by David Archer
Chance went upstairs to pack a bag and Gabriella joined him a moment later.
“This is terrible,” she said. “Chance, do you really think she could be telling the truth?”
“Well, it’s possible she heard that other woman’s story and is trying to use the same excuse, but something about it doesn’t sound right. Yolanda would have gone missing before that other woman was found and arrested, so she couldn’t have planned it out that way. I think the first step is to find a lawyer to take her case, and let him look over the evidence against her. After that, we’ll have some idea of what’s really going on.” He closed his bag and put his arms around his wife. “This is probably going to cost quite a bit,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” Gabriella replied. “I never would have made it through after Benny died without Carmelita and her sister. They’ve been an incredible amount of help to me, and I’ve never been able to pay them what it was worth. We’ve got plenty of money now, so this is a way we can say thank you for all that help.”
Chance hugged her tight, then picked up his bag and headed down the stairs. “Tell the boys I love them and I’ll be back in a couple of days. I’ll call you tonight and let you know what I’ve found out so far, so you might want to keep Carmelita here.”
“I was going to,” Gabriella said. “With Juanita out of town, she doesn’t need to be alone right now.”
Chance agreed, then said goodbye to his grandmother and Carmelita. He walked out the door and tossed his bag into the seat of his old pickup truck, then started it up and drove around to the barn.
Hidden under the floor of one of the workrooms was a special vault Chance had built. He kept most of his guns inside there, and quickly moved the tool bench that kept it concealed, then lifted out both of the special suppressed Maxim 9 mm pistols, as well as his twin Rugers with silencers. He looked over the rest of the arsenal he kept hidden in the vault, then reached in and took out his old rifle, the one he had inherited from his father. It was an old Browning A-Bolt that fired .300 Winchester ammunition, and it had proven its accuracy numerous times. Chance stuffed the rifle behind the seat, put all four pistols into his bag and then backed around and headed out of the driveway.
Getting to Las Vegas was a three-hour drive, so he rolled into town at just a bit before one. He stopped at a McDonald’s and grabbed a sandwich, then ate it as he followed the directions his phone was giving him to the jail. He parked the old truck in the lot, chose a wallet out of his secret hideaway and went inside.
“Can I help you?” A female deputy sitting behind the desk looked up at him when he entered.
“Yes,” Chance said. “My name is Bill Simmons. I’d like to see Yolanda Martinez, she’s an inmate here.”
The deputy looked at some information on her screen for a moment, then looked back at him. “I’ll need to see some ID.”
Chance took his wallet out and passed over the driver’s license he was using. The deputy put it into a copier beside her and made a copy of it, then wrote Yolanda’s name on the paper that spit out. She passed back the license.
“All right, Mr. Simmons,” she said, and then she directed Chance through a doorway. “Take the second door on the right after you go through that one, and have a seat.”
“Thank you,” Chance said. He stepped through the door and went where he was told, and was surprised to find himself in a small room with three chairs and a television set. On top of the television was a camera. He sat down in one of the chairs and waited.
A moment later, the television screen lit up and he saw a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, dressed in the orange jumpsuit that marked her as a felony prisoner. She was looking at Chance on the television in front of her, and she seemed confused.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you my lawyer? The judge said he would come to see me sometime in the next few days, but I wasn’t expecting anyone yet.”
“No, ma’am,” Chance said. “My name is Bill Simmons, and I’m here as a favor for a friend of your mother. I’m going to get you a lawyer, though, because I think you need somebody better than a public defender. I just got into town, and I wanted to ask you to tell me everything you know about this.”
She huffed. “Well, that’s the whole problem,” she said. “I don’t know anything. Yesterday morning, I got up out of bed like I do every day and went to work, but everybody I work with said I been gone more than a month. My boss yelled at me and told me I was a junkie, but I’m not, I haven’t touched any drugs in more than two years, and that’s the truth. He told me I was fired, so I go looking at other jobs, and then I get home and the police are there. They told me I’m supposed to have killed some man in Henderson, but I don’t know anything about it. As far as I know, I was at work the day before yesterday, but it turns out I got a whole month missing out of my life. That make any kind of sense to you?”
“Who was the man they say you killed?” Chance asked. “Did you know him?”
“No, I don’t know him,” she said. “They said his name is Fredericks, Robert Fredericks. I guess he was a really rich man, he owns some casinos around here and things like that. I don’t know him, I wouldn’t know him if he walked in here right now.”
Chance looked at her, trying to decide if he actually believed her or not. There was something in her eyes that made him want to believe, so he smiled.
“Okay, and what have they told you about why they arrested you? Do they say they have witnesses, or any kind of evidence?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yolanda said, rolling her eyes. “They showed me a video from some security camera that showed me going into a hotel room with this man, and then it’s got me coming out of the room a little while later, and they said that’s where they found his body. They got a knife they said was what killed him, and it’s got my fingerprints on it. The only problem is, I don’t think I’ve ever been to that place, and I’m absolutely certain that I’ve never seen that knife before. I’m thinking maybe I went crazy or something, but they don’t believe me. They just keep saying I’m lying, but I’m not.”
Tears started to run down her cheeks at that moment, and Chance felt a sudden wave of sympathy. What would it be like, he wondered, to be faced with evidence like that and have no memory of how it could’ve occurred?
“Yolanda, is there anything you can remember from this time you were supposedly missing? Anything at all?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s like I told you, as far as I can remember, I was at work the day before yesterday, and I went home and watched some TV before I went to bed. Then I got up yesterday morning with a headache, but it went away after a little while. It wasn’t until I got to work that everything suddenly went crazy.”
Chance nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Yolanda, I believe you. Now I just need to find a good lawyer, and see if he can figure out what’s going on and get you out of here. In the meantime, you just try to stay safe in there, and stay out of trouble. I’ll have a lawyer here to talk to you by tomorrow morning, and then we’ll go from there.”
The tears ran a little more freely, then. “Mr. Simmons,” she said, “you said you know my mother?”
“Yes,” Chance replied. “She’s a good friend of my wife and me. Helps out with our kids, sometimes.”
Yolanda smiled sadly. “Will you tell her I’m sorry? I’m sorry this is happening, because it looks like maybe I really did this. You tell her I don’t know what happened, but I know she raised me better than this. You tell her none of this is her fault, because she always tries to blame herself whenever I get into trouble. Will you tell her all that for me?”
“I will,” Chance said, “but don’t give up yet. Let’s see what the lawyer has to say before we start really getting worried, okay?”
“Okay,” she said grudgingly. “And thank you.”
“No problem. Listen, do you need anything? Is there anything I can do for you while you’re in there?”
Yolanda shook her hea
d. “No, I’m okay. I had some money on me when they arrested me, so they put that on my commissary account. I can get stuff I need.”
“Okay, then,” Chance said. “I’m going to go see about getting you a lawyer. If you need anything, you just tell the lawyer and he’ll tell me.”
Chance said goodbye and left the room, then stopped by the deputy’s desk again.
“Hey, I’ve got a question,” he said. “Can you tell me who’s the best lawyer around here?”
“Sorry, but I’m not allowed to recommend anybody,” she said, but Chance noticed her eyes flicking repeatedly toward a bulletin board on the wall to her right. He thanked her and walked over to the board, and looked at the many business cards for attorneys and bail bondsmen that were displayed under a sheet of plastic.
At first, none of them stood out to him, but then he noticed a couple of the attorneys’ cards had numerous fingerprint smudges on the plastic over them. He took out his phone and dialed one of the numbers, but only got a voicemail recording. He didn’t want to talk to a machine, so he dialed the second one.
“Kramer and Johnson,” the receptionist answered. “How can we help you today?”
“I’m looking for a really good criminal attorney,” Chance said. “Am I calling the right place?”
The receptionist chuckled. “If I said no, I’d get fired. Actually, Mr. Kramer really is about the best around here. Would you like an appointment?”
“Yes,” Chance said. “Immediately, if possible. I’m at the Clark County Detention Center, so however long it would take me to get there.”
“Well, that’s about a half-hour away,” the receptionist said. “If it’s that important, I can squeeze you in at two fifteen, but you’ll only have about fifteen minutes with him. Otherwise, I can give you 9 o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll take the fifteen minutes,” he said. “I’m on the way, now.”
“All right, and can I get your name?”
“Yes. My name is Bill Simmons.” He hung up and walked out the door, got into his truck and then googled the address of Kramer and Johnson. He was already pulling out of the parking lot when the directions started coming.
THREE
“Mr. Simmons,” said the tall, distinguished-looking man behind the desk. “I’m Alvin Kramer. What can I do for you, sir?”
“It’s not for me,” Chance said. “There’s a young woman who has been arrested for murder in Henderson, Yolanda Martinez. She claims she can’t remember anything from the last month, and everyone she knows says that she’s been missing about that long. The police have video of her leaving a room, I guess a hotel room, and they claim her fingerprints were on the knife that was used to kill the man.”
Kramer held up a hand. “Stop right there,” he said. “First off, I’ve already heard about this case on the news, and some gossip around the courthouse this morning. From what I’ve heard, the prosecutor has an airtight case against your friend Ms. Martinez.”
“I would imagine that’s how they feel,” Chance said. “But I just came from talking with Yolanda, and I actually believe she’s telling the truth. Now, I know there was another case like this a couple weeks ago, so I considered the possibility she was just trying to use the same story as that woman, but she went missing three weeks before that case hit the headlines. I’m thinking there might be some kind of connection. Both cases involve a woman who goes missing, then turns up with no memory of where she’s been, only to be arrested for a murder she can’t remember committing. I think she needs a better lawyer than just a public defender, and I’m willing to pay.”
“Even if the best I could do would be to get her a plea bargain that could keep her off death row?”
“If that’s honestly the best you can do,” Chance said. “Mr. Kramer, I honestly think she is telling the truth. If she is, then I need to find out what happened to her.”
Kramer sat and looked at him for several seconds, then nodded his head. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll take the case, but it’s going to cost you fifty thousand up front as a retainer, and I bill at a thousand dollars per hour. There’s one other requirement, though; I want you to hire a private investigator to look into her story. To be completely honest, it’s not going to matter what I believe. What’s important is what I can convince a jury to believe. You hire a private eye to find out what she was doing for that month she was missing, and it’s just barely possible there might be a way to build an effective defense. Do we have a deal?”
Chance took a checkbook out of his pocket and wrote out a check. He signed it and handed it to Kramer, who didn’t notice the signature was different than the name he’d been given. “Care to recommend a private investigator?” he asked.
“Well, that’s where you might run into a problem. You see, Bob Fredericks was one of the most popular men around here. Just about every casino owner in Las Vegas can tell you the story of how Bob Fredericks came to the rescue when they ran into financial troubles. He was a super nice guy, and generous to an absolute fault. You just might have trouble finding anybody who’s willing to help me defend the woman accused of murdering him.”
“Oh, come on,” Chance said. “There has to be somebody you can recommend.”
Kramer started to shake his head, and then stopped. “You know what? There’s one guy, but you have to track him down, and you may have to pry a bottle out of his fingers. A few years ago, he was the absolute best PI around here, but he’s gone downhill a bit recently. Still, if you can get him to sober up long enough, he’d be your best shot. His name is Pete Dixon, and he’ll be in one of the bars on the strip.”
Chance’s eyebrows rose. “He’s a drunk?”
“Unfortunately, that would be a fair description. However, drunk or sober, Pete Dixon is probably the best investigator I have ever known. If you can convince him to leave the bar long enough, he’ll find out what happened to her.”
Chance shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll go find him. How soon can you go visit Yolanda?”
Kramer leaned forward and looked at a paper on his desk. “I have another appointment in five minutes,” he said, “but I can cancel the one after that. I’ll go see her this afternoon, and get her arraignment scheduled. Do you want me to do anything about bail?”
“If you can,” Chance said. “I imagine that will be difficult in a case like this, though.”
“Might be, might be. I got your number, so I’ll let you know if I learn anything, and I expect you to do the same with me. You go find Dixon, and if you can get him on the case, we might actually have a chance.”
Chance grinned at him, privately enjoying the accidental pun. “Don’t suppose you could suggest the best bar to look in first, could you?”
Kramer thought for a moment, then nodded. “Try the Rainbow Room,” he said. “I’ve heard he likes to hang out there a lot.”
Chance thanked him and left his office, then googled the Rainbow Room on his phone and followed the directions, which led him out of the downtown area toward the strip. He ended up having to park two blocks away and walk the rest of the distance. When he got to the bar, he was forced to stop just inside the door and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.
The place almost looked like the inside of a cave, and if it weren’t for the neon signs advertising different liquors behind the bar, it would have been just that dark. It took almost half a minute for Chance’s eyes to adjust to the point that he could see people sitting at the bar and at the tables, and then he carefully made his way up to the bar and took a stool. The bartender, a man whose face looked like he’d taken his fair share of beatings over the years, gave him a half toothless grin.
“What’ll it be, mate?” he asked, surprising Chance with an accent that sounded Australian.
“Just a beer,” Chance said. He waited until the man had drawn him a glass and set it before him, then caught his attention before he could get away. “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “I don’t suppose you would know Pete Dixon?
”
The tall, thin man’s eyebrows shot upward. “Old Pistol Pete? Why you looking for him?”
“Well, because I heard that he might be able to help me out with a problem. I need a private investigator, and I’ve heard he’s pretty good.”
The bartender burst out laughing. “Well, he used to be,” he said. “But that was before. You sure you want to bother trying to drag him out of the bottle?”
Chance shrugged. “I heard he’s the guy I need,” he said. “Any idea where I can find him?”
“Oh, yeah,” the bartender said. “Just turn around. That’s him in the booth, with his head on the table.”
Chance turned around and looked, and sure enough there was a man slumped across the table in the first booth. He picked up his glass of beer and walked over to the booth, sliding into the opposite side.
There was no reaction. Chance reached over and shook Dixon’s shoulder, and the man finally fluttered his eyes open and looked up at him.
“Whaddaya want?” he asked. “I’m sleeping, here.”
“You’re awake now,” Chance said. “Care to make some money?”
“Ah, hell,” Dixon said. “I’m not following your old lady around today. Go find somebody else.”
Chance reached over and picked up the empty bottle beside Dixon’s hand. It was some of the cheapest whiskey you could buy, and explained why the guy seemed wasted.
“I don’t need any wives followed,” he said. “I need a private investigator, and I’ve heard that you can be a good one when you want to.”
“Yeah, did you catch that? When I want to. And I don’t want to.”
“Why not? Couldn’t you use the money?”
“Screw you and your money,” Dixon said. “I’m drunk and I’m tired and I really don’t care to talk about this anymore.” A moment later, his head down on the table again, Dixon was snoring.
The bartender came over and looked down at him, then looked over at Chance. “I could’ve warned you,” he said, “but you wouldn’t have believed me till you saw it for yourself.”