by Leslie Wolfe
“Do this again, wanker, and I’ll release you in your own neighborhood, and let everyone know how grateful we are for your help.”
Fear dilated his pupils and I felt his muscles relax under my grip. He wasn’t going to pose any more issues; he’d given up.
“Clear,” I shouted, and the three cops who were approaching with their weapons drawn holstered their pieces and drew near, inspecting Casarez with angry glares to see who’d disturbed their early morning routine.
One of them was lingering, seemingly uncomfortable; he wasn’t someone I knew well, just some rookie fresh out of the academy, his uniform still new and well pressed.
I looked at his sidearm holster and saw it was empty. The weapon he’d drawn earlier was his backup, now secured on his left ankle. I smiled and pulled out the gun that Casarez had swiped from his drawer and offered it to him.
“Lost something?”
He blushed before managing to reply. “Um, y—yes, thank you.”
Moments later, I loaded Casarez into the back of the borrowed cruiser and slammed the door behind him. When I climbed behind the wheel, he only had one thing to ask in a subdued, hesitant voice.
“What’s a wanker?”
I didn’t bother to educate him.
Instead, I drove by Starbucks on Eastern and picked up two ventis for Holt and me; black coffee for him, green tea for me. I don’t believe the procedure manual allows cops transferring detainees to make coffee stops, but I really couldn’t remember, nor did I believe anyone would mind.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Casarez was in the hospitable hands of LVMPD’s Central Booking, while I handed Holt his order of coffee, right as Captain Morales showed up.
“Thanks,” Holt said, taking the paper cup from my hand. Our fingers brushed in passing, and that brief, loaded contact brought a grin to his lips and a frown to my forehead.
Never again, I thought. Not in a thousand years.
One mistake was enough. Well, okay, there were two to be precise, but I’d learned my lesson.
“Come on in,” Morales invited us.
He had an unexpected smile on his face and the gaze of an intelligent, open-minded man.
We remained standing in front of his desk, watching him go over some paperwork in a cream-colored personnel file. I couldn’t read the name affixed on the cover, but it was probably mine.
“Welcome to LVMPD, Detective Baxter,” he said, and all I could do was gawk in disbelief. What, no threats? No huffing and puffing over taking someone else’s disciplinary transferee? No putting me on notice that I was going to be kicked out of the force for the tiniest mistake? I was prepared for that, not for this. Not for what appeared to be a clean slate with my new boss.
Holt elbowed me discreetly and I swallowed, then muttered a strangled, “Thank you.”
“Technically, you were a part of LVMPD before, while at Henderson,” he added, sounding apologetic. “You knew that, of course.”
I nodded.
“We’re lucky to have you,” he continued, reading from the file. “Degree in psychology, trained at Scotland Yard, deception detection and advanced interrogation techniques.”
Holt whistled quietly, shooting me a side glance. He probably wondered why I’d kept my background a secret, despite his many questions. The answer was simple; as soon as people learned of my abilities, they started shunning me, as if I were a mind reader and a dangerous one at that. Couldn’t’ve been further from the truth.
“You two had a terrific first week as a team,” Morales continued, thankfully changing the subject. “I read the report. Great job. Keep it up, both of you.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, ready to get out of there in a hurry, willing to sprint faster than Casarez running for his life.
“You bet,” Holt replied.
“Detective Baxter, you weren’t assigned a desk, a computer, or a car yet. We’ll get that sorted out today.”
“Thank you, sir,” I managed to articulate, still stunned, unsure how to behave.
“Until then, there’s been an incident at the Scala early this morning. The coroner’s already on site.” He pushed a brown, thin file across the desk and Holt grabbed it.
“You got it,” Holt replied for both of us, then turned and allowed me to leave the room first.
We walked in silence all the way to the parking lot, where he stopped short of unlocking his unmarked Ford Explorer.
“What the hell happened in there? Never seen you pretending to be a functional mute before.”
“Nothing like that,” I said, stopping to take a sip of tea. “I was expecting something different, that’s all.”
“Different, how?”
“Colder, more hostile, considering what’s in my file. Morales didn’t seem to know, or, if he knew, to give a damn.”
“He likes to think for himself and draw his own conclusions. But don’t let his friendly demeanor fool you. He’s tough. He doesn’t care about the national crime solve rate being as low as it is these days. He wants us closing all the cases, all the time.”
I shrugged. So did I, and from what I could tell, so did Holt. I didn’t see an issue.
He unlocked the car and we climbed inside without another word. The heavy silence continued for a long moment, while Holt’s hand hovered above the ignition. He seemed preoccupied by something he wasn’t yet sharing. I waited.
“Okay, I’ll give it to you, that was too nice, even for Morales,” he eventually said. “You are a disciplinary transferee and I’ve never seen him compliment anyone before you. Typically, he hands them a polite, yet firm warning not to screw up again.”
Tension firmed his jaw line, and I felt his uneasiness seed anxiety in my gut. What were we missing?
“Should I be jealous?” Holt suddenly quipped, replacing his grim expression with a seductive grin. “I saw the way he was looking at you.”
“Shut up already,” I replied, working hard at hiding a smile. “Do we know anything about the Scala case?”
Holt opened the file and frowned, seemingly intrigued. “Oh, that’s a new one. One of their exotic dancers died during a performance.”
Crime Scene
The most stunning thing about the Scala Hotel and Casino wasn’t the steel-and-glass, semicircular towers, forty-five stories high, housing thousands of rooms. To me, the fountain in front of the entrance was the one piece of lavish, exotic décor that spelled Scala more than anything else. When LED technology met computer-assisted fountain flow control, combined with what I’d learned since I’d seen it for the first time was called laminar flow, the result was a stunning, unpredictable, and mesmerizing game of light, color, and water. Water that didn’t splash, didn’t cascade, didn’t whirl, water that was turned into a fluid conduit for light; disciplined, intricate webs of perfectly contained jets, reminiscent of fiber optics.
But I wasn’t there to look at the fountain; the drop-off driveway that went around it was already filled with crime scene vehicles with their flashers on, and all access was blocked. Beyond the yellow do-not-cross tape, hundreds of gawkers took countless photos and endless videos on their cell phones, so we walked quickly toward the entrance, avoiding the cameras as much as we could.
The coroner’s van was already there, backed into the hotel’s entrance, on standby with its rear doors open. Two crime scene unit vans were also present, and the technicians, much to the disappointment of the camera-happy tourists, wore full-body coveralls complete with hoods and facial masks. Famous since the TV show CSI had achieved its notorious success, tourists always greeted the Vegas crime scene units with enthusiastic interest, and today was no exception, despite the fact that they couldn’t even get a glimpse of their faces.
But that wasn’t the reason why the technicians wore the white coveralls known as moon suits. Their focus was preserving the integrity of the evidence collected and avoiding the risk of contaminating the crime scene with even the tiniest of fibers or specks of dust. Put in perspective
, when the primary crime scene was the busy floor of one of the largest casinos in Las Vegas, such care to preserve the evidence might’ve seemed pointless, but it never was.
I followed a technician through the main doors, with Holt walking briskly by my side. Not a single word was exchanged between us on the ride over, and maybe that was for the best. The man rarely had anything to say that wasn’t a question, more often than not driven by the innate curiosity that made him the excellent cop that he was. But I wished he’d stop looking at me with the same level of suspicion that cops looked at the rest of the world, given the things they saw on a daily basis. Fact was, the man didn’t trust me worth a damn.
But had I done anything to gain his trust? Yeah, sure, I had his back on a couple of occasions, helped him out of a jam or two, but had I been open and truthful to him about anything of any importance? Not really. I opted to keep him in the dark, avoiding sharing any information about myself, about my past. That wasn’t because I’d just met him, or because I wanted to play coy. It was because nothing of my past could be shared without talking about Andrew and thinking about him still ripped through my heart like a serrated blade.
I was thankful when a crime scene tech directed us to the escalator, dissipating my gloomy thoughts. I gazed briefly at Holt and caught a frown wrinkling his forehead before he could wipe it off and paste his signature bad-boy grin on his face.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked, my voice casual, yet friendly.
“Just wondering what else is there to find out about my new partner, that’s all. Scotland Yard, really? And you didn’t think of mentioning that?”
I shrugged, feeling a little defensive. “Is that it?”
“That, and the thought of the awkwardness we’re all going to experience as soon as we start talking to the coroner.”
“Why?” I frowned, pretending I didn’t understand.
“Because you and Dr. Anne St. Clair obviously have a long history, a good one, but you won’t talk about it. I have my own history with her, not so good, but at least I told you about it.”
The escalator ride came to an end and I stepped on the second floor without replying to his comment. There was nothing I could say without making it worse. The fact remained, despite my best efforts, that my partner knew I was keeping a few secrets from him.
I thought of lying, of serving him a well-crafted tale told impeccably by someone trained in the art of deception, but my conscience held me back. He was a good man and a good cop. He deserved better; he deserved the truth, but I wasn’t ready to share.
Silence was golden, given the circumstances.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, a loaded stillness that tugged at the corner of his mouth and put a glint of sarcasm in his eyes. I focused on my surroundings, taking in everything.
After the stroll through the immense, familiar lobby, decorated in white marble that matched the modern chandeliers, each of them at least two stories tall, I entered uncharted territory. The second floor was new to me, because I rarely gamble; there’s no room for such extravagances while living on a cop’s salary. I was unfamiliar with the vastness of the Scala’s casino floor and completely unacquainted with the high-roller gambling rooms.
I’d read somewhere that the Scala had recently piloted opening up the high-limit gaming rooms to a larger number of players, by lowering the minimums, in an attempt to make more of their customers feel like VIPs. The pilot included bringing in a bit of pleasure-pit experience to the rooms, complete with music and dancers, instead of the elegant, yet cold and stark atmosphere one would expect when the chips on the table easily exceeded what I made in a year.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It had discreetly changed as I entered the restricted area. The cigarette smoke was now blended with bitter, suffocating cigar fog, and the fancy scent of the vapes I’d picked up downstairs was completely absent.
As soon as I entered the high-limit area through dark-tinted glass doors flanked by uniformed staff, the noise subsided, muted by the thick carpet that felt soft under my shoes.
The service lights were on, and the room was flooded with a white, bright glow coming from ceiling-mounted fixtures. These lamps were never on during the times the room was open to customers; from what I could tell, the room had its own club lights in bright colors, now turned off.
I stopped a few steps inside the entrance and observed the layout. Clusters of four gaming tables surrounded several small, elevated stages, each grouping about thirty feet apart from the others. In the center of each stage, there was a stainless steel pole that went all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. Blackjack, roulette, poker, even craps in the far corner, the setting was the same regardless of the game. The tables were close to the stages where dancers performed, enough to allow customers to offer a tip without leaving their seats, or to watch the dancers from across the table, not more than ten feet away.
I put on shoe covers and approached the elevated stage where technicians swarmed. Then I saw her.
She was stunningly beautiful, even in death.
She couldn’t’ve been more than eighteen, maybe nineteen years old. She lay on her side, her arm extended over the edge, and her head leaning on it as if she were sleeping. Long, wavy strands of blonde hair partially covered her face and draped around her shoulders. She seemed peaceful, as if in her last moments her young body hadn’t agonized, desperately trying to live, to survive; none of that anguish had left a mark on her elegant, relaxed features. Her lips were parted slightly, as if she were breathing gently while dreaming of something only she knew. Whatever her secret, she’d taken it with her.
“Finally,” I heard Anne St. Clair say. “Sure took you a while.”
I watched her crouch next to the body, gently removing the long strands of hair off her face and her neck. She leaned closer to the girl’s head and examined her eyes, then muttered, “Uh-huh,” only to herself.
“Do we have an ID?” I heard Holt ask a uniformed officer.
“Yeah, her name was Crystal Tillman,” he replied, holding a driver’s license with his gloved hand. “That man over there, the one in the suit and red tie, is the pit manager,” he added, pointing at an overweight man whose jowls extended beyond the collar of his perfectly starched, white shirt.
“Any background?” Holt asked the coroner’s assistant who was taking a reading on a mobile fingerprint scanner.
Erika didn’t look up from the device’s screen. “She’s not in the system.”
“Thanks,” Holt replied.
I climbed up on the stage next to Anne and crouched by her side.
“Hey,” I whispered, and she looked briefly in my direction and nodded quickly in lieu of a reply.
She never smiled when she worked, and there was a story behind that. I knew better than to be offended by her coldness; it wasn’t about me or about anyone present. Like most of us, Anne still fought the ghosts of her past.
“What can you tell me?”
She sighed before replying. “There are signs of asphyxia, see these petechiae here, and here?” She pointed with her pen at the small, ruptured blood vessels around the girl’s eyes. “But they’re not marked enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“We see more petechial hemorrhaging associated with a COD of asphyxia. In this case, we only have superficial petechiae, as if she had started to suffocate, but then her heart stopped.”
“By itself, in a girl this young?”
Anne sighed again. “Yeah, my point exactly. I’ll know more once I have her on my table, but I don’t believe a heart this young just stops without a reason.”
“Any signs of trauma?” Holt asked.
“None that I can see,” Anne replied.
“Could you venture a guess as to what killed her?” I asked, and she promptly frowned at me. She didn’t like it when I voiced that particular question, but I had no choice. The first forty-eight hours in a murder investigation are critical; we had no time to waste.
“If I had to speculate, which you know I can’t do, I’d have to say some kind of poison,” she said, lowering her voice as if she were doing something illegal by formulating an educated guess. “I’m not smelling anything, nor seeing the usual signs of poisoning, like foam at the mouth, vomiting, and so on. It’s either that, or something else stopped her heart.”
“Could it be natural causes, like a birth defect?” Holt asked.
“Theoretically it could, but I seriously doubt it,” she replied, and the temperature in the room dropped by at least ten degrees, possibly from the tone of her voice. She really didn’t like Holt one bit. “I’ll let you know soon enough.”
“How about time of death?” I asked, eager to dissipate the tension between the two.
“We have a time-coded video, from that camera over there,” Anne replied, pointing toward the ceiling, “and my findings confirm it: 4:12 AM.”
“But it’s almost eight-thirty now,” I said, the pitch of my voice expressing surprise and disappointment. Usually, we’re called within minutes of someone’s death, not hours.
“That’s your mystery to solve, not mine,” she replied coldly, while beckoning her assistant. “For some reason, they took their sweet time before calling nine-one-one.”
I felt the blood rush to my head. Out of the critical forty-eight hours, the most important four had been wasted.
Moments later, Anne and her assistant, Erika, took away the gurney carrying the lifeless body of a beautiful, young girl who had barely begun living. And the stuffed suit over by the lounge had wasted precious time.
I walked over to the pit manager and propped my hands firmly on my hips. “You have some serious explaining to do.”
Witnesses