Smith's Monthly #31

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  He also bought land and homes and apartments around Portland that also made him money. His grandmother’s fortune had gotten bigger even with his best efforts to drink and spend it all.

  He considered that failure his best success so far.

  And that’s why he could offer his services free to the different police agencies on really, really difficult and interesting cases. The weirder the case, the better.

  And there was seldom a day he wasn’t out on one thing or another. A lot of weird stuff happened around the Portland area.

  Donna parked the stretch limo that served as their remote office off to the side of a street next to a Mongolian restaurant. Two Tigard police cars were parked closer to the intersection in front of them and neither had their lights on. The drivers might have well been inside the restaurant for all Pilgrim could tell.

  The street was a slight hill and a wide sidewalk went down both sides. On the west side of the street he could see out over a shallow valley filled with a Home Depot and a couple other large box stores.

  He climbed out of the back of the limo as Donna climbed out of the front. She was going to have to be careful getting too close to the five lanes of traffic flashing past. Those tight brown shorts of hers left little to the imagination and would cause wrecks he was sure.

  Chief Bennett climbed out of one of the police cars on the passenger side and came back to meet Pilgrim and Donna. The day was warm, but not hot and the traffic noise wasn’t loud enough where they stood to be distracting.

  Pilgrim shook Bennett’s outstretched hand. The man was solid, about five eight, and wore a billed cap to cover his balding head. He wasn’t as tall as Pilgrim, and unlike Pilgrim who somehow managed to keep himself in shape, Bennett clearly hadn’t seen a gym in a long time. He now needed a new and bigger blue shirt before the buttons exploded off his stomach.

  “Thanks for coming,” Bennett said. “Hope I’m not wasting your time. And mine at that.”

  “Never a waste to put to rest a mystery,” Pilgrim said. “Want to tell us what’s happening?”

  “Damndest thing I have heard in a while,” Bennett said. “A guy by the name of Stephen Neilson is in the front patrol car. He ran into the middle of the street there in the crosswalk, shouting for people to call for help. He then went to help a person he saw there on the road.”

  “No one on the ground,” Pilgrim said, taking the reference from Bennett’s words. If there had actually been a person in the road, Bennett would not have said, “…a person he saw there on the road.”

  Bennett nodded. “This Neilson guy sure was convinced there was someone injured there. No one else stopped to help him, so I don’t know if others saw the body or not.”

  “Who called you?” Pilgrim asked.

  “A couple of people saying there was a man down in the street,” Bennett said, nodding. “So maybe others did see what Neilson saw.”

  “Go on,” Pilgrim said.

  “Neilson kept talking to and comforting the person he saw, shouting for people to get help. When my men showed up, Neilson was looking confused and was back on the sidewalk staring at the street. One of my men got him into the patrol car.”

  “No body in the street?” Pilgrim asked just to confirm that he was hearing this right.

  “No body,” Bennett said. “No blood or any other sign of a body either.”

  “Mental breakdown,” Donna said. “Military or something like that?”

  Bennett shook his head. “That’s what we thought as well, but Neilson is an outstanding father, husband, manager at the local Walmart. Never was in the service and has had no mental problems before that we could find. My people aren’t as good as you, but they aren’t bad.”

  Bennett said that to Donna and she nodded thanks, but said nothing.

  “So let me talk with Neilson for a minute,” Pilgrim said.

  “Be my guest,” Bennett said. “I’ll get him.”

  Bennett turned and went up to the front patrol car.

  Pilgrim turned to Donna. “Check out this Neilson guy and also if there were accidents here on this corner in the recent past. It looks like a dangerous intersection.”

  Pilgrim glanced up as four lanes of traffic sped past seemingly far too fast.

  Donna nodded and climbed into the back of the limo. She had a station there with two major computers that came up out of cabinets and surrounded her. She had to be the best at computers Pilgrim had ever seen and had no fear of finding information in any way she could. He had a hunch he knew what she was going to find this time.

  Nothing concerning Neilson.

  But she had to search for the information for them to be sure.

  Bennett came back down the sidewalk with Neilson, who kept glancing back at the street like he had seen a ghost.

  Neilson looked like an average guy, wearing tan slacks, a dress shirt, and loafers. His hair was brown and thinning and Pilgrim figured him to be about thirty.

  “Is the person you saw still there?” Pilgrim asked, not even giving Bennett a chance to introduce Neilson.

  “No,” Neilson said, shaking his head. “Vanished just as the police arrived. But the guy had seemed so real.”

  “What did the victim look like?” Pilgrim asked.

  “Senior guy, about eighty or so,” Neilson asked. “Bald. It looked as if he had been hit by a car. Blood on the guy’s blue shirt and he was twisted up. I was afraid to touch him so I just shouted for help.”

  Neilson looked down at his slacks as if seeing them for the first time. “I should be covered in the guy’s blood because it was everywhere and I was kneeling beside him. I really wanted to help the guy.”

  Pilgrim had no doubt at all about that. And he had no doubt at all that Neilson wasn’t the problem here, just a Samaritan stuck in this.

  “Please hold on for a moment,” Pilgrim said to Bennett and Neilson.

  Pilgrim then went over to the limo and opened the door. “Senior male victim, pedestrian. About eighty or so. Bald.”

  “Copy that,” Donna said as Pilgrim closed the door and turned back to Neilson.

  “Am I going insane?” Neilson asked.

  “In our own ways,” Pilgrim said, “We all are. But in this case, you are perfectly sane and tried to help what you thought was an injured man. Nothing at all insane about that.”

  Neilson nodded and managed to take a deep breath and exhale. Pilgrim could see the life coming back into the man.

  “You think you know what caused this?” Bennett asked.

  “I am pretty sure,” Pilgrim said. “But we need to wait for Donna to finish her work first.”

  “How long will that take?” Bennett asked.

  Pilgrim smiled and turned and pointed to the limo. “About now.”

  At that moment Donna opened the back door and climbed out. Her brown shorts and white blouse giving all three of them a wonderful show of fantastic beauty.

  Pilgrim noticed and smiled. He was sure that Neilson didn’t notice at all he was so rattled, and Bennett just sucked in his breath and turned to face Pilgrim.

  “Victim you were trying to help was David Luke,” Donna said. “He was hit in the crosswalk by a hit-and-run driver five months ago and died in the street before help could arrive.”

  “How is that possible?” Neilson said. “The guy didn’t look like a ghost.”

  “Not believing in ghosts either,” Bennett said, shaking his head.

  “No ghosts,” Pilgrim said. He turned to Donna. “Got a few suspects.”

  “Auto repair shop just up the hill on the other side of the street,” Donna said. “Chinese restaurant right beyond that, depending on who has the angle.”

  Pilgrim glanced at Bennett and Neilson. “How far into the street was the body?”

  “In the crosswalk,” Neilson said. “Second lane out on the east-bound side, this side.”

  Pilgrim nodded. “Chief Bennett, Mr. Neilson, would you please wait here while I take a walk to the corner and back.”


  “I’ll get you both a bottle of water,” Donna said turning to the limo as Pilgrim started up the sidewalk.

  It took him only about thirty seconds to reach the busy street. Donna was correct, the auto repair shop up the street was a logical target, but the roof wasn’t high enough for an angle over the cars in the other lanes and in the turning lane.

  If he was right, the image of the body of David Luke was projected on the street by a very powerful laser projector, something only the military might have. That would take some pretty large equipment and computer power and money. The Chinese restaurant had a phony front roofline that could easily hide large equipment behind it on the building’s flat roof.

  And that roof was high enough to have a clear sight-line to the spot where the body appeared.

  Pilgrim turned and headed back down the street. Just a little more research was needed to put the why with the how on this puzzle.

  As he approached Bennett and Donna and Neilson, Pilgrim said, “Let’s all climb into the limo and I’ll explain while Donna tries to figure out exactly who is behind this and why.”

  Donna nodded and moved over to hold the door for the three men, then climbed in last.

  Pilgrim took his normal seat in the back. He had a hidden computer station in his seat as well, but he saw no reason to bring it up at the moment. Bennett and Neilson both took the side seat, both marveling at the leather interior, mahogany woods, and the state-of-the-art computer system Donna had surrounding her behind the driver’s seat.

  Even with four people in the back of the limo, it still didn’t feel crowded at all. Pilgrim loved this moving office more than he liked his penthouse office on the top of his firm.

  “Chinese restaurant has the angle,” Pilgrim said. “Find out why? And you might want to check their power bills. I’m guessing a laser of that size pulls some real power.”

  Donna nodded.

  “Laser projection?” Bennett asked.

  “Technology has come a long ways and images can be made to look very, very real from a distance with a direct line. At night you would have been able to see the beam, but during the day, you only saw the projected image on the ground.”

  “So if I had touched the guy?” Neilson asked.

  “Your hand would have gone right through the image,” Pilgrim said. “Just like a ghost, which is my guess why someone is doing this. I’m betting David Luke’s case has not been solved, so whoever is doing this wants to haunt the intersection with his ghost.”

  “Got that in one,” Donna said. “Hit-and-run driver never found, but we might be able to solve it if you give me a few minutes to do this other thing first.”

  Bennett looked at Donna, then back at Pilgrim, shaking his head.

  “So I’m not going crazy,” Neilson said, smiling.

  “Got it,” Donna said. She turned slightly to the three men. “David Luke’s grandson is named David Luke as well. Luke junior has numbers of major degrees in physics and light refraction from more than one major school. His parents own the Chinese restaurant. His grandfather paid for all the years of college.”

  Donna turned back to the computers, her fingers moving as fast as Pilgrim had seen them move.

  Pilgrim turned to Bennett. “I don’t think this young David Luke has broken any laws, do you?”

  “Certainly could have gotten someone hurt,” Bennett said.

  “True,” Pilgrim said, “But other than having Neilson here question his sanity, nothing was harmed.

  Bennett slowly nodded. “What do you have in mind?”

  Pilgrim smiled. “I’ll get him to shut the machine down and never do it again. And maybe offer him some support and a job.”

  “He’s not going to want to stop until his grandfather’s murderer is caught,” Bennett said.

  “Don’t blame him,” Neilson said.

  Pilgrim smiled and pointed to a printer that had suddenly started spitting out paper from a hidden panel.

  Donna took the three sheets, glanced at them, and handed them to Bennett.

  “Your detective’s investigation found traces of red truck paint on the victim,” Donna said. “Eye witnesses also said it was a red Dodge pickup, fairly new.”

  “I remember that,” Bennett said. “We could never find the truck.”

  Donna smiled. “An auto repair shop in Walla Walla, Washington, fixed damage on the front of a red Dodge pickup one week after Luke senior was killed and repainted the entire truck green. The owner of the truck that was fixed in Walla Walla lives about a half mile from here and already has three DUI convictions and a revoked driver’s license.”

  “Shit, no wonder we couldn’t find the truck,” Bennett said.

  “Even better news,” Donna said, “The auto body shop has not yet thrown away the original bumper and front panel of the truck. They held it expecting insurance to come and investigate at some point. So I would imagine you can match evidence on the bumper to the senior Luke.”

  Bennett just shook his head and looked at the papers one more time, then said, “Thank you.”

  Then Bennett turned to Pilgrim. “You’ll get the kid to turn off the laser show?”

  Pilgrim smiled. “I’ll do it and tell him you have a lead on his grandfather’s killer thanks to his display.”

  Bennett turned to Neilson. “You all right?”

  “My wife’s never going to believe any of this,” Neilson said, smiling. “But just happy that man I saw in the street will get some justice now.”

  “That he will,” Bennett said, opening the door and climbing out.

  Donna shut down her computer and retracted it as Neilson also climbed out.

  Pilgrim followed Neilson and Donna got out behind him.

  “Thanks again you two,” Bennett said.

  With that he and Neilson headed back up the street toward the two cars.

  “It’s a nice day.” Donna said, smiling at Pilgrim. “Shall we walk up to the restaurant?”

  Pilgrim laughed. “Are you kidding me? That intersection is deadly. Just get me across there and to the restaurant safely and I’ll buy lunch.”

  “And explain to me over lunch what you meant by offering the kid a job?” Donna asked.

  “Just thinking I got that big empty building near the Pearl I just bought last week,” Pilgrim said. “That might be great for a research center. I will need someone with real innovation and courage of convictions to run it.”

  “To research what?” Donna asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Pilgrim said. “I just thought of the idea.”

  With that, Donna laughed, shook her head, and then turned to climb into the driver’s seat of the limo.

  Pilgrim climbed into the back and buckled up his seat belt. He loved it when he made Donna shake her head. Sometimes that was more fun than solving a case.

  Or in this instance, they had solved two cases. Even better.

  Thirty years ago in Las Vegas, Becky Penn said goodnight to her mother to go out with friends and vanished without a trace.

  Retired Detectives Bayard Lott and Julia Rogers, members of the Cold Poker Gang, take on Becky Penn’s cold case.

  They love working with other retired detectives and playing a little poker once a week, all to solve cold cases.

  A puzzle mystery unraveled carefully by the retired detectives who make up the Cold Poker Gang.

  A BAD DAY FOR THE DREAM

  A Cold Poker Gang Story

  PROLOGUE

  March 3rd, 1990

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Becky Penn tied her long brown hair back away from her face and laughed as her mom stood in their bathroom door, arms crossed over her chest, the worried look that Becky saw so much from her.

  Her mom had raised her since their father had left when Becky was three. The two of them were more like sisters at times and Becky loved that.

  Becky was dressed in a light skirt, a new blouse she had just bought, and had on sandals, since the weather was already starting to warm up.
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  Becky’s mom had already changed from her nursing scrubs into a light sweatshirt and jeans. She seldom wore shoes around the house and tonight was no exception.

  “It’s all right, mom,” Becky said, smiling as she finished up and turned from the mirror. “Paul and I are just headed to a party just off the strip. I’m going to meet him there.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” her mom said, shaking her head.

  “I know, I know,” Becky said. “You don’t like him.”

  “I’m not sure why you do,” her mom said.

  Becky laughed. Paul was a good guy who worked hard. And he was a very gentle soul. Becky liked that about him.

  Becky kissed her mother lightly on the cheek as she went past and out into the hallway toward the front door. “You worry too much.”

  “Sometimes I wish you worried more,” her mom said.

  Then both of them laughed. That exchange had happened for every date Becky had ever gone on from a freshman in high school and all the way through four years at UNLV. It made them both feel better.

  “Don’t wait up,” Becky said.

  A minute later she was in her red two-door Toyota and headed out toward the Strip.

  It was the last time anyone saw her. She just simply vanished.

  And just like so many other missing persons, after no leads came up, her case went cold.

  Thirty years cold.

  ONE

  April 10th, 2020

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Retired Detective Bayard Lott ran a hand through his short white hair and sighed. They weren’t supposed to find a body. Lott hated every time they did that. It was never the way they wanted to close missing person’s cases. But more often than not, it was exactly how they closed them.

  “Looks like we found Becky,” Retired Detective Julia Rogers said.

  Julia stood beside Lott staring down at the skeleton that was slowly emerging from the desert sand and dirt where it had been buried for almost thirty years, as far as they could tell.