Greg’s eyes remained locked on the board.
“She’s got a chip on her shoulder, doesn’t she?”
Stitts’s initial reaction was to become defensive, but then he realized that Greg was just making an observation and didn’t mean to be insulting.
And it was the truth, of course; Chase did have a chip on her shoulder.
“She’s a complicated woman, that’s for sure,” he found himself saying, without really thinking. Wishing to change the subject, he added, “Think I can borrow your car? You’re welcome to come with, if you want.”
Stitts got the sneaking suspicion that Greg didn’t like being left alone at the station. Alone among many, like Stitts himself.
“We can take my squad car. But you’re driving, my leg aches like hell.”
Stitts nodded.
“Not a problem.”
***
“How long have you been with the LVMPD, Greg?”
Greg stared out the window as he answered, a clear indication that he wasn’t comfortable talking about himself. But, as Stitts knew, the key to trust was being open and vulnerable. And if he couldn’t quite trust Chase, then he was going to take his chances with this man who seemed helpful in the face of a bunch of political bureaucrats.
“Thirty-three years last month,” he answered. As was his habit, even though Greg paused and appeared to be done speaking, Stitts didn’t immediately jump in with another question. Instead, he allowed his first to simmer, to marinade, to give Greg a chance to think about whether or not his answer was satisfactory.
Mostly, Stitts knew that people just wanted to be heard, and you couldn’t listen if all you did was ask questions. Eventually, Greg opened up, as Stitts knew he would.
“I started as a beat cop, then after about twelve years, I moved to a detective role. Six years after that, I was leading a team.”
Again, the man paused.
A team? What sort of team? Stitts wondered, but he held his tongue. And, in time, as they made the short drive from the station to the casino, Greg elaborated.
“I was working when the Las Vegas Village shooting took place,” he said at last. “I made a calculated decision and moved away from where the shots were being fired. Took a bullet in the leg, and that’s that.”
But it wasn’t all; Stitts could tell by the man’s intonation that there was more to the story, but he also knew that the man was finally done speaking.
Still, the man had revealed enough for things to start to fall into place. Stitts had been part of FBI for long enough to know what happened to someone who fled from a gunfight, irrespective of motive.
It meant that you were a coward and that you couldn’t be trusted. And, as Stitts was acutely becoming aware, if there was no trust, very little else mattered.
“Let me ask you something, Greg: was Sgt. Theodore present at the shooting?”
Greg shook his head.
“No, he arrived after the fact, headed part of the investigation on the management side. Sgt. Theodore was set to move up to Lieutenant before the incident, but many mistakes were made. And when you have in excess of fifty people dead and no motive after more than a month, fingers start to be pointed internally. A bunch of those fingers ended up aimed at the sergeant.”
Another piece to the puzzle, Stitts thought.
Sgt. Theodore was trying to curry political favor by shuttling all resources to the bombings. Putting too much emphasis and bringing the Emerald shootings into the public eye would only open old wounds. Wounds that had clearly stung the man and his career projections.
“What about you?” Greg said suddenly, surprising Stitts.
“Joined the FBI fourteen years ago. Before that, I was in the real estate.”
He was about to add more but was preoccupied with finding a parking space in The Emerald’s underground garage. From the outside, it was as if nothing had happened; the place was packed. Eventually, he gave up and rolled the cruiser into a fire lane.
“I mostly do profiles,” he continued, “specialize in—”
Stitts stopped mid-sentence. A man stood smoking by the doorway leading to the elevators. Normally, he wouldn’t have paid this any mind, but it had been a while since his last smoke and the sight of it caused him to stare more intently.
There was something about the man, something that was oddly familiar.
“Hey, do you recognize that guy?” He asked.
Greg followed his gaze and rolled down his window.
“I’m not… I’m not sure. My eyes aren’t—”
Stitts jammed the car into park and leaped from the vehicle.
“Hey! Hey, buddy, I’ve got a question—”
Stitts didn’t even manage to finish the sentence before the man dropped his cigarette and started to run.
Chapter 26
Given the size of the mansion, and the net worth of the owner, Chase expected a butler to answer the door, Jeeves perhaps, or that creepy bastard Raul who had looked after Clarissa and the late Thomas Smith’s place. She was pleasantly surprised when Stu Barnes pulled the large oak door open with his own two hands.
The man was wearing a crisp white dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone to just below his breastbone. His royal blue pants ended just above the ankle bone, and his sockless feet were buried in black leather driving loafers. The gray hair on his head and cheeks and chin were both neatly brushed.
Chase was nearly startled at how handsome the man was.
“Can I help you?” He asked, with no hint of an accent.
Chase cleared her throat.
“Stu? Stu Barnes?” Chase said, using her poker skills to keep her expression neutral.
The man’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, I’m Stu Barnes. Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Chase, Chase Adams. And I’m… well, I heard what happened and I just wanted to come by and say how sorry I was to hear.”
For a moment, Chase thought that she’d misread the man, and had incorrectly assumed that he was aware of the murders.
But when the man’s blue eyes suddenly went soft, Chase was reassured.
“You must’ve known Kevin,” he said, a hint of lamentation on his voice. Clearly, he was better off backing poker players than becoming one himself. “He was a good man.”
Chase found herself nodding, while on the inside she was busy packaging her preconceptions and tossing them into a mental waste bin. She’d expected a businessman with Stu’s success to be a ruthless, money hungry asshole. Instead, the man’s first comment wasn’t about his missing millions, but about Kevin.
After discarding her incorrect assumptions, Chase’s mind switched to the image of Kevin O’Hearn on the board back at the police station. He was in his mid-twenties and had a patchy beard and close-set eyes.
“I met him online, which is where he told me about you. I’ve never played with him live, but I’m… I dunno, I guess I’m mostly just scared and didn’t know where to go.”
Stu stepped aside and held the door wide, gesturing for Chase to enter.
“I am scared, too,” he admitted.
***
Stu Barnes was clearly hurting, but he hadn’t let his guard down completely. In casual conversation, he’d inquired about her online poker name and when he went to fetch coffee, she heard him typing away at his computer. There was only so much you could glean from her poker persona, but with connections, or enough money, of which she suspected Stu had both, you could find out enough.
In the end, however, it mattered little; after speaking with the man for several minutes, she knew that her poker knowledge would come through in only a way that a player’s could. There was something about playing mid- to high-level stakes poker that changed you in a way that was difficult to describe.
“I’m just in shock,” Stu said, returning with a fresh pot of coffee. “I’ve known Kevin O’Hearn for… shit, eight years now. We met quarterly to discuss business, but also to shoot the shit. He was pla
nning on proposing to his girlfriend in the fall.”
Chase swallowed hard. With poker, it was easy for her to disassociate her emotions; in fact, it was necessary for success. But with people, especially lately, it was becoming more and more difficult.
I’m taking Felix to Sweden. When you get better, you can come visit.
“I only met him online a few years back,” she lied; she’d never heard of Kevin before she’d seen his dead body. “He played at the super high-stakes, while I mettle along at the midrange. But once I heard about this…”
“And how did you hear about this? I mean, I checked the news and there’s nothing about these murders. Either they’re working hard to keep things under wrap, or they’re focusing on the Planned Parenthood bombing.”
It was clear by his tone that he suspected the latter, and was none too happy about it, either.
“The irony is, gamblers and gambling is what makes this town. It’s what draws forty million visitors a year, employs tens of thousands of people. Supports the infrastructure, the social programs. And yet, when something like this goes down, the authorities like to push it under the rug, pretend it didn’t happen. Silently assert that somehow the gamblers deserved it, that they are degenerates.”
Chase couldn’t help but be surprised by the man’s intuition.
“I have a family friend in the PD — helped him out with some bills a while back,” Chase said. “He gives me a little nudge anytime there’s something going on in the poker scene. I assure you that they’re working on it, but you’re right: the focus is on the bombing right now.”
“Figures,” Stu Barnes said, sipping his coffee. “Normally these private games are safe, especially at The Emerald. A couple of years back several underground poker rings got busted up by mobs in Montréal, but nothing like this. Nothing like flat out murder.”
The man stared off into space as he said this, and Chase knew then that he had nothing to do with the attacks.
Something that Stu said also struck a chord with her: …especially at The Emerald.
Kevin must have played in one of these private games there before. They had limited video footage from the most recent game, but she wondered if they might have more luck with a previous one. Perhaps the killer or killers staked it out to plan their Houdini act.
Chase made a mental note to ask Stitts to look into this later. She was about to express her disgust at what had happened when Stu suddenly clapped his hands on his thighs and stood.
“You know what? Fuck this coffee. I’m going to have a drink. We’ll drink to Kevin.”
Stu made his way to the bar near the back of the massive sitting room and promptly returned with two glasses and a bottle of fifty-year-old Balvenie.
“I promised Kevin that we’d pop this bottle when he proposed to his girlfriend,” Stu said. His eyes began to water and he turned his back to Chase and tried to wipe the tears away without her noticing. “And now that he’s gone… I say we have a drink in his honor.”
Chase hadn’t prepared for this scenario, and she felt sweat break out on her forehead.
The problem wasn’t the alcohol, at least not directly. The common adage was that weed was a gateway drug, but that was complete and utter bullshit. Alcohol was the gateway drug by definition. It lowered inhibitions, and when Chase’s guard was down, it led to uncomfortable and dangerous situations.
Ones that she’d promised both Dr. Matteo and Stitts that she’d avoid.
Chase was suddenly back at Grassroots bent over the sink, Louisa’s pudgy fingers jammed down her throat.
Those types of situations.
And yet, if she said no…
In the end, Stu made the decision for her by pouring two glasses.
“Here,” he said, handing her one of them. Chase stared at it for an inordinate amount of time before taking it from the man. Then Stu raised his glass and Chase did the same. “To Kevin.”
Chase brought the drink to her lips.
“To Kevin,” she repeated quietly.
Chapter 27
Stitts sprinted after the smoking man but, unfamiliar with the surroundings, he quickly found himself lagging behind. He followed through the doors leading to the elevators, but the man made a hard right and entered a stairwell instead.
Stitts opened the door and followed the footsteps upward, taking two at a time.
“Stop!” He shouted. “Stop! FBI!”
The man’s only response was sneakers slamming on the individual stairs as he continued upward. Stitts grabbed the railing and hoisted himself up each rung, his breath coming in ragged bursts now.
“Stop!”
Just as Stitts hit the second-floor landing, the door started to close. He managed to keep it open with his foot, and then shoved the pushbar.
The contrast between the empty stairwell and the cornucopia of sounds from The Emerald casino floor was so extreme that it was momentarily disorienting. That, combined with his fatigue, caused Stitts to stumble and he fell onto one knee. And yet, his eyes were still searching for the blond man in the hoodie.
Unlike Stitts, he was still on his feet, not quite running, but moving quickly toward the cashier’s desk before taking a hard right around a row of slot machines.
“Wait!” Stitts yelled, but his words were swallowed up by the din of the casino.
Worried that he would lose the man, he pushed himself to his feet and broke into a run again. Only he didn’t make it very far: two large men in matching black shirts calmly stepped out of nowhere and blocked his path.
“No running in the casino, sir,” the larger of the two men said. His hair shaved on the sides and a greasy ponytail rain down the back.
Stitts’s first instinct was to run around them, but despite their enormous size, they were actually quite agile and quickly blocked his path.
“No running,” the man repeated.
Stitts struggled to find his words while trying to catch his breath.
“I’m FBI,” he croaked, but either the men didn’t understand him, or didn’t rightly care.
When he tried to move again, ponytail put a hand on his chest. Stitts slapped it away, but the man grabbed his wrist and twisted it back. Fearing that his arm might snap, Stitts had no choice but to drop back onto one knee.
“I’m FBI,” he managed through clenched teeth. “God damn it, I’m FBI! Let me go!”
Instead of replying, ponytail slipped a hand into Stitts’s coat and pulled out the wallet containing his badge. He flipped it open and stared at it for a moment before showing it to his partner. They exchanged eyebrow raises before ponytail released his grip on Stitts’s wrists.
Stitts immediately jumped to his feet and craned his head around the two beefy security guards, trying to find the smoking man.
He was nowhere in sight.
“Fuck!”
“No running in the casino,” ponytail said for a third time.
Stitts scowled.
“Are you a fucking robot? Is that all you can say? I was chasing someone, for fuck’s sake.”
The man simply shrugged, and Stitts looked skyward.
“I need to speak to your manager — I need to speak to Shane McDuff.”
Ponytail’s eyebrow rose again, only this time it wasn’t in surprise, but something akin to fear. Finally, the man seemed to put two and two together: the FBI and what had happened on the seventh floor.
“Well, we didn’t know… I mean, we’ve got strict instructions to not let anyone—”
Stitts shook his head and cut him off.
“I don’t give a fuck about that. I need to see Shane McDuff. Are you going to take me to him, or am I going to have to throw your ass in jail for obstruction?”
Chapter 28
Shane McDuff was a nervous creature, with eyebrows that were more animated than a cartoon character. He seemed surprised when Stitts showed up at his office and became visibly agitated when he saw the man’s FBI badge. The first twenty or thirty words out of his mouth were r
elated to how he’d already told the police everything that he knew.
Even when Stitts pressed, the man seemed to be locked in the same refrain.
“I need you to tell me—”
The man fiddled with a pen in his hand, and Stitts noted that there was blue ink on his fingertips and the webbing between thumb and forefinger.
“I already told the police what happened. I got a call about some noise on the seventh floor — fireworks going off — and I sent my men right up there. They were already gone — whoever did this was gone. And then… and then… and then I called the police.”
Drawing Dead (A Chase Adams FBI Thriller Book 3) Page 10