Fantastic Detectives

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “Falling down was cute?” I asked.

  “It was,” she said, smiling at me with that same smile I had come to love for ten years.

  “So, Patty,” Ben said, “tell me your side of what happened.”

  I looked at her because I realized that in ten years I had never heard her side of that story.

  “I knew Poker Boy was coming in for the tournament,” Patty said. “And I spotted you at once when you came through the door and stopped. I thought you were cute before you did the dive over the luggage.”

  “You did?” I asked, stunned.

  “Of course,” she said, again squeezing my leg. “I had heard a few things about how you had saved some people and a few dogs and stopped Stan from losing his job and all that. So I wanted to meet you.”

  “Did you know about the Slots of Saturn at that point?” Ben asked Patty.

  Patty nodded, which stunned me.

  “My boss, Bernice, the God of Hospitality, had been dealing with the missing persons reports all over town. She and I both had a hunch we were dealing with ghost slots, but I honestly didn’t want to believe it. None of us did at that point. It was better to think of a more realistic reason than something like ghost slots.”

  Ben nodded.

  I just sat there, surprised.

  “So when did you realize you were actually dealing with ghost slots?”

  Patty looked at me. “When you and I saw them on the security tape take a customer from the Binion’s gaming floor.”

  I nodded. “That’s a memory I’m not going to soon forget.”

  In fact, just the memory of it right now had me sweating a little.

  4

  ANOTHER TRIP TO FIND A CLUE IN THE PAST

  Ben asked us a few more questions about that second meeting and why we took Samantha, the blind wife of the man who was taken by the slots from Binion’s, out of the hotel and to Madge’s Diner.

  That decision had started our regular meetings for years in the diner and then the design of this office when I built it two years ago.

  Going to Madge’s had been Patty’s idea and my idea to bring in Screamer to help.

  Ben walked us all the way through the entire events of that first battle, how we found the slots in the old Standard Slots Graveyard warehouse and how we rescued the people from inside the slots.

  Then he asked a very simple question, one that I had a hunch he had been working to for the entire last half hour. “So when was the last time you saw the ghost slots?”

  “I remember it clearly,” I said. “It was hot, middle of the afternoon.”

  “A Tuesday,” Patty said. “With Screamer, we watched as the two hauling men and two men from Standard Slots hauled the big monster out of the warehouse and craned it up onto a flatbed truck.”

  “They covered it with tarps and tied it down,” I said. “We stood and talked to the Standard Men as the two haulers left with it on the back of their truck, headed supposedly to the crusher out at the wrecking yard to the east of town.”

  Then it dawned on me what I had said. We had a trail, but a ten-year-old trail.

  “The truck drivers kept the machine, didn’t they?” I said to Ben. “We need to find them and where they kept it the last ten years, or who they sold it to, and we’ll have our home for the machines.”

  I turned to Patty. “You remember the name of the trucking company by any chance? It had a logo on the door.”

  “Steven’s Hauling,” Patty said without hesitation.

  Damn her memory never ceased to amaze me.

  I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the Bookkeeper. Of all the people I knew, he was the best with computers and the internet and research than anyone.

  “Still no schedule yet,” the Bookkeeper said when he answered the phone.

  “Can you trace Steven’s Hauling?” I asked. “They picked up the slots ten years ago from the old graveyard warehouse.

  “Call you right back,” he said.

  I hung up and then said, “Stan, we might have a lead.”

  A moment later Stan appeared with Screamer.

  “We’re tracking the company that hauled away the slots,” I said to him.

  “We were trying to find that information out,” Stan said, “but the Standard Warehouse Records were long gone. How did you figure it out just sitting here?”

  “A short trip down memory lane for Ben,” I said, “and Patty’s great memory of the name on the truck. Steven’s Hauling. I got the Bookkeeper tracing it.”

  My phone rang.

  I answered it and the Bookkeeper said, “Steven’s Hauling has been out of business since 2010 when one of their trucks wrecked on the way to LA, killing both of the brothers who owned the company and did all the work of hauling off the slots back ten years ago. Three days after hauling the slots from the warehouse, they deposited three thousand in cash into their bank account that they didn’t account for. That was about the going rate for an old set of slots like that back then.”

  “Nothing else?” I asked.

  “All the company records were destroyed in 2012. Now, I’m going back to trying to figure out where these monsters are going to land next.”

  With that he hung up.

  I looked at Patty and Ben and Stan and Screamer. “Dead end. No record of who they sold it to and the brothers who owned and worked the company are dead and all records destroyed.”

  “And more bad news,” Screamer said. “We’ve got twelve missing so far.”

  “That the police know about,” Stan said.

  All I could do was take a deep breath and just wonder what in the world we were going to do to stop this.

  Again.

  5

  GOT THEM!

  Patty and I were just about to jump to her apartment, change clothes, and head out for a quiet dinner so we could think when Screamer got a call.

  He listened for a moment, then said, “Be right there.”

  He slipped the phone back into his pocket and said, “Slots of Saturn are in Binion’s. Same spot as ten years ago. Police have them surrounded, so no unsuspecting customer is going to jump them at the moment.”

  Instead of teleporting into a dead camera area, it was just as easy for us to head down through Madge’s Diner entrance to my office, out the front door, and across the street to Binion’s.

  The three slot machines that had haunted my dreams for ten years were there, right where Patty and I had seen them on the security tape all those years ago.

  And they looked exactly the same. Exactly.

  Bright colors, the images of Saturn and the rings cutting across all three machines, three wooden chairs attached in front of them.

  My nightmare had returned in bright, living color.

  They were pulsing, dim to bright, every second or so, and I could sense the pull they were putting on people around them, including the police.

  Including me.

  They were hungry and if they didn’t find a victim soon, they might jump.

  And when they did, we needed to somehow trace them.

  I dropped us all out of time, freezing everything around us. I loved that superpower almost as much as I loved the ability to teleport. All I had actually done was take me and Patty and Ben and Screamer and Stan between instants of time.

  But all the casino sounds and the sounds coming from Fremont Street stopped instantly. Also, I could thankfully no longer feel the pull from the slots.

  “That thing feels like it’s about to jump,” I said.

  Stan nodded and an instant later Laverne appeared wearing her most distinct black power business suit and her hair pulled back tight. A different look than the last time she had been in my office.

  “Got any ideas?” she said, staring at the slots.

  “It’s about to jump, even if it doesn’t get fed,” I said. “Do we have anyone who can trace that amount of energy through time and space to figure out where it goes?”

  There was a long moment of silence inside an al
ready deadly quiet time bubble.

  Then Screamer looked at me, then Stan, and Lady Luck. “Is that machine pouring out a lot of energy?”

  “It is,” Lady Luck said. “And the energy feels very much human, so like the last time, the thing is being powered by the people inside it.”

  Screamer then said something that surprised me. “We need Sherri here.”

  Now Sherri was one of Lady Luck’s four daughters and Screamer’s wife. They had been separated for some time, a couple of decades from what I understood. But Screamer and Sherri had been working slowly to try to figure out a way to be together. I always knew when he and Sherri had spent time together because he came back smiling.

  But at the moment Sherri, who was a superhero, was tending bar in Reno and working for the Gods of Food and Beverage.

  She had offered to be part of the team, but until this moment, none of us ever thought to get her involved in any problem.

  “Why Sherri?” Lady Luck said a moment before I could.

  “She’s developed in the last year or so an ability to sense and follow energy,” Screamer said. “She can trace a person’s energy through a building hours after they walked through it. I think she might be able to trace those monsters, since it’s powered by human energy.”

  Screamer pointed to the frozen ghost slots.

  “Didn’t know that,” Lady Luck said, nodding. “Interesting new type of superpower. Worth a shot. Hold this time bubble and we’ll go get her.”

  Screamer and Lady Luck vanished.

  “Did you know Sherri could do that?” I asked Stan and Patty and Ben.

  All of them shook their heads.

  “Might be a good power to add into the mix at times,” Patty said.

  “We shall see,” I said, nodding. But I agreed with her. I could think of a couple times that might have been very handy.

  An instant later Lady Luck, Screamer, and Sherri appeared.

  Sherri was wearing basically the same thing she had on the first time I had met her. Tan slacks, white blouse, and an Eldorado bar apron. She had her long, pitch-black hair pulled back tight, which just accented her stunning beauty.

  She and Screamer were holding hands, so I was pretty sure he had transferred to her what was happening. And all the background that had happened ten years ago. He could do that with a touch, let her see inside his head what was happening.

  As they appeared, she stepped forward, staring at the Slots of Saturn. “So these are the ghost slots you three defeated ten years ago?”

  “They are,” Screamer said. “Same damn ones exactly.”

  “Let’s see if I can trace them or not,” she said. “Drop the time bubble.”

  I did as she asked and the sounds of the casino crashed back in around us.

  Instantly the wave of energy powered over us from the pulsing slots.

  Sherri staggered back into Screamer’s arms and collapsed as the slots pulsed faster and faster and faster and then vanished, leaving a newer bunch of slots in its place.

  I glanced back at Sherri.

  She was out cold and both Screamer and Lady Luck were hovering over her.

  A moment later all three of them vanished.

  “I’ll find out how she’s doing,” Stan said, and vanished as well, leaving me and Ben and Patty just standing there.

  “I think I need a rest,” Ben said. “I’ll catch up with everyone later.”

  He vanished.

  I looked around at the cops and the people who had been watching all this. And watching all of us just vanish into thin air. I had no idea how anyone was going to explain all this, or if they would even try, but right at that moment I didn’t care.

  I jumped Patty and me back to the bedroom of her apartment and stretched out on the bed, not even bothering to take off my leather coat. I used my hat to shade my eyes from what little light was coming around the long drapes pulled closed over the window.

  Patty stretched out beside me and took my hand.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said softly.

  I just wished I believed her, because if we didn’t, a lot of people were going to die a very ugly death inside a very nasty machine.

  6

  A NIGHTMARE

  I dozed, lying there on the bed.

  In the dream, I was back in that old Standard Warehouse, and Patty and I and Screamer were madly trying to save people as the big machine spit them out, one per second.

  Patty had slowed down time just enough that, as the people appeared, Screamer could shove them out of the way onto a big tarp. It had taken us a couple hours to get everyone out that way, with a few problems, but we had done it.

  And then the memory dream turned to a nightmare as the ghosts of the people we had saved just wandered the old warehouse full of dead slot machines, not knowing where to go.

  And no one would believe they were there.

  I woke up with a jerk, sweating.

  Patty had gone into the bathroom and was taking a shower.

  I lay there, letting my heart slow down, trying to figure out what that dream was all about.

  And coming up with nothing.

  Ghost slots. Ghost people. That made no sense at all.

  Then my cell phone rang. “Sherri’s fine,” Screamer said. “Meet in your office in an hour for dinner?”

  “We’ll be there,” I said.

  I took off my coat and hat and then the rest of my clothes. The nightmare had caused me to sweat right through them.

  I headed into the bathroom and crawled into the large shower with Patty, who kissed me, then climbed out.

  “What fun is that?” I asked, teasing her, even though I had no intention of fooling around.

  “Lot of time for fun when we find those damn machines,” she said. “And hurry up, I’ve got an idea I want to check out.”

  “Sherri is all right,” I said as the cool water rinsed over me, chasing some of the nightmare away. “We’re meeting in the office in an hour for dinner.”

  “Perfect,” Patty said, heading out to get dressed.

  Twenty minutes later I jumped us across town to a secluded spot near the front gate of an old wrecking yard.

  The heat from the desert slammed in on us like a hammer. It always seemed hot in the city, but out in the desert, it always felt worse. And jumping from a comfortable air-conditioned apartment into the direct sun and heat wasn’t fun. Especially wearing a black leather coat.

  I looked around to make sure we hadn’t been spotted. There was no one to see us. The place was acres of dead cars in a small valley to the east of Las Vegas, hidden from sight from just about anything. Sitting in long rows, the old and wrecked cars seemed to just be waiting patiently to be picked apart by car enthusiasts like vultures over dried bones.

  A wooden building just inside the open chain-link gate served as an office. They were clearly open. Beyond the office was a huge machine that was in the process of crushing a car, making a noise I didn’t want to really listen to for very long. At least not without some great earplugs.

  We headed up the dusty gravel road and then into the wooden building that looked like it hadn’t been painted since the area was settled.

  The door creaked as we went in and a bell rang, as if the door creaking wasn’t enough to shout that someone had entered. The cool insides of the office felt like I had dipped my face into a cold drink. We were greeted by an elderly woman who had to be in her seventies. She had on a nametag that read, “Denise” that looked like she was attending a convention more than working in a dusty office in the middle of nowhere.

  The place smelled of auto parts and oil and grease, and there were pictures of racing cars on the walls and a large glass case full of trophies, some of which looked to be fifty years old. Some of the pictures jammed all over the walls were clearly of Denise in much younger and thinner days.

  “What can I do for you kids?” Denise asked as she climbed to her feet and headed toward us from her cluttered desk.

 
“We’re wondering if your smashing records still go back ten years,” Patty asked, giving Denise her best smile and charm that was part of her superpower at front desks.

  Patty could calm the most angry customer with a wave of energy and a smile. I could feel the waves of it coming off of her now.

  “Oh, sure, dear,” Denise said, her voice sounding like a grandmother’s voice right out of the movies. “We have records back for forty years since we bought the Big Bully, as we call the noisy old thing.”

  “Any chance you might have records of crushing an antique three-chair set of slots ten years ago, almost to the day, give or take a few?”

  “Let me check,” Denise said.

  She went to some huge metal filing cabinets that lined the back wall and stretched down one side of a hallway that led to a back office and bathroom.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what Patty was thinking, because if the slots never arrived here, we were still at the same spot. But I agreed with this search just to make sure they hadn’t arrived here and then were sold from here.

  Denise pulled open one drawer with a bang and thumbed through a few files for a moment, then checked a few more, and pulled one file, shaking her head.

  “We only crushed one slot grouping that entire year,” Denise said. “I remember they were really nice-looking old slots owned by Standard, but the guys from the shipping company insisted they help us put them into Big Bully themselves to make sure they were destroyed. Something about them being haunted. It’s in the notes here.”

  Denise shook her head again. “Can you believe haunted slots?”

  Neither of us said a thing. I wasn’t sure what I believed any more.

  Then Denise slipped the vanilla file folder across the counter toward Patty.

  Patty looked at it and gasped.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing either.

  Someone had taken a color Polaroid of the Slots of Saturn half crushed by two huge metal crushing arms of a big machine.

  “We take a picture of everything we crush as it’s being crushed,” Denise said. “That way we’re never accused of double-dipping like some crushing yards.”