The John Milton Series Box Set 4

by Mark Dawson

  “Takes out?”

  Sacca put his fingers together in the shape of a gun.

  “He shot them?”

  Sacca nodded. “Puts the girl in the back of her papi’s car and runs. We chased him, but this guy is fast, like NASCAR, and we lost them.”

  Shepherd listened intently. Clearly, what had happened in the desert was a lot more complicated than it had initially appeared.

  “And then?” Salazar probed.

  Sacca reached out for his water and took a sip. “Oscar gets a call. It’s the guy. Smith. He says he’s got the money and he’ll exchange it for the old man. Oscar says yes. Smith says we meet him at Jean and he’ll take us to where it’s gonna go down.”

  “What happened next? Take your time.”

  “There were the two gringos and Russo’s daughter. One of them was Smith. English. He had the accent.”

  “Describe him?”

  “Forties. Same height as me, not as big. Dark hair, scar across his face, blue eyes.”

  “The other guy?”

  “Older.”

  “How old?”

  “Late sixties. Dressed like a cowboy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Big belt buckle. And he had these snakeskin boots. White and black.”

  Shepherd remembered the boots that she had seen in Beau Baxter’s room. He was late sixties, too.

  Surely not.

  She paused, distracted, as Salazar pressed Sacca to continue.

  “So Smith gives Oscar the briefcase,” he said. “Oscar looks—there’s money there, but not all of it. And then it all goes crazy. They got another guy out in the desert. He shoots Oscar; then the gringos take the rest of us out.”

  “And then?”

  “Don’t know what happened after that,” he said. “I was out of it. Next thing I know, I wake up covered in blood and you’re there.” He shrugged, his hands spread.

  The Mexican looked tired. The doctor, who had been standing just outside the door, put his head through. “Time to stop,” he said.

  Shepherd acknowledged him and stood. “We’ll be back tomorrow when you’re stronger.”

  “You leave someone here?” he said.

  “You feel like we need to?”

  He looked at her as if she were mad. “Those dudes were despiadado—you know?”

  Salazar translated. “Ruthless.”

  Sacca nodded. “Muy despiadado.”

  “We’ll leave an officer outside,” she said.

  70

  Salazar led the way out of the hospital room. He had seen the way Shepherd had reacted when Sacca had said that the older of the two shooters had been wearing white and black snakeskin boots. He knew what she was thinking: Beau Baxter had a pair of white and black boots in his room, and, by his own testimony, he had been shot near to where the massacre had taken place. The plan that Baxter and Smith had put together was looking like it was about to fray.

  “Shit,” Shepherd said to him.

  “No kidding. What do you make of it?”

  “We got to speak to the precinct. We need to see if they’ve got anything on this Russo.”

  “You want me to do it?”

  She shook her head. “I got it. Get me a coffee?”

  “Sure. See you downstairs.”

  Salazar took the elevator down to the first floor and went to the waiting area. He bought two coffees and sat down. He took out his phone and looked to see if there were any messages from Smith. There were none. He thought about how things might go south. Would Sacca be able to identify Baxter and Smith? It seemed possible. If he was able to do that, the lies that they had told would quickly be debunked. Salazar started to think about his own self-preservation.

  Shepherd joined him after ten minutes. Her eyes glittered with excitement as she sat down.

  “What is it?”

  “So,” she began, “I just spoke to Dutch. He ran Russo through the system. Turns out that financial crimes have been looking into him for the last six months. Dutch says that Russo’s behind a big scam on the Strip—setting up credit lines using stolen IDs, getting third parties to use the credit to post big bets and then, when they win, taking off with the proceeds.”

  “Working with Delgado?”

  “Dutch said that a couple of the gamblers they picked up had connections. Doesn’t seem like a stretch, given the circumstances.”

  “So what are we saying? Russo and Delgado were working together, Russo rips Delgado off, Delgado abducts him?”

  She nodded. “And his daughter and these two mystery men set them up at the exchange to get him back. I don’t think that sounds too wide of the mark.” She sipped the coffee.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m just getting started. Financial crimes subpoenaed Russo’s bank records six months ago. They’ve seen money going in, tens of thousands every month, and then, last month, a big sum was transferred into the client account of a real estate agent in Florence. Turns out that Russo bought a farmhouse near Siena. Put down six hundred grand and funded the rest with a mortgage. Look—Dutch even has a picture.”

  She took out her phone and handed it to Salazar. There was a PDF brochure from a property agent. The property advertised was called Casa Tulipano and, from the pictures at least, it looked stunning.

  Salazar thought of John Smith waiting at the airport and wondered if he had been able to pick them up. Was that where the Russos were going to run to?

  “We got an address in Vegas for him?”

  “Summerlin. Dutch is already on it.”

  “What about the two guys?”

  “Nothing obvious,” Shepherd said.

  Salazar watched her as she answered, looking for any indication that she had made the connection with Baxter. Her face gave nothing away. Maybe she hadn’t seen the boots.

  “What now?” he said.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m cooked. I should’ve been off shift hours ago. We can speak to Sacca again when he’s recovered, and I’m thinking we can leave Russo to Dutch. Maybe we pick this up again when we get back on shift. What do you say?”

  “Works for me.”

  Salazar finished his coffee and dropped the cup in the trash. “You still owe me breakfast.”

  “I’ll buy you a burger tonight.”

  71

  Shepherd and Salazar went out to their cars. Salazar drove away, waving as he went by. Shepherd opened her phone and navigated to Google. She searched on Beau Baxter’s name and scrolled through the results until she found the one that she wanted.

  Baxter’s Bail Bonds.

  She tapped the result and waited for the next page to load. It was bright red, with the name of the business running across the top of the screen in large white letters. There was a picture beneath it: Beau Baxter in a Stetson standing next to a steer, his hand resting between the beast’s horns.

  Shepherd got out of the Crown Vic and went back up to the room where Sacca was being treated.

  The doctor was looking at the man’s charts on the clipboard that was attached to the foot of the bed. He saw Shepherd and indicated that he would speak to her outside the room.

  “What is it?”

  “One more thing.”

  “I’ve just sedated him. He needs to rest.”

  “Won’t take long. I just need him to look at a photograph.”

  The doctor looked as if he was going to protest, but Shepherd held his eye and he relented.

  “Fine. But be quick.”

  “Thank you.”

  Shepherd went back into the room. Sacca looked up at her through glassy eyes. He looked close to sleep.

  “It’s Detective Shepherd. I need you to look at a picture for me. Can you do that?”

  He gave the slightest incline of his head. Shepherd took her phone from her pocket and held it out so that Sacca could look at the picture of Beau Baxter. He blinked, once and then twice and then a third time, as if willing his eyes to focus. Shepherd watched his face for a re
action and was rewarded: his nostrils flared and he scowled.

  “Is that him?” she asked. “Is that one of the men from the exchange?”

  “Sí,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Shepherd left Sacca and went back outside.

  She knew that Salazar was prone to sailing a little close to the wind from time to time, but she hadn’t sensed anything that might have suggested that he was involved with Baxter in whatever it was that had gone down in the desert last night. Baxter, though, was a different matter. She wondered whether it might be prudent to arrest him now and then formally question him. She would speak to the lieutenant. One thing was for sure: Salazar couldn’t be involved in that, at least not until she was absolutely sure that his hands were clean.

  What a mess.

  She sat down and stretched out her legs, the fatigue that she had been ignoring suddenly overwhelming her. She needed to sleep, but it was going to have to wait a little longer. She wanted to check with the doctor that security had been arranged, but the doctor wasn’t there.

  A man came out of the restroom opposite. He was dressed simply, in a black denim shirt and black denim jeans. His face had a monumental quality about it: his nose was a little bulbous, his cheekbones were prominent, his brow was a slab that ended with thick eyebrows that, in turn, surmounted dark and soulless eyes.

  He had a pistol in his hand and it was pointed straight at her.

  “Inside, please, Detective.”

  72

  Milton looked at his watch again. It was one o’clock now, and the flight had taken off on time half an hour ago. Milton and Riesenbeck had kept watch in the arrivals hall, with Milton staying in the café and Riesenbeck heading over to a line of stores where travellers could buy books, magazines, toiletries and other ephemera.

  There had been no sign of the Russos.

  Milton leaned back in the chair and exhaled impatiently.

  Riesenbeck was crossing the hall toward him. “They’re not coming, are they?”

  Milton got up and stretched the kinks from his shoulders. “It doesn’t look like it.”

  Milton thought back to the items that he had found in Jessica’s Tesla: the itinerary, the guidebook. She had clearly been intending to take that flight, and Italy was to be their final destination.

  What had changed?

  “You need me anymore?” Riesenbeck asked him.

  “No,” Milton said. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

  The detective shook his hand and made his way to the exit. Milton stayed where he was, thinking. What had happened? Jessica was smart: might she have anticipated that he would have gone back to search the car? That seemed like a stretch, especially given that she must have assumed his attention would have been taken up with tending to Beau.

  Milton took out his phone and called Salazar.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not good,” Milton said. “They didn’t show.”

  “Might only be a temporary disappointment. I got something for you—turns out that Richard Russo is a person of interest for the department. He’s been under investigation by the fraud team for months.”

  “For what?”

  “Hacking guest information at the casino and using it to set up fake lines of credit. We’re talking serious money. They were close to making an arrest. I just found out. Gets better, too. They’ve been in Russo’s bank accounts for months. Your hunch about Italy looks like it might be right. He bought a farmhouse near Siena. You got a pen and paper?”

  There was a store selling newspapers and stationery next to the café. Milton took a pen from the shelf, wedged the phone between his shoulder and chin, and held out his left hand. “Go on.”

  “Place is called Casa Tulipano. Near San Quirico d’Orcia.”

  Milton wrote the address on his hand. “Got it.”

  “You think they’ll still go out there?”

  Milton put the pen back. “Where else are they going to go? Have you had to deal with anyone leaving the country before?”

  “I work Nevada, buddy. Most of the low-lifes I deal with have never even left the state boundary, let alone the country.”

  “How many other big airports are close to Vegas?”

  “You think they booked another flight?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You got LAX and San Francisco if they went west.”

  “What about south or east? Phoenix?”

  “Sure. Albuquerque, Tucson, El Paso. Denver’s eleven hours away. They could transit to one of the hubs and head to Europe from there.”

  “What about Vegas?” Milton said.

  “You think?”

  “It’s worth considering. They’ve created a big diversion. Maybe they go straight to the airport and take the first flight out. Can you check?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can get someone back at the precinct to pull the manifests.”

  The more Milton thought about it, the more likely that seemed to be. Jessica was shrewd; the notion that she had outsmarted him again was not so hard to credit, given what she had already achieved.

  “What about the investigation?” he asked.

  “We caught a break—one of Delgado’s guys survived. He laid it all out—the exchange for Russo, what went down, the whole bit.”

  “Can he identify me or Beau?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Milton swore under his breath.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’ll stick around here for a while longer, just in case. Maybe they got a later flight. Will you let me know if you get anything?”

  “Sure.”

  Milton thanked him and hung up. He looked at the address that he had written on the back of his hand and wondered what to do next.

  73

  Beau had been spinning his wheels all afternoon. He was still sore from his injury, but when he looked down at the wound when the nurse changed his dressing, he could see that it had not become infected. They had done a good job of removing any foreign material, and that, together with the antibiotics that had been delivered intravenously since he had been admitted, had seemingly ensured that he would recover well enough. He knew he had been fortunate. He could easily have died in the desert, or in the back of the car as Smith had delivered him here, or from complications afterwards. He had lost a lot of blood, too, and the doctor had told him that they had transfused several pints as they’d sought to stabilise him. He was bound to feel weak.

  He was grateful, but now he was ready to leave. He had asked the doctor when he thought he would be able to discharge him and had received the reply—not that he was surprised by it—that they would like to keep him in for another couple of days, three at the outside. He had been very badly hurt, the doctor said, and he wanted to make sure that everything had been properly patched up before he was prepared to let him out. Beau hadn’t argued; he knew that there was no point, and presenting himself as anything other than a compliant patient would make it more difficult for him when he was ready to leave.

  There was also the small matter of the police. He was confident that the story that he and Smith had concocted was sound, and that his delivery of it had been persuasive, but there were things about the police investigation that they did not know, and that meant that it was possible that they might come across evidence that would undermine his telling of the tale. He was limited in what he could learn while he was stuck in the hospital; Salazar might be able to give him an update, but that was it.

  There were windows in the wall that separated Beau’s room from the corridor, but the glass was frosted, and all he could see of the people outside were their shapes as they passed. There had been a silhouette there most of the afternoon; Beau had hobbled outside earlier to see about getting a coffee and had seen that the silhouette belonged to the police officer who was guarding the room. Beau had thanked him, and the man had acknowledged his gratit
ude with a nod of the head.

  Beau was wondering about the best time to discharge himself when he saw another silhouette draw up to the guard. He heard the sound of voices—too low and muffled for him to decipher them from behind the door—and then watched as both shadows disappeared to the right.

  He turned away, his thoughts running back to how the next day or two might develop. He needed to get out so that he was in a position to stay ahead of events. He felt as if he was just waiting for things to happen while he was sitting here on his ass. At a minimum, he was going to have to get Chase to fly over so that he could collect the skipper and take him back to San Francisco. He didn’t like to lie to family, and he was going to have to think about exactly what he could tell his son to explain what had happened. Chase had been nagging him for months that maybe it was time to hang it up, and seeing him laid up in a hospital bed was going to be more grist for that particular mill.

  He heard the sound of footsteps and saw a dim shape passing across the window from right to left. The shape reached the door and he saw the handle being pushed down. The doctor? Beau shuffled back a little in the bed, wincing from the ache as he straightened his back against the headboard.

  The door opened.

  It wasn’t the doctor.

  It was a man Beau had not seen before. He was dressed all in black—black denim shirt and jeans—with black hair that framed an unhealthily white face. The man stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Hello, Señor Baxter,” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  The man ignored the question. Instead, he brought his arm up to show his hand; he was holding a pistol with a long suppressor screwed onto the barrel.

  “Please, señor, keep your voice down. I would like to ask you a few questions. I would much prefer it if our conversation was civil. Do you think that might be possible?”

  Beau was too long in the tooth to be panicked by the sight of a gun, but he was also more than experienced enough to know that he was in something of a situation. The reason guns did not normally concern him was that he always had one himself, and made it his practice to have it drawn and ready before the bad guy drew his. It was easier to be relaxed about the prospect of an armed man when you had your finger on the trigger before he did. That wasn’t the case now. Beau was unarmed, and, as he carefully glanced left and right, he could see nothing with which to improvise.