Trick Roller

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  Levi paced back and forth outside of Pantry. “Room service, of course. It would have been easy for the killer to stash a knife in their room and then slip it up their sleeve when they went to visit Walsh.”

  “If we had any doubts that Walsh and Hensley’s murders are connected, they’re gone now.”

  “Why leave the knife behind, though? They were so careful with the first scene.”

  “I think you were right about why the killer threw up after they murdered Walsh,” she said. “They must have gotten flustered and either forgot the knife or didn’t consider that we’d link it to the Mirage. They also didn’t think to shut down his computer. We got lucky that the experience of stabbing someone unnerved them so much.”

  “Well, I just finished up with Dr. Kapoor.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to head back to the substation, triple-check alibis and follow up with forensics on the Walsh scene. There must be something we’re missing.”

  “All right. I’ll see you there.”

  Levi hung up and started for the lobby. He and Martine had driven here together in her car, but it would be no problem to catch a quick taxi back. The Mirage was only four miles away from the substation, a straight shot down the Strip—or the parallel Las Vegas Freeway, which would probably be faster.

  As he walked through the casino floor and passed the aptly named Center Bar in the middle, one of the patrons caught his eye. Pale, gangly Craig Warner was slumped on a stool, both elbows on the bar while he nursed an enormous drink. Levi hadn’t been able to find him all morning; this explained why. By the looks of things, the cocktail in his hand wasn’t his first of the day.

  Joining him at the bar, Levi said, “Little early for a Mai Tai, isn’t it?”

  Warner blinked at him blearily, seeming not to recognize him right away. “Not in Las Vegas.”

  Good point. Levi sat on the stool next to him and waved off the approaching bartender.

  “You know, I’m supposed to be in a lecture on managing geriatric delirium right now,” Warner said. He guzzled his drink noisily through his straw.

  “Mind if I ask what you’re doing here instead?”

  Warner didn’t answer immediately. He was gripping his glass with both hands like somebody might take it away if he let go for even a moment.

  “I’m glad Hensley’s dead,” he said.

  He was clearly gearing up to say more, so Levi waited without comment.

  “When Dr. Kapoor told me the news on Sunday, the first thing I felt—the very first thing—was relief.” Warner closed his eyes. “I guess I’m having trouble dealing with that.”

  “I understand Dr. Hensley was difficult to work with,” Levi said carefully.

  Warner let out a bitter, snorting laugh. “Difficult? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he made my life a living hell. But still—to be happy that another human being was murdered? That’s sick.” He gave Levi a beseeching look. “How am I supposed to reconcile that part of myself?”

  Unbidden, Levi’s mind flashed back to the hostage situation at the Tropicana months earlier—the panicked robber police had cornered in the lobby, the little boy he’d been using as a human shield. The crack of Levi’s own bullet as it hit him dead center in the forehead.

  When Dale Slater collapsed, with the boy still alive and well, Levi had felt a moment of the purest, most intense satisfaction he’d ever known. The nauseating shame that swamped him seconds later still persisted today, though Natasha had helped him process the worst of it.

  “You’re asking the wrong person, trust me,” he said.

  Fidgeting with the pineapple garnish on the rim of his glass, Warner said, “I’ve thought about going home to Baltimore, and just screw our presentation tomorrow. But Dr. Northridge talked me out of it.”

  “Yeah, she mentioned that she was going to come support you and Dr. Kapoor.”

  “She’s a great doctor—a great woman. Much better than Hensley deserved. I’m surprised she flew out here so soon after he died. In her place, I don’t know that I would have bothered to come at all.”

  “You call a full forty-eight hours later ‘soon’?” said Levi.

  Warner’s brow furrowed. “Well, we didn’t find out until Sunday morning. Monday afternoon isn’t that much later.”

  “Dr. Northridge flew into Vegas on Tuesday,” Levi said, puzzled. “Did you see her on Monday?”

  “Um . . .” Clearing his throat, Warner straightened up. “No, you know, I must be confused. I’ve been so stressed out all week, the days are all blurring together.” He gestured to the bartender and added, “Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m on duty.” Levi took in Warner’s twitchy body language, then hopped off his stool. “And I’ve got to get back to work. You might think about doing the same. I don’t want to minimize what you’re going through, but it’s probably not worth ruining your career over.”

  “Thanks, Detective,” Warner said, toasting him with his glass.

  Levi pulled out his phone while he strode through the Mirage’s rainforest-themed atrium. Clarissa Northridge had been in Baltimore when Hensley had died, which was as ironclad as an alibi could get. There was no real reason to doubt that.

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to confirm a few things.

  Dominic threw the tennis ball in a neat arc that sailed down the length of the dog run. Rebel took off after it, kicking up grass in her enthusiasm. She snatched the ball up seconds after it landed and bounded back to him. Rather than drop the ball at his feet, she sat and waited for him to extend his hand for it.

  “Good girl,” he said. He tilted the ball back and forth. “You want this?”

  Her ears pricked up, her eyes trained as intensely as a laser beam on each miniscule movement. She stood in a tense half crouch, every muscle primed to spring into action.

  He faked her out a couple of times, but she was too smart to fall for that. When he finally let the ball fly, she bolted away at top speed.

  He smiled as he watched her go. In the cooler months, he took her with him on his long runs, but that was out of the question in the middle of summer. Even when he ran outside himself, early in the morning or late at night, he was too concerned about her overheating to bring her along. Playing at the park near his apartment provided a safe alternative.

  Dusk was falling when he called a halt—he had plans to meet Aubrey in an hour to continue their Rhodes surveillance. He clipped Rebel’s leash to her collar, and they ambled back to his truck, where he poured a small amount of water into a collapsible dog dish.

  Mid-slurp, Rebel’s body stiffened. She lifted her head, water dripping from her muzzle, and stared across the parking lot with her ears pushed all the way forward.

  Her body language wasn’t aggressive, just curious, so Dominic wasn’t alarmed. He looked in the same direction and tried to figure out what had caught her attention. There were people out playing with their kids and dogs, a few intrepid joggers, a group of teenagers on skateboards—nothing out of the ordinary for a neighborhood park on a Thursday evening.

  Rebel didn’t relax, though; she stood like a statue, only her eyes moving. Dominic had never seen her act like this. She was a trained personal protection dog, and if he were in danger, she’d warn him in no uncertain terms. Right now, she wasn’t displaying any of those signals. So what was going on?

  He trusted his own instincts too, and he didn’t sense any danger. But he was starting to get a little creeped out.

  Suddenly, Rebel huffed and returned to her water as if nothing had happened. Dominic scanned the environment one last time and then bent to pick up the bowl. “Come on, let’s go home,” he said.

  When he pulled into the lot outside his apartment complex, he saw his neighbor Mrs. Muñoz struggling to corral her three rambunctious young children while also retrieving several large grocery bags from the trunk of her car. Looping Rebel’s leash around his wrist, he jumped out of his truck and hurried over. She stayed close at his heels and happily acc
epted the children’s lavish attentions as they flocked around her.

  “Let me help you with those,” he said.

  “Oh, mijo, thank you.” Mrs. Muñoz handed him the bags with a sigh of relief. “Such a sweet boy.”

  She clapped her hands sharply, shooing her kids toward the gate in the complex’s chain-link fence. Dominic followed, only to be brought up short when Rebel whirled around and stared across the street with the same stiff posture and focused concentration she’d shown in the park.

  Once again, Dominic couldn’t identify the source of her fixation, and this time it made him even more apprehensive.

  “What is it, Rebel?” he asked.

  Whining low in her throat, she backed up a few steps and paced forward again. She looked up at Dominic, wagged her tail hesitantly, and then looked back across the street. She seemed more confused than anything else.

  “Is everything okay?” Mrs. Muñoz called from the gate.

  “It’s fine,” said Dominic. “Must be a new dog in the neighborhood or something.”

  He clicked his tongue and tugged lightly on Rebel’s leash. If she sensed a genuine threat, she would ignore him until he acknowledged it. Instead, she turned around and trotted at his side into the complex, glancing over her shoulder just once on the way.

  His unease persisted as he brought Mrs. Muñoz’s groceries up to her apartment and then returned to his own, where he fed Rebel her dinner and ate a quick meal himself. He wished he could take her along tonight; he was used to having her at his side when he pursued bounties, and he was loath to leave her alone after her unusual behavior. But he couldn’t explain that to Aubrey, who would probably find Rebel’s presence an unwelcome distraction.

  Aubrey had continued keeping tabs on Rhodes the past two nights while Dominic was bartending at Stingray, but Rhodes had just gone straight home from work both nights. Tonight, however, he’d told his wife he’d be working late again. Dominic hooked up with Aubrey in the parking lot outside Rhodes’s office just in time to see the man get into his own car.

  “Looks like he saves his bad behavior for you,” Aubrey joked as she turned the key in the ignition.

  “Lucky me,” Dominic said.

  They followed Rhodes to a rowdy dive bar Downtown. It was crowded enough inside for them to risk close personal observation, so they took a table in the corner and ordered a couple of drinks for appearance’s sake. Rhodes hung out by the bar for a few minutes, texting intermittently, before greeting a pretty brunette and settling down at a table of his own.

  “Sometimes I wonder if Rhodes suspects his wife is having him followed,” Aubrey said, after they’d watched him and the woman flirting tamely for a while. “I mean, I don’t think he’s ever made us, but he’s oddly careful about not crossing the line with these women in public.”

  Dominic shrugged. “Could be. Or maybe he’s concerned about the possibility of running into someone he and his wife know. You don’t have to be a PI to snap an incriminating picture on your phone.”

  For the umpteenth time that evening, he swiveled around in his chair, surveying the bar. It was second nature for him to pay close attention to his surroundings, marking exits and escape routes, staying alert to any activity or movement or other visual cues that were out of place. But tonight the nape of his neck was prickling in a way that prompted more deliberate scrutiny. The worst part was that he couldn’t be sure if that was because he was picking up on something subconsciously, or if he was just being unnecessarily paranoid due to Rebel’s earlier behavior.

  “You’re on edge.” Aubrey narrowed her eyes. “Are you, um . . . having problems again?”

  “What?” he said, his attention snapping back to her. “No, it’s nothing like that. I’m just keeping an eye out.”

  A stunning young woman walked into the bar then, a quintessential blonde bombshell in an eye-popping dress who turned heads all over the room. She didn’t return any of the admiring glances, though, scanning the crowd as if she were searching for someone in particular. When she saw Rhodes, she locked on and headed straight for his table. He seemed surprised but not at all displeased by her approach.

  “Think he accidentally double-booked himself?” Dominic asked.

  “That, or he’s trying for a threesome,” Aubrey said with a smirk. “In which case I doubt he’ll succeed.”

  Indeed, the introduction of a rival had the brunette spitting fire. Dominic and Aubrey watched with fascination as a war was waged for Rhodes’s attention in venomous glances, tossed hair, and painfully fake laughter. Rhodes was the only one enjoying himself, apparently oblivious to the fact that the women were one snapped thread away from leaping across the table and clawing each other to shreds.

  “This is better than Animal Planet,” said Aubrey.

  The brunette put up a good fight, but in the end, the blonde’s more aggressive affections won out. As the brunette slunk away in defeat, the blonde curtailed Rhodes’s protests by curling up in his lap, playing with his tie while she whispered in his ear.

  Frowning, Dominic said, “I’m getting a weird vibe off this woman. Rhodes is a good-looking guy, but is he really worth this level of dedicated effort?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. There are plenty of hot guys in here, but when she came in, it was like she was looking for Rhodes specifically.”

  “And it didn’t seem like he was expecting her.”

  Less than five minutes later, the blonde hopped off Rhodes’s lap, coaxed him to his feet, and led him to the door. He stumbled along behind her, a glazed, lust-drunk expression on his face that Dominic could empathize with. He was sure he looked the same way half the time he was in Levi’s presence.

  He and Aubrey turned aside as the couple passed them, but they needn’t have bothered—Rhodes only had eyes for the woman. They trailed them outside, remaining at a discreet distance while Rhodes and the woman called for an Uber, then tracked them to a motel a few miles away.

  “Classy place,” Aubrey said, parking at an angle that gave them a good view of the front of the building. “You ready?”

  Dominic nodded, hefting the camera and lowering the passenger-side window. He snapped a continuous series of shots as Rhodes and the woman left the Uber hand in hand, laughing and canoodling on their way to one of the first-floor rooms.

  “They didn’t check in,” Aubrey said. “Does one of them already have a key?”

  That question was answered when the blonde withdrew a keycard from her purse and waved it playfully at Rhodes, who said something they were too far away to hear. She smiled in response, backed him up against the wall outside the room, and kissed him hard.

  Dominic continued photographing them while Aubrey made a quiet, triumphant noise beside him. Rhodes and the woman separated just long enough for her to unlock the door and were already kissing again by the time it closed behind them.

  Dominic lowered the camera and leaned over so he and Aubrey could both review the photos as he cycled through them. The clear, crisp images caught Rhodes with his unfaithful hands all over a woman who was decidedly not his wife, and the setting left no doubt as to his intentions. Combined with the photos Aubrey had taken in the bar with her hidden purse camera, this spelled doom for the cheating bastard.

  “Got the money shot.” Aubrey leaned back in her seat with a contented air. “Now we just wait, get a few more shots of him coming out with a post-sex glow, and our client’s got her profitable divorce in the bag.”

  Expecting to hang around for an hour or two, they made themselves comfortable, and Aubrey started telling a story about the time she’d gotten lost in Marrakesh while stoned out of her mind. They both startled when the door to Rhodes’s room flew open not ten minutes later.

  The blonde darted out, stuffing something into her tiny purse and struggling to close the clasp. Dominic and Aubrey instinctively flattened themselves against their seats as she looked back and forth across the parking lot and then took off running, leaving the door to the motel room hal
f-ajar.

  “Holy shit, she just rolled him!” Dominic said. He grabbed the camera and took a few more quick shots.

  “We don’t know that.”

  He pointed to the far corner of the lot, where a dark sedan’s lights flashed as the blonde unlocked it remotely. “You think she’s going out to get condoms?”

  Maneuvering with impressive agility on her stiletto heels, the blonde dove into the car, started up the engine, and peeled out of the lot to the sound of screeching tires. Dominic reached for his door handle, but Aubrey caught his arm.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “You’ll blow our cover.”

  “Seriously? She could have drugged him, stabbed him—he could be dying right now.”

  “Our first responsibility is to our client.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, but my first responsibility is to my fellow human beings.”

  Ignoring her protests, he got out of the car and hurried toward the room. The heavy door had begun to creep shut, but he caught it at the last second before it hit the jamb. He nudged it back open, crouched low, and peered inside.

  Rhodes was sprawled unconscious on the bed, his shoes off and his shirt half-unbuttoned. Though the room looked otherwise empty, Dominic drew his gun and cleared it anyway, in case the blonde had an accomplice who’d been lying in wait. Once he was sure nobody was hiding in the bathroom, the closet, or under the bed, he moved to Rhodes’s side.

  Rhodes was breathing fine and his pulse was steady, but he didn’t respond at all to Dominic’s vigorous attempts to wake him. A couple of red Solo cups were set out next to the TV alongside bottles of vodka and orange juice. No points for deducing what had happened here.

  “Christ,” Dominic muttered. He rolled Rhodes into the recovery position on his left side before pulling out his phone.