Roll the Dice (Vegas Series)

by Author Mimi Barbour

  Ham answered—his Irish dialect obvious. “Looked like an ordinary B&E. Figured to be neighbourhood kids. The place was ransacked and drugs on the premises went missing.”

  “What drugs?”

  “Mostly pain killers but with street value. The doctor’s statement said she’d been visited by a number of drug representatives who’d left her a selection of samples. They were all taken. Looks to me like we jumped through the hoops, but nothing came up. Says here, the lass called repeatedly.”

  “I want you to go back and get the goods on what went down. If she gives you any trouble, subpoena her. I want to know what files were messed with. Also, if they took anything other than drugs. This might be a false lead, but we can’t afford to let anything slip through the cracks. Not with this bastard.” He handed the sheet back.

  “On it, Boss.” Ham left the office.

  “That leaves you two to work on the journal. I’ve called the special victims units in the other places Rhondo hit and promised to send on the pertinent data. But we need you to follow up on his victims here in this city.” With his short red hair standing on end and his temper barely held in check, Cory meant business. “I want him Aurora.

  "We'll get him. You can bet on it." Flint-hard Kai interrupted, and his positive tone spelled trouble.

  Cory swung his head in Kai's direction. You have as much invested in getting this guy as we do. But, we play by the rules and follow procedures. It’s how we’ve always worked and this case is no different.” He swung away and wriggled his fingers. “On the other hand, I don’t much care how hard you push those rules. Got it?”

  “Yes boss!” Aurora answered first. Then Kai echoed her answer before they left the room.

  Once back into their own small office, coffee cups in hand, they sat at their desks across from each other. Neither looked at the other and it had been this way since they’d arrived this morning.

  Aurora opened her computer and brought up the e-mail the office secretary had sent to everyone who was working on the case. Loaded into a special file, each page from the journal was scanned and added in order of place and date. She pushed the print button on two copies, one for her and Kai, then sipped the vile coffee they brewed in-house.

  Once we get the info, we can organize the victims and pay some home visits. Maggie, our old secretary trained Linda well and she’s already gotten the addresses added for each person. At least those she could find. They’re working on getting the others. But we have lots to start on now.”

  Kai sipped with enjoyment. “Humm. Good coffee—”

  Aurora choked on the sip she’d just taken. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “What do you think?”

  With his eyebrow raised, and the sideways smirk on his face, she really couldn’t tell. “I don’t want to know. If you said you liked it, I’d have to report you to PEAP.”

  His look said he didn’t understand and she added. “Psych assistance.”

  He laughed…and she swung around to hide the shock. My good lord, he’s delicious!

  The beep on the copy machine warned her to get her mind back on the job so she wouldn’t embarrass herself.

  “Do you want to split up on these names or work together?”

  Cory thought about the options and realized that many of the women would refuse to talk to him because he was a guy. But they’d open to a female officer much easier. “I’ll stick with you. Two of us doing the questioning will work better I think. You okay with that?”

  “Sure. Tell you the truth; I kinda suspected it’ll be a lot smoother for me than you.”

  “Yeah! I came to the same conclusion. You ready?”

  The first two names on the list were young women living in crappy apartments near the strip. Both knew the ropes and had grown a thick skin from seeing and doing too much in their short lives. They answered the questions with a bored attitude that personally hurt Aurora. She knew these girls had accepted their ordeal. Just another fucked-up scenario in their screwed up lives.

  The next place they pulled up to was a home, well loved, and so was the girl. She was younger than the other two, in her late teens. Her demeanour showed clearly that Rhondo's torture had damaged her mentally. These poor folks had been working hard for months to undo the destruction that one animal had managed to accomplish in a few terror-filled hours.

  While Aurora questioned the girl, dealing with her tears, her self-recriminations, Kai talked to Mrs. Wright, the mother.

  “Can you tell me how you found her? It says here that she called from a payphone on West Sahara?”

  “She said he’d dumped her from the vehicle onto the side of a road, and she’d crawled to the phone. Only reason we found her was she’d recognized the Golf club in the distance. That bastard had left her almost naked, ripped and bleeding…” The sobbing cut into her monologue and after he handed over the tissues he’d thoughtfully collected for his pocket, Kai waited patiently.

  “I’m sorry. Every time I picture her looking that way, it brings the nightmare back. My daughter had it all, straight A’s in her classes, more friends than she had time for and a life planned out from university to medical school. Now….” The sigh lasted a long time. But still Kai waited. Hands fisted, he arched his neck, a relaxing technique he'd recently acquired.

  Finally the woman straightened her shoulders and turned to him. “These last few months have been unbearable. Nothing has made any sense. Do you know what I mean?"

  "Yes, Mrs Wright. I do understand."

  " Except maybe something my mother used to say. It's called The Serenity Prayer, do you know it?”

  “No ma’am. Can’t say that I do.”

  The woman walked in a controlled manner that told him more than words of the pain she bore. She opened the drawer of a small table near a wall of plants and slowly stepped towards him, hand outstretched, a plastic card wavering slightly.

  “Keep this. It might help you sometime.”

  Kai glanced down to see a short poem. Trying not to appear rude, he placed it in his shirt pocket and then patted it.

  “Thank you. Are you feeling up to answering a few more questions? Sometimes small bits of information you think are unimportant can help us in our investigation. “

  The woman nodded.

  “Do you remember what her first words were when you reached her?”

  “Yes. She apologized for not being more careful. Said she was sorry for deciding to walk home after dark. He’d picked her up a few blocks from here. A few blocks…”

  Again, Kai waited patiently.

  Wiping her cheeks, Alicia’s mother continued. “She said he approached her, asking for directions. When she stopped to answer, he zapped her with a stun gun, and the next thing she knew, he had her in a field outside of town. She could see the city lights in the distance. He’d thrown her to the ground near the car and was drinking from a bottle of rum, singing an Elvis tune and dancing to the music on the radio. He tried to force her to drink. When she refused, he hit her. So she drank. Then he hit her anyway because he could. Said he liked how it sounded. Reminded him of when he was a kid.”

  “Did she know how long he kept her there?”

  “It was ten in the evening when she’d started walking home and five in the morning when her call woke us up. Neither my husband nor I were aware she hadn’t come home. You see we never had to worry. Alicia was the best girl in the world. Now—not so much. Since that night, she craves the blindfolds of booze.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d suggest you find a good support group. Sometimes it helps victims to be around others who’ve suffered in the same way. They truly understand.”

  “Do you think so?” Hope lit up the woman’s pale face across from him. The dark roots in the tied-back hair added to the look of one not caring about personal grooming.

  “Yes. Phone the precinct for information. They’ll help you. Now, can you think of anything else that might help us locate Mr. Rhondo? Did he tell her anything she might have spoke
n about in those first few hours?”

  “She told the therapist that he took a break from hurting her, stopped to write in a book, a journal. Made her tell him her name, checked her wallet for identification so she couldn’t lie. Then he told her if she got pregnant, he’d know. And it would make him happy. My God! Those words alone were enough for her to demand the morning after pill at the hospital. He was a monster, Mr. Lawson and I hope he burns in hell.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I have no doubt they’ve a special place set up for him there.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Near the end of the day, frustration had set in as Kai and Aurora wrote up their notes back at the office. They shared information and added their findings on the boards. Pictures of the girls they’d interviewed. Relevant clues they’d garnered from talking to each of them. One board had turned into two and just that morning a third had been added.

  All this evidence and they still had no idea where the culprit lurked. The quiet ate away at Aurora. She realized he kept a low profile on purpose and it worried her. Whenever he'd been in town, the man liked to be in the thick of things. It wasn’t in his DNA to hide out for long.

  They’d contacted other districts within his preferred hangouts but had no luck. He’d gone into hiding. Her gut instinct screamed that Rhondo was here in Vegas. The drugs he’d managed to sneak through their nets were showing up on the streets. Common sense warned her he’d have to mess up soon. Just not soon enough.

  Ham stalked into the room and sat with one hip on the corner of Aurora’s desk. “Hey Morelli, you okay? You look like it’s been a rough day.”

  “It has. All those women’s lives ripped apart because of one freak’s needs. It’s sick.”

  “What’s sick is spending the day checking out their neighbours. They act as if remembering their own name and address is taxing their intelligence.”

  “I know what you mean. Their brains disappear when it comes to stepping up, being accountable. Some people—it’s like they come in dumb waves.”

  Kai snorted and caught her attention. She leaned back in her office chair, drawing him into the conversation. “On the other hand,” she said. “Talking to the victims frustrates the hell outta me too. I thought the journal full of sufferers would give us a lot more to work with, but so far, they mostly tell the same story.”

  Kai adds. “He likes to hurt people. He likes to make them scream. And he likes them to fight.” He picked up a sheaf of pages stapled together highlighted with notes he’d made in the empty spaces. “I think I’ve finally figured out what he means by the letters A, B, and F. After talking to some of these women, I figure the ones who fought the hardest have earned an A. The ones who laid back and let him do his dirty were the ones who he marked with an F. Just can’t figure out what the B stands for.”

  Ham looked over his shoulder. “You’re right. The sicko’s lettered every one of the pages. Like grading them.”

  Kai added. “That’s my theory. Look here, we know Tamryn and Alicia Wright fought him and they have A’s on their pages. Deb had to have given him a battle because she earned an A+ but then he’s marked her with a B also. The other two we interviewed today both have F’s. I got the feeling that all they did was stay alive.”

  “Is there anyone else with a B on their page?” Disgust rang in the Irish cop’s tone while his expression screamed distain.

  “Here, by this girl, Ruth Grainger. She’s outside of Reno and was one of the ones who filed a complaint. Except she’d waited for weeks before she came forward. She got an F, guess she didn’t satisfy the freak. No fun if they lie there and take it. But he gave her a B, and then with different coloured ink, he crossed it out, which denotes he probably did that some time later. The letters have to mean something. I just wish I knew what?”

  Aurora held the back of her neck in both hands. First she stretched one way and then the other. “Who know what goes through his mind. The profiler we called in on the case gave us the regular jargon. Single mom, probably beat him and brought home men who most likely beat her. They surmised he learned physical brutality from behaviour he’d witnessed. Most likely lived through it continually in his formative years. Because they’ve labelled him as psychotic, they know the drugs and alcohol he uses exacerbates the condition. His hallucinating that the females he’s hurt have liked what he did to them is another symptom of his delusions.”

  Kai shot from his chair his expression explosive. “I don’t care what the professionals say. There is no excuse for his behaviour. None! To think a defence attorney could use this shit to get him off one day makes me sick.”

  “Hey calm down, big guy. He won’t get off. We have too many key witnesses and all this corroborating evidence he wrote himself. He’ll go down for life.” Aurora hated to see her partner lose it. Showed how close he was to the situation. Unhealthily close.

  Aurora’s cell phone cut off her spiel. She fished in her pocket and looked to see the caller. Her hand went up to warn the others but just by her body language they seemed to know something had happened.

  “This is Detective Morelli. How can I help you?”

  Disbelief appeared and was replaced with cold acceptance. “Hang on, Darlene. We’ll be right there.”

  She hung up and retrieved her gun from the side drawer. She holstered it and then slipped on her jacket. And all the while she spoke in a controlled tone. “Darlene needs us, Rhondo’s back in action. Except this time we were wrong. He didn’t want her. He took Wayne.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Just tell us exactly what you remember.” Official yet tender at the same time, Kai took lead in questioning the girl whose cheek looked twice the size as normal.

  Aurora sat holding onto the hand that clutched hers. “Start with when it happened. It’ll help clear your mind.”

  Darlene aroused herself from the stupor she’d reverted to after they arrived. Aurora sensed the shock had taken her to a place where she could handle the confusion and pain. “What time did he show up?”

  A glance at her watch helped her to answer. “I guess about an hour ago. It seems a lot longer. But I'd just come home from the early shift at the restaurant where I work. I’d swung by to pick up Wayne at the school. Since we've moved here, we try and walk home together. Wayne’s been concerned about me.” The sobbing laugh that erupted made the hairs on the back of Aurora’s neck shoot up. “Joke, right? He worried about me and I never once gave a thought to him being the target.”

  “Neither did we, Darlene. It’s only recently we found out that Rhondo swings both ways when it comes to his games. Otherwise, we’d have warned you and Wayne.”

  Kai passed over a tissue from the seemingly constant supply he kept in his pocket. “Then what happened?”

  “He was waiting. Right here in the apartment. As if he owned the place. Pleased as punch with himself.” Darlene blew her nose and lowered the Kleenex to be shredded in her lap.

  “Wayne, acting the man, pushed me to the bedroom and tried to pretend that Earl was a friend. The man laughed in his face. Then he told me to come closer. I wanted to give Wayne time to run but he wouldn’t. He went for the fiend and got smacked for his trouble. He still wouldn’t stay down, went for him again. I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t stop. He wanted to protect me.”

  “Brave kid to take on someone twice his size.” Kai spoke, pride ringing clearly.

  “Except that it seemed to excite Earl and he said to me. “Look at that, chicken-shit whore! This little sucker’s got spirit. I like that.”

  “I knew then what he meant and I threw myself at him, begged him to take me. I begged…” At this point, neither Kai nor Aurora could make out any words— just babble and groans. Eventually when she became coherent again, they continued.

  “Did he say where they were going?”

  “They didn’t go anywhere. He tazed Wayne and then flung him over his shoulders like a sack of old potatoes. When I tried to stop him, he hit me and I banged my head on the corner of the
coffee table. I must have conked out. When I woke up, they were gone.

  “I’ll get out an amber alert. Do you have a recent photo of Wayne? I’ll need to send it in so his I.D. will go out to highway patrol plus to the officers on duty in town. If he’s on the streets, we’ll find him.”

  Kai took the proffered picture and using his phone, he took a copy and within minutes had it sent over the wires.

  The crime scene investigators showed up and were given space to set up their equipment. The medics also arrived and examined Darlene whose stamina had fizzed out and who was now in the state of collapse.

  Aurora stepped out of the way to let the others do their jobs. She looked down at her tear-stained blouse where the first onslaught of Darlene’s weeping had happened the minute they’d stepped into the apartment. She’d chosen her nicest blue tailored blouse this morning, not quite sure why, and it now resembled the rag she felt like.

  Standing took so much energy, she wondered if she’d fall flat on her face. Clutching the photograph and seeing the cocky smiling face of Darlene’s brother reminded her of how a trooper acted, full of bravado and confidence and bullshit luck. Only his luck had run out.

  “You okay, Aurora?” Kai’s soft voice in her ear straightened her spine and got her adrenalin flowing.

  “Yeah! I’m good to go. I need to see someone. Get one of the black and white’s to drop you off at the station.”

  “You’re taking personal time? Now?”

  “It’s none of your God-dam business.” She started moving towards the door and his hand on her arm, steering into the hallway, put a stop to her hysterics. A ringing in her head started but he pulled her attention away before she could concentrate on what put it there.

  “It is my business. We’re partners, remember? Where are you going?”

  She looked at the fingers still encircling her arm and then she stared into his eyes, the intense blue glacier cold. Time passed as she waited. Finally he let her go.