One-Eyed Royals

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  Gibbs frowned at Dominic. “Russo? What are you doing here?”

  “This is my building.”

  Gibbs looked back and forth between Dominic and Levi, then glanced at Levi’s car. There was no way to prevent him from drawing the right conclusion—there was only one reason Levi would be parked at Dominic’s apartment so early in the morning.

  “I thought you guys broke up,” said Gibbs.

  Levi closed his eyes.

  “Move along, Officer,” Dominic said sharply.

  Gibbs smirked and walked away. Taking one deep breath, Levi opened his eyes—but he didn’t look even slightly angry, which worried Dominic more than the explosive reaction he might have expected.

  Levi’s anger was frequently toxic and out of control, sure, but it was also his most reliable defense mechanism. How would he protect himself without it?

  When the crime scene techs finished with the car, Martine leaned into the back seat, retrieved the gift box, and set it on the hood. It seemed the lid was wrapped separately from the rest, because she was able to lift it off without unwrapping the box. She peered inside with a furrowed brow, then pulled out a handheld voice recorder.

  After a brief conference with Wen, Martine walked toward their little group, joined them on the other side of the tape, and gestured for Levi to accompany her to the far corner of the lot. Dominic handed Rebel’s leash to Carlos and followed without being invited, but Martine didn’t comment.

  “This is the only thing that was in the box,” she said to Levi. “Do you want me to listen to it first and tell you what’s on it?”

  Levi shook his head. “Just play it. Please.”

  Martine hit Play. The sounds of heavy thuds and wet crunching filled the air, along with a man crying out in pain—someone was getting a serious beatdown.

  “No, please, all right, all right!” the man on the recording said. “I’ll do it, just—ungh—just please stop. I’ll do what you want.”

  What came next was definitely another person talking, but the recording had been altered so the voice was only an unintelligible whomp-whomp-whomp like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons.

  The man snuffled in fear. “I understand. Please don’t.” He took several sobbing breaths before continuing. “My name is Grant Sheppard. From 1999 to 2011, I was the director of the Trenton Police Department.”

  Dominic, Levi, and Martine all went rigid. On the recording, the mystery voice spoke again.

  “I told you,” said Sheppard, “there’s no way I can remember every case that—”

  Though there was no sound of impact, Sheppard let out a high-pitched shriek.

  “Fuck, okay! Yeah, I remember the one you mean. It was in 2005, 2006. Some college kid got himself beat outside a gay bar. It was pretty nasty.”

  Whomp-whomp.

  “How the hell would I remember the victim’s—”

  This time, Sheppard’s screaming and cursing went on for a full ten seconds. Dominic’s stomach turned over, and Martine winced while she listened. Levi alone seemed unaffected.

  “Levi Abrams! The victim’s name was Levi Abrams.” Sheppard cried quietly for a few moments until his tormenter spoke again, then said, “Yes, that’s right. The case is still unsolved. The perpetrators were never identified.”

  Whomp.

  “What? No—” Sheppard screamed in terror, the noise raising goose bumps all over Dominic’s body. “Wait, God, please! Please don’t. I’ll tell you.”

  There was a pause while Sheppard gulped in air. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with mucous—and blood, Dominic suspected.

  “We identified the suspects’ likely vehicle from a nearby camera that had captured a car running a red light. The car was registered to a Scott West. His father was a state senator. A pillar of the community, one of our biggest donors.”

  Levi rocked back a step.

  “We contacted him first as a courtesy,” Sheppard went on. “Turns out Scott and a few of his friends had been . . . getting up to some mischief. His father offered us money to make the problem go away. So we swept the whole thing under the rug.”

  Levi swayed on his feet, his face absolutely bloodless. Dominic steadied him.

  Whomp-whomp-whomp.

  “Yes,” said Sheppard. “I—I advised my officers to accept a bribe in return for covering up a violent crime. Is that what you wanted? Is that what you came here for?” He was desperate now, sobbing freely. “Please, I know the other men’s names! I can tell you. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll do whatever you want, just please, please don’t— No, wait— No! No!”

  Sheppard’s voice escalated into hysterical screaming, and then the recording cut off. The three of them stood in shocked silence for a minute.

  “They always told us they didn’t have any leads,” Levi said faintly. “My parents badgered them for months and got shut down every time. But the cops knew who it was all along.” Though Dominic’s hand was still on his back, he had yet to push Dominic away.

  “Sounds like the Seven of Spades may have killed this guy too,” Martine said, indicating the recorder. “I think you should come to the substation with me.”

  Levi nodded and took several halting steps toward her. He looked completely out of it, almost catatonic.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Dominic said without thinking. Why would Levi want him, of all people?

  “Hmm?” Levi blinked, but he didn’t sneer or scoff. “Oh. No, that’s okay. Thanks though.”

  And that was all. Martine gave Dominic a small nod that spoke volumes—I’ll take care of him, don’t worry—before leading Levi away.

  As Dominic watched them go, he noticed an obvious hitch in Levi’s step and palmed his face. A sight that might have aroused him under other circumstances now made him feel like the world’s biggest asshole. He’d been way too rough last night, and Levi would have to suffer the consequences of that all day on top of dealing with the rest of this garbage.

  Over by Levi’s car, the coroner investigator was supervising the transfer of the victim’s corpse to a body bag on a stretcher. Two down, two to go.

  Dominic couldn’t shake the feeling that the worst was yet to come.

  Levi wasn’t used to being on this side of the equation. He sat on the couch in the same room where he’d interviewed Rose Nguyen, an untouched cup of coffee on the end table beside him. A nasty headache throbbed right behind his eyes, reverberating through his skull to the cramped muscles in his neck and shoulders. He was having trouble focusing through the fog that had taken over his brain.

  The cops had known the identities of the men who’d almost beaten him to death all along. They’d looked Levi and his parents in the eye and lied to their faces, over and over again. Men who should have gone to prison had been allowed to walk free for years—for money.

  The revelation should have thrown Levi into an unholy rage; he’d been provoked by far less in the past. But the burning anger that infected him deep in his core—the bright spark always ready to flare up at a moment’s notice—had gone dormant, leaving him empty and cold right when he needed it most.

  He glanced up as the door opened. Martine and Wen came in, accompanied by Natasha.

  “I asked Natasha to be here,” Martine said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” said Levi, who was happy to see her. A social worker by training and a mediator by nature, Natasha exerted a calming influence on any situation, and had a knack for offering support without judgment.

  Though the fact that Martine considered Natasha’s presence necessary didn’t bode well for the conversation they were about to have.

  Martine and Wen sat in chairs across from the couch, while Natasha took a seat beside Levi. She squeezed his knee and gave him an encouraging smile.

  Wen fussed with his tie, though it was already pin-straight. “The current police director in Trenton told me that Grant Sheppard moved to Philadelphia after he retired. I just got off the phone with the Philly PD, and t
hey’re faxing over the case file on his homicide now.”

  “So he was murdered?” Levi asked.

  “He was killed in an apparent home invasion on December 27,” Martine said. “His house was ransacked, everything valuable stolen. He was tied to a chair, badly beaten, and electrocuted multiple times with a stun gun before ultimately being stabbed to death.”

  “Any drugs in his system?”

  “They had no reason to check.”

  “Was there a seven of spades card at the scene?”

  “No.”

  Levi’s brow creased. “That doesn’t fit the Seven of Spades’s MO. At all. They don’t beat people, they don’t stab, we’ve only seen them use a stun gun once . . .” A flare of fresh pain speared through his head; he hissed and ground the heels of his hands into his aching eyeballs. “Sorry. I have the worst fucking headache.”

  Martine made an exasperated noise. “You’re in caffeine withdrawal. Drink your coffee.”

  He picked up his abandoned cup of substation coffee and took a few sips. Already poor quality, the coffee was even worse lukewarm—he’d been waiting in this room for a while. He continued drinking it, though, because it was marginally preferable to the withdrawal symptoms.

  “Almost every element of this situation is a deviation from the Seven of Spades’s MO,” Wen said. “We can assume their . . . attachment to you is what’s driving the unusual behavior. As for Sheppard, taking credit for his death would have interfered with the killer’s plans to trap the other four men. Now they’re running around Las Vegas with two captives, planning God knows what, and we can’t anticipate their actions because they’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “The FBI hasn’t made any progress in locating the missing men?” Natasha asked.

  Slumping in her chair, Martine ran a hand through her short, springy finger coils. “We’ve got nothing. It’s like they were abducted by aliens.”

  Levi swallowed a mouthful of terrible coffee. “What about the Philly cops? Did they have any leads for Sheppard’s homicide?”

  “They had chalked it up to local gang violence.” Wen hesitated. “But . . . there’s a problem.”

  He and Martine exchanged a troubled look that instantly had Levi on high alert.

  “What?” Levi said.

  Martine crossed and uncrossed her legs before speaking. “Sheppard was killed in Philadelphia on December 27. You were in New Jersey visiting your family for Hanukkah the same day.”

  There was Levi’s rage.

  It burst back into flame all at once, scorching him from the inside out, making him shake so badly he had to hurry to put down his coffee. He struggled to control his suddenly rapid breathing while his hands flexed open and shut, desperate for something to throw, to hit, to break—anything to release the building fury burning his throat and churning his stomach.

  “You must be joking.” Natasha’s face was slack with astonishment. “Martine, for you of all people to imply—”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Martine snapped. “I’d believe Santa Claus was the Seven of Spades before I’d believe it was Levi. But I also don’t think the timing of Sheppard’s murder is a coincidence. Neither is the fact that Wayne Reddick’s body was found in Levi’s car.”

  Levi had to put himself through one of Alana’s breathing exercises before he trusted himself to speak. “So you think . . . what, the Seven of Spades is setting me up? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Agent Chaudhary suggested the Seven of Spades wanted to recruit you as an asset in the future. This may be their way of forcing your hand.”

  “Regardless of the killer’s intentions, it’s even more vital now that you stay as far away from the case as possible.” Wen pinched the bridge of his nose. “The press is going to have a field day with this. We’ll try to keep most of it under wraps, but there’s no hiding that you were removed from the investigation, and any dedicated journalist will be able to find out why.”

  “Maybe you should take the rest of the day off,” Natasha said to Levi.

  “I can’t do that. If I’m not working, I’ll go insane. Plus, I have a meeting scheduled with Carolyn Royce this afternoon.”

  “There’s no reason you can’t work,” said Wen. “Just be your usual circumspect self.” He paused. “And if you are approached by the press, please try not to . . .”

  “Throw gasoline on the fire?” Levi said wryly.

  Wen nodded. Levi wasn’t offended; there was an excellent chance he’d do exactly that if a reporter rubbed him the wrong way while he was in this kind of mood.

  “I have to go home to shower and change anyway,” he said. “After that, I’ll stay at my desk and screen my calls until I’m ready to meet Ms. Royce.”

  At least the detour would give him the opportunity to use some of Alana’s techniques to work through his anger constructively. With the Seven of Spades shining an ever-brightening spotlight right on him, he couldn’t risk doing anything that would damage the LVMPD’s reputation.

  Or his own.

  A bell chimed as Dominic pushed open the door to Value Pawn. Unlike some of Vegas’s famous upmarket pawnshops, this dive—located in a seedy strip mall on the west side—was grimy and run-down. The windows were plastered so heavily with blazing signs advertising payday loans and cash for gold that little sunlight could penetrate, leaving the shop lit by the sickly glow of the flickering fluorescents overhead. Shelves crammed with everything from electronics to jewelry to knockoff handbags created narrow, claustrophobic aisles, and the walls were lined with enough shotguns and rifles to arm a small militia.

  A rail-thin white man with weathered skin and a scraggly gray beard stood behind the counter, sucking noisily on chewing tobacco while leafing through an issue of Guns & Ammo. Up in the corner, a television chained where the wall met the ceiling played a trashy daytime talk show.

  “Hey, Paulie,” Dominic said as he approached.

  “Russo,” Paulie said without looking up. “Whatcha selling today?”

  “Not selling. Buying.”

  Paulie snorted and flipped a page in his magazine. “You got no money. Unless you finally hit it big?”

  Dominic placed a thick envelope on the counter. “My client is the one paying.”

  Paulie eyed the envelope while he spit a stream of tobacco juice into a red Solo cup, then opened the flap. He riffled his thumb along the wad of bills inside. “That’s a lot of cash,” he said suspiciously.

  “There’s been a string of kidnaps-for-ransom in the Valley over the past couple of months. Professional jobs, high-roller victims, no police involvement—until the last victim turned up murdered this weekend.”

  “I know nothing about that.”

  “But you can find out.”

  Paulie’s shifty eyes darted around the empty shop. Dominic placed both hands on the counter to reclaim his attention.

  “Why do you think I come here, Paulie? Your amazing deals? The fantastic ambiance?” Dominic leaned forward. “You’re a fence and a fixer. Let’s not play games. You’ve hooked me up before.”

  “That was when you were a bounty hunter,” Paulie said with a grimace. “Now you’re a PI fucking a cop—or were, anyway. You’ve gone legit, and I’m no snitch.”

  Bounty hunting was no less legitimate than private investigation or law enforcement, but there was a widespread perception that bounty hunters were only in it for the money and the thrill of the chase, just one step away from becoming criminals themselves. That had worked to Dominic’s advantage in the past, so he didn’t argue against it now.

  “I’m not the law,” he said. “I don’t care what kind of illegal shit you’ve got going on here. I just want to solve this case for my client so I can get the payout.” He didn’t worry about overselling the bit; scumbags like Paulie were always willing to believe other people were as greedy and corrupt as they were themselves.

  Paulie sucked harder on his chew while he considered the cash.

  Exploiting t
he opening, Dominic said, “Jobs like these kidnappings don’t go down without making some kind of impact. Manpower, resources, a safe house—they would have needed something from the local community. I just need you to point me in the right direction.”

  Paulie spit decisively into the Solo cup and snatched the envelope. “Yeah, all right. I’ll see what I can find and hit you up on your cell. Don’t come back here for at least a week.”

  “Deal.”

  As Dominic turned away from the counter, a blast of tinny music sounded from the television, which cut from the talk show to a local newsroom.

  “This is a breaking news bulletin,” said the anchorwoman. “The vigilante serial killer Seven of Spades claimed another victim this morning—New Jersey resident Wayne Reddick, one of the three men reported abducted from local nightclub Ambrosia on Friday night. We’ve just learned that the car in which Reddick’s body was found belonged to Detective Levi Abrams of the LVMPD.”

  Dominic stiffened. The shot changed to a panning view of that morning’s crime scene. Levi could be glimpsed in the background, but he was mostly concealed by Dominic’s own body, as intended.

  “As we’ve previously reported, Detective Abrams was one of the lead detectives on the Seven of Spades case until this past Saturday. He was removed from the investigation for undisclosed reasons after the serial killer murdered tourist Jared Foley at the Caesars Palace hotel and allegedly abducted three of Foley’s friends. Inside sources at the LVMPD now tell us that Detective Abrams has strong personal connections to all four victims, though the exact nature of that connection remains unclear.”

  That had been fast. Dominic rubbed an anxious hand over his mouth and jaw, the sting against his palm reminding him that he’d forgotten to shave yet again.

  “We’ve also been informed that Detective Abrams has been named a person of interest in a Philadelphia homicide that occurred in December, though our sources emphasized that he is not an active suspect.”

  What? That—that had to be Trenton’s former police director. Why hadn’t Martine updated him?

  “The LVMPD and FBI continue to coordinate a massive city-wide manhunt in search of the two men still missing. George Quintana and Scott West are believed to be held captive by the Seven of Spades somewhere within the Las Vegas Valley. The FBI is offering a substantial reward in return for information leading to their whereabouts . . .”