Dead Man's Hand

by Luke Murphy

  He had to find a break in the case somewhere. He turned the night lamp off on his and Jimmy’s desks and followed the long, musty hallway down to the basement forensics lab.

  The tech looked up from a microscope and checked Dale out over the bifocals perched on the end of his nose. The man’s hair was greasy and disheveled and his white lab coat grimy. The eraser head of a pencil peeked out of his breast pocket and another was tucked behind his right ear. After a deferential nod, he went back to his microscope.

  While Dale waited, he checked the dismantled bomb resting on the countertop. The pieces lay strewn about, each numbered and named.

  He was inspecting the blasting cap and C-4 when the lab technician finally looked up again. “I’ve been waiting for you to come down.” He smacked on gum and blew a bubble.

  “So, tell me about the bomb. And no mumbo jumbo bullshit. You know that I know squat about bombs.”

  “Great, another simpleton.”

  “Just tell me.”

  The techie got up off his stool and walked over to Dale and the bomb. “All right, in layman’s terms. A chunk of plastic explosive had been secured under the driver’s seat, because that was the center of the target—the driver. The C4 had a detonator shoved into it and the detonator wires had been attached to the ignition wires. The bomb was to go off when the car was started. Do I need to slow down?”

  Dale considered the explanation. In a sense, it would’ve been the perfect murder—except Watters was long gone and not worried about his car.

  The tech continued. “I fed the information through the FBI Bomb Data Center and the ATF’s National Repository, but I couldn’t find a signature match to our bomb.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  He yawned and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Well, the fact that plastic explosive was used does tell us that the suspect is an expert bomb maker. You can’t get this stuff over the counter. The setup was elaborate and the bomb hidden so well that it couldn’t have been detected by the naked eye, unless you actually squirmed underneath the car looking for it. It would’ve taken a pro to design and dismantle the explosive weapon. This car was detonated to explode if someone either started or tampered with the vehicle.”

  There was nothing in his bio to indicate that Calvin Watters had any special training in the detonation of bombs. Also why would Watters set a bomb under his own car? Someone wanted Watters out of the picture. Why?

  “Thanks,” Dale said.

  “No problem.”

  He was more convinced than ever that Watters was innocent, but he couldn’t prove that any more than he could Sanders’ guilt.

  Now, along with the three “perfect” murders, he had to deal with a “perfect” attempted murder.

  In the basement he pulled out his cell phone. No signal. He began to climb the stairs and as the signal was restored, he called his partner.

  “It’s Dale.”

  “Where have you been? I have been trying to reach you.”

  He heard the tension in his partner’s voice. “I’ve been in the basement with the lab tech. I can’t get a signal down there.”

  “So you haven’t heard?”

  “What?”

  “There was a press conference this evening outside the Greek. Linda Grant just sold her shares of the casino to Sanders. He’s now part owner.”

  “I’m impressed she moved without wasting time. Tomorrow morning check that the deal was legit, but I bet it was.”

  He paused for a moment. “And I need you to do one more thing before you settle down for the night. Use your network to see if anyone will give up that an assassin has come to town who knows bombs.”

  “Got it.”

  Too many questions and not enough answers.

  Chapter 28

  A tiny jingle gave Calvin a start. His head shot up off the desk, a piece of paper stuck to the side of his mouth from drool.

  How long had he been out?

  He checked the monitor and through fuzzy eyes saw Rachel at the back door, letting herself in. He jumped from his chair and hustled to meet her.

  He spoke before she had closed the door. “Where have you been?” He strode to her and lightly grasped her arm.

  Rachel shook it away. “I had to get out.”

  “You know we can’t leave. Goddamn it, Rachel! Do you think this is a game? You could have been caught, followed, or even killed.”

  He peeked out the window.

  “Settle down, Calvin. I did what you told me—circled a bunch of times and retraced my steps.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Relax. You haven’t slept for days, so I didn’t wake you. I had to see my friends.”

  “Hookers?” Calvin’s eyes grew large.

  “My colleagues.” Rachel’s voice was stern.

  “Sorry.” He shook his head. “What did you possibly need from them that you would risk leaving here?”

  “I can’t just sit around and do nothing, Calvin, while, as you say, ‘our lives are in danger.’ I want to help, but you refuse to let me. I can do stuff. I’ve been protecting myself for a long time.”

  He knew that and also realized that Rachel was just being proactive, wanting to do all she could to help him, as well as her. But in his heart, he didn’t want anything to happen to her and would do anything to protect her. He respected and admired Rachel all the more now, but he would never tell her. He needed to make sure she knew the consequences of her actions.

  “It was Amber.”

  “Who’s Amber?”

  Rachel swiped away a single tear. “It was Amber in Pitt’s office. She was new and I’d only met her once. No one really knew much about her. But she was sweet.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry.”

  She pushed him away. “That’s not all. People are asking about us.”

  “I know. Once the cops found out about you, your colleagues would be the first ones they’d question.”

  “I’m not talking about the cops.”

  Calvin saw fear in her eyes. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Wanda said he’s pretty creepy though. He asked about me and you. He didn’t show any identification and they said he definitely wasn’t a cop.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “They all gave me a different description—but all confirmed he was tall and skinny and very strange.”

  He shook his head. That helped very little. The man could be anyone, working for anyone. “Listen, Rachel. I’m not joking. You’re not to leave again.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  He was about to say more when he heard the familiar “bing” from his computer—another emergency message alert. He rushed to the computer room and clicked on the blinking icon. He saw two familiar faces on the computer monitor.

  Sanders and Linda Grant, hand in hand on a podium set up outside the Greek. He read the writing that scrolled across the bottom. Sanders had just purchased the rights to own a small percentage of the casino.

  Bingo! Sanders killed Grant.

  Calvin had been sure that there was some connection between Sanders, Linda Grant and Pitt. But he hadn’t known exactly what it was.

  Seeing the news about the sale, he made the final connection. Pitt, who’d done so much dirty work for Sanders, was involved somehow in making that sale possible. Pitt was probably an accomplice in Grant’s murder too.

  He closed the document and focused on gathering intelligence that connected Grant’s killer and his accomplices. He was sure Sanders had killed Pitt because he had known too much about Sanders’ plans and actions and because Sanders, being Sanders, had never intended Pitt to be any kind of partner, silent or otherwise. They’d used Pitt until the deal was done and then killed him. Now it was just Sanders and Linda, which Calvin suspected was their plan all along.

  He could have hacked into Pitt’s database, but since the cops would have wiped out everything useful by now, he picked up the phone and dialed o
ut. “Please be right. Please be right.”

  “Hello?”

  “Dixie, it’s me again. Please tell me that you still have the personal USB key Pitt gave you from his files?”

  “No, I gave that to the officer who came to interview me.”

  “Damn it!” He slammed his fist down on the desk.

  “But I saved it on my hard drive.”

  He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Dixie Miller. Send it to this secure address, please.”

  He gave her his new email address and hung up.

  The file arrived within minutes.

  There was nothing obvious in the file folder. But he found a “mislabeled” hidden file in which Pitt had recorded an agreement to work with Sanders to take over the Greek. Pitt had been afraid of Sanders—and the trick with the filename and security opened a new question. Who was helping Pitt? As far as Calvin knew, no friend of Pitt was clever with computers.

  Since Dixie had given the USB to the cops, he knew they had the same information and had to see Sanders as a suspect.

  Why weren’t they acting on that?

  Returning to his desk, Dale logged onto the KVVU FOX5 Vegas website to see the press conference with Sanders, staged in the parking lot of the Greek. Dale turned up the volume as Linda Grant, to massive applause, approached a cluster of microphones set up on a podium.

  “It is my great pleasure to announce a new member of our team.” She read from a prepared statement. ”’Because of the passing of my husband and my lack of experience in casino operations, I have decided it is in everyone’s best interest for me to sell my share of the casino to someone with experience, someone who can make a real contribution to running the great Greek Hotel and Casino. He is already the owner of two major casinos in our wonderful city and I have the utmost confidence in his future success. My husband would be very proud today. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present to you the new part owner and team member of the Greek Hotel and Casino—Mr. Ace Sanders.’”

  Dale watched as the camera focused on Sanders, who had been seated at a table next to Shawn Grant, the majority shareholder of the casino. Grant’s face showed displeasure and a fake smile. Dale didn’t see Melanie or her mother.

  Sanders approached the microphones—to what Dale considered mixed reviews from the gallery—and shook Linda’s hand. Dale thought that Sanders had been born for the spotlight. “Now that’s motive,” Dale muttered.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Grant,” Sanders said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am more than honored to be a new member of the team and I look forward to working with Shawn Grant. I think that together we can create an ever brighter future for the Greek Hotel and Casino.”

  He smiled, pausing for dramatic effect and waiting for the applause to die down. “I am thrilled that the Grant family has accepted my bid and welcomed me into their family. I hope to do even more for the community now that I’m involved with three casinos. I just wish to do the Grant family justice and make them proud.”

  Sanders and Linda stood together, hands clasped. Shawn seemed in no hurry to join them, but he finally did. The three members raised their hands in unison as the cameras flashed and reporters yelled questions.

  Dale read the article that complemented the video.

  There was no public record about the deal, but “informed sources” said that Sanders purchased his share of the casino for an estimated $40 million.

  He closed the report and removed the coroner report folders from a drawer.

  A single powerful slice from a strong killer, maybe known to the victim, had killed Pitt in seconds, just like Grant. No damage had been done to Pitt’s front-door lock, so either the door was unlocked or the killer had a key. But when Dale had arrived at the scene, all the doors had been locked.

  This still didn’t rule out Watters, an employee, who could have had a key. Sanders could also have had a key if he and Pitt were such tight associates.

  Why would Watters kill his boss? To cover up the Grant murder, or, if Dale’s assumption was correct, the fact that Pitt had framed Watters? Maybe it was payback.

  Dale still wondered about the anonymous phone call. The detective couldn’t figure out who would call or why. Why was some of the information right and some wrong? Misinformation to hide the source? Who could have known so much about exactly what Watters was doing that morning, disguised and on his way to Grant’s private office?

  He had already found nothing in the office or business paper trail. That had only worn down Dale and his team.

  How much was he being played by the department heads, who only seemed interested in Watters? Who did Grant, or Sanders, have in his pocket?

  He moved on to the death of the prostitute. Her street name was Amber, real name unknown. They had searched the database but no description on an active missing person case had been found. No one seemed to want her—living or dead—except for sex. She was not the killer’s target.

  Wait.

  The slice on Amber’s throat had come from right to left. The predator had been behind the victim. That would mean that the killer had held the weapon in his left hand. But Pitt’s throat slash had come from left to right, same as Grant’s. That killer had been right handed.

  Dale called Edgar Perkins at home.

  When the medical examiner answered his phone, Dale spoke. “Hey, Edgar, it’s Dale. I need some information.”

  “You want to know about your DOAs from the bookie’s shop?”

  “Tell me about the throat slash on Amber.”

  Perkins had been the chief pathologist for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Crime Lab for over twenty-five years.

  “Well, since we determined there was only one killer, I originally thought that the murderer had been left handed, because of the direction of the wound on Amber’s throat. But after a second check on Pitt’s wound and substantial consideration, I’d say that the killer is ambidextrous. The slash on Pitt’s neck, like Grant’s, almost decapitated both victims. But the other one, the woman’s wound, was a little more sloppy. The woman had considerable bruising and an abrasion from the pressure of being held, which indicated that the man’s right arm was his stronger side. The knife was held in the left hand, but the killer could be trying to throw us off. In my opinion, this attacker can use his left and right hand with the same degree of accuracy.”

  “Thanks, Edgar.”

  “No problem, Dale. How’s your—”

  Dale hung up before Perkins could keep him long. An ambidextrous killer, that had to narrow down the field. He turned the page and read on.

  Pitt and Grant were killed with the right hand but the prostitute was not. Dale suspected the rear angle of the attack made it difficult for the killer to control the woman with his left arm and kill with his right, as he’d done twice before. She was weaker than either man, so the killer didn’t need the same strength. He controlled her with his right arm, which is why he was scratched.

  He assumed that if it had not been for the happenstance of the prostitute, the killer would have slashed both times with his right hand and all the evidence would indicate that the killer was right-handed. But as life happens, she was there and that revealed the ambidexterity of the killer.

  They already knew that skin under the prostitute’s nails, from fighting her killer, was Caucasian and therefore not from Watters. Even though there had been no scratch marks on Pitt, the trace was still being compared with his DNA.

  Dale slid the two medical reports to the side of his desk. He opened up Grant’s file and set the report beside the other folders. It made no sense to have more than one killer with wounds this similar.

  Sanders was so obviously the person with the strength and will to kill all three. He killed Grant for the Greek. He killed Pitt for cover up. But Dale’s sergeant had already put Sanders “off limits.” The casino owner was practically untouchable.

  Dale compared the wounds. The MO was the same for all three murders, even though two different knives had be
en used. Any smart killer would change weapons after each killing and destroy the ones used.

  Craig’s death, shot in the head, was the only wild card. There was a second killer who used a gun.

  He did one more search of national and local killings with the same MO, but no dice—nothing to do with this pattern that could not be explained by chance.

  But he cross-referenced all of those cases anyway. At the national level, as he suspected because the knife-to-throat MO wasn’t unique, he found a total of 124 cases over the last year. But when he dug deeper the suspects were all ruled out for various reasons—they were dead, serving life sentences, paroled or disappeared. The very few who didn’t get crossed off and potentially could be Dale’s killer were very unlikely because the murders happened in Vegas.

  He threw the files into his desk and shut down the computer. He was at an investigative dead end.

  He looked around the office. The lighting was dim and only a handful of officers remained. He wondered how many of those officers also had empty homes to go to. The divorce rate was high on the force and he didn’t want to be just another statistic. But would he ever be able to make it up to Betty and Sammie?

  One last thought about the case struck him. He wandered over to his partner’s messy desk. He found a DVD resting on top of a bundle of files. The label read, “Sugar Bowl.” He popped it into the video player.

  He remembered Watters on the football field—graceful and unstoppable. His large frame and long, smooth strides made him the model running back headed for big-league glory. From Jimmy’s notes, Dale read that Watters had run the ball sixty-one times that game for the Trojans, a new NCAA record. So finding a sequence of Watters’ carries wasn’t a challenge.

  After the first carry, Dale thought he had picked something out. After the second, he knew for certain. After seven straight carries, it was irrefutable—Watters received the ball from his quarterback the same way each time, cradling the ball with his right arm and using his left to stiff-arm his way through tackles, no matter which side the play was called to run. Watters was as right-handed as right-handed ever got. Someone ambidextrous, at that level of play, would have used that to their advantage.