A Phoenix outfit that seemed to go out of its way not to get along with the Predators, the Spokes had infringed a little more on the Predators’ turf all week, at every turn.
Tensions were running high.
The Predators were staying at the Four Kings, technically, but not really—their rooms were strictly for partying; the gang kept its HQ at a campground on the south edge of town.
The Spokes, meanwhile, had taken up residence at the Gold Vault, the casino motel directly across the street from the Four Kings. A certain antagonism between the two casinos underscored the rivalry between the motorcycle crews.
Fistfights and worse had been going on all week. Around the casino, rumor had it that the Rusty Spokes planned to force a showdown with the Predators and had designated Boot Hill to host the action.
While Vanessa would have liked to dismiss the rumor as paranoid b.s., she knew it made a sick sort of sense. After all, Phoenix had too big a police force to risk a showdown, and the Predators seemed to have no fixed home, bouncing between dozens of small towns in California, Nevada, and Arizona. Both groups knew that Police Chief Jorge Lopez had only a small force in Boot Hill, and that the nearest Highway Patrol substations in Jean (to the northwest) and Laughlin (to the southeast) were both over thirty miles away.
The only real police force of any size was the Las Vegas Police Department, the nation’s ninth largest…but that, as Vanessa knew only too well, was a world away, fifty miles from Boot Hill.
Two nights ago (and this was no rumor) Chief Lopez and three of his officers had broken up what appeared about to turn into a nasty knife fight between the two factions (her coworker Laura had said, “It’s a real powder keg, I tell ya, Vannie…and it’s lit!”).
She’d talked to Cody about it just before her shift started.
“Should be cool,” the older man said. “Jorge put the fear of God in ’em. Past twenty-four hours, Spokes and Predators been avoidin’ each other like the plague.”
“Really?”
Cody nodded. “Tomorrow, Blowout’s over, and these fellas’ll be on the road back home. Like the song says, ‘head out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure.’”
And, across the room, Cody was giving Vanessa a reassuring smile. She gave him a little nod, then turned her attention to the Predators at the table.
The first one on the left, long brown hair swept straight back, wore worn jeans, a white T-shirt under an Army shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and that same smart-ass smirk that Vanessa had seen on a hundred bullies. Though thinner and younger, he reminded her of that weird-hair guy from The Sopranos, the one in Springsteen’s band.
On his left sat the head Predator, Nick Valpo. Nearly fifty, the shirtless Valpo sported a black cotton vest, his skin frog-belly white, belying how much time he spent on his hog tearing across the desert. Two tattoos nestled in the hairy thatch on his chest—over the right breast, a dagger pierced a heart, blood drops trailing down his torso (allegedly one for every man he had killed), and center-chest a caricature of himself with the words “Ride Or Die” emblazoned beneath it peered from between dark curls.
Like his underling, Valpo wore his hair combed straight back, which emphasized his widow’s peak, showing shiny skull where some balding betrayed his age. A black goatee, three or four inches long, looked like an odd sponge hanging from the leader’s chin—a clownish effect that was nonetheless intimidating, perhaps due to Valpo’s seemingly black, burning eyes.
To Vanessa, the Predator leader looked like Charles Manson on crank; on the other hand, during the several times he’d sat at her table this week, he’d been nice, even sweet to her, and not in a coming-on-to-her way.
Next to Valpo, his chief lieutenant, Jake Hanson, provided a contrast to his buddies, his jeans relatively new, white T-shirt cleaner, and an unbuttoned blue-and-white short-sleeved shirt, not a ratty vest. Hanson had soft blue eyes that reminded Vanessa of a mountain stream. The others were definitely bikers, but Jake Hanson might have been a rock star.
The final Predator of the quartet wore his dark greasy hair parted crookedly near the middle and had a skinny black beard and mustache, possibly intended to make him look older, though the effect was the opposite. He might have been a high school thespian who’d glued on a beard for a role. Vanessa probably should have carded the kid, but why push it with this bunch? Like Cody said, tomorrow they’d be going, going, gone.
“What’re you waitin’ for?” the bearded kid asked irritably. “Deal, bitch!”
Valpo shook his head, eyes narrowed, and gave her a warm, apologetic smile. “Vanessa, he’s young. Be patient with his young ass…. Dicky, shut the hell up and treat her like the lady she so obviously is.”
Vanessa nodded her nervous thanks to Valpo and dealt. The first guy busted and Valpo got a blackjack.
“Surprise, surprise,” Dicky said from the far end.
Holding his breath for a long moment, Valpo seemed to be concentrating on something somewhere in the distance; then his eyes found Dicky’s and held them, snake and mouse.
“Dicky, I swear to Christ, if you don’t shut it, I’m gonna take you outside and beat the ever-livin’ piss out of you myself till your manners improve.”
“Ah, come on, dude—”
“Dude. I don’t care if your mom’s my cousin or not. Be nice to the dealer. Try to remember you’re indoors.”
Hanson held on nineteen and Dicky managed to start out with nine and still find a way to bust.
“Daaaamn!” Dicky yelped.
Vanessa turned over an eighteen. “Paying a blackjack and a winner.” Her eyes caught the blue-eyed Hanson’s, and when she passed over his winnings their hands brushed for an instant.
God, he is cute, she thought. Who does he remind me of?
“I can’t believe this crap,” Dicky groused. “Is there any other kinda luck but bad luck in this town?”
Valpo shot him a glare and Dicky went silent. “Here’s a thought, sunshine—don’t hit on seventeen and maybe you won’t lose every damn time.”
“You think I don’t know how to play cards?” Dicky challenged. “I know how to play cards.”
Laughing, Valpo said, “I know you can’t play cards. You can barely play with yourself…Dicky bird.”
Dicky reddened, but Hanson and the other guy joined Valpo’s laughter and nothing was left but for Dicky to take it: he was the kid, Valpo the man.
Vanessa was working not to join in the laughter when she looked toward the front door and beheld an unsettling sight.
Twenty or so Rusty Spokes were rolling into the casino like a bad wind.
That put a chill up Vanessa’s spine, and her eyes immediately darted around looking for Cody, for any security guy….
She caught Cody, already moving toward the door. But as she turned to see what the Spokes were going to do, guns—as if from nowhere—seemed to appear in all of the intruders’ hands. Revolvers, shotguns, rifles…was that a machine gun? Jesus!
The first shot was fired before Vanessa could utter a sound.
Her mind managed to form the thought, What about the damn metal detectors?
But that was as far as she got before Jake Hanson leapt over the table and swept her into his arms. They rolled to the floor and Vanessa looked up just as bullets from the machine gun ripped into her table, tossing splinters like a dealer flipping cards.
Instinctively, she turned her head away and found herself staring into the blue eyes of Jake Hanson, who still held her. His face seemed peaceful even as hell exploded around them.
Mouth to her ear, as if kissing it, he yelled, “Are you okay?”
That’s what it took for her to hear the words over the din of the gunfire.
She nodded. He released her from his grip, and the fear hit her harder—she had felt safe, somehow, cocooned in his arms. He flashed a smile, winked, rolled away, rose to a crouch, and moved off.
The smell of shooting filled the air, making her choke. Gun smoke and stirred dust and wo
od fragments clouded the room and, cowering behind and flush against the bullet-riddled blackjack table, Vanessa felt like this might go on forever—already it seemed like forever since she had turned to see the Rusty Spokes entering the casino and those guns materializing and yet still the guns clattered, some of the Predators now returning fire.
How in God’s name had this many guns made it past the metal detectors?
Around her, other patrons, the ones on the floor in fear, those not part of either gang, still had the wherewithal to gather up chips spilled around them by the battle. Nothing could kill greed.
Or anyway, nothing as inconsequential as a firefight in the middle of a casino.
She did not avert her eyes, much as she wanted to—she was not ready to shut the world out and just wait and hope and pray she would open her eyes without a bullet finding her first. The violence, the carnage, the destruction had the same hypnotic effect as being in a car crash and having the world go into slow motion. The heavyset guy in the Boot Hill T-shirt took a bullet in the chest and scarlet showered from the ripped logo as he keeled over backward, smacking his head on the corner of a slot machine as he went, which made Vanessa wince even though she knew the man might be dead before his head came anywhere near the machine….
To her right came an explosive sound—a grenade?—and her eyes shot in that direction of their own volition. On the floor, in an aisle, a man twitched and danced, blood spurting from a hole in his right pants leg where his limb had been severed by the blast—shotgun, not grenade. He was screaming, but she could not hear him, or anyway discern distinctly the screaming out of the overall din. But she could tell he was bleeding to death, and she averted her eyes, finally taking control of them.
She could feel the wet warmth of tears on her cheeks and wondered, as if from a distance, why she was crying when she was not among the injured, one of the lucky ones in this unlucky casino.
Farther to her right, Jake Hanson was ducking behind a craps table, jamming a fresh clip into a huge black pistol. He then rose and fired several rounds in the direction of the Spokes and ducked down again.
To her left, maybe twenty feet away, the Predators’ leader knelt behind a video poker machine. Every few seconds, he would peek out, squeeze off a couple shots, then dodge back behind the machine. When he turned toward her, he saw her watching him and flashed her a grin as if he was having a great time.
The insanity in that smile gave Vanessa an urge to jump up and run screaming from the room; but survival instinct overrode that. She kept her head down and did not move. As for Valpo, he still had that maniacal grin pasted on, though his wide eyes spoke of hysteria and fear.
Valpo leaned out from behind his cover, raised his pistol, and a crimson flower bloomed in his right shoulder, the gun springing from his grasp and bouncing out of reach under a table across an aisle where bullets zinged and pinged.
As Valpo fell sideways, back behind the poker machine, Vanessa finally picked out a sound other than general gunfire—sirens.
Whether they were near or far she could not tell, but help was clearly coming, the wailing getting louder by the second.
As if wanting to strike back before the local law arrived to stop their fun, Valpo scrabbled after the pistol, shots chewing up the carpeting and shaking machines till their coins rattled, bullets all around him as he dove for the weapon.
Just as Valpo got to the pistol, a ghostly figure moved through the smoke and dust and running people and came up behind the Predator leader, aiming a handgun at the back of the man’s head….
Vanessa saw the flash from the barrel more than she actually heard the sound.
She jumped, a full-body twitch, just as Valpo’s body did much the same, the pistol dropping from his dead hand.
Vanessa felt herself screaming, but could not hear it. The shooter now turned to face her, lowered the gun toward her. The scream died in her throat and she followed the line of the gun barrel to the madman’s eyes burning through her.
Her mouth dry now, she struggled to cry out, but no sound would come.
Vanessa suddenly felt that distanced, slow-motion sensation again. Almost serene, she prayed in the church of her mind that someone would take care of her daughter.
She knew she would not live through the next minute, let alone her shift. The house always wins, they say, but this time a dealer could lose.
Then, just as suddenly, the killer lowered the pistol and gave Vanessa a smile so gentle and sad that she knew she’d been reprieved, she knew she would see Cyndi again, after all.
“I’ll never tell,” she said, and averted her gaze, but guns were still firing, and no one heard her, not even herself.
Something slammed into her.
The breath left Vanessa’s body and she felt herself toppling to one side—it was as if she’d been struck a blow.
But she had, indeed, been shot.
Her eyes went back to the killer, who turned away now, not meeting her wide-eyed amazement at his having reneged on the reprieve, shooting her after all, and she tried to inhale, but a rope must have been constricting her neck. The more she struggled, the less oxygen she seemed able to gulp down. Her side ached like she had a really bad bruise, but beyond that, all through her body, flowed a red hotness like swallowing a whiskey shot too fast…only the burning ran horizontally through her and warmed much more intensely.
Each breath was a greater struggle now.
Surprisingly, no real pain—the broken leg she got when she fell off a garage roof at twelve hurt a lot worse than this, way worse. Okay, she’d been shot, but wasn’t sure it was so bad. You can recover from gunshot wounds—her ex-boyfriend had. Her baby’s father. Her baby…
If only she could breathe. She was sure that would help. Somebody must have hit the air conditioner with a stray bullet, because it seemed to be running full tilt now, getting colder by the second. For a moment she caught the killer walking away and wondered if she’d have kept her promise, if it had been heard, if she’d been allowed to live.
Oh hell, she thought, I hope it’s not Mom who raises Cyndi, and then even the coldness was gone.
2
Friday, April 1, 2005, 4:28 P.M.
CATHERINE WILLOWS WOULD HAVE RATHER kept a dental appointment than go to this meeting.
Maybe that’s why she was cutting it so close—the 4:30 was at the other end of CSI headquarters, and she’d have to hustle to make it. She jogged up the hallway, her red hair trailing behind her trim dancer’s frame.
Assistant Lab Director Conrad Ecklie, her boss, was a stickler about punctuality, beyond which this was not just any appointment: Ecklie, Sheriff Burdick, and graveyard-shift supervisor Gil Grissom were having a rare staff meeting to discuss inter-shift cooperation.
Everyone even remotely associated with the Vegas Crime Lab knew of the animosity between Ecklie and Grissom—which was remarkable in and of itself, because rarely had either man spoken a cross word to the other. Professionalism was something both men valued, as was public decorum, though Catherine considered the two to share the social skills of a dill pickle.
And, of course, she had worked the night shift herself for several years and had been Grissom’s right hand until her promotion to supervisor of swing.
So she had a history with and loyalty for Gil; but Ecklie was the one who’d promoted her and for whom she worked on a daily basis—so those ties weighed on her, as well. She was not anxious to become the net in a tennis match between two strong-willed, passive-aggressive men.
And it wasn’t like she didn’t have anything else to do! Her shift was already shorthanded, due to Warrick taking a vacation day, plus two investigators with court dates and another investigator calling in sick. Basically, she had Nick Stokes, Sofia Curtis (borrowed from Grissom’s shift), and herself. Oh yes, and a great big city called Las Vegas cooking up all sorts of crimes to solve….
As she approached the glass-enclosed conference room, Catherine could see the others already inside.
Allowing herself one deep breath, Catherine slipped into the conference room.
Ecklie glanced at his watch and then at her, but to his credit said nothing. A manila folder lay on the table in front of him like a restaurant place mat. She did not dislike this man, though in her night-shift “days” he had been the object of much coworker griping; now her personal experience indicated Ecklie to be fair and smart.
But his blind spot was Grissom, much as Grissom’s was Ecklie—a classic crime-lab case of bureaucrat versus scientist. If she had a dollar for every conflict like this in every crime lab in the nation, she could retire tomorrow….
Sheriff Burdick, his own suit almost as perfect as Ecklie’s, gave Catherine a polite smile as she sat. Thinning brown hair clipped short, the sheriff had a quietly rugged way about him, with a certain gentleness in his calm brown eyes that drew voters’ confidence, especially (the pollsters said) the female voters.
Catherine had long since proved immune to those eyes, but she respected this man, who backed the crime lab all the way. He seemed less prone to the politics of his recent predecessors.
Across from her, Grissom looked haggard—tiredness was a given for CSIs, and for a driven workaholic like Gil, a constant. But this was different. His hair, especially his beard, seemed grayer than she remembered, and his eyes looked puffy, like he hadn’t been getting his usual, already limited hours of sleep.
Despite this, a tiny, barely perceptible smile lurked on his lips. Dressed in his customary black shirt and slacks, Gil Grissom, weary or not, somehow seemed in better spirits than either of the other men.
“Catherine,” he said as she pulled her chair up. “Thanks for joining us.”
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