She was actually surprised to find him in the office when she called.
“Detective Holland,” he said by way of greeting.
“Andy, it’s Lacey Fitzpatrick. How are you?”
“Lacey? I’m great, how are you? Long time no see.”
“Yeah, long time.” She mentally calculated the months since she resigned: almost eighteen. “I can’t believe I caught you at your desk,” she said. “Things pretty quiet?”
“Not bad,” he said. “But even so, paperwork, you know. So what’s up? What are you doing with yourself? Did I hear something about you getting your P.I. license?”
“You probably did because that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m looking at a case in Las Vegas, and I’m wondering if you can refer me to an upright detective on their Homicide division. You got an in for me?”
“Hmm, Las Vegas. Haven’t talked to those guys for a while. There was one guy, thought—old guy—named Pete McLeary. He was a real straight arrow. Royal pain in the ass, though.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Oh, you know the type; been around forever, knows everybody and everything. Not exactly a team player. But no question he’s an upright guy.”
“Okay,” Lacey said, jotting down the name. “What about Vice? Know anyone there?”
“Eh, not that I can think of. But Tommy would know.”
Tommy Belvedere. One of her ex-boyfriend’s old cronies. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to talk to him.
“Thanks, Andy. I’ll, uh, think about that one.”
Andy was silent for a heartbeat. “You know he felt really bad about that,” he said. “But he couldn’t ignore it. He knew Derrick was crossing the line.”
“Oh, I’ve got no problem with that,” she said. “Hell, I wish someone had blown the whistle on him sooner. No, Derrick got exactly what he deserved. I’m just not sure I want to revisit all that.”
“I hear ya,” Andy said. “Well, it’s there if you want it.”
“Thanks. I’ll start with Homicide and see how far that takes me. I appreciate the help.”
“Good luck,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
She grinned. “Okay, Andy. Thanks.”
She hung up the phone and stared at the number Andy had given her. No time like the present, she thought. She poured herself a fresh glass of iced tea and punched in the number.
“Homicide,” a bored voice answered.
“Could I speak to Pete McLeary, please?”
“Hang on.” The line went on hold. Lacey sipped her tea.
“McLeary,” a voice barked.
“Detective McLeary, my name is Lacey Fitzpatrick, and I’m a P.I. in LA. I was referred to you by Andy Holland at the LAPD. I’m investigating a possible murder in your area and hope you can give me some information.” She pushed it all out in one breath so as not to give McLeary the time to interrupt. Most detectives, she knew, were less than enthusiastic about talking to outsiders who butted into their business.
“Fitzpatrick, huh?” came the reply. “You related to a Fiona Fitzpatrick in Eagle Rock?”
“Um, no, I’m not,” Lacey said. Too late, she wondered if lying about a connection would have brought her more cooperation. Being caught in a lie, however, could scotch the whole deal.
“Huh. Too bad. Sweet old broad. So what can I do for you, Lacey Fitzpatrick-not-related-to-Fiona?” The gravelly voice, for all its roughness, sounded slightly amused. That was a good thing, right?
“I’ve been hired to investigate the disappearance of a twenty-eight-year-old male, Hispanic-Native American, name of Kyle James Arredondo. I’ve got the police report file right here.” She read off the number and hoped McLeary was writing it down. “I’d like to find out, first of all, if you have any John Does that match that description.”
“Nah,” he said without hesitation.
Lacey blinked at the immediate one-word answer. “Uh, you’re sure about that?” she asked. “You don’t want to check your records?”
“Nah,” he bit off again. “I’m sure. Only John Does we got on ice are a burnt-out forty-something crack head and a fifty-something pimp killed in a knife fight. How’d your guy buy it?”
“Um, we actually don’t know for sure,” Lacey said. “He was known to be a meth user and flew under the radar a lot, but the family’s been unable to reach him for several days now and fears the worst.” Lacey knew this was thin, but she wasn’t about to discuss Sam’s dream with Detective McLeary.
“Last known location?” McLeary barked.
“Just… Las Vegas. Nothing more specific than that.”
“C’mon, Lacey Fitzpatrick,” he said irritably. “Meth-head underground in Vegas? You know how many rats we got livin’ in the sewer here? Give me a break. Call me back when you’ve got some real facts.”
Click.
That went well, Lacey thought grimly. But she couldn’t blame him; she knew exactly what he was saying. Sin City was awash with druggies, prostitutes and losers hanging onto life by their fingernails. If and when any of them bought it—as he so delicately put it—few cared or even noticed. God only knew how many bodies were buried in the desert outside Vegas.
Lacey crossed her arms and glared at her phone as if she could coax more information out of it. She only had one more card to play and wasn’t eager to use it. But she had to. It was all she had.
She dialed the LAPD Vice division.
“Vice,” a voice answered.
“Tommy Belvedere, please,” she asked.
“Hold on.”
“Belvedere.” That familiar tenor voice, a little scratchy. Tommy was six foot six with a boyish face and the very antithesis of a clichéd rough-and-tumble vice officer.
“Tommy? It’s Lacey. How you doing?”
He paused, no doubt recovering from the shock of hearing from her. “Lacey? My God. I’m—I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she said. “Working as a P.I. I’m actually hoping you can help me on a case.”
“Uh, sure, Lace, sure. Whatcha got?”
She almost laughed. Guilt was a great motivator. Tommy had been instrumental in the investigation against her boyfriend, Derrick Nelson. Derrick had expanded on his official duties as a vice officer by going into drug-dealing on the side, even going so far as to shake down his own informants to get more drugs to sell. Not a smart move, and certainly one she never thought he would take. Showed how much she knew.
Briefly Lacey brought Tommy up to speed. “So what I need from you is a contact at Las Vegas Vice. You know any good guys over there?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “We ran a joint investigation last year—no pun intended—and closed down a pipeline from Tijuana to LA to Vegas. His name is Adrian DelMonico. Let me get his number.”
Lacey waited while he got that, then jotted the number down as he read it to her.
“Thanks, Tommy. I appreciate the help.”
“Yeah, sure, Lace. Anytime. But, uh, listen…” He hesitated slightly. “I never really got a chance to tell you how sorry I was. About… everything. I never thought it would be so rough on you, making you quit the force and all. I’m just real—”
“Tommy, it’s fine,” she interrupted. “It was rough but that was Derrick’s fault, not yours. And regardless of what anyone else did or didn’t do, it was always going to be a shit time. Resigning was my choice when I realized the press wasn’t going to let me do my job without the constant media circus. None of that was on you. So give yourself a break, okay? Anyway,” she added, “I’ve moved on. I like what I’m doing, and I’m happy being a P.I. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
She heard a long sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that, Lacey. I’ll tell you, every time I thought about it—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Just let it go. I have.”
He chuckled faintly. “Okay, whatever you say, Lacey. Good luck with your case. If I can do anything else for you, let me know.”
&nb
sp; “I will, Tommy. Thanks.”
She let out a long breath as she ended the call. Easier than she thought. She’d been afraid Tommy would want to revisit the entire ugly episode, but he was easy enough to deflect. Good. She’d told him the truth. She had moved on. It was time everyone else did, too.
She dialed the number for Las Vegas Vice and was surprised when the call was picked up after only one ring.
“Vice, DelMonico.”
Jackpot, she thought. She introduced herself, gave her short spiel and mentioned Tommy’s name. “I’m hoping you can give me a little information on the drug hierarchy there in Vegas.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“My missing person was known to use meth. Is the meth in Vegas controlled by a few drug gangs, or is it pretty much a free-for-all?”
DelMonico snorted. “Are you kidding? There’s probably a meth lab for every square mile of town, and in some areas it’s closer to one on every street. Sure, the drug bosses try to keep their thumbs on it, but it’s a moving target. A meth lab can pop up in a garage, operate for about six months and then disappear in a heartbeat.”
“I hear that,” Lacey said, “and that’s pretty much what I figured. Let me ask you this: what areas of Vegas would be more frequented by druggies? And which areas would not be? The problem is, we don’t even know where to start looking.”
“Well, let’s see,” DelMonico said. Lacey had an image in her mind of him leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “North Las Vegas is pretty rough, especially the alpha streets. The area around Martin Luther King Boulevard is particularly bad. There are some ratty areas out by Nellis, so basically north and east. All the newer areas are in the west, so there are fewer drugs there, just more home invasions.”
“Good news and bad news, huh?” Lacey surmised.
“Yeah.” DelMonico laughed. “No getting around it. People will do what they do.”
“That’s for sure,” Lacey said. “I was LAPD for eight years, so I’m with you on that all the way.”
“No shit? You work with Tommy?”
“Not directly,” she said. “I was Homicide. Never got into Vice.” Except tangentially, through Derrick, but that wasn’t for him to know.
“Ah. And now you’re a P.I. How do you like it?”
“I like it fine,” she said truthfully. “I work alone for the most part, so I can set my own hours. I do work with a partner on the knottier cases. Keeps it interesting.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “So, anything else I can answer for you?”
Lacey checked her notes. “I don’t think so. I’ve already spoken to Pete McLeary about unclaimed John Does, and I think that’s about all we can do for now.”
“All right, then. If you think of anything else, let me know. We’re always open.”
Lacey smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
She keyed off the call. That was a pleasant exchange after the earlier one with McLeary. The help was minimal, but that wasn’t DelMonico’s fault.
Now what, she thought as she read over her notes. Whatever they had, it wasn’t enough. She pulled up a map of Las Vegas on her laptop. The city was a massive sprawl across the desert.
Nope. Not enough.
~~~
FOUR
That evening, Sam called. Lacey saw his name on her phone and felt a sad dread. She’d hoped to have better news for him.
“Sam,” she said in measured greeting.
“Hey, Lacey. How’s it going?”
She dragged in a ragged breath. “Not well. I actually haven’t been able to add to what we already knew except the locations of the most drug-infested areas of Vegas. Everything else was a dead end.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got better news.”
For just a second, Lacey’s brain seized up. “What? What news?”
Sam chuckled. “Christine got a call from Courtney.”
For a split second, Lacey wondered if Kyle were alive and well, but if that were true, why would he haunt Sam’s dreams? No, she thought, that was not possible.
“And…?” she asked, letting Sam tell the story.
“She’s okay. And we’ve got locations. We’ve got facts. She was working in a dollar store. He was doing some welding for a body shop. They were living in one of those pay-by-the-week motels northeast of town. Finally we have a starting point.”
“That’s great,” Lacey said, but her tone was cautious. “Does she know… what happened to him?”
“No,” he sighed. “She doesn’t. Said he never came home one evening about a week ago. She thinks someone killed him. Apparently he owed someone money for drugs, and he’d put them off too long.”
“Does she know who?”
“No, not for sure. She said he mentioned a guy named Willie, but no last name. She has no idea how to get in touch with him, and doesn’t want to. She’s been staying with friends because she was afraid Willie—or whoever—would come after her for the money. After Kyle’d been missing for a day and a half, she left the motel, left her job and went underground. She’s pretty frantic right now.”
“I’ll bet,” Lacey said. Her mind was already turning. “Well, it’s not a ton of information, but it’s more than we had yesterday. Do you think it’s enough?”
Sam paused, the silence evident of his deliberate thought process. “Yeah, I do. You up for it?”
“Of course,” she said, knowing there had never been any doubt. And she’d feel much better when they could start working actual locations. The phone and computer work were fine, but it was actively hitting the streets that felt like real progress.
“When do you want to go?” she asked.
“Tomorrow too soon?”
She chuckled. He was ansty, too. “Tomorrow works for me. I’ll pick you up at nine.”
~~~
FIVE
It had been a while since they’d gone on a road trip together; six months, actually, since they’d driven to the Navajo reservation to investigate the death of Sam’s cousin. They had plenty of time to catch up as Lacey propelled her little car out of LA and northeast on the 15 toward Vegas.
“At least this time Blanche will have paved roads,” Lacey noted. Her poor car had been sorely tested by the washboard dirt roads on the reservation. “How’s your grampa, by the way?”
“He’s good,” Sam said. “At least for an eighty-four-year-old.”
“He’s sweet,” she said. “We’ll have to go visit him again sometime.”
“We’ll be halfway there when we get to Vegas.”
“Talk about culture shock,” Lacey muttered. From the garish neon lights of Vegas to the star-studded black skies of the reservation? “No, we’ll do that another time.”
She sipped her Starbucks coffee and settled in for the long ride. “So did you have any visitors last night?”
“As a matter of fact,” Sam said, holding his own Starbucks, “I did.”
Lacey glanced over. “Anything new?”
“No.” He kept his gaze out the windshield as he spoke. “Kyle appears, floating, then folds up in a box. That’s all.”
Stutter steps. So far that seemed to characterize this case. She longed for the day when she had a thread to follow, and each bit of information led to another and another. But not this one. She had a sudden thought, though.
“Did it… feel any different?” she asked. “I mean, since Christine heard from Courtney and we’d planned this drive to Vegas—did that change the dream in any way?”
“Hmm.” Sam sipped his coffee and stared out the window. His profile was to Lacey, the high brow, the hooked nose, the strong chin. He could be the Indian on the Indian head nickel.
“Now that you mention it,” he said slowly. More silence. Lacey kept her eyes resolutely on the road. “Huh,” he said finally.
“What?” she prompted.
“Well, it could just be my imagination, but now that I think back on it, he
did seem more… hopeful in a way. There’s nothing specific I can put my finger on, just a sense of it. Some relief—because we’re coming.”
“That’s something,” Lacey said. “At least he knows we’re going to be looking for him. I wonder if he’ll be able to give you more information when we’re closer.”
“I don’t know.” Sam shook his head. “It’s weird because I can’t tune in to him like I can to someone when I’m awake. It’s like I’m just receiving, and I can’t… reach out to him. You know?” He looked over at her.
“I think so.” At least she understood intellectually, although she’d never experienced the spirit connections that Sam did. “I’m wondering,” she said, “if you might be able to, well, not wake up, but maybe make yourself conscious as you’re dreaming. So maybe you could reach out to him.” She glanced over. “Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?”
“I think I’ve heard the term,” he said. “What’s it mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure I understand it, but I believe it’s dreaming when you’re conscious that it’s a dream. You’re aware that you’re asleep. And I think I’ve heard that you can then direct the dream. Interact with it.”
“Hmm. That would help, probably. If I could establish a two-way connection with Kyle, I could ask him questions.”
“I wonder if there’s some way you could plant a seed in your mind so that tonight—or whenever he comes to you again—you can know that you’re dreaming. Then you can really communicate with him.”
Sam shrugged. “It’s worth a try.” He put one finger to his forehead and tapped lightly. “Seed planted,” he said.
Lacey chuckled.
The wall to wall concrete of LA gave way to more open land and less urbanity as they drove. Instead of being lined with strip malls and cookie cutter neighborhoods, the freeway was more often bounded by bare rolling hills and dry gulches that emptied out into drier basins. They dropped down toward Victorville as the land transitioned from scrub forest to agriculture and, finally, to desert.
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