“I haven’t killed anyone,” Warner said.
Martine snorted. “Yeah, waving a gun at a cop gives that a lot of credibility.”
Tilting his head to the side, Levi studied Warner’s nervous, twitchy body language. He didn’t think Warner would shoot him head-on like this—the man seemed to favor taking his victims by surprise—but he couldn’t be sure of that. He continued advancing slowly while he spoke.
“I didn’t put it together until Ms. Kostas called me last night. See, the only reason we suspected Dr. Northridge to begin with was because you told me you’d seen her on Monday. Then it turned out that she had been in the city all along, so that checked out. But when she told me her story . . . she was smart, and she’d been very careful. If she’d killed Hensley, there’s no way she would have let you catch so much as a glimpse of her. So how’d you know she’d been here? My guess is Alan Walsh told you, and you ‘accidentally’ let it slip to me to cast suspicion on her.”
Warner’s face had been steadily draining of color and was now a sickly gray. He licked his lips but said nothing.
“Should I keep going?” Levi asked. He took Warner’s stony silence as a yes. “On the posterboard at your presentation on Friday, you were named in the research—but I saw the original program for the conference, and you weren’t named on the paper then, nor were you scheduled to speak at all. In fact, your name is missing from a lot of the background reading I did for this case. Because that was Hensley’s game, wasn’t it? He cut you out of research you’d been a part of, took credit for your work, verbally abused you, and generally made your life miserable at every turn. So you decided enough was enough.”
“No,” Warner whispered.
“You knew Hensley would hire an escort his first night in Vegas, and you must have read about trick rollers somewhere. It seemed like the perfect plan. Your room wasn’t far down the hall from his, so all you had to do was keep an eye on the people coming and going and wait for his escort to leave. Once she had, you hurried to his room, convinced him to drink with you, and made sure he got a lethal dose of Rohypnol in his champagne. Then you stole his valuables as the finishing touch.”
Warner closed his eyes briefly.
Levi had almost closed the distance between them. “Problem is, Alan Walsh saw you sneaking those valuables out the service exit at the Mirage the next morning. He photographed you, realized later what he had proof of, and blackmailed you. So you had to kill him too.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Warner said, his nostrils flaring.
“I can prove all of it.” Levi counted the points off on his fingers. “First of all, the people you were with all vouched for the fact that you were falling-down drunk that night. Even your girlfriend agreed. And there’s no way a guy that wasted could pull this plan off. Which is why you paid the bartender to give you non-alcoholic drinks all night and pretended to get drunk. She’s a temp, so she was a little hard to track down, but she was happy to tell us all about it once she found out you strangled an innocent woman.”
“That’s crazy. She’s—she’s lying—”
“Then there’s the steak dinner you ordered from room service Tuesday night—the night Walsh was killed with a steak knife in a design made exclusively for the Mirage.”
Warner opened his mouth, but Levi held up a hand.
“I’ll admit—circumstantial at best,” he said. “What’s less circumstantial are the multiple calls on your cell phone records from burner numbers Dr. Northridge has confirmed belonged to Walsh. Plus, you’re a doctor. I’m sure you’re aware that DNA can be obtained from vomit, especially when the dumbass who left it at a crime scene didn’t clean it up thoroughly.”
Warner blanched.
Moving in for the kill, Levi said, “The photographs I mentioned earlier, the ones of you leaving the Mirage with Hensley’s belongings? That wasn’t guesswork on my part. I’ve seen them with my own eyes, because a couple of hours ago, our tech analyst was able to break through the encryption on a backup hard drive Walsh had hidden in his bedroom.”
“No, you—you’ve got it all wrong. I can explain—”
“Most damning of all,” Levi said, talking right over him, “is that when Diana Kostas recovers—which she will—she’ll name you not only as her attacker last night but as the person she saw going into Dr. Hensley’s room the night he was murdered. That’s why she called me; it’s why you tried to kill her. You were in such a rush to kill Hensley that you didn’t give her enough time to leave the hotel. The two of you were in the hallway at the same time and she saw you. She just didn’t realize what she’d seen or how you were connected to him until she saw you again at the substation on Friday.”
Quiet fell over the parking lot as it was bathed in pink light from the sun cresting the mountains to the east. The three of them stood in a motionless tableau—Martine with her gun trained unwaveringly on Warner, and Warner pointing his gun more shakily at Levi, who was barely more than a foot away from him now. The uniforms hung back at the perimeter, guns drawn but making no other move to interfere.
“She was in the elevator,” Warner said, his voice cracking, and Levi had to swallow hard to suppress a triumphant shout. “The doors hadn’t closed yet, and she saw me knocking. She was too far away to know which room I was at, though, and she had no idea who I was. It shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Getting away with murder isn’t as easy as you expected, huh?” Levi said.
“I didn’t want to hurt her or Walsh! Nobody was supposed to die except Hensley.” He looked pleadingly at Levi. “He deserved it, you know he did. He ruined lives. I did everyone a favor.”
“Yeah, you should get an award for your humanitarianism,” Martine said in disgust. “Put your gun on the ground and get on your knees with your hands behind your head.”
Warner clenched his jaw, panicked determination sparking in his eyes. Holding his gun inches from Levi’s chest, he said, “I don’t think so. Put down your gun or your partner gets hurt.”
Martine chuckled. “Oh, you poor bastard. He’s not the one who’s gonna get hurt.”
Levi leaned to the side as his arms shot up, his left hand grabbing the muzzle of the gun and his right wrapping around the butt. He kicked Warner viciously in the balls while whipping the gun out of his grip, then backed up a few steps to disengage. He aimed the gun at Warner himself, though he needn’t have bothered—Warner was doubled over and groaning in agony.
“How’s that, Ms. Rashid?” he called out.
Leila Rashid sauntered out from behind another parked car, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed Warner, who blinked up at her with eyes dazed from pain and shock. “Not bad. I do love a good solid confession. Makes my job a lot easier.”
“Dr. Warner, meet Leila Rashid, the deputy district attorney who’ll be prosecuting your case. Or cutting you a plea deal, which you might prefer now.”
“What?” Warner tried to straighten up, winced, and said, “No! You saw what he did, he—he coerced me, entrapped me—”
“He coerced you into a confession while you were holding a gun on him?” Her voice was cool with disdain. “Good luck selling that one.”
Keeping said gun trained on Warner, Levi nodded to Martine, who holstered her own weapon and moved forward to place him under arrest. Levi didn’t relax until she carted him away to one of the unmarked squad cars.
“I need to bag this,” he said to Rashid, as he ejected the gun’s magazine and emptied the bullet out of the chamber.
She accompanied him to his car, which hadn’t been his intention, but he didn’t see how he could stop her. He retrieved an evidence tag and bag from the supply in his trunk and started filling them out.
“Yours must be the shortest suspension in the history of the LVMPD,” she said, leaning one hip against the trunk.
“Wen wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t have much of a choice after Diana Kostas chose to call me. Plus, Martine argued on my behalf. We needed all hands
on deck to make this case airtight and set up the trap.” He dropped the tagged gun into the bag and sealed it shut. “Don’t worry, though—everyone still knows why I was suspended in the first place. I’m still the obsessed freak nobody believes.”
Rashid shrugged. “I believe you.”
He fumbled the bag, just managing to catch it before it hit the ground. “You what?”
“There’s no way Keith Chapman was the Seven of Spades,” she said calmly, as if she were discussing what she’d had for dinner the night before. “The real killer set him up and is still at large. I’ve always believed that.”
It took him a few seconds to process his shock, and then anger set in. “If that’s true, then why give me such a hard time about it? Why haven’t you ever spoken up yourself?”
“There are more people who believe you than you might think. We’re just not all bent on committing career suicide.”
“Defending your beliefs is more important than a job,” he snapped.
“Is that why you tried so hard to hide your little side investigation?” she said with a smile. Before he could respond, she added, “Besides, ultimately it won’t matter that I kept quiet, because you’ll be vindicated sooner rather than later. A killer as theatrical and desperate for attention as the Seven of Spades can’t hold out much longer. That craving for recognition must be unbearable by now, even if they’ve been killing people in other ways this whole time. They’ll reappear at some point, and everyone will know you were right.”
“You realize that will mean that someone else has been killed,” he said, staring at her.
She wrinkled her nose. “Rapists and wife-beaters and corrupt public officials? What a shame.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” he muttered.
Pushing herself off his car, she said, “Just give it time. Meanwhile, when it comes to Warner, make sure you have every I dotted and every T crossed. No shortcuts and no mistakes. Between the evidence you’ve collected and a confession made in front of two detectives and a DDA, any competent defense lawyer will advise him to take the plea I’ll offer. We can all spare the taxpayers the expense of a trial.”
He nodded. “I’ll leave it in your hands, Ms. Rashid.”
“Call me Leila,” she said, flipping her long black hair over one shoulder. She turned and walked away with the easy, graceful athleticism he’d noticed the first time they met.
Once she was gone, he stored Warner’s gun in the trunk, then gave himself a moment to appreciate the fact that the case had been wrapped up with little chance of the killer escaping justice.
Time was, a successful solve had been cause for celebration, not to mention a great sense of accomplishment. Since the Seven of Spades had burst onto the scene, however, Levi’s other cases had dimmed in importance. He still gave them everything he had, but it didn’t feel the same anymore.
Until he caught the Seven of Spades, every other victory would ring hollow.
Monday morning, Levi found himself strolling along the Andersons’ property line despite the blazing summer sun overhead. Adriana had wanted to go for a walk, and he hadn’t had the heart to say no.
“I know it’s been less than a full day, but how has everything been so far?” he asked.
“Pretty good.” Adriana walked beside him with her hands stuffed into the pockets of a new pair of jeans. “The Andersons are nice.”
“What about Josh and Rima?”
“They’re okay.”
Despite what sounded like faint praise, Levi could see the changes in her already. She still had a hunted air about her—she probably would for a long time—but she looked more relaxed, less likely to bolt at the drop of a hat. When he’d arrived at the house, she’d been talking and laughing with her new foster siblings in the kitchen, and she hadn’t flinched when Rima had touched her arm.
He nodded toward a group of horses that were quite sensibly hanging out in the shade. “Have you been around horses before?”
“No. The Andersons said I could earn extra money helping out with the farm, though, and Wendy’s going to teach me how to ride.” She shrugged nonchalantly and kicked a clod of dirt. “That’ll be kind of cool, I guess.”
Levi hid a smile.
They arrived at the corner of the property, and Adriana hopped up to sit on the wooden fence. Levi leaned against it, his suit jacket draped over one arm.
It was so hot that the air was hazy, the dust an inch thick on the parched earth. Good thing he’d thought to stash an extra shirt in his car; this one would soon be soaked through with sweat.
“I’m glad you caught the guy who killed that doctor,” Adriana said. “He’s not gonna get away with it, is he?”
“Definitely not. The DA’s office is offering to avoid seeking the death penalty if he agrees to life in prison without parole.”
Levi thought that was a ballsy move on Rashid’s part. Though Nevada technically had dozens of men sitting on death row, the state hadn’t executed anyone since 2006. He knew for a fact that the government’s stockpiles of one of the drugs used for the lethal injection was about to expire, too, and pharmaceutical companies weren’t exactly jumping at the chance to participate in executions these days.
But Rashid knew as well as Levi did that Warner was a coward at heart. He’d take the deal.
“Confirming that the bag you found was the same one in those photographs was a big help,” Levi added. “Thank you.”
She smiled and swung her legs back and forth as she sat atop the fence. He could tell there was more she wanted to say, so he gazed out across the horse pasture while he waited.
“Did your boyfriend hit you?” she asked abruptly.
Startled, he raised a hand to his lip. The healing cut and lingering bruise still looked bad, but it barely hurt anymore so he tended to forget about it.
“No,” he said. “I was searching a suspect’s apartment and her boyfriend came home and attacked me.”
She didn’t apologize for suspecting Dominic, and he didn’t scold her for it. “Did you win the fight?”
“Yes.”
She looked him up and down, then nodded. “I asked Natasha about you. She said you study some kind of Israeli martial arts and that a few months ago you took down three guys in like twenty seconds.”
“It’s called Krav Maga,” he said, hoping Natasha hadn’t hyped him up too much. “It was created for the Israel Defense Forces in the 1940s. I train under the IKMF—the International Krav Maga Federation.”
“Are you a black belt or something?”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Uh, no. Krav doesn’t use belts. There’s fifteen levels—five Practitioner, five Graduate, and five Expert. I’m an E1.”
She was silent for a minute while she absorbed this. Then she said, “You told me you’d teach me how to defend myself. Did you mean it?”
“I did. If you’re still interested.”
“I am,” she said, but she hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “It’s just . . . do you think people will think it’s weird, you spending time with me? Like maybe it’s inappropriate?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Would people think that, knowing I’m gay?”
“Are you?”
“You know I have a boyfriend.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re gay,” she said archly.
That surprised a laugh out of him, and he said, “You’re absolutely right; I stand corrected. But I am gay, no doubt about it. I’ve only ever kissed one girl in my entire life—Jessica Stein, at my bar mitzvah. I think she only did it out of pity though, because later that night I caught her making out with Danny Chen.”
“Ouch.”
“Honestly, it was a relief. They ended up dating for a few years too.” He straightened up. “We’ll just be straightforward with the Andersons and your caseworker about what we’re doing and why. I doubt anyone will have a problem with it.”
“Okay,” she said, grinning. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome
. Now let’s head back. I have to be in court in a couple of hours.”
Adriana jumped off the fence, and they started toward the house. Halfway there, she said, “You didn’t have to help me. You don’t have to help me now. What are you getting out of this?”
It was a fair question, so Levi gave it thought before he answered. “It makes me angry to see people get hurt, especially by someone they should have been able to trust. The best way to deal with that anger is to address the problem head-on.”
She scuffed her sneaker along the ground, sending up a cloud of dust and dirt. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s a good reason, maybe the best reason. It’s a little weird though, because if you think about it, isn’t that kind of the same reason that serial killer slit all those people’s throats?”
Levi didn’t have a response for that.
Dominic knocked on the half-open door to Room 227 and peered around it before entering. The woman in the first hospital bed was asleep; he walked quietly past her to where a drawn curtain separated off the room’s second occupant.
Diana Kostas was flipping through a magazine, the head of her bed raised at a gentle incline. Her throat was mottled with vicious dark bruises, but she was breathing unassisted. The only equipment hooked up to her was an IV line.
He cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, Ms. Kostas?”
She glanced up and sucked in a breath, her fingers tightening around the edges of her magazine—not an unexpected reaction to a man his size in a woman who’d just been brutally assaulted. But her anxiety quickly turned to confusion as her eyes fell on the enormous bouquet of dahlias and yellow roses he held in one arm.
“I’m Dominic Russo. Detective Abrams’s boyfriend?”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God,” she said, her voice so hoarse and ragged it was painful to hear. “You’re the one who saved me.” She struggled to sit up, then gasped and grabbed the side of her rib cage.
“Um, yeah, I—wait, let me help you.” He set the flowers on the side table and moved to the bed, using the controls to lift the top half so she could keep her body still.
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