Ace High

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “Steven, the owner of the company doing the inventory of the Landmark furniture and fixtures, called me up to the 20th floor to bring crowbars. He was scouting ahead of us and had found a door that the master key wouldn’t work in and we needed to get it open.”

  “Was that unusual?” Sarge asked.

  Munro shrugged, his massive muscles in his shoulders and arms moving like ripples under his loose T-shirt. “We had to break open a couple dozen doors in the entire place. But most of those were closets and back rooms and such. Steven always had me do it because of my strength. That was the only hotel room door the keys wouldn’t work in, though.”

  Pickett nodded and glanced over as Sarge wrote that down.

  “We had to pry off the molding around the door first,” Munro said, “to get to the door. And then it took both of us on crowbars to force the door’s lock enough to push the door open.”

  “Really stuck, huh?” Sarge asked.

  “Bad,” Munro said, nodding. “And when the door swung open we were hit with a nasty, rotting smell that drove us back down the hallway. Still makes me queasy to think about.”

  “So you didn’t know she was in there at that point?” Pickett asked.

  Munro shook his head. “Steven had a couple masks and we put them on and went back into the room. Steven stopped a few paces in and I looked over his shoulder and saw her naked and wrinkled there on the bed. No doubt she was dead. No doubt at all. And what really bothered me was that she seemed to be about my age at the time. I was twenty-five and had two kids and death wasn’t something I thought was even possible at that point in my life.”

  “Yeah, that realization comes with time,” Sarge said.

  Munro nodded to that. “Came to me quickly that day, let me tell you.”

  “What happened next?” Pickett asked.

  “I went back into the hall and lost my lunch,” Munro said. “A moment later Steven backed out of the room, called the rest of the crew to go to the truck and then he walked me down the twenty flights to fresh air.”

  “Clearly Steven had seen dead bodies before,” Sarge said.

  “Steven worked search and rescue. He said he lost his lunch the first time as well.”

  Sarge laughed. “We all do. And trust me, it’s better you never get hardened about seeing death like that.”

  Munro nodded to that.

  “So you think that door was locked from the inside?” Pickett asked.

  “Locked or jammed stuck,” Munro said. “We opened all those other locked doors much easier now that I think about it.”

  Pickett watched as Sarge wrote that down as well.

  This thing was strange to begin with, but now it had just gotten stranger. Did that girl lock herself in that room or was she locked in there by someone else?

  Or had the door jammed by accident?

  After only a few hours of studying this case, Pickett really wanted to know that answer and get answers to what happened in that room.

  And more importantly, find out who that young girl really was.

  6

  December 4th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  It wasn’t even eleven in the morning and Sarge was already convinced that girl had been murdered. She had been locked in that room without food or water and simply died of dehydration and heat stroke.

  What a horrid way to go.

  Now he just had to figure out a way to prove that theory.

  And if someone had actually murdered the girl, who and why had they done it? Figuring that out was going to be even harder.

  He and Pickett thanked Munro and promised to tell him if they found out more about the girl, then headed for Pickett’s car.

  As they climbed in Pickett asked a simple, one word question. “Murder?”

  “Convinced,” Sarge said. “Hotel room doors don’t jam like that and also not have the master key not work. Those old master keys in hotels worked for every door, which was one of the problems with them when someone lost one.”

  “That was back in the day before the security locks on the inside,” Pickett said. “Robin and I worked a number of serial rapist cases right at the beginning of our detective careers where the rapist had gotten a copy of a master key in a couple of the older hotels.”

  “Yeah, as a patrol cop I responded on a few of those early on as well,” Sarge said, pushing the memories back down. Hotels were so much safer today than they had been back thirty years before. Of that there was no doubt.

  “So we need to get someone to talk to who worked on the shuttering of the Landmark,” Pickett said. “I’m surprised we haven’t heard from Robin on that yet.”

  Pickett grabbed her phone. A moment later she put the phone on speaker as Robin came on.

  Pickett gave Robin a quick rundown on the information from Munro about the door, then asked, “Who do we talk with about the shuttering? Got a name for us yet?”

  “Not yet,” Robin said. “Turning out to be harder than I thought. But I think I found out who our girl is.”

  Sarge was stunned. He looked at Pickett whose eyes had grown round with surprise.

  “You’re not kidding us, are you?” Pickett asked.

  “We put her DNA into the system,” Robin said, “and it came back in less than an hour with a familial match. A brother. Her name was Heather Winston and she was 19 when she vanished. I’m sending you a picture of her from high school. She disappeared in August of 1990 between her freshman and sophomore year here at UNLV.”

  “So there is a missing person’s case open for her?” Pickett asked.

  “There is,” Robin said. “The two cases should have gotten combined back in the day, but since the missing person’s case was filed in August and she wasn’t found until April the following year, it didn’t happen.”

  “All those years of not knowing and the information was right in the files,” Pickett said, shaking her head.

  Sarge felt the same way, but it was a different world just back twenty-five years ago. Now the computers would have linked the two cases quickly. Back then it would have had to be detectives linking it and chances are she was reported missing in one area of town and found in another, so the detectives working the two cases didn’t even know each other, let alone talked.

  “Her parents still alive?” Sarge asked.

  “No,” Robin said. “They died in a car wreck up by Big Bear two years after she vanished. But her brother still lives here with his wife. He has three kids, all in college. He has his own accounting firm.”

  “You want us to tell him we found his sister?” Pickett asked.

  Sarge hated that idea. But he knew that it had to be done and if Robin was sure about the identification, maybe the brother might help them figure out what happened.

  There was never any way to know how someone would react after decades of not knowing what happened to a family member. Some were stoic and others fell apart. Either way, telling the family the bad news wasn’t pleasant, but at least it gave them closure.

  “I think you should,” Pickett said. “It’s a one-hundred-percent certainty from the DNA that the girl on the bed was Heather Winston.”

  “Give us his address and his work phone,” Sarge said.

  He wrote it down and then Robin said, “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with someone to talk to about the shuttering. But you should know that Heather Winston went missing a full week after the shuttering of the Landmark was completed.”

  “She didn’t get in there ahead of time or during the process?” Sarge asked, again stunned.

  “No,” Robin said. “The shuttering was done a good week before, the doors locked, windows boarded up, and the entire place fenced in and locked up. Somehow she got it there after that process.”

  “Security service watching the place?” Pickett asked a moment before Sarge could.”

  “Already digging into that,” Robin said.

  “So we’ll go talk with the brother and report back
,” Pickett said.

  Robin hung up and Pickett glanced at Sarge. “At least we have solved one cold missing person’s case this morning.”

  Sarge laughed. “We have, but just came up with a ton more questions on the case we are working on.”

  “True,” she said as she started up the car. “Just trying to find a bright side of all this.”

  “I got a feeling with this one that there might not be many bright sides.”

  Pickett nodded. “I got the same feeling.”

  7

  December 4th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  The brother’s name was Bob Steven Winston. Pickett wasn’t sure why the two first names, but she had sure seen stranger names in her years. He had had his own accounting firm since right out of college. He was two years older than Heather and looked like he was seventy, even though Pickett knew he was only fifty-six.

  His office screamed money and just the massive decorative live plants in the huge waiting room had to cost a fortune to maintain.

  Sarge told a receptionist who they were and that they needed to speak with Mr. Winston on a private matter.

  Pickett introduced herself and Sarge when Winston came out and they both showed him their badges, then asked to talk with him privately.

  He led them into a conference room off to one side of the lobby and closed the door behind them, indicating that they should all sit at the large oak table surrounded by ornate chairs.

  Winston not only looked old, he moved like he hadn’t had a day of exercise in thirty years. He was overweight and mostly bald, but his gray three-piece suit was expensive and tailored to fit.

  “We’re here about your sister, Heather,” Pickett said.

  Winston just shook his head. “Now what has she done?”

  Pickett glanced at Sarge, then back at Winston.

  Sarge sat forward. “Did your sister, Heather Winston, go missing in August of 1990? Two years before your parents’ tragic accident?”

  Winston nodded. “She did. Had us all scared to death. But she came home about a week later and wouldn’t tell us what happened.”

  Pickett just sort of stared at Winston. Then she pulled out her phone and opened up the picture of Heather when she was in high school and turned it so Winston could see it. “Is this your sister?”

  “Sure,” Winston said, nodding. “She’s gained a bunch of weight since then. So what’s going on?”

  “We seem to have made a mistake,” Sarge said, standing before Pickett could say another word. “Our records show your sister’s missing person’s case was still open and we were just investigating. So it seems this one turned out all right.”

  Pickett and Winston both stood.

  “Yeah, wish it had been that simple,” Winston said. “After Heather came home she was never really the same. Mom and Dad were thinking of trying to get her professional help to deal with what happened during that time she was gone, but they died before they could force the issue.

  Now Pickett was feeling even more stunned. And her stomach had clamped up into a knot.

  “Sure sorry to bother you,” Sarge said.

  He nodded to Pickett and she followed his lead. Clearly he knew they needed to get out of there right now before one of them said something. They needed to find out first exactly what was going on.

  And they sure weren’t going to find it sitting here in this room; Pickett knew that without a doubt.

  “Glad you could get it cleared up,” Winston said as Pickett followed Sarge out the door.

  “So are we,” Pickett said.

  But this meeting had far from cleared up anything. It just had confused the issue even more.

  And she had no idea at all what they needed to do next.

  Not clue one.

  8

  December 4th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  Sarge didn’t say a word until they were in the car with the doors closed. He didn’t know what to say, actually. That was one thing he had never, ever expected to happen.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Pickett asked, shaking her head and staring at the steering wheel.

  “Let’s see if we heard the same thing,” Sarge said.

  “Hang on,” Pickett said. “Robin has got to hear this as well.”

  Sarge tried to calm his thoughts as Robin came on the phone and said, “That was quick. How’d he take it?”

  “Well,” Pickett said, “that’s the problem.”

  “We were just about to go over what we heard in there so we are on the same page,” Sarge said.

  “First off,” Pickett said, “when we asked him if he had a sister named Heather Winston, he said he did. And then asked us what she had done this time.”

  “What?” Robin asked.

  “It gets stranger,” Sarge said. “I asked him if his sister had gone missing in August of 1990 and he said she had, but came back a week later.”

  “A changed person,” Pickett said.

  “Serious?” Robin asked.

  “Serious,” Pickett said. “We showed him a picture of Heather from her graduation and he confirmed that was his sister.”

  “And then he told us,” Sarge said, “that his sister was so different after the missing week that his parents wanted to take her for counseling and get her help.

  “But they died before they could do it,” Pickett said.

  “Oh, shit,” Robin said softly.

  “We got out of there,” Pickett said, “telling him that the mistake was that her missing person’s case should have been closed but wasn’t.”

  “I’ve got to sit down,” Robin said.

  All three sat in silence for a moment.

  Then Robin broke the silence. “I’ll dig into the Heather Winston still living.”

  “She has to be an imposter,” Pickett said. “We’re 100% on the DNA?”

  “The body was the real Heather Winston,” Robin said. “We have to assume that DNA off the body was collected correctly.”

  Sarge nodded. He had been wondering exactly the same thing. The alive Heather was most likely an imposter.

  “Find out how much she inherited when the parents were killed,” Sarge said. “And more details about the accident that killed them.”

  “You thinking the imposter killed them in some way?” Pickett asked.

  Sarge just shrugged. That’s exactly what he was thinking. But there was no proof or evidence. But the girl had a motive if she knew the real Heather Winston was found dead in a room.

  “Something is really wacked out here,” Robin said. “No doubt at all about that. And it would sure be nice to get some of that modern Heather Wilson’s DNA to test to see who she really is.”

  “We could stake her out,” Pickett said, “see if we can get something from garbage or fast food or such?”

  “Good idea,” Robin said. “Give me five minutes to find her address and pictures, if there are any. I’ll get one of Will’s people to help me on this.”

  Robin hung up and Pickett started the car, moving it onto the road and away from the parking lot of the accounting firm.

  Sarge pulled out his notebook and started writing notes about what had happened as Pickett pulled into a grocery store parking lot, parked and turned off the engine.

  Just as she did, Robin called and gave them the address and that chances are the fake Heather was home because she worked nights at a casino on the Strip. And as best Robin could find, she lived alone.

  “So we going to talk with her?” Pickett asked as she pulled the car out of the lot and headed toward the address Robin had given them.

  “I think we have a logical chance to do just that,” he said. “We talked to her brother, just needed to confirm a few details with her before we can officially close the missing person’s case.”

  Pickett nodded. “And that would give us a better chance of getting something with her DNA on it.”

  Sarge agreed. He di
dn’t like the idea much, but he agreed.

  Ten minutes later they were walking up a gravel front sidewalk toward a small house in a very old neighborhood. The house had clearly seen better days and its white paint was peeling in a number of places. Dust seemed to coat the windows so bad they would be impossible to see out of.

  A screen door hung loosely to one side of the main wooden door.

  Sarge knocked loudly and he could hear movement from the inside.

  A moment later a large woman dressed in a ratty brown bathrobe and worn blue slippers answered the door, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

  A smell of burnt bacon came from the house mixed with the smoke smell. It was so dark behind the woman compared to the daylight that Sarge couldn’t see much inside the house at all.

  “Yeah,” she said, standing in the door.

  “Heather Winston?” Pickett said.

  “Yeah?” the woman said.

  Sarge just stared at that half-smoked cigarette as Pickett introduced the two of them and they both showed their badges. A number of cigarette butts littered the rock area beside the front door.

  “We just talked with your brother a short time ago,” Sarge said. “We are working a task force to close old missing person’s cases and it so happened yours was still open. We just needed to check in with you to close the case.”

  “That was twenty-five years ago,” she said, shaking her head.

  “We were surprised when your brother said you were alive and that the case had never been closed,” Pickett said. “So now we can get it off the books if you would help us with a couple details.”

  “Sure, what?” the woman asked.

  “We just need to see a copy of your driver’s license is all,” Pickett said.

  Sarge nodded. That might work to get them inside.

  “Sure, hang on,” the woman said.

  She took the still burning cigarette and flicked it into the rocks beside the door, then turned to get the license.

  Pickett smiled at Sarge and he smiled back. They had exactly what they needed.