Vegas Rain

by Rick Murcer

  VEGAS RAIN

  By

  RICK MURCER

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Murcer Press, LLC

  Edited by

  Jan Green-thewordverve.com

  Interior book design by

  Bob Houston eBook Formatting

  www.rickmurcer.com

  Vegas Rain © 2013 Rick Murcer All rights reserved

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. The ebook contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  For JC, who loves me and keeps me on the path, eternally.

  For all of the wonderful readers I’ve met along this journey.

  You are ALL special to me.

  A special thanks to my wife, Carrie. There is truly no one like you.

  CHAPTER-1

  The roar of the large, yellow backhoe caught his attention. FBI Special Agent Manny Williams stared as the monstrosity turned the corner of the gravelly trail running through the middle of the cemetery and headed directly toward him. It swung to the left, barely avoiding a one-hundred-year-old tombstone, zigged back into position and was on track again, sprinting at him with the menace of a T-Rex. He reached inside his coat and placed his hand on the cold steel of his Glock 19.

  A few seconds later, as the lumbering machine drew closer, he got a better glimpse of the driver and passenger. He pulled his hand from the gun and smiled.

  Josh Corner, the leader of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, and Alex Downs, Manny’s longtime friend and the most talented CSI he’d ever worked with, were crowded side by side on the bench seat, Josh driving, Alex giving animated directions with his hands. Manny’s smile widened. He’d remember this one. It was like a Laurel and Hardy skit from the golden age of black-and-white television.

  Wheeling up close, maybe fifteen feet, the smell of spent diesel fuel dancing amidst the crisp Michigan air, the backhoe rumbled to a jerky stop.

  A moment later, Josh jumped out and Alex followed suit, shaking his head and clutching his chest.

  “I got to get one of these,” said Josh. “That was more fun than riding with Sophie when she’s got a wild hair.”

  “Yeah. You need to go to backhoe driving school first. You only have to learn how to start one, drive it, and control the front loader and the backhoe. Other than that, you’re good to go,” said Alex, pulling his black-rimmed glasses from his round face and wiping them against his fleece jacket.

  Josh shrugged, running his hand over his almost-shaved head, his cobalt-blue eyes sparkling. “Not bad for a city boy.” Then he cocked his head toward Manny. “They have classes for that?”

  “Man, I hope so. But you did okay. I only reached for my gun once.”

  Josh’s eyes sparkled even more. “I’ll take that as an endorsement then.”

  “Amazing how we hear only what we want to hear,” said Alex.

  Another roar of a high-powered engine caused the three men to turn in the opposite direction and focus on a black FBI SUV as it banked around the corner of the gravel road.

  Stones and dirt flew like a mini snowstorm as the vehicle fishtailed to the left, then the right. Five seconds later, it came to an even stop, engine revving, smoke rising slowly from the exhaust.

  Before the wheels had even stopped rolling, both doors flew open and the last two members of the BAU came walking in their direction, not appearing to be in any great hurry.

  Sophie Lee, his attractive, diminutive Chinese-American ex-partner from his time with the Lansing Police Department, who had joined him at the Bureau, was a few feet ahead of the taller, bearded Dean Mikus, the other forensic expert of the BAU. Dean’s face was flushed as he held tight to a red paisley driver’s cap that matched his shirt.

  Manny shook his head. The man had a fashion sense, if you could call it that, all his own. Just like his taste in women. Dean was partial to independent Asian ladies and none he’d ever met matched his partiality more than Sophie. That was probably an understatement.

  Dean had been smitten by Sophie the second he’d laid eyes on her in Puerto Rico some five months ago. He’d even gotten down on one knee, called her princess, and kissed her hand. It may have been the only time in their respective careers that the collective BAU was rendered speechless.

  It hadn’t happened often in the nine years Manny and Sophie worked together, but she’d been totally shocked by Dean’s confession of adoration, for a few seconds at least. And now, after all of these months, she was warming up to Dean, but was taking her time. Manny thought that kind of patience a great choice. She’d been through enough hell in her personal life over the last few years, including two divorces, so to dive in the deep end of the pool again wasn’t wise. He liked that she understood that.

  Sophie looped her arm under Manny’s, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. “This better be good, Williams. You got my ass out of bed way too early for a weekend. Just because you gave up any hope of a real life now that you’re married, doesn’t mean I did. The nightlife in Lansing needs me. I’m in demand.”

  Patting Sophie’s arm, Manny grinned. No matter the circumstance, and what was coming next was as unreal as he could imagine, she held an innate ability to make him do just that: smile.

  “Hey. This is what you get when you sign up to protect your country and join the FBI. Besides, you know the BAU never gets any sleep. It’s in the job description,” Manny answered.

  “Whatever. You dragged me to a cemetery on top of getting me out of bed? You sure know how to show a woman a good time, Williams. My public needs to see me looking my best.”

  “Public? Rumor has it that you were home and in bed, and alone, by eleven.”

  Sophie shot Manny a look and then turned an icy stare toward Dean. He shifted his feet, glancing down at his steel-toed boots. The newest member of the BAU was still a bit uncomfortable when the attention focused on him. That was okay. This unit had enough type A personalities.

  Dean exhaled and scanned the group before his soft gaze settled on Sophie. Again, Manny wondered just what he and Sophie had going. Maybe the two of them hadn’t a clue either.

  “Hey, Princess. I can’t lie to him. He called to make sure we were ready this morning. I told him you were tired and I dropped you off at your apartment at ten-thirty.”

  “Great. Makes me look like I’m forty or something. Traitor.”

  He shook his head. “No. I was tired too. But I watched you turn out your lights before I went to the hotel.”

  “You watched me turn off the lights? Normally I’d think that’s creepy, even for me, but coming from you, that’s kind of cool. Did you see anything? You know, like, was I naked and silhouetted against the curtain? That kind of stuff?”

  Dean’s face turned a bright scarlet. “Well, I didn’t exactly, you know, see . . . ”

  “Okay. Let’s stay on
task. You two can talk about this on your own time.”

  Rolling her eyes, Sophie grabbed Manny’s arm. “See what I mean, Williams? You’re letting the air out of your marriage already. You need to do things like that to keep your sex life rolling, ya know? You’re still hot, but man, you gotta keep things hopping. Chloe will think you’ve turned old. Hell, you know, like fifty.”

  “Chloe and I are just fine.” His eyes narrowed. “You aren’t allowed to talk to her about our personal life, got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you,” said Sophie, her smile as incorrigible as ever. “And, well, women talk.”

  It was Manny’s turn to roll his eyes. “I thought we were out of high school and college.”

  “Never. Anyway, what’s going on here? You said something about Argyle’s grave being empty?” asked Sophie, her voice growing softer.

  For a numberless time, he tried to get his mind around what Sophie had asked. How Dr. Argyle’s body wound up missing was the least of his concerns; the why held a much more pointed, unsettling overtone.

  Manny had put the brilliant, but totally demented killer in the ground with a bullet to the head in Galway, Ireland a year ago. Even though the Good Doctor had cultivated some over-zealous groupies, the act of robbing his grave was almost beyond comprehension, even if any of his warped followers might still be around.

  Running his hand through his hair, Manny spoke. “I had Alex get an exhumation order while we were coming back from North Carolina after we found out that Max Tucker had been killed.”

  “You didn’t say why you wanted to do it exactly,” said Josh.

  “I’m not sure why . . . it was a gut feeling, I guess. It simply seemed odd to me that Max was murdered when he was a certified disciple of Argyle. I mean what was gained by that? Toss in the circumstances involving the murder of Garity a few weeks after he stabbed me in San Juan and, well, it made me wonder, just for a moment, if I’d really put Argyle away.”

  “You know, that’s a few times you’ve mentioned that. You blew his freaking head off, remember?” said Sophie, her voice rising.

  “I know how crazy that sounds, but did I really? I mean, I was looking at his face, his eyes, and I’m still pretty sure it was him, sort of. But think about it, about him, and how he did what he did from the very beginning. He always had an escape, a way out, right? He’d never exposed himself to the remotest chance of dying. He had the money, the time, that brain-washing charm, everything he’d need to create a perfect doppelganger,” said Manny.

  Josh shifted his weight, obviously uncomfortable. “I don’t question your instincts any more, especially when you trance, but like I said initially when you mentioned all this, you need to give yourself more credit. We beat him at his own game. He never saw us coming.”

  Manny nodded. “I keep thinking that, but I need to . . . no, we all need to make sure. I wanted Alex to do a DNA analysis of his body to help me rest easier.”

  He glance around his unit. “Anyone else think that my concerns could have a little substance?”

  No one answered.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Taking a few steps toward the open grave some twenty feet away, Manny turned back to the others.

  “Now we get this—an empty grave without a clue of where the body might be. Does anyone else want to chime in with an explanation?”

  “Not yet,” said Dean. “Do we have any idea how this might have happened? It could lead to the why and where, maybe?”

  “The how is simple. The man working the third shift at the cemetery dug the casket up sometime last week,” said Manny.

  “Why would he do that? And how do you know?” asked Sophie, shaking her head.

  “I think we can figure those questions out. After Alex called last night, I had him do background checks on anyone who might have had access to this cemetery and the backhoe.”

  “Good place to start,” said Josh.

  “We thought so. At any rate, this guy was a City of Lansing employee, and he was also a patient of Doctor Fredrick Argyle five years ago. He was sent in for counseling after he’d lost his son to a drunk-driving accident.”

  “Shit, is there anyone that guy didn’t treat in this damn city?” said Sophie.

  Manny shrugged. “Dr. Argyle held the contract for city and county employees, so you can guess at the opportunities he had to spread his distorted gospel.”

  “Should we check out the rest of the people he had contact with over that time period?” asked Josh.

  “We should. Although I suspect he only targeted people he could manipulate. I’ve talked to my old boss, Commissioner Gavin Crosby, and he’s going to work on creating a list of names of employees who may have talked with Argyle.”

  More silence. Phenomenal how it could be so deafening.

  The early spring morning accepted the uneasy stillness even if the crew in the cemetery wasn’t sure how to handle it.

  Manny knew that the talented group of FBI agents, and close friends, were trying to get their minds around what he’d already accepted.

  Argyle could be alive.

  CHAPTER-2

  “Don’t never matter anyway. I got shit for luck and misery’s my best frriieenndd.”

  Alonzo Smith stopped sifting among the green garbage bins located behind the Egyptian Casino just off from Las Vegas Avenue. He put his hand on his chest, one dirty foot on an old cardboard box, Sinatra-like, then sang the last phrase, again, of his newest lyrics. He listened intently as the melody echoed throughout the small, hot alley. His smile evolved into something more, and he laughed.

  “I still got it, baby, still got it,” he said out loud, bowing to an unseen crowd who didn’t seem to mind the stench—his and the alley’s.

  Removing his foot from the box, he moved slowly to the next bin. His voice had changed over the last few years, but he knew good music when he heard it, whether he was drunk, stoned, or otherwise. He could still carry a tune better than most and, back in his day, during his fifteen minutes of fame, no one had written better lyrics. He wrote those moving love songs with sexy, steamy, get-laid lyrics that made peoples’ temperatures rise as their imaginations took over.

  Once, all of those years ago, he’d had the gold records to prove it. Motown. LA. New York. You name the city; they’d all been his oyster. And he could write the other stuff too. He’d written so many jingles that he’d forgotten the exact amount. Never mind a couple of those movie themes.

  “You were the best, baby, the best,” he whispered.

  Looking down at his dirty hands and tattered clothing, he slowly waggled his head. That wasn’t all he’d forgotten was it? She wasn’t easy to erase from his tortured mind. Never would be.

  It didn’t happen often these days. The lucid, introspective moments of recollection reared ugly heads when their ghosts wanted to remind him of his sins.

  He felt his angst rise.

  These unexpected spells cast a peek into the past that was bittersweet. His successes, the money, the cars, the houses—those were pleasant things. Nothing matched her, however. How she cared. How she loved. How she lived. Then she was gone. All because of him.

  His heart pounded in his chest.

  All because of him.

  Well, that was the true apparition that sent him back to his own tiny world, wasn’t it?

  He closed his eyes and waited for the page to turn so that he could go back to the world that always gave him sanctuary. He opened his eyes. Alonzo was still in the wrong reality.

  Then he hit himself in the head with a quick right. Nothing. He was still of sound mind, her lovely face dancing in his brain so vividly that the tears came, again. His quiet cry turned into sobs. She was so beautiful, so trusting, then she was gone, and all because he wouldn’t play ball with a couple of Vegas hoods.

  Quickly fumbling through his deep pockets, he found his remedy of choice and drank a fourth of the pint of whisky in one gulp. Sniffing the bottle, he
repeated the long swig. The smell and the incessant burn combined to form his version of comfort food. It worked.

  A few moments later, the real world again a distant shadow, he rummaged around the remaining garbage bins, impervious to the increasing stench that would have driven most others to a safer haven. Any thoughts of his past life were finally and completely obliterated.

  After tossing away a large section of cardboard, he stopped, tilted his head, and grinned. A shoe. Not just any shoe but a black, patent-leather, designer shoe was sticking straight up, looking like his size, at least close enough, and waiting for him to pluck it from its dicey prison. He bent closer and felt his pulse shift to fourth gear. The mate for his new treasure was right next to it, albeit buried a little deeper.

  “Score! It’s my lucky day, and I gotta say, I did it my waayy,” he crooned, laughing at his good fortune.

  Clutching the first shoe, he yanked, fully expecting it to come free. It didn’t. He scowled and then gave it another yank. It moved sideways, not up, and he fell back, catching himself with his hands.

  “You som’bitches are coming with me, like it or not,” he yelled.

  Alonzo spit on his hands, grabbed the shoe again, and yanked with all of his might. Again he ended up on his backside, but, this time, the black treasure came free. He stared at the shoe in his grasp, but that wasn’t the only thing that came out from the rubble in the bin.

  At first, he believed the leg belonged to a mannequin, but the dried blood and the rancid odor emanating from the human foot still wedged within the shoe told him otherwise.

  The dark hairs standing straight out from the foot, just under the straight cut that had separated it from the man’s leg, held Alonzo paralyzed.

  But only for a small morsel of time.

  What was left of his sanity demanded a whole new reaction.

  Tossing the limb from hell aside, he scrambled out of the bin.

  Alonzo Smith reached the hot asphalt and tore his shirt with both hands, screaming for Satan to leave him alone.