Trick Roller

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  Her breath hitched when she said Hensley’s name. Levi handed her a nearby box of tissues, then gestured for her and Warner to sit on the couch they’d risen from when he entered. He sat in the armchair across from them and pulled out a notepad.

  “I know this is painful, but could you please tell me about the last time you saw Dr. Hensley alive?”

  Kapoor swallowed hard and nodded. “The three of us had dinner last night with a few colleagues at Samba, right there in the hotel. Stephen headed up to his room around ten, I think. Said he was going to call it an early night—jet lag.”

  “Did either of you communicate with him in any way after that point? Phone calls, texts?”

  Both Kapoor and Warner shook their heads.

  “Are you staying at the Mirage as well?” Levi asked.

  “Yes, we’re actually all on the same floor,” said Kapoor. “They’re part of the block of rooms reserved for the conference.”

  “Did you see or hear anything suspicious on the floor last night?” This time, Levi directed the question toward Warner, who had yet to speak.

  “No,” Warner said, in a voice that was surprisingly deep coming out of such a skinny frame. “I mean, there were people running up and down the hallway all night long, but . . . it’s Vegas, right?”

  Kapoor agreed, and Levi spent a few minutes confirming the reason for their trip and their movements the night before. As Gibbs had said, they’d flown in early from Baltimore to do some partying before a national conference on hospice and palliative care that would officially begin on Monday. After dinner at Samba, their group had thrown back a few cocktails at one of the Mirage’s many bars before scattering their separate ways.

  Kapoor had hit the casino floor, not returning upstairs until almost 3 a.m. Warner, on the other hand, had gotten so wasted at the bar he needed two friends to help him back to his room, where he’d drunk-dialed his girlfriend in Baltimore despite the time difference and then passed out in front of a pay-per-view movie.

  “I don’t usually drink that much,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Now I have an angry girlfriend and the worst hangover of my life on top of everything else.”

  Welcome to Vegas, Levi thought, but he didn’t say it out loud because it was insensitive even by his standards. “What raised your concerns about Dr. Hensley this morning?” he asked Kapoor.

  “We had all planned to meet at Cravings this morning at nine for the breakfast buffet. Stephen is . . . was . . .” Kapoor closed her eyes briefly and then soldiered on. “Punctual to a fault. When he didn’t show up, I texted him a couple of times, then called his cell. I even tried his room phone, but it just kept ringing and ringing. That’s when I knew something was wrong; I could feel it. I asked hotel security for help, and they let me into his room. He—he was—”

  She started crying quietly again, pressing a tissue to her face. Warner put an arm around her shoulders.

  Levi gave her some time before asking, “Was Dr. Hensley married?”

  “Yes,” Warner said. “His wife is back in Baltimore—shit, she doesn’t know yet, does she?”

  “Did Dr. Hensley have any other sexual partners either of you were aware of? A mistress, a girlfriend?”

  Kapoor lowered the hand that had been covering her face and stared at him. “What?”

  This was awkward, but it had to be discussed. “Dr. Hensley definitely engaged in sexual activity last night,” Levi said. “Our top priority is finding out who was with him in his hotel room. Did he appear to be making romantic or sexual overtures to anyone at the restaurant before he left?”

  “No,” Kapoor said. “As far as I know, he went straight to his room.”

  “Is it possible he would have arranged a visit from an escort service?”

  There was a short silence in which Kapoor and Warner exchanged uncomfortable sideways glances that told Levi everything he needed to know. “It wouldn’t have been . . . out of character,” she said delicately.

  “Wait, hang on.” Warner turned to her on the couch. “I thought Dr. Hensley died of some kind of overdose.”

  She took a shaky breath. “That’s what it looked like from what I saw.”

  “But all these questions . . .” He frowned at Levi. “Do you think someone else overdosed him? Like he spent the night with a hooker and she killed him?”

  Levi twitched in irritation at the term hooker and said, “We don’t have an official cause of death yet. Until we do, I don’t want to speculate. But regardless of the circumstances of Dr. Hensley’s death, it’s imperative that we find the person he was with last night.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think we can help you with that,” said Kapoor. “None of us have ever been to Vegas before. I don’t know where Stephen would have turned for . . . for companionship.”

  Levi asked a few more follow-up questions but learned nothing else of relevance. “Are you still planning to attend the conference?” he asked, as they all stood. Tourist homicides could be a major headache when all the important suspects and witnesses flitted back to their hometowns, and there wasn’t much, if anything, he could do to make them stay.

  Kapoor nodded. “We’re scheduled to present groundbreaking research later this week—research Stephen dedicated years of his life to. He’d want us to stay and go on with the presentation.”

  “Can I ask what topic your research is on?” Levi said, making a note for himself.

  “The cellular mechanisms involved in pain signaling and perception,” Warner said.

  Levi gave both doctors his card with the usual instructions to call him if they remembered anything else that might help, then showed them out of the substation before heading for his desk. The first order of business was to call the Baltimore PD so they could send local officers out to notify Hensley’s wife of his death in person. Then he’d need a slew of warrants—the hotel didn’t have security cameras in the hallways, but they did in the elevators and lobby. He also needed access to the room’s phone records and Hensley’s cell phone records. If Hensley had booked an escort online, though, they were out of luck with his laptop missing.

  After that, he’d vet Kapoor and Warner’s alibis in the interest of thoroughness and maybe request some of the conference materials to get a handle on Hensley’s background. He was definitely in store for a long day.

  Mid-afternoon, he took a break to grab more coffee and a sandwich. Figuring Dominic would have left the weekly family lunch at his mother’s house by now, he gave him a call while he ate.

  “Hey,” Dominic said, against background noise that suggested he had Levi on Bluetooth in his truck. “How’s the case?”

  “We’re not a hundred percent sure there is a case yet.” Levi scrubbed his napkin over his mouth. “Even if there is, it’s looking like a possible manslaughter charge.”

  “Well, you’ll crack it in no time.”

  Snorting, Levi said, “Thanks. How was lunch?”

  “Pretty good. Gina’s getting huge. She swears she’s not carrying twins, but she’s way bigger than any of the other women in our family were at six months.”

  “You didn’t say that to her, did you?” Levi asked. Dominic was the third of five children, and Gina was his youngest sibling, currently pregnant with her first child.

  “No way. I like my balls not smashed to a bloody pulp, thanks.” Dominic paused. “My mom said it.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah, it ignited this huge debate about who had been how big at which point in their pregnancies—everyone with their cell phones out, digging back through their photos and shouting about it for over an hour.” Despite this description of family drama, Dominic’s voice was cheerful. “Anyway, I’m going to meet Carlos at the gym now, and then I’m interning at McBride tonight and tomorrow night. But I thought maybe we could meet up for lunch tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Sounds good,” said Levi. He was already looking forward to it.

  “My schedule is more flexible than yours, so just give m
e a call and tell me when and where to meet you.”

  “All right. See you tomorrow.”

  As Levi hung up, he remembered a moment from the night before with crystal clarity—Dominic pressing him up against the headboard, surging inside him, calling him baby. It had been said in the heat of passion, and he didn’t know if Dominic even realized he’d done it.

  He’d always disliked pet names; he’d certainly never used them with Stanton. He thought about Dominic calling him baby again in that deep, rumbly voice. Though he should have hated it, all it did was make him shiver, because it was different this time.

  Everything was different with Dominic.

  Dominic met Carlos at Rolando’s, a casual, scruffy hole-in-the-wall gym not far from Downtown. The eponymous owner, an Afro-Caribbean man similar to Dominic in height and build, had been a champion heavyweight boxer a decade earlier, particularly beloved in Las Vegas. He’d opened the gym after he retired, resisting pressure to take it in a fancy boutique direction and keeping it stripped down to the bare essentials.

  Carlos was waiting at the door, his lanky body clad in track pants and a zipped-up jacket despite the stifling heat. He was rocking the artful stubble look these days, and he’d recently cut his dark-brown hair into a shorter style.

  Knowing that Carlos wouldn’t want to use the locker rooms, Dominic had changed into his own workout gear before leaving his mother’s house. He greeted Carlos with a fist bump, and they headed inside.

  They passed a few cardio machines and the boxing area, where Rolando himself was patiently coaching a couple of young men. He gave Dominic a friendly nod, and Dominic returned the gesture. God, he’d had an insane crush on Rolando when he’d first started here. Too bad the guy was hopelessly straight.

  He and Carlos stopped in the weight room. There were a few other people hard at work, grunting and sweating through heavy sets. This gym was popular with both veterans and bounty hunters—two communities that tended to have a lot of overlap—which was how Dominic had found it in the first place. People came here to push themselves.

  “You gonna take your jacket off?” Dominic asked lightly, as he and Carlos set up by a couple of weight benches.

  Carlos hesitated, glancing around the gym. Nobody was paying any attention to them.

  A few months ago, Carlos had gotten top surgery to remove his breasts and reshape his chest. He’d been gradually resuming his previous exercise routine over the past six weeks, and now the surgeon had not only cleared him for heavy upper-body weightlifting, but had strongly recommended it.

  “You’re safe here,” Dominic said. Even if any of the gym-goers pegged Carlos as trans, they’d know better than to shoot their mouths off unless they wanted Rolando to knock their teeth down their throats.

  “I know. It’s just . . .”

  Carlos shook his head, unzipped his jacket, and peeled it off. After he set it aside, he went to cross his arms over his chest, then repressed the gesture with visible effort.

  Looking down at the flat chest beneath his T-shirt, he said, “It still feels weird to be out like this without a binder on.”

  “It looks great,” Dominic said honestly. The surgeon had done impressive work—as well he should have, considering how much Carlos and Jasmine had paid for the procedure. “Plus, remember what the doctor said: the more you build up your pecs, the more it’ll improve the shape.”

  “Yeah. But I’m not looking for monsters like these, all right?” Carlos slapped his hand against Dominic’s chest.

  Dominic grinned. “Noted.”

  He guided Carlos through the upper-body superset circuit he’d designed himself, moving them along at the same pace so the only difference was the amount of weight they were lifting. They were about halfway through it, banging out a set of horizontal dumbbell rows, when Carlos said, “Jasmine told me she ran into Levi coming out of your apartment this morning.”

  “Yeah?” Bent forward with one foot propped on the bench, Dominic lifted his enormous dumbbell with a grunt until his arm was perpendicular to his shoulder. He inhaled slowly through his nose as he lowered the weight.

  “It was a relief too, because after what we heard last night, we were afraid you might have murdered him.”

  Dominic gasped out a laugh. “Sorry about that. He can be pretty loud.” The memory was distracting, and it wasn’t until they’d switched arms and were rowing on the other side that it occurred to him to add, “Don’t say anything to him about it, though. He’d be so embarrassed—dude, breathe out when you lift the weight.”

  Carlos, whose face was flushed and sweaty, took a short break to readjust his position and fix his breathing. “So you guys are doing good, then?”

  “I think so,” Dominic said with a smile.

  The conversation ebbed for a while as they concentrated on the workout. Later, when they were doing side by side barbell curls in front of a mirror, Carlos said, “Do you want to bring him to the Andersons’ party on Saturday?”

  Dominic raised his eyebrows. Jasmine’s parents were having a cookout on Saturday afternoon, a casual family reunion sort of thing, and they’d invited him weeks ago. “You sure? I didn’t know if you’d want him there.”

  “Of course we do. He’s your boyfriend, right?”

  “We haven’t talked about it yet.”

  Carlos rolled his eyes. “He’s your boyfriend, trust me.” His speech was ragged, the words punched out between heaving breaths. “I mean, Jasmine and I weren’t sure about him at first, because he didn’t seem like your type. He’s a little . . .”

  “Stiff?” Dominic suggested. He squeezed his biceps as he curled the weight toward his shoulders, relishing the burn in his muscles.

  “Yeah. He loosens up when he’s speaking to you or touching you, though. And the look on your face when you talk about him . . . anyone who can make you look like that is okay with us.”

  “Thanks.” Dominic was touched. “I’ll run it past him, see if he’s free that day.”

  They finished out the superset and returned the weights. “I’m going to propose to Jasmine at the party,” Carlos said, right as Dominic was gulping a mouthful of water.

  Dominic coughed up his water and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Seriously? How long have you been planning that?”

  Wringing his towel between his hands, Carlos said, “I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but I couldn’t afford a ring so soon after the surgery, so I thought it’d be a long time coming. Then I talked to her mom about it, and she gave me Jasmine’s great-grandmother’s ring.”

  “Holy shit.” Dominic clapped his shoulder. “Congratulations, man.”

  “Thanks,” said Carlos. “I’m freaking out about it.”

  “You know she’ll say yes.”

  “And you’d think that would make it less nerve-wracking, but it really doesn’t.”

  Spending the night with Levi, lunch with his family, now Carlos’s happy news—this day kept getting better and better. Dominic was in high spirits when he returned to his apartment, and took Rebel for a walk before he showered and changed for his internship.

  After the Seven of Spades case, Levi had suggested that he consider becoming a private investigator. Dominic, who had been coming to the realization that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life bounty hunting and bartending, no matter how much he enjoyed both professions, had jumped on the idea and ran with it. He was scheduled to take the licensing exam in a few months, and in the meantime, he’d been learning the ropes at McBride Investigations.

  While not the largest agency of its kind in Las Vegas, McBride was by far the most prestigious, with a list of high-roller clients a mile long. Dominic’s years as a bounty hunter had given him an edge; he spent a few weeks proving his worth by using the sly tricks and shortcuts he’d developed, as well as his extensive network of contacts across the Valley, to tie up asset investigations and other research-heavy cases in record time. Tonight, he was being sent into the field for the first time—su
pervised, of course.

  The agency occupied the tenth and eleventh floors in a sleek high-rise right off the Strip. Dominic took the elevator and was shown into Kate McBride’s office at once.

  McBride had inherited the business from her father, who had taken it over from his father before him. She was a muscular, stocky woman with tanned skin and short hair. Her croaky voice was roughened from decades of heavy smoking, though she’d recently transitioned to vaping at the insistence of her wife—her much younger, drop-dead-gorgeous, showgirl wife. Dominic had never seen her without an e-cigarette in her hand.

  She was holding one now as she waved Dominic into a chair in front of her massive desk. “We’re gonna start you off nice and easy,” she said, nudging a slim file in his direction. “Domestic case, cheating spouse—this shit is our bread and butter.”

  Dominic skimmed the file while he listened.

  “Nervous housewife in Summerlin thinks her rich hubby is having an affair, and she’s probably right. All the signs are there—staying late at the office, furtive telephone calls, lower sex drive, buying her flowers and jewelry for no reason. These cases confirm infidelity about ninety-five percent of the time.”

  He didn’t need to be told that; he’d lost count of the number of married bounties he’d ended up tracking down at the home of a secret lover. “Basic surveillance job?” he asked.

  “You got it. Cases like these, we keep the target under constant surveillance during the hours specified by the client, document all activities, and record video whenever legal.” McBride took a drag off her cigarette and exhaled the vapor. “I want to stress legal. All of our evidence needs to be admissible in court if necessary. You’re a bounty hunter, so I’m not too worried about it. You know the laws around trespassing and covert recordings.”

  That was true, though he’d also broken those laws when he’d known he could get away with it.

  Pointing her cigarette at him, she said, “There is one challenge with you doing surveillance work. Seeing as you’re roughly the size of an elephant, there aren’t many environments where you could really blend in.”