Stephanie Caffrey - Raven McShane 01 - Diva Las Vegas

by Stephanie Caffrey

  After a few seconds the car’s engine revved loudly and the headlights swung around to the left as the car backed up and turned around. Was he leaving, or was he just positioning the car for an easy getaway? Carlos looked at me and shrugged. We waited another minute, listening for the telltale sound of a car door closing, but that sound never came.

  From our vantage point we could see the inside of the lobby doors but not anything outside, and the panel of floor-to-ceiling windows next to the glass doors ensured we’d be spotted if we tried to peek. We stayed put.

  “Sounds like he left,” Carlos said.

  “Hold on.” I secretly hoped Carlos was right.

  Carlos nudged me. The left-hand lobby door had swung outward silently, in slow motion. A man’s leg stepped tentatively across the threshold. Carlos and I both instinctively crouched even lower in the shadows. The man closed the door without making a noise. For a split second I worried he would look to his right and see us, but he stood there looking straight ahead. He seemed to have zeroed-in on the building directory on the other side of the lobby, just as Carlos had predicted. As he moved into the center of the dimly lit lobby, I finally recognized the tall bulky figure with white hair.

  Carlos looked at me.

  Holman, I mouthed.

  He nodded. I think we were both relieved that Holman was alone.

  As we’d hoped, Eddie Holman had his back towards us as he studied the directory in search of my office, and Carlos wasted no time in creeping towards him silently. I followed behind, but kept my distance. Holman was wearing an untucked black polo shirt and jeans, but I was more interested in the gun he wore in an open holster under his right arm.

  Holman was searching to find my name on the building directory. It took him ten or fifteen seconds to realize I wasn’t on the directory, and he let out a curse of frustration under his breath. That was Carlos’s green light. Before Holman knew what hit him, Carlos sprang on his back and laced his arms underneath Holman’s, holding him in a kind of three-quarter nelson grip. Holman began swearing and flailing around wildly, trying to throw Carlos off.

  I took my cue and tried to center a punch right at Holman’s nose, but he spun away, and I caught him full in his right ear. I hadn’t punched anyone since sixth grade, but it was enough to stun him. He stopped spinning long enough for me to grab his gun away from him while Carlos had him immobilized. I punched him full in the face again for good measure.

  “What the fuck?” he sputtered. He hadn’t recognized me yet.

  “Shut up,” I said. I tucked the gun into my waistband, hoping I didn’t look too ridiculous. Carlos jumped off Holman’s back and shoved him against the wall. While Holman staggered to stand up, Carlos drew his Glock and pointed it at Holman’s head, which was now spattered with his own blood.

  His body heaved as he tried to catch his breath. “Fuck you,” he hissed.

  “Real original. I suppose you’re here to kill me the same way you killed George Hannity.”

  “I never killed anybody,” he spit.

  “Right. So why show up here in the middle of the night with a loaded handgun?” I asked. Carlos cocked his Glock suggestively, and I hoped the sound of ready steel would get Holman in a more talkative mood.

  “None of your business,” he grunted. “Who’s your gangster boyfriend here?” He sneered at Carlos. A Mona Lisa smile appeared on Carlos’ face. He cocked his head to one side and suddenly pulled the trigger. The unexpected explosion of brick and lead was deafening, and shards of crushed brick flew in every direction. When the dust settled, a crater in the wall appeared about a foot from Holman’s left ear. Holman looked at me beseechingly, as though I would protect him.

  “My boyfriend here is an illegal with nothing to lose,” I lied. “He can be very violent, unfortunately,” I said with mock sadness. “Now why don’t you tell us how you murdered George Hannity?” That was the cue for Cody to begin recording with his cell phone.

  A thin mist of brick dust cast a haze throughout the lobby, and the pungent smell of fresh gunpowder wafted through the air. Holman lifted his mangled face up again. “I told you, I never killed anybody. Just let me go, and I swear I will leave you alone forever.”

  Carlos and I shared a brief chuckle at that suggestion, at which point Carlos pointed the gun directly at Holman’s head. I had hoped that the combination of a physical assault and a loaded gun would get Holman to talk, but that didn’t seem to be working. At this point I wasn’t sure what the next step was. It was tempting, but I wasn’t going to let Carlos shoot Holman’s face off.

  It turned out the next step wasn’t up to me. As Carlos re-cocked his gun, the throaty rumble of a truck engine began roaring towards us from the front of the building. Before I could react, a high-pitched crash pierced the air and the lobby became a cyclone of flying broken glass. Instinctively, I covered my head and bolted out of the way of the massive white SUV that had plowed through the front doors and was now barreling right at us. In the confusion, Holman managed to knock the gun out of Carlos’ hand. Carlos recovered quickly, and the two men began wrestling on the floor for the gun before Carlos kicked it into a corner, where it got lost in all the glass and rubble.

  In my tumble I must have cracked a rib, and I stood up slowly and half-dazed from the corner of the lobby. I began reaching for the gun in my waistband when a figure emerged from in front of Holman’s white Escalade.

  “Don’t even think about it,” the voice shrieked at me. It was Amy Masterson, and she was pointing a gun directly at my head.

  I was stunned, frozen. The Escalade was still running, its halogen headlights piercing icy bright beams through the dusty air. My first thought was that Amy looked like a crazed wreck—either drunk, on drugs, or both. Her nipples were showing through a thin white camisole, and her gray shorts were way too short. Her pajamas, probably. The gun she was pointing at me seemed wholly out of place.

  Apparently the sight of Amy wildly brandishing a gun had created a temporary truce between Carlos and Holman, and Carlos shot me a quizzical look as he eased away from Holman.

  Amy kept one eye on me and turned slightly to face Holman. “Can’t you do anything right?” She shrieked. She was beyond pissed.

  “Amy,” I said softly, trying to keep her calm. My mind raced, trying to find some explanation for the incongruous scene I was now a part of. Amy continued to point the gun directly at me, but she didn’t say anything. It was obvious she hadn’t planned what to do next. I decided my only hope was to seize the initiative.

  “You got greedy,” I found myself saying. Things were finally falling into place. She remained silent, just gaping at me, her eyes wide and jaw set. She clung tightly to the gun with both hands, and licked her lips nervously. She kept the gun aimed directly at the bridge of my nose.

  “You could have just bumped off your brother George and gotten the whole casino for yourself. Nothing novel about that—they did that kind of thing back in biblical times.” I was struggling to keep my voice calm. I was stalling for time, and I hoped that my monologue might keep her distracted. “But you decided that wasn’t enough. Once you learned your husband wasn’t really interested in you, you wanted to get rid of him, too. The problem was that you were stuck with him—he’d clean you out if you divorced him.” I hoped Cody wouldn’t stand up and protest. If Amy suddenly saw him, there was no telling what she’d do with that gun.

  Her eyes narrowed a bit, and she shifted her weight from leg to leg. It seemed she was comprehending what I was saying, but her body began trembling slightly and her arms began weakening under the gun’s weight. No one moved. I kept talking.

  “But you couldn’t just get rid of Cody, could you? Another dead body would look a little suspicious, so another murder was out of the question. But once it was clear no one suspected you of George’s murder, you decided to frame Cody for the murder you committed and have Cody sent off to prison for life. That way you could divorce him, reap the benefits of your crime, and Cody wouldn’t g
et a dime.”

  “You can’t prove any of that,” she hissed. Her face still looked defiant.

  “You did it perfectly,” I continued, working it out on the fly. “I have to compliment you. By testifying for Cody—even though it was a weak alibi—you made him dependent on you. Until this moment I couldn’t figure out why you would stay married to each other, but that was the key. You were bound together by that lie. He couldn’t divorce you and get your money because you could always retract your alibi testimony.”

  She continued sneering at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “No, actually it’s very simple. As long as you remained married to Cody, you could prevent him from testifying against you in court. It’s called the marital privilege.” I pulled that one out of my ass. “If the cops ever got around to pointing the finger at you for the crime, the only way to keep Cody off the stand was to stay married to him.”

  “Shit,” Carlos muttered under his breath. Tears began running down Amy’s face.

  “Stop!” she yelled at me. Her big mouth was twisted into a sickening snarl.

  “You probably never dreamed the jury would let him off, did you?” I pressed. She looked pathetic, but she hadn’t quite admitted anything yet. I wanted her to say more while Carlos and Cody were listening. I hoped Cody’s cell phone was recording everything. “It was easy for you to testify when it looked like he was guilty, but by then you hated Cody so much that you forgot the effect his face could have on people.” It didn’t hurt that Cody bribed one of the jurors, but I kept that little tidbit to myself.

  “You bitch!” she screamed finally. Wait, I was the bitch? She inhaled audibly. Her whole body was shaking, and I was worried I’d gone too far to set her off.

  Her eyes had been locked in on me, but suddenly she seemed distracted by something above my head. I turned to see Cody looking down at us from the second floor. He looked like some kind of angel, outlined in a halo of the reflected glow of the Escalade’s headlamps.

  Amy turned the gun on Cody, and for an instant I felt a pang of relief. Amy’s face showed a kind of baffled rage. “You’re supposed to be dead,” she said matter-of-factly. It was the first thing she’d said that could be incriminating. I guessed she’d told Holman to ram Cody’s car earlier. Or she’d done it herself.

  Cody seemed unsure of what to say, but he looked as angry as she was.

  “You killed your own brother?” he asked finally. He slurred his words, probably an effect of the codeine. “You were going to let me rot in prison just so you could have the whole casino to yourself?”

  She sneered. “Actually,” she said with unsettling calmness, “I was hoping you’d get the death penalty.” With that she fired off a round at Cody, and the blast threw him back against the wall. His scream echoed through the lobby long after the sharp report from the gun stopped ringing.

  I shouldn’t have been shocked by the gunshot, but I was. As Amy turned the gun back to me my mind searched for any means of escape. I saw Carlos inching closer along the wall, but she saw him too and waved him off. He froze. I began slowly walking backwards as she took aim at me, and the last thing I remembered before the shot rang out was a strange crunching sound coming from my left.

  My ears rang from the gunshot, which seemed louder than the last. A moment passed before I knew I was still alive. I felt myself for blood, and I felt a mixture of relief and confusion sweep over me as I realized I was okay. Amy was on the floor, somehow, rocking back and forth. Blood poured sickeningly from the stump where her right arm used to be.

  “Nobody move!” boomed a voice on my left. It was Lieutenant Sean Whelan. If I hadn’t phoned him earlier, I might not have recognized him. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been plastered and probably at the tail end of a three-day bender. Now he had an all-business expression, and he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

  Whelan nodded at me gruffly and pointed his weapon at Carlos.

  “He’s okay,” I said. “The other guy is trouble,” I said, pointing at Holman. “There’s another guy upstairs. He’s been shot. Can you call in an ambulance?”

  “You do it,” Whelan said. “Just dial 911.”

  I did. They said it would be five to ten minutes.

  Whelan moved towards the crumpled figure of Amy Masterson and picked her handgun off the floor, the whole time keeping his gun pointed at Holman. Holman instinctively held his hands in the air, and he eased himself backwards to lean against the wall. I discreetly felt the front of my shorts to see if my bladder had emptied. Somehow, I was dry.

  “What the hell is that thing?” I asked, nodding at Whelan’s gun.

  “Shotgun,” he said, reporting the obvious. “Beretta M4, if you’re keeping score. When I saw the Escalade had driven right through the front doors, I figured I better not come in here with a pop gun.”

  Whelan looked Amy over and nudged her onto her back with his right foot. It might have otherwise been a crass gesture, but Whelan had to keep one eye on Holman. Amy’s right arm now ended just below her elbow, and there was no sign anywhere of the remains of her hand and wrist. She seemed to be going into shock, and I wondered if the ambulance would have room for both her and Cody. That would be a scene.

  “She’ll survive, but she’ll have to become left-handed,” Whelan said.

  With the building’s front doors and windows smashed in, we were now standing in an open-air lobby. A faint desert breeze wheezed in from outside, and it carried with it the sound of sirens approaching from a distance. I began breathing a little easier. Whelan walked around to survey the damage, his heavy black shoes crunching the broken glass underfoot. He stuck his finger in the hole in the wall that Carlos had made with his Glock and then turned around to size up the hood of the Escalade, which was sprayed with a mixture of buckshot and blood.

  Whelan looked at me quizzically, the faintest hint of a smile detectable on his face. He checked his watch. “I thought you said to come at two o’clock. It seems you guys started the party a little early.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “The things I was planning to do might not have worked if an official police presence was here. So I gave ourselves a half-hour head start.”

  “Good plan,” he said sarcastically. “Seems like you pretty much had everything under control. What were you planning to do, anyway?”

  “Well, I thought there was a good chance we’d have to beat the crap out of somebody to get a confession.”

  “I see.”

  I laughed nervously. “Beyond that, I didn’t know what to expect. Thanks for coming, though. Next time, I’ll let the pros handle something like this.” That was an understatement.

  It seemed like Whelan had things under control, so I ran up the stairs two at a time. Cody was lying on his back and moaning. It looked like Amy had clipped his other arm. There was a hole in the shoulder of his shirt, but I couldn’t see any blood soaking through.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  More moaning. I knelt down and checked his torso. It was his shoulder, all right, but there wasn’t much blood at all. It looked like he would be okay, but he’d be dependent on someone for a long time. I lifted up his head and rested it on my thigh. He didn’t seem to mind. I ran my hand through his hair and touched his face. It wasn’t exactly how I had planned it, but what the hell.

  I was stroking Cody’s head softly when he opened his eyes and smiled at me. It made me all warm inside.

  Carlos appeared at the top of the steps, shaking his head in disgust. “You’re pathetic.”

  “What?” I asked innocently.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Whoa, slow down,” Mike said at dinner the next night.

  “Okay. I was saying my mistake was in focusing the whole time on who killed George Hannity, when I should have been looking for who tried to frame Cody for killing George. Once I guessed Cody was innocent, the real question was who would try to make it look like Cody was guilty. The
most logical person was always Amy.”

  “But they were all up to no good, so how were you supposed to know?” He was being kind, trying to reassure me that I hadn’t completely made a mess of things. “That was the confusing part,” he continued. “Three of them were ripping the casino off, so nobody wanted to cooperate with you because that would end the good thing they had going. The newspaper made you into a hero,” he added.

  My last phone call the previous night had been to Leslie Trondheim, the Review-Journal reporter I’d taken to dinner a few weeks earlier. Les was wide-awake when I reached her at 2:10 a.m., just as the ambulances arrived to take Amy and Cody to the hospital. I gave her the gist of the story and told her to rush a photographer to the hospital. She had managed to get the presses stopped for a late edition, and front-page color images of a bloodied Cody and Amy Masterson greeted a stunned city the next morning.

  Mike and I were sitting at a corner table at Lucello’s, and it was very late. I had polished off a martini, and he was politely sipping at a glass of red wine. I think it was evaporating faster than he was drinking it.

  “Right,” I continued. “Amy was calling the shots the whole time. And apparently Holman thought he was going to swoop in and become a multi-millionaire by marrying Amy when the time came.”

  “Really?” he laughed.

  “That’s what Lieutenant Whelan told me. That’s why he was doing all her dirty work. She had him wrapped around her little finger.”

  Mike seemed impressed. In retrospect, I probably should have called him for additional backup the night before, but for some pigheaded reason I’d wanted to do it without Mike’s help.