Lucky Score

by Deborah Coonts

  “You’re not dead.” Bethany gave a little snort.

  “Little do you know.” I nudged her toward the gate into the gaming area. “Let’s go find Romeo. He said he was at Building Ten. Does that mean anything to you?” The rolling hills, the bombed-out shells of buildings, the darkness and the shadows, a place Death would hide.

  “Yeah, follow me. It’s at the far edge of the stadium.”

  “Stadium?” I let her lead, following a step or two behind. “Like gladiators?”

  “That was a coliseum.”

  “Whatever.” I resorted to the teenage word I hated the most. Being corrected by a teenager—such fun. “If it’s a stadium, where are the spectators?”

  “Watching digital feeds.”

  “In real time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is any of it recorded?”

  “No.” Bethany shot me a glance over her shoulder. “No one saw any need.”

  “An oversight. I mean, who would ever think anyone might actually be hurt or killed at a place where the goal is to shoot to kill.”

  “It’s all a game.”

  “Am I the only one who sees any irony here?” We shuffled through the sand, which held the footprints of those who had run this gauntlet before us. My toe connected with a brick or rock, something hard in the shadow. “Damn.”

  “Hence, the boots,” Bethany said as she grabbed my elbow. “It’s just around here.”

  On the other side of a pile of bricks so tall I couldn’t see over it, Detective Romeo stood looking down at a body covered in blood. Thin to the point of needing an IV, Romeo was now down to being a human hanger for his ubiquitous Columbo raincoat. Even the cowlick at the crown of his head had gone limp.

  “A game, you say?” I stepped aside. We all grew up sometime—tonight was her night. I put a hand out to keep her back—we both stayed well away from the body. Maybe the M.E. could glean something from all the footprints in the sand—we didn’t need to muddy that with our own.

  Bethany swallowed hard. “Holy shit.”

  Taking in the whole scene, I reevaluated the wisdom of bringing the kid and my cavalier attitude toward “growing up.” This wasn’t growing up—this was tantamount to child abuse.

  “I can’t believe someone didn’t find his body before we came looking for it.”

  “Few of the players come this far.” Bethany’s voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “Out here, things get too spread out. Shooting people is much more fun in tight quarters.”

  “The fact that you can say that in all seriousness and from personal experience strikes me as a bad thing.”

  “The earlier you learn human nature, the better off you are to protect yourself from it.” She tossed out the grown-up line like she owned it.

  “Assuming all this knowledge doesn’t leave you in the fetal position, locked in a padded room.”

  “Offense is the best defense. I learned that from you.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel good.”

  Neither of us could smile through the horror in front of us.

  Romeo motioned us closer. We stood back, behind him, as the three of us stared down at the body of Senator Justice Lake. He stared back through unseeing eyes. Blood saturated his shirt—drying, it had started to darken at the edges, the red losing its brightness. A large pool stained the sand underneath him to a dark muddy brown.

  A shirt had been tugged over his head—some sort of football jersey bearing the number 88. If it was an NFL jersey, it was a prototype I hadn’t seen. Gashes in the shirt, dozens and dozens of them, shredded it like a teenager going after a pair of jeans.

  “How many times?” I asked, barely able to force out the words.

  “Forty, but that’s just on the front. Some are shallow, some deeper. Some angled. Lake’s hands show defensive wounds. Hell of a battle.” Romeo sounded distant, far away, as if retreating from reality.

  I knew the coping mechanism. I felt myself retreat along with him, but the shivering teenager who clung to my arm kept me in the present, grounded in a parental way. “You shouldn’t be here.” I patted Bethany’s hand, consoling myself. “I’m really sorry I brought you.”

  “I invited myself.” She squeezed my arm tighter. “I’m cool.”

  The lies we tell ourselves.

  Blood splatter hit everything I could see, rocks, sand. It stitched up the side of a concrete wall nearby. Streams of it. Dots. Dripped dots. Rivulets. A bloody handprint on his chest.

  I breathed in and out, in and out, wishing for a paper bag. “Somebody had a real hate thing going on.”

  “Or they were whacked out of their mind,” Romeo, said, his implication clear. The young detective had decided this case was a slam-dunk.

  “You think the handprint is Ponder’s?” I asked although I could tell he’d made up his mind how all this was going to go—never a good thing in police work.

  He shrugged. “Makes the most sense.”

  “Doesn’t prove anything. You’re supposed to be the dispassionate observer, the champion of the truth. Hard to uncover the truth when you’ve already decided what it is.” What was up with the kid? Jumping to conclusions had never been his M.O.

  “Aren’t you the one who always says experience is a great teacher? If the handprint is his, and he had the murder weapon…” He left me to draw the obvious conclusion.

  “I know, a case a prosecutor would salivate over.” For some reason I felt like clutching at straws. “Beyond a reasonable doubt, though? I don’t know…”

  “What, you want a video?” Romeo couldn’t help the mock.

  I resented it. “This is not the time to play good cop, bad cop. I don’t have to tell you how to do your job.”

  “Why do you have so much energy for Ponder?”

  “I don’t. I’m more invested in the process, which protects us all. You have to prove he did it; otherwise, he gets a presumption of innocence. Besides, if the good guys all go to the bad side, where does that leave us?”

  “With job security.”

  “Detective, you are getting on my last nerve.” I snapped my fingers as a thought flew across the synapses. “Video! Speaking of.”

  Bethany stared side-eyed at the body. I had to tug on her arm several times to get her to look at me. “I know the video from the guns isn’t archived. But presumably there were people watching the game tonight?”

  “Are you kidding? With all the football dudes here? Primetime kinda numbers.”

  “Wait. There’s live video?” For the first time tonight Romeo sounded hopeful.

  I waved him to silence. “With all the sports celebs, maybe someone recorded the video feed?”

  “They aren’t supposed to.” Bethany looked doubtful.

  Ah, to once again have that innocence. “They aren’t supposed to stab people either.”

  “That’s equating killers with video watchers.”

  “Rule breakers. Sometimes we put them in jail; sometimes we need their help. Black and white fade to gray. Can you access who signed in to watch?”

  She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I think I can.”

  “Over my dead body!” a man growled as he stalked in our direction. Several of Romeo’s men restrained him. “That’s proprietary information.”

  With a sweeping gesture, I directed his attention to the former Senator Lake. “You can live with this on your conscience?”

  The guy did lose a bit of his bluster when he saw all the blood.

  “Let me guess. The owner of War Vegas?” I asked my cousin.

  “A franchisee, but yes.” Bethany dug a toe in the sand as she refused to look at him. “My boss, Bogie Wilson.”

  “Bogie?” I mouthed to her, making her choke back a laugh.

  Romeo pushed himself to his feet, taking his time, his motions slow. He dusted off his pants where he’d knelt in the sand. “A warrant is nothing more than a formality here. A state senator was killed on your property during a game which you run.
Any judge on the planet would sign my request in a heartbeat.” He turned and leveled a gaze at Bogie Wilson. “Wouldn’t it be better, all things considered, if you were seen to be cooperating with the police?”

  “Seriously? My fans are the 2nd Amendment crowd, the NRA, those dudes.”

  “Any cooperation with authority might be perceived as weakness,” I added.

  “You’re not helping.” Romeo looked like he’d like to clap a set of cuffs and a muzzle on me.

  I got it—the last thing he needed was to chase around unnecessarily. In a murder investigation, time was often the most important commodity. “I thought you guys worshiped at the altar of the police,” I said to Bogie.

  He shrugged, giving me the point. At least he knew to retreat in the face of overwhelming odds. “Our computer equipment is in the building behind the fence along with all the gear.” He lowered his head and gave Romeo a semi-glare. “You’ll want to check all of that as well, I presume?”

  “Of course. I presume that won’t be a problem.” Headlights arced across the grounds. “There’s the Medical Examiner now.”

  Bethany and I stepped back to give the M.E. and his techs room.

  The M.E. wore white coveralls, covers over his shoes, gloves, and a frown. He kept his gray hair military short and his manner all business. His techs set to work without instruction, each with a job to do. One to take photos. One to collect trace. One to analyze footprints.

  “Jesus,” the M.E. growled as he glowered in my direction. “Coroner’s going to have a coronary.” The Coroner was the PR front man; the Medical Examiner did all the heavy lifting. As the mouthpiece, the Coroner would have to handle the hot potato of a dead legislator.

  “He’s a showboat. I doubt he’ll begrudge the airtime.”

  “He may even go national with this one. That’ll give him a total hard-on.” The M.E. gave me a hint of a smile. “Your take?” He lifted his chin toward the body.

  Our normal game, but I was never sure why we played it. “He was shot, once in the right shoulder. Not sure from where. I’ll need your trajectory analysis. But the shot didn’t kill him. His heart was still pumping when he was stabbed multiple times.” I pointed to the blood spatter on the nearby rocks. The same kind of stitching of droplets that I’d seen across Nolan Ponder’s face and shirt. “If his heart hadn’t been pumping, I don’t think you would have that kind of pattern.”

  “What about from the knife as it was being raised and then lowered to stab him again and again?” Bethany asked.

  “It wouldn’t look like that, and there wouldn’t be as much blood. That spray definitely looks like the knife nicked an artery. What do you think, Doc?”

  The M.E. surveyed the scene. “I agree.”

  An attaboy I needed tonight. I gave him the quick and dirty about the video feed. He motioned to one of his techs. “Shasta?”

  A woman, blonde, and much too young, responded to his summons, joining us. “Sir?”

  “Bethany here will guide you through the computer to find a list of log-ins for the game viewing last night. Document all of it.”

  Bethany gave me a look over her shoulder as she left with the tech. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Later. The list of voyeurs is more important right now.”

  She shot a glance at Romeo’s back I couldn’t read.

  EVERYONE at the crime scene had a job to do, so I left them to do it. Romeo said he’d round up Bethany and bring her home. The kid was bunking with my parents, which I thought would be good for all of them—or would be a disaster of epic proportions. The jury was still out on which way it would go.

  With my mother, all bets were off.

  The police had me blocked in, so it took a bit of maneuvering to get the Ferrari free. Once freed, I let the horses run as we galloped back toward the beckoning beacon of the Strip, where magic lived. From my vantage point in the foothills on the far west side of town, the Strip sliced across the horizon in front of me, beckoning me home. Downtown clustered on my left, the lights thinning as I followed them across to the right until I reached the intersection of Sahara, where the lights exploded as the density increased and the hotels grew taller. The Babylon, Wynn and Encore, two sisters clustered together, Mirage, Palazzo, Caesar’s, Bellagio, the green glow of MGM peeking through the buildings of New York, New York, then terminating in the beam of light shining from the tip of the Luxor to the gold shimmer of Mandalay Bay. Aria, The Cosmopolitan, they tucked in among the cluster but didn’t stand out on the skyline, at least not to me. The newest addition was Cielo, my hotel. A gem among larger stars, as I intended. It sat just across from MGM, nestled in next to the airport.

  Home. My two hotels bookending the magic as if capturing it, holding it.

  At the 215, I wheeled to the left and hit the onramp, then settled in to make some calls.

  Miss P answered on the first ring. “EMTs took Jerry to UMC for further eval. He’s fine, not to worry. Cops are sitting on Ponder, not literally, of course. They are still here, but the CSIs have processed him.”

  “Processed him?”

  “Took his clothes, the knife. Got blood samples from everywhere. Collected trace. I think they combed every hair and probed each orifice.”

  I shuddered at the visual, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “I’m assuming he’s not hanging on your every word.”

  “Lying down in your office. Door closed. The officer with him sitting at your desk.”

  Another jab I wouldn’t respond to. Like the three bears, I hated someone sitting in my chair. “And the doctor?”

  “Still waiting on him. Ponder refused to go with the EMTs, but they seemed satisfied he was out of the woods.”

  “The media attention would be a bit of a disincentive.” If he were arrested, I doubted his money could buy his way out of at least a version of the perp walk, but this was Vegas where money could buy anything. “What’s he wearing?”

  “One of the Babylon’s velour tracksuits. Your father brought it down for him.”

  “Our logo emblazoned on his chest in that candid perp walk photo and printed above the fold on the Sunday Review-Journal. My family is intentionally trying to kill me off early, aren’t they?”

  “Despite appearances, I’m not sure that’s their goal.”

  “Trade places with me, then say that with intention.” I glanced at the clock on the dash. Shift change an hour ago. My timing needed vast improvement. “Can you raise Mr. Fox in Security and ask him to meet me in my office?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Ten minutes out. I’ll hold.”

  In less time than it took to choose a song from the playlist, Miss P was back. “He’s on break.”

  “Since when did everyone in Security go on break?” I took a breath, then rushed on. “Rhetorical question. Get ahold of him when he returns and arrange a meeting somewhere, I don’t care where.”

  After I rang off, I wondered at the wisdom of allowing her such latitude in light of her recent passive-aggressive streak. But, given the relative magnitude of my current problems, I doubted she would add overmuch to my burden with her choice, so I let my bet ride.

  Everybody had been riding my tail lately, each in their own way. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but since I was the common denominator, I’d bet a significant portion of my net worth that all of it had to do with me, my attitude, my shortcomings, my choices or my inability to make them, or any or all of the above. Although I knew they meant to incite positive changes, all the “help” left me feeling under fire and adrift…and pissed, to be honest.

  With my toes curling over the edge of the abyss, I was doing the best I could. And being reminded that my best wasn’t good enough was way too demoralizing for me to own right now.

  So I settled back into the relative quiet, lulled into a happier glow by the growl of a perfectly tuned, well-engineered, high-performance machine. My love for cars went all the way back to a need for freedom.

  I
’d saved every dime from every tiny, menial, disgusting job my mother foisted upon me from the time I was twelve to buy my first car at the age of fifteen and a half. A fire-engine-red Cutlass convertible. Used, of course, it had been born long before I had been, but love had been lavished upon it. The old man who sold it to me had made me promise to do the same. The car had belonged to his wife. She’d died a year before. It seemed to me, even as young as I was, that parting with that car was more difficult for him than hacking off a leg would’ve been.

  To know such love…

  Even though I’d never met her, I had honored my promise and her memory. In my book, promises were immutable. Maybe that’s why I took so long and gave each one so much angst before offering my hand in a handshake.

  Other things, though, weren’t as indelibly imprinted on my value construct. I’d forged my mother’s signature on my hardship license application.

  And freedom had been mine.

  Until, two weeks later, I’d been sent to Vegas to work for my father. Of course, no one had bothered me with that little tidbit. I’d just recently learned the truth when my father thought he was going to die and admitted his paternity and his and my mother’s subterfuge.

  Still processing all of it, I wasn’t sure how I felt other than I usually wanted a drink when those thoughts tortured me.

  How do parents do that? Not being a parent, I didn’t have an answer.

  And I didn’t want to ruin my comparatively stellar evening by diving down that rat hole.

  So I didn’t. Instead, I leaned my head back and listened to the tunes of Luis Miguel. Latin music resonated in my soul. Someday, I would explore why that was, but for now, I let the music and his smooth vocals soothe the worry, at least until I made it to the Babylon.

  It took me fifteen extra minutes to weave my way through the phalanx of protesters. One even spat on my car. Spitting on a Ferrari! If that wasn’t a felony, it should be.

  I tossed the keys to a valet and shrugged back into my life, sagging under the weight.

  As I strode into the lobby, people still chattered excitedly, some pointing out the spot where Ponder had fallen as if the blood still marked it with a red X. Thankfully, that was not the case—the clean-up had been thorough; the recent past erased. We’re good at that in Vegas.