Chase’s headache suddenly bloomed.
Live in the moment, Chase.
She sipped her coffee.
Fuck you, Dr. Matteo. In several ‘moments’, my husband and son will be halfway across the world and a killer will still be on the loose in Las Vegas.
“Yeah, I guess,” she concluded.
The waitress returned with Stitts’s brunch, and he ate in silence for several minutes before addressing the elephant in the diner.
“So? You going to tell me what you saw back at the hotel? Share your voodoo? Because we could really use some insight into this one, Chase.”
Chapter 21
“A girl’s gotta have some secrets, doesn’t she?”
Stitts swallowed a hunk of bagel smothered in cream cheese.
“Seriously?”
“Let’s just go over what we know first before we come to that,” Chase said with a smile.
Despite her outward appearance, on the inside, Chase felt only one thing: shame.
At least back when she’d been hopped up on drugs and alcohol, she’d brought something to this partnership. Her strange ‘touch’ had provided insight that had directly led to solving several cases.
But now that her ability to read the crime scene had apparently vanished, what could she offer? What could a fucked up ex-heroin addict with a temper problem who is recently estranged from her husband and son provide in this case?
For the second time that day, it dawned on Chase that the loss of her ability coincided with her giving up booze and drugs. It wasn’t unreasonable to think the compounds had heightened her sense somehow, and if only—
Chase shook her head.
No. Just no, Chase.
“You okay?” Stitts asked.
“Yeah, fine. Just tired,” she lied. “I’m not used to big city lights, if you know what you mean. More into saunas and yoga.”
Stitts smirked. There was no way he was buying that Chase had spent more than two minutes in a yoga class before throwing her hands up, uttering a curse, and walking out.
Chase wondered briefly what Stitts had done to get her reinstated. The last time, he had either hidden or changed both her psych eval and medical results. And that was before what she’d done in Chicago.
She couldn’t imagine what hoops Stitts had to go through this time. And yet, that wasn’t what needled Chase most.
That luxury was afforded to the why.
Staring at the man across from her, Chase wondered why in the hell he would go out on a limb for her, especially given the way she’d treated him over the past year or so.
The lies, the deception, the downright illegal activities she always seemed to get them both wrapped up in.
Again, Chase shook her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts.
“You almost done? I need some fresh air.”
Stitts wiped his hands on his napkin and then tossed it onto his plate.
“All done,” he said, rising to his feet. He put a ten on the table and then led the way to the door.
Once outside, he immediately lit up a cigarette.
“I said fresh air, Stitts.”
Stitts exhaled a thin stream of smoke on the side opposite Chase, and she took this opportunity to stare at him for a moment. Despite being the one who claimed to be tired, it was Stitts who was wearing the fatigue on his face like an ill-fitting mask. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he hadn’t shaved in several days. Chase had been so caught up in her own issues that she hadn’t even bothered checking in with him, despite already having spent the better part of a day together.
“Are you… are you okay, Stitts?”
Stitts was in the process of bringing the cigarette to his lips when she asked the question, and Chase noted a slight hesitation.
“Fine,” he lied.
Chase opened her mouth to say more, but then shut it again. When she was ‘fine’, it was because she wanted to change the subject. But this wasn’t her… this was Stitts. The same Stitts who had been open about his emotions going way back to the day they’d met in NYC.
And yet, for some reason, Chase found herself unable to probe deeper.
He took another drag.
“So, where do we go from here, Chase? We’ve got no evidence, no suspects, and a murderer that somehow managed to transport in and out of a hotel room. I mean, this is Vegas, but Houdini died a long time ago.”
Chase sighed. Their feelings would have to wait.
“I sent out feelers to some of my poker buddies online,” she began. “A lot of the guys that I know form their play live games, too. Not usually at the same blistering stakes, but high-stakes nonetheless. Only two of them knew about the game — one of whom was invited, an online player who goes by the screen name ‘ATM’, while I think the other just heard about what happened afterward. But that’s only of the people I know; it’s clear that even though these games are supposed to be secret, people know about them. I also raised a flag out there saying I was interested in the next game, if there is one, to see if any funky replies filter in. Unlikely, but if the killer or killers are online players too, you never know.”
“You think it might be personal?”
The obliterated face of the bartender flashed in Chase’s mind and she shuddered.
“Not with the players, I don’t think. But I wouldn’t rule it out in general,” she replied.
“All right, sounds good. Greg’s compiling information about anyone who stepped foot on that floor around the time of the murders, and we should be getting access to the casino video feeds soon,” Stitts added.
“What’s his deal, anyway?”
Stitts turned to look at her.
“Who?”
“Greg. There’s something about him that seems off.”
Stitts rocked his head side to side as he thought about this.
“I dunno,” he said after a pause. “He doesn’t seem to be liked much by his peers, that’s for sure. But he’s the only person who’s helping us at all, so please don’t ask him to take his dick out and measure it.”
Chase chuckled, picturing the horrified expression on Duane Gwynne’s fat face.
“You can’t win a pissing contest without taking your pecker out, Stitts.”
They continued walking down the strip, Stitts smoking cigarette after cigarette, Chase observing the throngs of people.
They passed a husband and wife who were swinging their five-year-old daughter between their arms. The girl was squealing with glee, while the parents had deep scowls etched on their faces.
Probably blew her college funds at the craps table, Chase thought. Who would bring a child to Vegas for a vacation, anyway? Who in the fuck would take their son to live in Sweden?
Chase swallowed hard.
“What about the wives, sons and daughters, families of the players who died?” she asked. “They might’ve known about the game. We should also look into the backers.”
Stitts raised an eyebrow.
“Backers?”
Chase nodded.
“It’s rare for pros to go into these high-stake games using their own cash. Usually, they hedge their bets, pardon the pun, which means they get a bunch of rich friends or colleagues to put up a significant portion of the buy-in. Then, depending on the outcome, they split the profits.”
“Really? I thought some of these guys were super rich — like eight or nine figures rich. I mean, I didn’t recognize any of the victims from TV, but still.”
“Yeah, but the TV guys are just that: TV guys. They can play, sure, but most of the time they already made their money, and the stuff they do on TV is just to increase their Instagram followers. More face time, literally. But the guys who play in these big games, like the one in The Emerald? They’re real businesspeople. It makes no sense to put all your money on the line, especially when there are dozens of people vying for the opportunity to do it for you. In any event, I assume that at least half of the seven players had backers. These things obvi
ously aren’t public, but the information could be found out if you knew where to look. And they would most definitely know about the game. Perhaps not the details of where it was being held, but at the very least how much was at stake and a general idea of when the game is going to take place.”
Stitts turned his face away then, his gaze drawn by the roller-coaster that ripped through NY, NY.
“So, we’ve gone from a private game with eleven people inside, all of whom are killed, to potentially… what? A dozen more that knew about it? And that doesn’t include hotel staff or guests. Looks like the investigation just got more complicated.”
Chase couldn’t help but think of what Stitts had said about how difficult it had been to coordinate with the ATF, DoD, and state and local PD; he was probably right about being better off without them. After all, now that backers were likely involved, Stitts had no idea how complicated it was about to get.
After all, poker players were in the same league as the best liars in the world — their wealth depended on it.
And Chase considered herself one of them.
Chapter 22
Eventually, when the lights of Vegas were dangerously close to becoming permanent fixtures on their retinas, Chase and Stitts made their way back to the station. And if they had considered it a madhouse before, it was a veritable insane asylum now. Chase could barely get in the door even after flashing her credentials. Apparently, not only did the F in FBI come after ATF and DoD in the alphabet, it also followed them in hierarchy as well.
After name-dropping Sgt. Theodore and purposefully not mentioning Greg Ivory, they were reluctantly granted access. They were met with further resistance when they arrived at “their” office, but eventually, they entered that, too. Duane Gwynne was at Stitts’s desk, while Josh Haskell had taken up residence at Chase’s. Such nice guys that they were, they had neatly piled Chase’s belongings and placed them on the floor beside the waste bin. They had also been courteous enough to remove the photographs that Chase had neatly arranged on the pegboard and had layered them on top of one another so that only the face of the bartender remained visible.
Neither man raised their eyes as they entered, and Chase looked to Stitts for advice on what to do next. She was seething, of course, and desperately wanted to tell these men to go fuck themselves. While F might come after A and D, it didn’t stand for Federal Bureau of Investigation as much as it did Fucking Bitch Incarnate at that very moment.
Stitts lowered a calming hand on her shoulder and she felt some of her misplaced anger start to dissipate.
“Gentlemen,” Stitts said in a friendly tone.
Both men looked up and Chase felt her blood pressure rise when a grin, not a shit-eating grin so much as a diarrhea smear, appeared on Duane Gwynne’s fat face.
“You guys back?” Josh asked. “I piled your stuff up there, tried to be all neat about it, to keep it the way it was.”
This time, Chase couldn’t control herself.
“Gee, thanks. So kind of you.”
Josh’s brow furled.
“Wait, you mean that you’re not… you haven’t been… you’re still in this office? I thought that with the media coverage of the bombing, that you would be—” he shrugged, — “relocated.”
Duane chuckled, or he had a minor infarct — it was difficult to tell which — and Stitts’s grip tightened on her shoulder.
“No, we’re—”
Somebody suddenly appeared behind Chase and she whipped around, reactively taking a defensive posture.
She relaxed when she saw it was Greg and was genuinely surprised that the man had managed to sneak up on her given his noisy cane and ambulatory difficulties.
“What?” Chase snapped. When she saw Greg’s face contract inward, she calmed her tone. “What is it?”
“I just wanted to give you the heads up that the officers completed their rounds.”
“Their rounds?”
Greg nodded.
“Yeah, the men met with the families of the deceased. And I think we have a bit of a problem.”
Stitts stepped protectively in front of Chase.
“What kind of problem?”
Greg opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak a shout filtered to them from down the hall.
“Where’s his watch?” A female voice shrieked. “Where the hell is his watch?”
Greg hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
“That kind of problem,” he said.
***
“No, you don’t understand — you’re not listening. Mike wouldn’t go anywhere without his watch.”
Chase stared at the woman across from her, focusing on her tear-sodden cheeks, her rheumy eyes, unkempt hair.
“Ms. Hartman, I’m very, very sorry for your loss,” Stitts began, leaning across the table.
The woman recoiled as if she’d been struck.
“No, no, no, no, no. You can’t do this to me. Everyone else in this fucking building is the same — the police officers, the detectives, everyone. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m telling you, like I told them, that my son would never go anywhere without his watch. It was a gift from his father.”
Chase watched the woman as she spoke, confirming that her pain was genuine. She also knew from experience that it wasn’t uncommon for people who had just lost a loved one to place inordinate value on inanimate objects. It was their way of dealing with the loss, of retaining something to hold onto forever.
“We are working around the clock to find out who did this,” Stitts said, the woman’s face growing more pinched with every word. “Is there anybody—”
Chase decided to interrupt. She knew that if Stitts continued along these lines they would lose the woman and any valuable information that she might hold.
“Ms. Hartman, do you have a photograph of the watch? Can you describe it to us?”
The woman’s face relaxed and she breathed a sigh of relief. Someone was finally listening to her.
As if waiting for this very moment, Ms. Hartman reached into her purse and pulled out a photo and handed it to Chase.
Chase stared at it for several seconds, taking in all the details. The watch was an old timepiece, the kind with a large digital display that was popular in the mid-80s and early 90s. Dark black with a leather band that was clearly added post-market, it appeared to have little financial value.
“And your son never leaves home without this, is that correct?”
The woman nodded enthusiastically.
“Never.”
Chase looked over at Stitts then and took a deep breath. She recalled the way Mike Hartman’s face had been caved in by gunfire, and she swallowed hard before asking her next question.
“Ms. Hartman, I need to ask you something, something very important. But it might be upsetting. Would that be alright?”
The woman hesitated, but eventually nodded. She wiped tears away from her eyes with nicotine-stained fingers.
“Did you identify your son’s body? Are you sure it was him in the hotel room?”
The woman exploded in waterworks and Stitts hurried to her, handing her a box of tissues and putting a reassuring arm on her back.
For a moment, Chase thought that she had pushed Ms. Hartman too far and that it had been she who had lost her.
“He’s my son,” she said softly. “You think I wouldn’t recognize my own son?”
Son or not, it would’ve been difficult for anybody to identify Mike Hartman’s body in the shape Chase had seen it in the hotel room.
As if reading her mind, the woman cleared her throat and continued.
“He’s got a tattoo — a sparrow — on the inside of his right forearm.”
Chase nodded.
She’d seen that sparrow, had touched it. Chase had hoped that it would transport her into Mike Hartman’s last moments among the living. But in the end, all she got was a handful of cold, dead flesh.
Chapter 23
“No, something just doesn’t make sense
,” Chase said. Ms. Hartman had since been escorted from the building and Greg Ivory had been gracious enough to let them share his office. While it was smaller than the one that the ATF and DoD had commandeered, Greg was a thin, tidy man who appeared to be one of the few people who gave a fuck about The Emerald shooting victims.
Drawing Dead (A Chase Adams FBI Thriller Book 3) Page 8