“There’d be no way to anticipate how much each person would drink,” he said, “or how it would affect them individually. Some of these men must still have been able to move when the Seven of Spades attacked. Not that it did them any good.”
“What’s different about these men?” Rohan asked.
Levi and Martine turned toward him.
“There’s something very wrong here. Why risk taking on multiple victims at once? Why was the killer so angry? Why call you themselves and insist you rush to the scene? The Seven of Spades has deviated from their MO so significantly that there must be something enormously important that sets these victims apart.”
He was right, but Levi didn’t see anything in this room to indicate that difference. The Seven of Spades hadn’t even staged the scene to symbolize the victims’ crimes, unless . . .
Unless the mutilation was symbolic.
“These wounds aren’t random,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. The killer had solely mutilated the victims’ hands, eyes, and mouths. Those specific body parts had one connection that immediately sprang to mind. And the Seven of Spades had been so urgent on the phone, insisting Levi come here right away . . .
He bolted out of the room. Martine called his name in surprise, then chased after him when he didn’t respond.
Back in the hallway, he scanned the floor until he found what he was looking for: a diffuse, subtle trail of blood droplets along one wall. Following it, he burst through the door separating the offices from the main warehouse, with Martine and Rohan right on his heels. They had both drawn their weapons, but he didn’t bother.
The mazelike setup that confronted them consisted of long rows of suspended doors and windows stacked atop each other, towering all the way to the high ceiling and stretching out in every direction. Not far from the door they’d come through, one large plate of glass had been extracted from its row and turned so it faced them head-on.
A numeral seven was splashed on the glass in blood. The bar across the middle had been turned into an arrow pointing right.
“A barred seven,” Rohan said musingly. “Not that common in America.”
“They may have just written it that way so they could do that trick with the arrow,” said Martine. “This is the first time we’ve seen the Seven of Spades write the number seven in numeral form.”
Levi couldn’t have cared less about their conversation. His anxiety mounted, the need to hurry tugging at him. He didn’t think they would be too late, but he couldn’t know for sure.
He took off down the row indicated by the arrow. There they found another sign, this one painted on a white farmhouse-style door.
This warehouse seemed to have been intentionally designed in the most confusing layout possible. It would have been a nightmare to navigate unassisted, but the Seven of Spades had left them a clear, if twisting, trail through the dizzying rows of glass and wood. The path terminated in an alcove secreted behind a completely illogical arrangement of hanging windows, one Levi would have walked right past if it hadn’t been marked.
The bloody seven on the wall here was surrounded by a circle rather than shaped into an arrow. Levi ran his gloved hands along the wall but felt nothing out of the ordinary. He studied the sign a moment longer, made a face, and pressed his palm right up against the circled seven.
A pressure plate gave way beneath his hand and a hidden panel retracted, revealing a wooden door installed behind it. Martine and Rohan made surprised noises.
Levi tried the doorknob, but it was locked. He couldn’t risk shooting the lock off, and they couldn’t waste time going back to search the men’s bodies for the key, so he shoved his hands against the door a few times, testing its give.
Satisfied, he backed up and said, “Give me some room.”
Martine and Rohan flanked him on either side, both aiming their guns at the door. Levi strode forward and launched a powerful defensive front kick, driving through it with all the strength in his hips and thighs. The door shivered on its hinges.
Terrified screams sounded from behind the door.
“Are there people in there?” Martine said.
Levi didn’t answer. He kicked the door again, harder this time; it creaked and splintered ominously. One more devastating blow with everything he had, and he broke through. He swung the door open, his heart in his throat.
The cramped, poorly lit room beyond echoed with whimpers and sobs. He stared at the huddled mass of at least a dozen frightened children, all chained at the wrists and ankles and most badly bruised.
“Oh my God.” Martine holstered her gun, pushed past him to enter the room, and crouched down to the children’s level, speaking in a soothing tone as she reassured them she was a police officer.
Levi didn’t move; he couldn’t. Beside him, Rohan lowered his own gun and said, “You knew there would be people held captive here. You knew before you even left that room. How?”
“I didn’t know they’d be kids,” Levi said numbly. “I just knew from the way the Seven of Spades mutilated the bodies that those men were human traffickers.”
“How?”
Levi clenched his jaw. “It’s what I would have wanted to do to them.”
Hours later, Levi got into the driver’s seat of his own car. Rather than put the keys in the ignition, he dropped them into the center console, leaned back, and covered his face with both hands.
The rescued children were safe in the hospital under the temporary care of the Division of Child and Family Services. Rohan had gone to the local FBI office to assist in matching them to missing persons reports and locating their families. The crime scene had been fully processed, all the evidence bagged and tagged, the five corpses transported to the coroner’s office for top-priority autopsies.
His cell phone rang, and he dug it out of his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew who it was.
“You’ve never called me on my cell before,” he said in greeting.
“I did a lot of things today I’ve never done before,” said the Seven of Spades.
“What happened?” As Levi spoke, he slid his thumb across the screen of his phone and opened an app that would record the call. He’d downloaded it months ago in anticipation of just this event.
“I got angry.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“You don’t understand.” There was a long pause. “I’m not usually angry when I kill.”
“How does killing make you feel?”
“Calm. Happy. At peace, like everything is falling into place. Like things are finally the way they should be.”
Levi’s stomach turned over, but he hadn’t eaten in ten hours so there was nothing for him to throw up. “You butchered those men.”
“I know. I didn’t plan that. I just . . . I didn’t feel better after I killed them. Because it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough to punish them for what they’d done. It made me angry and I lost control.”
“You chopped off a guy’s fingers!”
“He was already dead when I did that.” There was an edge to the electronic voice now. “They all were. I would never torture a living person that way.”
“Great to know you draw the line somewhere,” Levi muttered.
“You’re upset. I know I left a mess for you, and it must have been unpleasant to walk into that. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry you lost control and made a mess. But you’re not sorry you killed them, are you?”
“Of course not. Why would I be? There’s no trust more sacred than that a child should be able to have in adults, no betrayal more vile than exploiting them. Can you think of a worse crime than trafficking children for sex?”
“I don’t know.” Levi thumped his head against the seat. “Genocide? That’s about it.”
“Then how can you object to their execution? The world is a better place without those men in it.”
“Honestly, yeah, that’s probably true. But that’s not the point. The poi
nt is that you have no right to decide who lives and who dies. No one person should have that kind of power. What makes you so special that you can be judge, jury, and executioner for the rest of us?”
“I’m not special,” said the killer. “Many people could do what I do, some even better than me. What makes me different is that I choose to take action instead of fantasizing about it.”
Closing his eyes, Levi said, “You’re insane.”
“I’m not, actually. But I think you know that. It’s why you’re so afraid of me.”
Levi huffed a humorless laugh. “You may not be crazy in the sense that you’re aware of and in control of your actions, but if you can kill a human being and feel happiness, there’s something broken inside you.”
“I’d argue there’s something broken in everyone.”
No. Levi was not debating morality and the nature of man with a serial killer who’d just carved up five people and splashed their blood around a warehouse. “You knew those children were there,” he said instead.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t help them.”
“I couldn’t help directly. They would have seen me.”
“So you just left them there?”
“I knew you would find them.”
Levi grimaced. “How did you even know that warehouse was being used for human trafficking? I looked into it—it wasn’t a blip on the radar of any local or national law enforcement agency. You couldn’t have found out through the LVMPD or the DA’s office.”
The Seven of Spades was quiet for a long time, long enough that Levi checked his phone to make sure the call was still connected. “Are you aware that people ask for my help?”
“What do you mean?”
“People reach out to me, sharing the injustices they’ve suffered. Most of it is nonsense, just idiots seeking petty revenge, but sometimes I receive valuable information.”
Levi sat upright. “How do people contact you if nobody knows who you are? 1-800-SERIAL-KILLER?”
A creepy electronic chuckle rasped over the line. “Don’t be ridiculous. They use the website.”
“What website?” Levi asked as a chill ran through him.
“Really? You don’t have a Google alert for my name?”
“Do you?”
“Of course. This is the Information Age, Detective.”
“Oh my God,” Levi muttered.
“I didn’t start the site and I have no control over it, but it’s an interesting read. In this case, the source was legitimate, so I followed the lead. You’ll learn this sooner rather than later, but the men I executed today were foot soldiers for the Slavic Collective. That warehouse was just one small part of the Collective’s human-trafficking ring.”
It was a testament to the insanity of Levi’s life that the news didn’t even faze him. “You said the source was legitimate. You know who tipped you off?”
“I do.” The killer’s smugness came through loud and clear despite the voice masker. “It’s a man I’ve dealt with before. His name is Eddie Mercado—he’s a lieutenant within Los Avispones.”
“Hey, baby,” Dominic said when he answered his cell phone. “Sorry we keep missing each other.”
“Me too.” Levi sighed. “Though I don’t think I’d be good company right now.”
Dominic gazed up at the Catholic church in front of him, his stomach churning. “Same here.”
He hadn’t seen Levi since Monday night, and it was now Thursday morning. That didn’t seem like a long time, but they hadn’t really spoken either—whenever one was available, the other was busy. It had been two and a half days of missed connections.
“Is your case not going well?” Levi asked.
“It’s . . .” Dominic watched a handful of world-weary people trudge into the church one by one. “It’s more complicated than I’d anticipated.”
Good thing he’d always been a skilled liar, because that was the understatement of the century. On Tuesday night, he’d learned through conversation with his fellow gamblers that Volkov’s underground casino rotated through a series of venues throughout the Valley every day to better evade law enforcement. Regular patrons were informed of the location daily via coded text. All it had taken was a little charm and dropping Jessica Miller’s name to get Michael Greene on that list, and he’d spent all last night in the hidden back room of a nightclub east of the Strip, raking it in. Once he’d gotten on that hot streak, he’d ridden it as long as possible.
He had to. For the case.
“. . . Dominic. Are you still there?”
“Huh?” Dominic startled where he stood at the edge of the curb. “Yeah, sorry. Some idiot wasn’t watching where he was going, and I almost knocked him over. What were you saying?”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Thanks, but I’m good. You have enough of your own crazy shit to deal with anyway. Speaking of which—are you okay?”
Levi didn’t answer for a moment. “I’ll be better when I can see you again. I just don’t know when we’re going to be able to make that happen.”
“Things won’t be this chaotic forever. Hang in there and we’ll get through it.”
“I know it’s only been a couple of days, but I miss you,” Levi said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. There must be people nearby he didn’t want overhearing.
Dominic felt the warm rush of tenderness he experienced whenever Levi showed his vulnerable side—a side he kept so carefully guarded that most people had no idea it existed. Levi’s trust was a gift, and not one Dominic took lightly.
He turned his back on the church to give Levi his full attention. “I miss you too, baby. There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now than next to you.”
Levi’s soft exhalation crackled over the phone. “I— Shit, I’ve gotta go. We’re having another briefing on this latest clusterfuck. I’ll try to call later, okay? Love you.”
“Love you.”
Dominic hung up, looked back at the church, and checked the time on his phone. The Gamblers Anonymous meeting started in two minutes.
The illegal casinos were the only feasible lead he had. He couldn’t storm Sergei Volkov’s Summerlin compound, and he’d never be able to contact Jessica privately during her monitored outings to church.
But if he infiltrated the gambling ring—got in good with the patrons and employees, endeared himself to management—he could keep an eye on her. He could take his time and find a way to extract her safely, all while gathering intel for the LVMPD that would bring down a massive organized-crime operation.
Okay, so he might lose a little money, be a little distracted. Wasn’t that a small sacrifice compared to the good he could do?
He could quit gambling again after the case was finished.
The church bells tolled the hour. Dominic walked away.
Levi was deep in conversation with Martine when hoots and hollers filled the briefing room. He swiveled around to see Jonah Gibbs slink in with a vivid black eye and a busted lip.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, assholes.” Gibbs dropped into his usual seat with his buddies near the back and crossed his arms.
“Dude, how many times you been punched on the job now?” one of the other officers asked.
“It was a domestic disturbance call,” Gibbs said sullenly. “Guy took me by surprise.”
Levi rolled his eyes and saw the same exasperated expression on Martine’s face. Due to his big mouth and hair-trigger temper, Gibbs had been in more physical altercations with suspects than Levi could count, though never to the point of serious damage on either side. This wasn’t the first shiner he’d brought to work.
Gibbs’s friends continued ribbing him until the briefing began, and Wen handed the meeting over to Rohan.
Levi was spitefully pleased to see that Rohan wasn’t as flawlessly put-together as usual. There was a palpable air of fatigue about him; he had dark circles under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved for at least a day.
“The county�
��s medical examiners have been working overtime to rush the autopsies on yesterday’s five victims,” he said. “So far, preliminary results confirm what the Seven of Spades told Detective Abrams last night—and thank you for that recording, Detective. Aside from the usual killing stroke across the victim’s throats, all of the mutilation to the bodies was performed postmortem. In fact, in at least one of the victims, the slash to the throat occurred after death as well. The ME’s conclusion is that he died of a ketamine overdose before the Seven of Spades reached him, though toxicology reports establishing the exact amounts of ketamine in each man’s system will take more time.”
“That many victims, you have to wonder if the killer may have made a mistake this time,” said Detective Burton. “Any foreign DNA at the scene?”
“We won’t know for a few days at least. The lab has a massive amount of evidence to process. We do know that the warehouse’s surveillance system was disconnected before the attack, so as usual there’s no electronic proof of the killer’s presence.”
“Are we sure the person who called Levi was the Seven of Spades?” Martine said—not to Rohan, but to Carmen Rivera.
“Yep,” Carmen said. “The masking algorithm destroys too much data in the conversion process for me to reverse it, but because the killer uses the same algorithm every time, I’m able to compare and match each sample. Every time the Seven of Spades has called Detective Abrams, it’s been the same person.”
Levi didn’t need a computer to tell him that. He felt it in his gut whenever he talked to them: that distinct creeping sense of dread and horror.
Rohan cleared his throat. “These murders were a severe departure from the Seven of Spades’s MO, indicating that there were unique triggers influencing their behavior. The killer themselves stated that they were overtaken by an anger they rarely experience that led them to lose control, and specifically referenced the nature of the victims’ crimes—the sexual exploitation of children. My theory is that this situation affected them more personally because it’s related to their original trauma.”
“Wow, seriously?” Levi said, unable to keep quiet. “So not only are we looking for a person who’s been traumatized, we’re looking for someone who’s experienced sexual assault and/or child abuse—two of the most sensitive and underreported crimes that exist?”
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