Casino Girl

by Leslie Wolfe

  “And what exactly does that mean?” I asked again. I was unexpectedly calm, calmer than I’d been in a long time.

  “I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” she replied angrily, pushing her chair away from the table and starting to pace the room. “You work your caseload like you’d normally do, and on top of that you help us investigate whomever we choose, whenever we choose. You will close all the investigations the IAB assigns to you during these twelve months quickly, correctly, with well-documented evidence that will stand up in court.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t, you won’t be holding on to your badge for much longer, Detective. We can always flip the switch on you. We’ve got enough to bury you for good, as you well know. Your extracurricular activities are nothing short of appalling.”

  With those simple words, I felt a chill freeze my blood; it wasn’t just Reyes they were throwing against me. My job was everything I had left. I couldn’t think of a life where I wasn’t a cop. However, what they were asking for was preposterous. If I’d read them well, they didn’t care if I planted a kilo of coke on Holt myself, as long as I made it stick and got him nailed for it. They didn’t seem to care about the presumption of innocence where Holt was concerned; the almighty judge and jury of the IAB had decided Holt was guilty and wanted him executed. Soon. Yesterday, if possible.

  I was only a pawn in their bloody game.

  My breath caught as I fully understood my options. I leaned against the back of my seat and looked at Steenstra unequivocally.

  “Okay, I get it,” I replied. “What’s my timeline? With Holt?”

  “You have a week, Detective. Not a single day more.”

  “A week? I can’t possibly be expected to pull this off in a week,” I reacted, not having to feign any of the anguish in my voice. “We just caught a murder case; I won’t have the time. I need more—”

  “Make the time, Detective,” Steenstra said, collecting the scattered photos from the table and getting ready to leave. “I expect a full status report on my desk by noon, next Monday. Close the case on Holt, or we close the case on you.”

  She turned and left the room and the door sealed quietly behind her, pulled shut by a hydraulic mechanism. Stunned, I stared at the door for several minutes before I collected myself enough to head downstairs and face my new partner, the man I was supposed to bury.

  Waiting for the elevator to arrive, I realized that never, during the conversation with Steenstra, had I wondered if Holt was indeed guilty; not even once. He was a good cop; I knew that in my gut, although he was also a recovering addict. The fact that he’d become addicted to cocaine while working an undercover drug operation mattered to the higher-ups just as much as it had mattered what Reyes had done to me, to my husband. Until that day, I’d thought people understood what drove me to come down on Reyes, and that’s why I still had a job. Sadly, it turned out that wasn’t the case; the rat squad needed fresh meat, and that’s all there was to it.

  No empathy. No compassion.

  The IAB needed collars to look good, just like the rest of us did. But for the rest of us, there was enough real crime in Vegas to investigate and meet our arrest quotas. We didn’t have to go around framing people; we had good collars to show.

  What if the IAB didn’t have enough things going on to justify its existence? Maybe someone else had taken the missing cocaine and framed Holt for it. Or maybe the IAB had an axe to grind with Holt and had decided to jam him up permanently.

  My mind kept spinning, weaving layers of explanations, no matter how far-fetched, because I couldn’t think of a single scenario in which Jack Holt, my new partner, could be the criminal the IAB was saying he was.

  Preliminary Findings

  I took a deep breath just before the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. I had to summon all my strength to smile casually in Holt’s direction, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, although on that particular occasion I didn’t manage to fool him one bit.

  He frowned and came straight to me. “What’s wrong?”

  I’d learned a trick at Scotland Yard while training on deceptive tactics; it’s called half-truths. A lie had better chances of ringing true if it was built on a foundation of truth or, even better, if it’s sandwiched between two slices of factual information. Even share a little vulnerability, expose something that you wouldn’t otherwise expose about yourself, and the person you’re talking to would zero in on that particular aspect and not see the fib blooming right in front of their eyes.

  “It’s that stupid probation I have on my record,” I replied, stating one truthful statement about the entire situation. “This supervision will make the next twelve months of my life interesting, to say the least.”

  “What do they want now?” Holt asked in a lowered voice.

  I led the way to the parking lot and didn’t reply until we’d left the building. “These HR people and their never-ending requirements.” That was the lie. “Did you know I have to see an anger management shrink now?”

  The part about the shrink was also true, albeit not new. I’d been seeing a court-appointed shrink for a few weeks, hating every minute of it.

  As expected, Holt relaxed a little when he heard my response, not doubting it, from what I could tell. “Better watch what you’re saying in the office,” he said. “It could come back and bite you in the rear.”

  I smiled briefly and nodded a couple of times. “I know it. It’s just a waste of time, that’s all.”

  “Want to deliver next of kin?” he asked. “I called the restaurant and Mrs. Tillman is off today.”

  “Let’s stop by Anne’s first, to see what she’s got so far.”

  “Deal,” he said, then started the car and put the AC setting halfway to the max.

  It was a cold, yet sunny day that had managed to make the inside of his Ford as unbearably hot as if it were summer. Winters in Vegas are short-lived and not cold, and the crisp blue of the sky contradicts the notion of winter, which, by definition and association, was supposed to be as miserable as I was remembering it from my native London. Back then, darkness gloomed for days in a row, while an incessant drizzle fell from the sky and a bitter cold pierced through to the bones, regardless of how many layers of clothing attempted to shield it. But in Vegas, the air was crisp and the sky cloudless; you had to remind yourself it was Christmastime. Between the palm trees and the powerful rays of the desert sun, there wasn’t any hope for a white Christmas, and the idea of winter holidays seemed surreal, unless you climbed nearby Mount Charleston.

  Holt made small talk during the few minutes it took him to drive us to the coroner’s office on Pinto Lane, while I let my thoughts grab and twist me into a knot, trying to figure out what to do. How was I going to deliver on the IAB’s demands and still be able to live with myself? One alternative required I didn’t have a conscience; the other meant I didn’t have a job.

  The cold air filled with the smell of formaldehyde pulled me into the present the moment we walked through the double doors that separated the autopsy room from the coroner’s front office. As always happened when I visited the morgue, I froze in place, willing myself to take a few more steps and move near the autopsy table where Crystal’s body lay bare.

  I felt a chill in my blood as if it were my skin touching the stainless steel table. Nothing made me think of my own mortality more than seeing death’s handiwork, exposed and analyzed under powerful lights, dissected with sharp instruments, interpreted by mass spectrometers, visualized with electronic microscopes, and separated into core components by whirring, spinning centrifuges. Death had won that round, and Crystal’s body lay still and vulnerable in testimony to some bastard’s victory. But death had been but an instrument wielded by a hateful hand, one I was soon going to snap handcuffs around.

  I breathed, willing the thumping of my heart against my chest to slow a little, and approached the autopsy table. I looked at Crystal’s perfect face, glowing under the powerf
ul exam lamps, beautiful and serene. How could someone so young, so innocent have stirred up such immense enmity in another human being? What could she have done, if anything? Or had she been a random victim of a killer yearning to satisfy urges of a dark, perverted nature?

  In my mind, there wasn’t a single shred of doubt: that beautiful, young girl had been murdered.

  “I’m not done yet,” Anne announced, not raising her eyes from Crystal’s abdominal cavity.

  She wore her lab coat and a see-through, polyethylene protective gown on top of black jeans and a black T-shirt. Her hair was buzzed even shorter than usual, her firm response to the invasive smells of death and decay that accompanied her daily labor. It was difficult to see, behind the rigid, authoritarian appearance, the kindness and warmth of Dr. Anne St. Clair—the person, not the ME. The medical examiner was all business: cold, factual, analytical, a dedicated and perceptive investigator.

  I swallowed hard, finding it difficult to voice words or make sounds near Crystal’s motionless body. That was a part of my job that never got easier, despite the many years I’d accumulated investigating homicides on both sides of the Atlantic.

  “Anything you can tell us?” I asked, shooting Holt a quick look.

  He seemed uncomfortable, even more than I was. He was pacing slowly, his hands tucked deeply inside his pockets, and his broad shoulders hunched forward, walking back and forth by the drawers stacked against the back wall in two rows of four refrigerated body storage units. Five of them had labels; it had been a busy few weeks for the Clark County coroner’s office.

  Anne looked up through her safety goggles with scrutinizing eyes. She seemed to have an unspoken question on her mind but decided to keep that to herself after shooting Holt a cold glance.

  “Got your message about the chip in her bra,” she said, “but I didn’t find anything. All her clothing has been swabbed, bagged, and tagged, and there was no chip. I don’t remember seeing one at the crime scene either.”

  “I went over the crime scene photos and there was no chip anywhere,” Erika, her assistant chimed in from the lab’s computer desk.

  I sighed, feeling a wave of frustration building. That chip could’ve had that mysterious man’s fingerprints and DNA on it. “Okay. Anything more on the cause of death? Something we could use?”

  Anne put her scalpel on a tray by her side and took off her gloves, then her goggles.

  “I will rule this death as suspicious circumstances, until I can identify the chemical that was used.”

  “So, she was poisoned?” Holt asked, approaching the table. “This is officially a homicide, then?”

  “I will rule her death as suspicious for now,” she repeated her earlier statement. “Her heart stopped moments after she started showing acute symptoms of poison-induced asphyxia.”

  “What was it, Doc?”

  “Do you know how many poisons and toxins there are in this world, Detective?” she asked, but Holt knew better than to venture a response. “We will have to test for each one until we find what killed her.”

  “So, no idea what it was?” I asked.

  “I have a long list of what it wasn’t,” she replied, “but that list isn’t nearly long enough to make testing a quick task. I’ll start testing for the more common substances used that deliver the symptoms I’ve seen.”

  “Anything else relevant?” Holt asked.

  “Again, this is preliminary, Detective. My guest is still on the table,” she stated, going back to her earlier position next to Crystal’s body. “I swiped her chest in case that chip left any trace material. At first sight, the area was clean. Well, that’s a relative term, considering I found dust particles, hair and carpet fibers, and other trace elements we’re working to identify.”

  “Do you know how she ingested the poison?” Holt asked.

  “That’s one of the things I didn’t find, evidence that she had actually ingested it. See here?” she pointed her finger at the stomach, opened up for examination in a metallic tray by the organ scale. “Typically, in ingested poison victims we see signs of chemical burns in the stomach lining. Here, there are none. But there are several known toxins and poisons that don’t leave any visible marks on the mucosae.”

  “If you had to guess?” I asked quietly, knowing how much she hated the question.

  “There’s one big problem with guessing,” she said coldly. “It can point you in the wrong direction, giving you clues where there aren’t any. No, Detectives, I don’t want to guess. The only thing I can say is that based on my experience with poison victims and the literature I reviewed, I’m inclined to start testing for toxins before poisons.”

  Holt frowned, then rubbed his forehead with one quick gesture. “Meaning?”

  “A toxin is a poison that was produced by a living organism, animal or plant,” she replied. “I believe what killed her had been engineered by a living organism.”

  “Could it be possible a snake bit her?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see signs of a snake bite anywhere on her body. Typically, when people get bitten by snakes they go to the hospital and seek help.”

  “Then, what are you telling us?”

  “I’m telling you I will start testing for toxins before I start testing for poisons, and that I can’t tell you yet how the toxin got into her bloodstream. I’ll take tissues samples from all her organs, including her skin, and have those analyzed. As soon as I know, you’ll know. I’ve already sent a blood sample for a tox screen, but it will take a while to get the results back.”

  “How about stomach contents?” Holt asked.

  “Still working on that, Detective.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, “we’ll get out of your hair. Call us when you get something.”

  “I always do,” she replied simply. “Oh, there is one more thing. She was ten weeks pregnant.”

  Family

  That was another part of my job that never got easier; delivering death notifications to victims’ families. The worst of them all was telling a parent that her child was never coming home.

  Elaine Tillman lived with her younger daughter, Tina, and Norm Chaney, most likely her boyfriend, in a small house in Spring Valley. It was a beige, single-story, two-car garage, traditional house with a small backyard and little distance between neighboring homes, the tell-all sign of a newer development. Nothing stood out about the property, except a bike abandoned on the driveway, Tina’s, judging by the pink frame and the handlebar streamers in pink and purple. It was almost dark; Tina was possibly at home, eating dinner, telling stories about her day, in a preteen chipper voice.

  I took a deep breath before ringing the bell and glanced at Holt quickly. His eyes were lowered, and a couple of deep ridges marked his forehead. He must have dreaded these house calls just as much as I did.

  Elaine Tillman opened the door, and her smile vanished when we showed identification and I said our names. She wiped her hands on her green-and-white striped apron and ran her hand quickly against her hair, as if to make sure everything was in place.

  “May we come in, please?” I asked, and she stepped aside, making room for us to enter. She closed the door behind us and gestured an invite to take seats in the living room, while pallor took all the color away from her cheeks.

  “Who is it, Mom?” a young girl asked, as she burst into the living room at a sprinter’s pace. I recognized Tina from the photos we had in our systems, dating a couple of years back when she got a passport issued for a trip to Cancun. She had the most freckled face I’d ever seen, complemented by long, curly, and seriously entangled hair, so red it didn’t seem natural. Her mother must’ve spent hours combing through that mess every day.

  “What can we do for you, Detectives?” Mrs. Tillman asked, while Tina drew near her mom, wrapping her thin arms around her waist.

  “Please, take a seat,” Holt invited, and they both obeyed silently, fear altering their features, changing the expressions in their eyes, bringing slight tremors to th
eir mouths.

  Then Holt and I looked briefly at each other.

  “Mrs. Tillman, I’m afraid we have sad news,” I said, feeling my throat dry all of a sudden, making it difficult for me to articulate the words. But I pulled myself together; if it was tough for me to say the words, for them it was much worse to hear what I was about to say. “Your daughter, Carole Sue Tillman, died early this morning during her shift.”

  Mrs. Tillman’s mouth gaped open and, at first, not a single sound came out. Her eyes, open wide, moved erratically as she tried to make sense of my words, as if she were looking all over the place for help, for someone to tell her it wasn’t true, for a sign that everything she’d heard was a nightmare she was going to wake up from.

  “No… Are… you sure?” she eventually asked, her voice choked, raspy, and trembling.

  My eyes were riveted on Tina’s reaction. Her big, blue eyes had shifted from shock to pain and immediately to anger, while she threw a fiery glare at a door, most likely leading to a bedroom. Behind that door, the muted sound of a TV delivered some baseball news I could only partially hear.

  “Yes, I’m afraid we’re sure,” Holt replied. “She died this morning at 4:12, on the casino floor where she worked. Her heart stopped.”

  Mrs. Tillman covered her gaping mouth with her hand, but to no avail. Her sobs burst from her heaving chest, while her tears mixed with Tina’s, mother and daughter in a tight embrace, their cheeks touching, their wails buried in each other’s hair.

  “What the hell is going on?” a man said, and with his appearance, the TV sports commentary resounded louder, now that the door to the bedroom was open.

  That was Norm Chaney, and my first impression of him was instant, undeniable dislike sprinkled with wariness. It wasn’t because of the sleeveless shirt he was wearing with brown, worn-out shorts and flipflops. It wasn’t the large number of tattoos that marked his skin in faded blue ink. One of them caught my attention though, some kind of broken, thick line, only partially visible above the neck of his shirt. It seemed familiar, although I couldn’t tell what it was; when he saw where I was looking, he placed his hand on top of the tattoo as if to hide it. However, not even that quick, reflex gesture was the reason for my suspicion.