service elevator.
When we made it downstairs, Howerton asked me to remain behind while he checked with his agent and the hotel’s head of security, who I imagined was not pleased to be going into the weekend dealing with a murder. It wouldn’t be long before the news showed up. Some could use the increased scrutiny to manipulate someone or something within the casino.
None of that was my concern. Emilia and Liliana were in danger. Or were a danger to those around them. Either way, we needed to get them into custody as soon as possible. And if I could have five minutes with them before the LVPD, even better.
I fired off a message to Bridget while waiting for Howerton to return. For a day full of shocking developments, this one threatened to send all of us over the edge. She replied she had already heard the news and was waiting for me to reach out. I had just started to call her when Howerton poked his head out and wanted me to join him in an unmarked room.
Howerton stood next to a six-six behemoth of a man with a shaved head and thick, dark beard. “This is Malcolm. He’s head of security here. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna let him.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Some fucking bullshit,” Malcolm said with a voice that matched his size.
“Coulda told you that.”
“Right, well, this might be my ass in the end, but here’s what went down. Kinda hard to believe.” The big guy’s shoulders drooped and his head followed. He stared at his feet for a good ten seconds before taking in a long breath and exhaling with a groan. “No one saw anyone leave that room because the feed was on a continuous twenty-second loop.”
“Say what?”
“Watch.” He leaned over an empty workstation and grabbed the mouse. Footage from the hallway began playing. Halfway through, Malcolm began counting down from ten. “Six, five, four, three, two.” He pointed at the screen on what would have been one, then snapped on zero.
I saw it. The hitch in the playback. It was slight. Things were out of sync for not even a second. But it was enough to reveal the truth.
“Okay,” I said. “We don’t know exactly who was in the room. But there has to be other footage we can examine, right? You got cameras everywhere.”
Howerton rubbed his temples with the tips of his thumb and middle fingers.
“Gone.” Malcolm shook his head as he looked past us at the monitors on the walls. “We have nothing recorded for a ten-minute period.”
“More l
oops?” I asked.
“Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Timestamp jumps ten minutes as though someone took a pair of scissors and cut the tape. But all our shit is digital, so it’s more like someone hit pause.”
I looked around the room, which easily accommodated eight people. “How many were in here?”
“Four, including me.” He crossed his thick arms over his chest. Didn’t take too much of a leap of faith to imagine this guy had started off as a bouncer and worked his way up. “And before you start thinking it, no one in here would’ve done this, and definitely not with me present.”
“I trust you,” I said. “What did you see during this time, though?”
“Business as usual. We were most focused on the hallway.”
“Yeah, and we know what happened there.”
“Right. The rest looked normal.”
“This the only room set up like this? Monitoring and all?”
“Two others.” Malcolm walked over to one of the building diagrams on the wall. “Got one for outside areas not including front of the building. We handle that. And there’s another for the casino. Bigger than this. Lot more to monitor on the floor.”
“I imagine.” I studied the map more for the hotel floor layouts than anything to do with the casino. “Possible it happened in either of those rooms?”
Malcolm didn’t answer this time. We all knew it was a possibility.
Howerton said, “We’ve discussed that as a possibility. There are protocols in place that would identify if the footage was stopped from within the hotel.”
“And that’ll take a bit to determine,” Malcolm added.
I slipped my hand in my pocket and wrapped it around my phone. I had a name, one that hadn’t come up yet, that we found written on a napkin from one of the hotel’s restaurants. Only reason we found it was a CI told Bridget to look for something in the trash. Was this name important here? Deciding against mentioning it yet, I turned my attention back to the floor plans.
“How many ways does a guest have of getting down from the eighteenth floor?” I asked.
Malcolm pointed at the diagrams. “I should be able to answer this right off the top of my head. Things are a bit jumbled up at the moment, though.” He pointed at the room Lavelle had checked into. “So, it’s like a Y, right? You’ve got three sets of stairs and this elevator bank. Where you get options is when you reach the lower floors. Bypass the lobby, head all the way down here, and get to the casino. They always want to funnel you to the casino.”
“Every damn hotel out here’s like that,” Howerton said.
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“Right, but,” Malcolm said. “If you know where you’re going, the second floor can lead you down to the main level all the way back here.” He tapped on a stairwell exit at the rear of the building, near the pools. “And my guess is that they stepped out there wearing bathing suits, visors or whatever, and had tote bags with changes of clothing and whatever else they needed to escape.”
A knock on the door caused him to pause. He excused himself and left the room for a few moments.
“What do you think?” Howerton asked.
“I think those two women joined forces and killed the man they shared.” That wasn’t all I thought, but I didn’t know or trust Howerton yet. I wanted Bridget here.
“Sounds simple enough.”
“Yeah, right. Simple.”
Malcolm reentered the room with another man behind him. The door fell shut. “All right, tell them.”
“An employee emptying trash near one of the pool cabanas found a small club, like a mini-baseball bat, inside the trash.”
“Any other evidence?” I asked.
The guy nodded. “Blood, hair, flesh, all of it caked to the bat.”
“Well, then I guess we found our murder weapon.”
22
The drone of computer fans whirred in time with the frigid air being piped in to combat the heat put off by the systems and monitors hanging on the walls. Despite the climate control that bordered on Antarctic, Malcolm had a thin sheen of sweat permanently coating his forehead. He dabbed it with a handkerchief and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“We’ve got the area blocked off and they’re working to clear that pool now.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “Could be something else left behind that helps identify who dropped the bat in the trash. Any witnesses so far?”
“Going to check on the scene now. I’ll find out how many people they’ve held back for statements.” Malcolm excused himself.
“Tanner,” Howerton said. “Let’s grab a coffee.”
I followed him out of the room. It almost felt like the desert in the lobby. I rubbed feeling back in my hands and caught up with Howerton in the hallway leading toward the shops and restaurants.
“Sure stumbled into a shit show, huh?” Howerton watched me from the corner of his eye. Didn’t blame him for the distrust. He didn’t know me.
“I tell you,” I said. “Come out to catch up with an old friend. Next thing I know, I’m in Vegas looking at a dead body. Just can’t escape the job, I guess.”
“How long you been a cop?”
“Joined when I was still a kid.”
He nodded. “Grown up with the force, huh?”
“You have no idea.” I pointed at the coffee stand ahead. “What’s this about? I know you didn’t pull me out here to make small talk or investigate my history. Bridget could tell you everything you need to know about me.”
“Let’s order and then we’ll talk.”
A few minutes later, we occupied a bar-height table in the back of an empty seating area. Howerton scrolled through his messages and emails, then set his phone on the table face down.
“You’re gonna have to back off this case.” He continued to stare at the back of his phone. “We appreciate the help, but this is way out of your jurisdiction, and the risks of having you involved, I mean, you could invalidate all the evidence.”
“Didn’t place myself in the middle of this on purpose.” My back was partly to the walkway, something I didn’t like. Felt as though someone was watching, waiting, preparing to pounce on me should I throw resistance back at Howerton. “But I hear you, and I understand. Frankly, I’d rather not be involved at all.”
Howerton leaned forward. “Look, if Bridget comes down, you can tag along with her. She’ll own up to it if something goes wrong. But it’s probably best you book a flight out of here. Get back to Denver, or better yet, maybe head home to Philly.”
My interest in Howerton went up a hundredfold at that moment. Why was he so bent on getting rid of me?
“The local PD is already on this. They’re owning the homicide. We’re still treating his wife as a missing person. She very well could have been under someone’s control. The mistress, maybe. Or could be that someone else was up there with them. Hard to tell without the camera footage.”
“Should be plenty before Lavelle was axed though, right?”
“Be like trying to find a bobby pin at the beach, Tanner. I wish we had that kind of manpower, but we don’t. And the local PD, no chance they do.” His phone buzzed, sending vibrations through the tabletop. “Excuse me.”
Howerton disappeared around the corner. Maybe he wouldn’t come back. He’d probably be fine if I got up and left. And I was half-tempted to do so. Why sink my teeth deeper into this case if I wasn’t welcome to assist?
My cell screen lit up, breaking my train of thought. It was Bridget.
“I just heard about the murder weapon,” she said. “Have you seen it?”
“They froze me out. LVPD will take over the homicide investigation. Howerton told me to go back to Philly.”
“Screw him. I’ve got your back.”
“Yeah, which means you oughta watch yours.”
“How so?”
“Willing to bet he’s angling to get Emilia Lavelle’s case pulled.”
“No chance.”
“He seems pretty gung h
o.”
“Well, he doesn’t know what I just found out.”
The words hung in cyberspace for a few seconds as I waited for her to continue, and she waited for me to ask for more. After a little more silence, she continued.
“Lavelle didn’t sell the Mercedes.”
The transaction had lingered in the back of my mind throughout the day. I couldn’t accept that he had sold the car this morning. Still, I was curious how she came to this conclusion.
“How’d you figure that out?” I asked.
“They just caught the guy in Utah on I-70. Said he just bought the car and he was heading to Reno.”
I applied my rudimentary knowledge of the area’s geography. Both cities were quite a distance from Denver, and fairly far from one another. “So what’s to say he didn’t and he wasn’t?”
“Car was still registered to Lavelle, still had his plates.”
“Not entirely a shocker. If the guy was from Reno, he’d want to handle his part there.”
“That’s true. But we also got the check signed by David Lavelle.”
“How much?”
“Five grand.” She paused a beat to let the number sink in. “I’m no car buff, Mitch, but I’m fairly certain a new Mercedes S class is going for more than five thousand dollars.”
“By a factor of twenty.” I hopped off my stool and checked to make sure Howerton wasn’t close by.
“Still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. So, recap. Lavelle gave this guy five grand, presumably to drive the car from Denver to Vegas. Can only assume—“
“Careful with that.”
“—that he had no plans on returning to Denver anytime soon. Do we have proof he was en route to Vegas?”
“Glad you finally asked. Here’s the killer. His GPS was set for The Venetian.”
“And this isn’t a scenario where Lavelle set the destination, but this guy wasn’t actually using the GPS?”