by Leslie Wolfe
13
Evidence
I’d been camped out in front of the emergency room at the University Medical Center for a few hours, waiting to hear what was going on with Anne. A doctor had come out after an hour or so and told Holt and me she wasn’t critical; she was stable. She’d been lucky, the man said, while I looked at him with suspicion, noticing he seemed too young to drive. But his ID had MD after his name so I listened, fighting hard against the urge to ask him for a more experienced doctor to take over Anne’s case.
She had two cracked ribs and some internal bruising, a cut on her forehead that had required a few stiches, and she was being treated for smoke inhalation. She was in good spirits, taking it like a soldier.
Oh, if only you knew, I thought, but it wasn’t the time or the place to start sharing my knowledge of her military record with her attending physician. Instead, I nodded and thanked him right after he told me they were still running some tests to eliminate the risk of a concussion, and then they would release her in a couple of hours, because she was adamant about not spending the night.
That was the Anne I knew. A fighter. A survivor.
I smiled widely, lowering my head to hide my tears. When I looked up again, he was gone.
But Holt was still there, and without a word he took me in his arms and held me, while I buried my face in his chest and tears of gratitude stained his shirt. We were both covered with soot anyway.
He caressed my hair gently, and said, “She isn’t just the coroner you’ve worked with for the past few years, is she? You two seem way closer than that.”
Holt and his questions, for crying out loud… I pulled myself away from him and wiped my eyes with the back of my hands.
“Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?”
He seemed confused, but I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t playing it dumb, trying to back out of our deal. He was supposed to attend an AA meeting every night for a year, or for as long as I needed him to, until I could be sure his addiction wouldn’t relapse. That was the price I’d asked for in exchange for my silence, for the countless rules I was breaking by not telling the IAB about him being hooked.
I held his gaze firmly, with an unspoken, “Cut the crap” message in my eyes.
He lowered his head and said, “All right, I think I might still find a meeting, although it’s late.”
“Wait,” I said, “I need your laptop. Could you please leave it with me?”
He nodded and disappeared for a couple of minutes. When he returned, he had his laptop with him and a grim expression on his face.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I’m wondering if Anne’s still a target,” he replied. “He might come back, and I won’t be here.”
“But I will, Holt,” I replied. “I don’t believe he was after Anne. My gut tells me he was after the evidence in Crystal’s case. We might be getting close to uncovering a thing or two about her killer.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that, if you tell me what an eighteen-year-old stripper could—”
“Exotic dancer,” I said, frowning.
“Okay, exotic dancer,” he conceded, “have done to earn herself the attention of an assassin, a pro. Not everyone walks the streets of Vegas with grenades in their pockets, Baxter. I’m taking your bet, you know. Your coroner friend is the target. What other cases is she working on?”
I clammed up for a moment, accepting the hypothesis. What if the timing of attack on the morgue and Crystal’s murder had been coincidental? Either way, I was a capable cop who didn’t need a man to take care of her and her friend.
“We’ll be fine, Holt, I won’t let her out of my sight.”
“Where are you taking her when you leave here?”
“My place, if she’ll have it. Her fridge is always empty,” I added with a tiny smile. “Now, go to your meeting.”
I took a seat in the waiting area near the ER doors and fired up the laptop. I hesitated a little before starting my search; what should I start with? What did we really know about Crystal Tillman?
Not much, and most of what we thought we knew were only versions of truth, seeding suspicions in my mind that we might soon uncover more lies.
She was eighteen, an early graduate, a college student, an exotic dancer using a fake ID to gain access to a well-paying job. And that about summed it all up, everything we really knew about her.
As my old Scotland Yard trainer had said in a previous life, always start small. “How do you eat an elephant?” he’d asked. “One bite at a time,” was the answer, a wise course of action for deciphering Crystal’s multifaceted life.
I opened a new document and started typing questions freely as they popped into my mind. Who issued the professional grade, fake, driver’s licenses? How did Crystal afford one, before starting to make money as a dancer? That level of craftsmanship rarely goes for under a thousand bucks apiece, and that’s only if you know the right people. That seemed unlikely for a girl from Grady, Arkansas. Maybe she had help.
Help from a man who had his own helicopter, came the immediate conclusion. Was that man Ellis? Probably. He would’ve had the financial resources and the pull to get anything to happen for the young lady of his heart. But wait, if he was so in love with her, why would he have helped her become an exotic dancer, so she could take her clothes off onstage, in front of other men? It didn’t make sense.
Was there another man in the picture? Maybe someone younger than the helo guy, maybe someone Crystal really loved, but couldn’t be with because they were both poor? Okay, now I was speculating, my brain turned to mush from an endless day, a rollercoaster of emotions and interiorized conflict about my own involvement with Holt.
Bloody hell… I could still smell his aftershave in my hair, from when I nestled my head against his chest. I could still feel the warmth of his strong arms wrapped around my body. And I could still recall the irritation I’d felt when he started his overprotective male routine a few minutes earlier, forgetting I was a cop just like him, always carrying two loaded weapons on my person. Why? Because I’d allowed that to happen. It was all on me.
And it wasn’t going to happen again. Not ever. Not even once.
Bloody hell.
Focus, Baxter, focus, I told myself, as I started typing more questions.
What if Crystal was a high-end call girl? It’s been known to happen, especially here, in Sin City, when good girls can’t think of a different way to survive, to make ends meet, or, in Crystal’s case, to help her family.
If that part was even true.
If so, did Crystal have a pimp then? Where would she have met the famous, rich, yet married Ellis? Those things don’t just happen, like in fairy tales. Maybe she had a pimp, or maybe she had an agent, a new version of pimp for the entrepreneurial, expensive, and exclusive call girls. A different kind of business deal altogether, where the agent recommended vetted clients, set the appointments, and managed any interference, all for a hefty percentage, of course. Such an agent would have a business front set up, so the client could use corporate invoicing or a company-issued credit card without raising any suspicions. The agent’s corporation would pay the call girl as a 1099 contractor. Apparently all legit, all tax-deductible, until someone looked closely enough at the actual services being rendered.
It made sense, the call girl theory. It explained the helo rides in the middle of the night, why she’d kept her job as a dancer, why a mysterious man had been seen shoving a casino chip in her bra. Most of these men were power freaks, alpha males who took rejection badly and competition even worse. If that were the case, then Crystal’s best friend, Roxanne, knew much more than she’d shared. “Well, of course she did,” I whispered. Why would she be the one to tell the truth?
The automatic doors swung open and the young doctor pushed Anne through in a wheelchair. She was pale and tired, and four stitches marred her forehead at an angle above her right eye. She was restless in her seat, holding on to the arms of the wheel
chair as if she were planning to make a sudden run for the door.
“Here you go, Detective,” the doctor said, “she’s all yours.”
I almost touched her forehead and whispered, “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged and dismissed my concern with a wave of her hand. “I’ve had worse.”
There was still some soot on the side of her neck, and I used my sleeve to wipe it off.
“All right, Mother Hen,” she quipped in a faint voice, “I’ll be okay. I’m ready to go home now, if you’ll take me.”
“Of course, I will,” I said, taking the wheelchair handles from the doctor’s hand.
“I’ll pretend I don’t know she’s a licensed physician and prescribe a recovery regimen she’ll undoubtedly ignore,” he said. “Bed rest is mandatory, and I’m sending her home with oxygen and a mask. Please make sure she uses it.”
“Thanks,” I said, over my shoulder, and crouched in front of her. “Do you have any idea who did this?”
“No,” she replied, seemingly ashamed, as if it were her fault. “He was wearing a black ski mask and moved around like a pro. I almost had him, but he had a grenade.”
“You’re so tough, Dr. St. Clair,” I said, smiling widely. “He’s probably in worse shape than you are. Now let’s get you home.”
“You should put out a BOLO for a six-three, Caucasian male with a torn left knee and a deep laceration under his right eye,” she said, sounding proud.
“Will do, as soon as I get you to bed.”
I started pushing the wheelchair down the long corridor toward the exit and asked one of the parking attendants to get me a cab.
“We lost everything, didn’t we?” I asked, thinking of Crystal’s body, charred to a crisp and buried under rubble.
“Not really,” Anne replied. “All the physical evidence was in the back-room fridge. The blast didn’t damage it.”
“Why would you—”
“She was poisoned, and we still don’t know by what and how. Until we do, I need every bit of evidence preserved. Some poisons are volatile and can dissipate in time. Even room temperature can accelerate the evaporation process.”
“You mean, we still have, what, exactly?”
“Everything, more or less. Her clothing and shoes, her purse, and all the swabs we’d already taken from her body that we hadn’t had the time to process yet.”
“How about blood, fluids, fibers, the body?”
“Her organs were removed and stored in the big fridge; I wanted to be able to take another look once we have the toxin identified,” she said, counting on her fingers. “I’ve sent blood out for a tox panel already, a large sample; they’ll have to be careful with how much they use until we finish testing, but I believe they have enough. Vic and fetal DNA are with the Crime Lab already, but the body was burned to a crisp.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I asked. She’d been in the ER the entire time since I’d found her.
“It was on my side exam table, and the entire room was engulfed in flames. That much I remember seeing before I—”
She stopped talking, and I didn’t push. Instead, I glared at the parking attendant, wondering why that cab was taking so damn long.
“Anything further I find on the body will likely be disputed in court,” she continued. “A good defense attorney will claim the evidence was contaminated by all the chemicals that were dispersed by the explosion, the gasoline, the water and suppressors they used to put out the fire, and so on. We’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Yeah, but the perp won’t know that, right?” I replied. She turned to look at me, wincing a little, and I winked. “He won’t know what samples had already been sent to the lab.”
“Yeah, but in court, I couldn’t—”
“No one’s asking you. We’re cops; we’re allowed to lie, as long as it’s not under oath.”
“That is correct,” she replied, smiling.
“You keep on digging and give us something we can use. We need to know how Crystal died. Nothing we’ve uncovered so far makes any sense.”
“On it,” she replied with a shattered sigh. “I just need to clean up the morgue as soon as possible, because whatever that goon thought he was achieving by torching the place didn’t happen.”
“Oh, no, first you take a few days off,” I replied, pushing her wheelchair toward the cab pulled in at the curb.
“We’ll see,” she said, grunting a little when she got up and climbed inside the minivan.
I slid next to her and clutched her hand. It was frozen, and she was shivering, although the heat was on in the vehicle.
“Your place or mine?” she asked faintly.
“Mine,” I replied, then gave the driver the address and asked him to crank up the heat. “It’s girls’ night in.”
The moment I said those words, a heavy silence fell between us. Only one other time we’d spent the night at my place; the night after Andrew had been killed. Anne had been there for me every second of that terrible night, the first night I grieved the loss of my husband and she mourned the death of the fellow Marine and helicopter pilot with whom she’d served two tours overseas.
I felt her hand squeeze mine and realized she knew exactly how I felt. I willed away my tears and smiled.
“Got liquor?” Anne asked.
“After a day like today, you get to pick your label, woman,” I replied, then hugged her gently, afraid I’d see that wince on her face again. “Do you believe alcohol mixes well with oxygen?” I quipped, pointing at the gas canister in her lap. “I don’t want to blow up the house.”
She didn’t reply; she just let her head rest on my shoulder and closed her eyes.
Later that night, as I pulled the curtains shut on my living room window, I thought I saw Holt’s unmarked Ford parked across the street.
Bloody hell, Holt.
14
Anxiety
Roxanne’s hands trembled as she unlocked the front door. The house was unusually dark and quiet, and she reached for the light switch without daring to step inside, terrified as if there was someone lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce.
With the floor lamp on, she dared to come in and closed the door behind her, turned the deadbolt and slid on the chain. She walked toward the small table where she and Crystal usually dropped their purses when they came home, but her keys fell to the floor. The clatter of rattling metal against the granite tiles startled her, seeming much louder against the still silence of the house.
She wasn’t used to that much silence. Crystal always had music on, as if the music she danced to wasn’t enough for her and she always needed more. But Roxanne didn’t feel like breaking the mournful peace. She wandered aimlessly through the living room, noticing where the two detectives had opened closets and looked through their stuff. Briefly, she stopped in front of Crystal’s bedroom, the closed door bearing her name in girlish, glittery letters sprinkled with tiny hearts and gold stars. She didn’t dare enter the room, as if she risked bringing upon herself the rage of a restless ghost, still hurting to be yanked so brutally away from the land of the living and deep into nothingness.
She turned away from there, breathing with more ease as she distanced herself from the haunted room. She stopped for a moment in the middle of the living room, heaving, still terrified after the events of that morning. She picked up her purse and clutched it tightly, thinking how lucky she’d been. She could’ve been in jail that night if the dice would’ve rolled a different number.
She unzipped the purse slowly and fished out the gun with frozen, trembling fingers, her entire body reacting to the sensation of the cold metal against her skin.
She looked at the weapon as if she’d never seen it before and wondered how she could have possibly thought of shooting Crystal. She must’ve been insane… The gods must’ve smiled down her way, no matter how unlikely that seemed, when they didn’t let her find the guts to pull the trigger the night before. They’d smiled again
when the detectives didn’t find her in possession of an illegal weapon.
Her breath shattered, and she let herself slide against the wall, until she hit the floor. The coldness of the granite grounded her but didn’t do much for the chill that sent icicles through her blood, coming from inside her heart. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t pulled that trigger; she’d wanted Crystal dead, and she’d bought the gun to take her friend’s life. She was still a murderer.
Tears started rolling down her cheeks in steady rivulets, blurring the image of the weapon she held in her hands. She’d loved Crystal, and she’d always felt they were like sisters, closer than family, thicker than thieves. Until…
She picked herself up from the floor, put the gun back in her purse, and pulled the zipper shut. Tomorrow she’d have to figure out a way to get rid of the gun, before the cops came to visit again.
Once the echoes of the purse zipper subsided, silence engulfed the house once more. Roxanne shivered and opened the fridge door, looking for something to warm up her frozen soul. She poured herself a shot of Grey Goose without bothering to close the fridge door, downed it, then filled the glass again. She hesitated for a moment, held on to the bottle and kicked the fridge door closed with the tip of her foot.
Better.
She looked at the clock on the wall and realized how late it was. He was soon going to be there, and she wasn’t ready for him. Regretfully, she abandoned the bottle of vodka on the table and took off her clothes, letting them fall in a heap on the floor. She rushed into the shower, letting the hot water cleanse her body and her burdened conscience.
She spent more time than usual in there, applying lather after lather of her favorite scented shower gel, savoring the smell, anticipating how Paul would savor it too, breathing against her heated skin. She washed her hair thoroughly, knowing only long minutes of shampooing would remove the stink of the casino, the smell of cigars and of metabolized alcohol that reeked in the high-limit gaming room.
