Ace High

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Cinda was right. Darling Black had been a real nasty bitch. Stunning that the world didn’t know she was nothing more than a college student.

  But someone clearly must have known.

  Someone angry enough to lock Heather, aka Darling Black, in an abandoned hotel to die.

  Part IV

  Darling Black

  16

  December 5th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  Sarge and Pickett thanked Cinda for all the help, then headed for the car. Once inside, Sarge glanced at Pickett. He had noticed her react to the name Darling Black, so she clearly had a memory of the pen name.

  “So what was with the name Darling Black?” he asked.

  “As Cinda said, a real nasty bitch,” Pickett said. “Let’s wait until we are at lunch with Robin and both of us can go over what we had to deal with on that name.”

  Sarge nodded and glanced at his notebook. “I know the storage facility she mentioned. Think they might still have records from all those years ago?”

  “It’s not that far,” Pickett said, shrugging. “Might as well check since our cast of possible suspects just grew to half the city.”

  “And don’t forget the California date.”

  Pickett laughed. “Seems we are making progress, but in the wrong direction.”

  Sarge nodded. “Feels exactly that way.”

  Ten minutes later Pickett had them parked outside the main building for the S&S Storage and Save. The place was in a desperate need of paint and the wire fence looked like one good wind would knock it down. The garage doors on each unit seemed rusted and that was from what Sarge could see from the parking area.

  They headed into the small office to be greeted with a cloud of smoke and a woman behind the desk with a 1960s beehive hairdo and layers of purple makeup. She had to be in her eighties.

  She ground out her cigarette in a full plastic ashtray and said, “What can I help you folks with?”

  Her voice sounded as you would expect from a person who smoked far too many cigarettes: Low and full of gravel.

  Both Sarge and Pickett introduced themselves and showed her their badges.

  The woman only nodded and didn’t introduce herself.

  They had decided on the way over that chances are Heather had rented the unit under her own name, so Sarge said, “We’re wondering if you have records that might date back into the early 1990s.”

  “Got them into the seventies,” the woman said. “Don’t trust them tax people to not bother me, so I keep it all.”

  “We’re looking into a locker that might have been rented by a Heather Winston in 1990 or before,” Pickett said.

  “She rented it in December of 1988,” the woman said.

  “Wow, great memory,” Sarge said.

  “No memory needed,” the woman said. “I see it every month when I do the books. We needed some cash to expand, so we had a special that December for a lifetime rental and she paid the two thousand. Ten people did, but she’s the only one still here.”

  Pickett glanced at Sarge. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  Pickett recovered faster than Sarge. “Does Heather ever come around much?”

  “Nope,” the woman said. “I can tell you for a fact that she hasn’t been here in years and years. Her lock rusted off about twelve years ago and we opened up her unit. It was still full and since she was paid up, we legally couldn’t do anything, so we just closed it back up and put one of our locks on it. No one has ever come asking for the key. Got a hunch she forgot the unit was here.”

  “Can we get the number of the unit?” Sarge asked. “We’ll do some checking and see if we can get that freed up for you.”

  For the first time the woman almost smiled, which Sarge wasn’t sure wouldn’t crack her layers of thick makeup. “Appreciate that. Let me know if there is anything I can do.”

  The woman gave them the number and Picket and Sarge thanked her and headed back for their car.

  “We need a search warrant,” Pickett said as she closed the door and started up the Jeep.

  “But unless we tell someone about the real Heather being dead and the fake Heather,” Sarge said, “that is going to be damned hard to get. And I’m honestly not believing we could get this lucky.”

  “Not so sure it’s luck in this case,” Pickett said. “If this case holds true, all that stuff in there is going to do is expand our suspect list, not narrow it.”

  “If the contents are what we suspect it to be,” Sarge said.

  Everything about this case was just getting stranger and stranger. Why would a nineteen-year-old college girl rent a storage unit for life? What did she plan on keeping in there?

  And what Sarge really wanted to know was did this young girl have help with all the betting, the money, the research into all the gossip, and everything. She had also been going to college at the time of her disappearance and her grades were top line.

  “I think we need lunch,” Sarge said after they had sat there thinking for almost a minute in silence.

  Pickett nodded, grabbed her phone, and called Robin.

  “You are not going to believe what we have found,” Pickett said. “Lunch at the café?”

  Pickett nodded, then said, “See you there.”

  She clicked off her phone and got the Jeep out of the parking lot and into traffic, headed toward the Bellagio.

  Sarge just sat thinking, trying to make some sense out of all the details. And not a thing was coming together.

  17

  December 5th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  The Bellagio Café was one of Pickett’s favorite places. It not only had great food and choices, but the seating was comfortable and many of the booths were surrounded by plants, which gave a feeling of privacy to every meal even though they were in the middle of a large casino.

  Also, the casino machines and games were far enough away that the noise was muted and talking was comfortable. The café was always their choice to have lunch when they were out along the Strip.

  Pickett and Sarge had just gotten seated when Robin arrived, carrying a notebook and a folder.

  As they were waiting for the drinks, Pickett and Sarge filled Robin in on the details of the conversation with Cinda.

  “Darling Black?” Robin said, shaking her head. “Wow, that’s a name out of the past.”

  Pickett said, “Wait, there’s more.”

  She and Sarge told Robin about the storage place and how Heather’s storage unit was still there.

  “Oh, shit,” Robin said. “How the hell are we going to get into that?”

  Pickett felt the same way and Sarge just looked concerned. At this point it looked like they were going to have to turn all this over to an active detective and all three of them knew that the case would just run cold again. Active detectives just were so busy with the stuff happening right now around them, a decades-old possible murder wouldn’t get much attention at all.

  And Pickett didn’t blame them in the slightest. Detectives spent most of their days just trying to prioritize which case needed the most attention the quickest. It was always an impossible task and always too much to do. She didn’t miss the stress of that part of the job at all. Not for a second.

  “Think maybe we can talk with Andor?” Sarge said. “Get him to talk with the chief, let us get into that unit to see if there really is a case worth an active detective’s time.”

  Pickett looked at Robin, who seemed to be frowning. Pickett knew that meant she had no better idea.

  But then Pickett realized they might have another way. “Cavanaugh.”

  Sarge frowned, but Robin nodded.

  “Detective Tony Cavanaugh,” Pickett said to Sarge. “An old friend, still active but about to retire. Wants to join the Gang when he does.”

  “And he owes me and Will a favor,” Robin said, smiling. “I’ll set up a time to meet him after lunch, see what he can do. Somet
hing as simple as a search warrant for a storage unit I think might be possible. Good idea.”

  “So what’s in the folder?” Pickett said.

  “Photos of the doorframe in the Landmark,” Robin said, pulling out the folder from beside her on the booth and opening it up for Pickett and Sarge to both see.

  Robin pointed to an area near the top and bottom of the frame. And the destroyed insides of the lock. “Door was nailed closed after the lock was disabled.”

  “Murder,” Sarge said, nodding.

  “Might have only been with the intent to hold her for a few days, but then it turned into Heather dying,” Pickett said. “Manslaughter or murder, either way trapping her was intended.”

  At that moment the waitress came with their drinks and to take their lunch order. Then after she left, Robin and Pickett explained to Sarge why they knew the name Darling Black and how they had been assigned to investigate some threats against her.

  “I’ll pull up the old file on the stuff we did,” Robin said.

  “Won’t be worth much,” Pickett said. “Newspaper stonewalled us and then when the columns stopped the entire thing seemed to just vanish.”

  Sarge nodded. “So I keep coming back to the place where a young college student couldn’t have been a bookie and a rising columnist and a student without help from someone.”

  “And someone was behind nailing that door closed and then helping the fake Heather take over Heather’s life,” Pickett said.

  “And maybe kill the parents as well,” Robin said.

  “None of this is still fitting together,” Sarge said.

  Pickett couldn’t agree more. But she had a hunch that whatever was in that storage unit might get them going in the right direction. They were almost at a dead end without it.

  If they could just get the search warrant without losing the case. That was one of the really major drawbacks about being in the Cold Case Gang task force. They had no standing to go and get search warrants.

  And honestly, so far, in all the cold cases she and Robin had worked, they hadn’t needed one.

  But this time they did. They simply had no choice.

  18

  December 5th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  * * *

  Sarge watched as Pickett was clearly excited to see Cavanaugh again when he met them in the parking lot area of the storage facility at a little after four in the afternoon. His head was bald, his sports coat hung loose on his shoulders, and his face looked thin, maybe a little too thin.

  But his broad smile and green eyes made Pickett smile as she gave him a hug. Robin gave him a hug as well and then Pickett introduced him to Sarge.

  Cavanaugh’s grip was firm and his smile real. “Heard a lot about you over the years,” Cavanaugh said. “And I’m really impressed you could convince Pickett here to leave her matron ways in the past.”

  “I doubt I had anything to do with that,” Sarge said, laughing.

  “Matron ways?” Pickett asked, pretending to frown at Cavanaugh.

  “Yeah, you know, like your virginity,” Cavanaugh said, “Hard to get rid of but you never miss it once you do.”

  Sarge laughed and Robin sounded like she was going to hurt herself she was laughing so hard.

  Pickett just laughed and then gave Cavanaugh another hug. “Damn it’s wonderful to see you again. When you officially joining the gang?”

  “Six months from now,” Cavanaugh said. “You want to know how many days and minutes exactly? I cross them off my calendar in my office every day.”

  Again Sarge just laughed. Cavanaugh seemed like a great guy and clearly Robin and Pickett loved him.

  Cavanaugh reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “We have permission to search, photograph, inventory, and even remove some things.”

  “Wow, what did you give the judge for that?” Robin asked.

  “Just mentioned this might get some answers on whatever happened to Darling Black and he gave me the whole nine yards,” Cavanaugh said. “I hadn’t thought of that name for decades until you told me what you guys were doing.”

  Sarge just shook his head. Had he been the only person in Las Vegas to not know that name?

  Cavanaugh and Robin went into the small office and a few minutes later the woman with the tall, beehive hair came out with them. She had a lit cigarette in her hand and walked all four of them down the worn concrete to a second building and pointed to a unit and handed Cavanaugh the key.

  It took only a moment for Cavanaugh to get the lock off, but both he and Sarge had to slowly work the rusted old garage door up.

  Sarge and Pickett had brought a couple of LED lanterns in hopes they would get the search warrant and also a number of file storage boxes.

  About a foot inside the door was a dusty curtain strung from one side of the ten-foot wide unit to the other.

  Sarge had the others stay outside and he carefully pulled the curtain aside, sliding it along the cord holding it up, trying not to stir up any more dust than he had to.

  Then he stepped back out into the sunlight to let the dust settle that he had disturbed.

  With the light of the day shining in, the unit looked like it might have even more than they had hoped. A wooden desk sat against the right wall with a desk lamp in one corner. Some papers were piled to one side and an old computer filled the middle of the desk with a massive printer on the other side.

  Everything had a thick layer of dust on it.

  “Wow, that setup cost some money in its day,” Cavanaugh said, pointing at the computer and printer.

  Sarge had been thinking the same thing. Just the printer alone had to have cost over three grand in 1990 money. No telling how much the computer had cost.

  Along the back wall were a row of six four-drawer file cabinets and two lamps on top of the cabinets. Some papers were stacked neatly on top of the cabinets.

  In the back left corner was a fairly large combination safe.

  “What was she doing in here?” Pickett asked.

  “Let me take some pictures before we even look,” Robin said.

  Sarge watched as Robin made sure she didn’t miss an angle on any of the stuff in the room.

  “You guys don’t mind,” Cavanaugh said, “I’m going to leave the deeper exploring in the dust to you. I got another appointment to make before dinner. Send me the pictures and inventory for my official file. And keep me up on what you find, would you. This is all damn weird.”

  Both Pickett and Robin hugged him and thanked him before Cavanaugh nodded to Sarge and headed back for his car.

  “Nice guy,” Sarge said.

  “One of the best,” Robin said. “His wife Steph was a dream as well, but she lost a long fight with cancer a few years back. He’s going to make a great addition to the gang. Andor said we were going to have a special welcome night for him when he finally retired officially.”

  Sarge had a gut sense they were right about Cavanaugh being a good member of the gang. Somehow he had managed to get this search warrant and then felt comfortable leaving it to them.

  “So how do we start?” Pickett asked.

  “We open every file drawer and I get a picture first,” Robin said. “And then every desk drawer and the same thing. Carefully and by the numbers we all used to follow.”

  “Pain-in-the-ass numbers,” Pickett said.

  “My suggestion after that,” Sarge said, “is we take fingerprints. We need to know exactly, besides the testimony of the landlord, who was in this place.”

  “How many people were in here,” Pickett said, nodding.

  They all put on evidence gloves and Sarge was about to open a top drawer on the left near the safe and Pickett was moving to the cabinet on the right when he noticed a small wire leading from the drawer.

  “Don’t touch anything!” he shouted. “Back out carefully a safe distance.”

  Pickett and Robin did exactly as he told them to do.

  He carefully, witho
ut touching anything, traced the wire along the top edge of the cabinet and then down the side to where it disappeared behind the cabinet.

  The cabinet was either wired to explode if opened wrong or if opened wrong would set off some sort of alarm somewhere. Either way, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  He moved along the cabinets slowly, looking at each one. From what he could tell, every file cabinet was wired the same way.

  And so was the large desk drawer.

  He got down on his knees and visually traced the wire from the desk to a switch hidden on the wall behind the desk.

  The wires from the cabinets all seemed to come into that same switch.

  And above the switch, secured to the wall, were enough explosives to not only destroy everything in this unit, but the entire row of units.

  He could hear his blood pounding in his ears and he didn’t want to dare breathe.

  Those were old explosives.

  And when explosives got old, they often got touchy. It was lucky the thing hadn’t gone off when he and Cavanaugh had worked that door open.

  Sarge slowly climbed to his feet, not touching anything, being very careful to not lose his balance.

  His heart was threatening to pound out of his chest by the time he slowly backed out of the storage unit and turned to join Pickett and Robin who were standing in the middle of the drive looking very worried.

  “Everything is wired to explode if opened without deactivating a switch under the desk,” he said, indicating that they should all move farther away from the unit. “Enough to level the entire row of units.”

  “Oh, shit,” Pickett said.

  “Too damned close,” Robin said, shaking her head.

  Pickett hugged Sarge as they moved away and he hugged her back.

  Robin took a deep breath after they had stood for a moment staring at the open storage unit. “I’ll call Cavanaugh, have him get the bomb squad out here and get back here himself since this is his warrant.”