by Leslie Wolfe
“Who could make extracts like these?” Holt asked.
“Anyone with knowledge, a small garden, and a pot of boiling water. No luck narrowing suspects down this way, Detective.” She breathed deeply, and broke down in a coughing spell that ended with a few inhalations from her oxygen mask. “Once I have it identified, we’ll be able to determine how it entered her bloodstream.”
She needed to be in bed, not here, in a makeshift morgue, inhaling chemicals. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Let’s get you home.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” she replied in a raspy, choked voice. “I have to wrap this up today; we can’t wait any longer. You need to know exactly what toxin was used.”
“How long?” I asked, cringing at the thought of pushing her any further than she’d already pushed herself.
I needed that information quickly; a killer could always get a panic attack and decide to disappear for good. Plus, I didn’t know how much time I had before the IAB decided I hadn’t kept my end of the bargain and terminated me. For some reason, it was important for me to catch Crystal’s killer before being kicked to the curb, even if it was the last thing I did as a cop.
Especially because it would be the last thing I did as a cop.
Anne rubbed her eyes, filled with tears after the coughing spell, and continued, “I inspected Crystal’s stomach lining again, looking for chemical burns, lesions, or other signs she might’ve ingested the poison. There’s nothing probative. However, I have her last meal documented, if you’re interested. It was exquisite, to say the least. Maybe it will help you map her last twenty-four hours.”
“Shoot,” Holt said, ready to take notes.
“She had king crab with remoulade and toast, veal with rice and fine herbs, raspberry mousse, champagne wafers, and a glass of wine.”
“Who eats like that?” Holt mumbled. “When was this fancy schmancy dinner?”
“Sometime between eight and ten, the night she died,” Anne replied.
“Wait, she ate all that before going to work?”
“The quantities were small,” Anne replied. “She barely tasted the foods, but she was somewhere where they served all that, and I can’t think of a single place that has all those items on the menu.”
“Anything else?” I asked, sounding a little discouraged. It would take some doing to call the many high-end restaurants in Vegas to narrow it down.
“Nothing more on Crystal for now, but the DNA came back for Erika’s killer,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness as she threw a quick glance at the cold storage shelves lining the back wall. “Ronnie Sanford, forty-two.”
She walked to the computer and typed a few commands. A man’s rap sheet displayed on the wall-mounted TV. Seeing how bulky and muscular his throat was, and the expression of sheer evil in his face, I was surprised that Anne had survived the attack and had managed to dent him at all. Andrew would’ve been proud; I knew for sure, because I was.
“He served six months for an illegal firearms charge; that’s what landed him in the system,” she continued. “He was also tried and acquitted for a homicide that was suspected to have been a murder for hire.”
“Could you please send this to Fletcher?” I asked, but Holt was already on it.
“Done. He’ll put the BOLO out. I asked Fletch to pull Sanford’s financials, but don’t hold your breath.”
38
Truth into Lies
I walked quickly across the vast Scala lobby, then up the stairs, Holt by my side, in a weird déjà vu moment, a snapshot of last night’s visit to the high-end gaming room. It was nine, peak hour in Sin City, and the foot traffic was heavy everywhere in the hotel, the gaming room no exception; I counted eight gamblers losing money elegantly under the direct supervision of our friend, Mr. Farley.
I beckoned him, and he rushed toward us, in an attempt to keep any police talk as far from his clients’ earshot as possible.
“We need to speak with Rox—Devine again,” I said, remembering at the last minute she used that name for anything work-related.
“You mean, Roxanne Omelas, Detective?” he smiled sarcastically. “We’re required by law to check ID before hiring anyone.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, thinking of Crystal’s fake ID. Farley had been really diligent with that.
“Where is she?” Holt asked impatiently. “We don’t have all night.”
“In her dressing room, I think; her shift’s about to start,” he replied with a slight frown, shooting a worried glance toward the gamblers. “I’d rather you talked with her there; I’ll walk you over.”
“We know the way, thanks,” I said over my shoulder, already rushing toward the door marked, “Authorized Personnel Only.”
Roxanne opened the dressing room door herself after we knocked. I thought I saw color leave her face when she recognized us, but the yellowish hallway light was dim, and I couldn’t be sure.
“Come on in,” she said, “it’s just me in here.”
She waited for us to come in, then closed the door. Her fingers trembled slightly, and she knew it, because she quickly hid them behind her back. She was already dressed for the stage, wearing a strappy, lace bra with tiny, narrow bands connected to a thick, leather choker. When she turned around, a V-shaped keyhole in the back of her cheeky panties left little to the imagination.
“We’re taking you in,” I broke the news, pulling zip ties from my pocket.
She took a few steps back, until she hit the wall behind her, sending the clothes on a hanging rack into a heap on the floor. “Why? What have I done?”
“You lied to police during a murder investigation, and that will cost you an obstruction charge.”
“I didn’t… I don’t know what you mean,” she stuttered, while her eyes filled with tears.
“This,” Holt said, putting his phone in front of her. “Yesterday, we showed you this photo, taken from a video surveillance camera on the night of Crystal’s murder, and you said you didn’t recognize the man.” He paused for a moment, giving her time to process. “We know you lied. We have you dead to rights holding hands with Paul Steele, climbing into his limo. Turn around, hands behind your back.”
She grabbed Holt’s forearm with both her hands, sobbing. “Listen, I didn’t mean to lie, I was in shock. You have to believe me,” she pleaded, her voice shattered, sounding sincere to me.
“Explain,” I said, putting the zip ties back in my pocket.
She turned toward me and let go of Holt’s arm. “I didn’t recognize him at first, I swear I didn’t. It made no sense that Paul would be talking to Crystal, would… rough her up. They barely knew each other, there was nothing going on between then. Then I realized who he was, saw how he grabbed her bra, all that anger, and I froze. Please…”
“Jealous?” Holt asked.
“No… confused, lost. The two most important people in my life were having such a heated conversation, and I knew nothing of it. My mind went crazy, spinning with questions.”
“Did you kill Crystal, Roxanne?” I asked, looking at her intently, ready to catch the tiniest flinch.
“No,” she shouted, clasping her hands in front of her chest in a pleading gesture. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”
There was no sign of deception that I could see. Was she a true psychopath? Those were the only individuals who didn’t display the typical microexpressions of deceit, because they had no conscience to trigger them.
“You lied to us before,” Holt said angrily. “Are you lying now?”
“No,” she replied, sniffling. “This is the truth.”
“We know you had some kind of an argument with Crystal before she died,” I said, and I saw a flicker of emotion, pupils dilating, her hands pulling away from me, her eyelids dropping to cover her eyes. Jackpot. “What were you two arguing about?”
“I have n—no idea,” she said, wringing her hands while her shoulders tightened. “I thought we were good, like sisters, like we’d always been.” She avoided m
y scrutiny, keeping her eyes riveted to the floor, shooting quick, guarded glances at me or Holt, as if to see if she was getting away with her lies.
“Cut the shite, all right?” I snapped, getting in her face, so close she had to lift her eyes and look at me. “We know she was moving out, that’s how bad a fight you two had. Don’t tell me you still can’t remember.”
There it was again, the pupils dilating, her eyes looking anywhere but at me, as if tracing the movements of a fly buzzing around the ceiling fixture.
“I’m really sorry,” she bawled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
I looked at Holt and shrugged. “Take her in.”
Holt took out his zip ties and grabbed Roxanne’s shoulder. “Roxanne Omelas, you have the right to remain—”
“No!” she shouted, trying to pull herself away from Holt. “I’ll tell you, all right?”
I nodded, and Holt released his grip on her arm, rolling his eyes. It seemed we had to do this dance with her every time we needed a tiny morsel of information. She didn’t demonstrate too much logic, or good memory for that matter.
“I’m listening,” I snapped, “and it better be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or I’ll throw the book at you.”
She sniffled and wiped her nose on a Kleenex she picked from a box on her vanity, then nodded a few times. “We were fighting over Paul,” she admitted in a weak, defeated voice.
“I thought you said she didn’t know him that well?” Holt asked.
“She wanted me to dump him, threatened me she’d talk to him about it.”
What she said made absolutely no sense. “Why? Why did she care? Was she into him?”
“No,” she replied, sniffling again. “She didn’t like him that much.”
“Then what?” I insisted, sitting on a vanity chair, my eyes riveted to her face as she spoke, looking to catch that precise fraction of a second when truth turned into lies. Holt paced the room impatiently, fed up with her act.
“It was because he’s married, and I was pushing him to leave his wife,” she continued, her voice just as weak.
“More,” I asked, inviting her to continue with a demanding hand gesture.
She lowered her head again, giving herself time to think on how to best wrap up her serving up a pile of crap, so she could dish it to us. I glanced quickly at Holt, drawing his attention to her demeanor. He nodded discreetly with a hint of a smile; she wasn’t fooling him either.
“I got drunk one night,” she finally said, raising her eyes and facing mine directly, openly. “I told her I was after Paul for money, at first, that I’d hunted for him, made it possible for us to cross paths.”
“How exactly did you cross paths, by the way?”
She covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head, wondering if she really had to answer. She saw my glare and made the right call. “I, um, stalked him for a while, until I learned his schedule, his patterns, which way he took to leave the casino at night, and so on.”
“And?” Holt asked the moment she stopped.
“I, um, arranged it so that some guy grabbed me and attacked me right there, on the casino floor, just as he was coming by.”
Holt whistled, while I thought to myself, Bloody unbelievable, the little twat. Maybe she does have what it takes to hire a contract killer.
“Paul intervened, saved me, and so we met,” she said blushing, visibly embarrassed, as if that were the worst thing she’d ever done. “He felt responsible, because I was attacked in his hotel, and took me to dinner, gave me the opportunity to… seduce him.”
Holt and I exchanged a quick glance. Paul Steele should’ve been smarter, but he was almost certainly thinking how to best avoid legal liability and bad press for his hotel after that incident.
One thing was certain; Roxanne Omelas was a predator. But was she a killer?
“What happened with your so-called attacker?”
“Paul was nice about it,” Roxanne replied, smiling warmly. “He asked whether I wanted to file a complaint with the cops, and when I said no, he said he’d take care of him personally.”
“Okay, what do you think happened to your attacker?”
She shrugged with indifference. “He was beat up by Paul’s guys, but we expected that, and he’d been paid good money for it. He had no complaints.”
How lovely. The girl was an angel, no less. She did, however, look bloody fantastic in that stage outfit.
“Then what happened? How did Crystal get entangled in all this?”
She shifted and fidgeted for a few seconds before speaking, and when she did, her voice was different, transformed. “I was in it for the money at first, all right, but that changed; I’d fallen in love with Paul. Crystal called me a homewrecker and told me to dump him.”
“Wasn’t she sleeping with a married man also?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t pushing Ellis to divorce his wife, and she’d never been in it for the money.”
“No offense, but you two girls don’t exactly strike me as saints,” I said, still not completely grasping what Crystal’s issue had been. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Roxanne stood silently, staring at the floor.
“Was Crystal threatening to tell Paul he’d been manipulated, if you didn’t dump him?”
“Yes,” she whispered, not lifting her eyes from the stained cement.
“Why? Was she afraid Paul Steele would kill you if he found out? Would break your legs, like he does to cheaters and cons caught screwing around in his casino?”
She nodded, sending rippling waves into her long, silky hair.
“Do you realize this means you had one hell of a motive to kill Crystal?”
“Yes,” she whispered, lifting her eyes and looking at me, then at Holt. “But I didn’t do it, I swear.”
39
Money Talks
“Why isn’t Roxanne in jail already?” Fletcher asked between slurps from a half-pint coffee mug.
“We hung a tail on her,” I replied. “We lit a fire under her already burning, liar pants, and we hope she’ll feel compelled to take some action. So far, nothing.”
“She’s a cool customer, that one,” Holt laughed.
“Not sure she’s our killer, though,” I said as I took another bite from my breakfast bagel, covered generously in Philly spread, trying to ignore the nine grams of fat per ounce. “I’m getting all sorts of bad vibes from her, but she seemed truthful when she said she didn’t do it.”
“She pulled off some nasty crap,” Fletcher commented. “Good thing she isn’t on my case.”
We burst into laughter, and I wondered if I should tell him that could never happen, considering how much a technical analyst made each paycheck. Roxanne most likely scored that much from one night’s tips. No good could’ve come from telling him that, so I changed the subject.
“We need you badly,” I said, and he looked at me from underneath thick, entangled curls, his eyes still sleepy, reminiscent of a teenager’s, despite the soon approaching noon hour. “We need financials on all these people.”
“How do you think that’s going to work?” Holt asked. “We’re dealing with smart, educated, and ridiculously rich people who can private jet it to the Caymans or Grand Bahama easier than you and I can get refills on our morning joes.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, raising my hands in a pacifying gesture. “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try.”
“They could move fortunes by pretending they lost it in a card game, and we’d have no way to prove that isn’t true,” Holt insisted. “Why do you think Steele gave Crystal a chip, instead of cash?”
He was right; it was a long shot, at best. If we couldn’t track the money, we needed something else to work with.
Anything.
Something to help us catch Crystal’s killer, to point us in the right direction. And for an eighteen-year-old, Crystal had made a lot of enemies.
“Let’s be
methodical about this whole thing,” Fletcher said. “Paul Steele’s net worth is one point six billion dollars.”
“By the way, when is our appointment with Steele and his lawyer?” I asked, mulling over a fresh idea. What if Roxanne had started her pursuit of Paul Steele for the money, as in thousands, maybe more, maybe even a million, but then realized she could be in it for the whole shebang? Well, technically, for a part of it, but still, a nice, round chunk of change she could sink her acrylic claws into.
Holt checked his phone email, mumbling something I didn’t catch. “Um, a week from next Tuesday, the smug son of a bitch.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, and Fletcher chuckled, without taking his eyes off his computer screens, scrolling over endless rows of data. “We’re investigating a murder, for Pete’s sake.”
“He knows that very well,” Holt replied, “and he’s doing his best to stall us. Ideas?”
“Oh, I got one,” I said. “Fletch, what’s Steele’s office phone number?”
He dictated the digits and I dialed on my phone, then initiated the call on speaker.
“Mr. Steele’s office, how may I assist you?”
I recognized the voice of the efficient Miss Gentry.
“Miss Gentry, this is Detective Baxter, Homicide.”
“Yes, Detective, what can I do for you?”
“I need you to bring forward our meeting with Paul Steele and his lawyer.”
“Let me see,” she said, her voice trailing off as she typed something on her keyboard. “I’m afraid Mr. Steele is completely booked for the next week.”
“And I’m afraid that makes no difference whatsoever in a murder investigation, Miss Gentry.” I paused, letting my words sink.
“I—I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s simple. He either makes time for us today, or we bring a warrant at five PM sharp. However, we might have media trailing in with us. We really can’t tell; those people are awful, like vultures; they always follow us around, hoping to get a juicy piece of news to slap on the first page of their tabloids.”