Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets

by Miles, Matthew

  Mr. Chuck still has his credit card. Dead girls in Amsterdam. A dead girl at Checkpoint Chili’s. His credit card at both. Jesus Christ. Mr. Chuck appears pretty unhinged, but this is worse than he could have imagined.

  Jaime pops her door open, starts to climb out of her car. Dodge knows she just put it together too. She no longer seems so drunk.

  The cop drops his hand to his pistol when Jaime moves. It’s an instinct, though - he doesn’t think Jaime’s coming out firing. He drops his hand.

  This is a rookie mistake, Dodge thinks. They could really be adulterous, murderous lovers, willing to do anything to get away with their crimes. This cop can’t know they aren’t.

  “Maybe I’ve been there, maybe I haven’t,” Dodge says slowly, now simply trying to buy time to think what to do. He doesn’t want to admit his credit card was stolen. It could jeopardize his alibi. But he doesn’t exactly want to be implicated in something he had nothing to do with.

  That sick bastard.

  “Thing is,” the cop says, tension mounting. “We know you weren’t there.”

  Dodge processes this, but doesn’t know what to say.

  “We got you under surveillance,” the rookie explains.

  Of course.

  “I got to take you in,” he tells Dodge. He’s polite, sensitive - probably for Jaime’s benefit. “Just for questioning, though. Sheriff Broonzy wants to talk to you.”

  Dodge doesn’t want to go anywhere near the police station.

  He’s afraid he’ll never get to leave.

  “Evan,” Jaime says, stepping gently toward the cop, summoning a sense of familiarity. “Something’s going on here,” she tells him. “I know it doesn’t look that way, but Dodge is innocent here. Someone is setting him up.”

  She pleads with him with her eyes.

  “You’ve got to give us a chance to figure this out. Just give us a head start, a couple of hours,” she begs.

  “Miss Tu,” he starts, groaning at the dilemma.

  “Did you call this in, Evan?” she asks him, direct, turning on all of her charm.

  “Ah, no,” he stammers, admits.

  Rookie.

  “Then you can give us a chance,” she insists. “That’s all I’m asking. A chance. Wouldn’t you like a chance?” she asks him, practically purring.

  Jaime is mesmerizing. There’s no way of ever knowing what she means when she says things like that, it’s just a soothing siren’s call that simply stops Evan’s brain from working.

  “Fine,” he sighs. “Jesus Christ. Be back at Dodge’s in two hours.”

  And just like that Jaime turns away from him, pulling Dodge toward her car. “Come on,” she says. “We’ve got to find Mr. Chuck.”

  “Let’s take my car,” he says, dragging her instead toward the Crown Vic.

  People will get out of the way faster.

  *****

  Chuck is not at the office, but it’s clear he’s been here, a lot. Dodge and Jaime hit the mail room first, and it’s a mess. It looks like he’s been living here - clothes, empty Chinese food containers, a makeshift bed.

  “Jaime, look,” Dodge directs her, scanning some printouts of photos taped to the wall. “Is that you?”

  “Ugh,” she answers simply. “That’s my high school yearbook photo. I hate that picture.”

  “Really?” Dodge asks. “Wow, you were pretty cute.”

  Not that she looks much different now; it was barely a few years ago.

  She just sneers a little, trying to suppress the smile that also creeps up. “Well don’t get too excited, perv. I’m not even eighteen in that photo yet.”

  “Well, I’d have asked you to the prom,” he assures her.

  “Whatever,” she chides. “I’ve been throwing myself at you for months and you barely even acknowledge it.”

  Except for once, of course.

  “Jaime,” he says, slowly, feeling guilty over his one indiscretion.

  And how he denied all the promise of that moment since, and let it fizzle away.

  He knows he hurt her, that it was more than just a moment of indiscretion for her. And maybe it wasn’t for him either, but he couldn’t treat it any other way.

  Not without betraying Siobhan even more, destroying everything they had built together.

  He should never have let that one time happen.

  She should never have made it happen.

  It’s not like she isn’t complicit in all of this - she knows he was married, and happy with Siobhan. She knew Siobhan, worked for Siobhan, only met Dodge because of Siobhan.

  Jaime pursued Dodge - there is no doubt between them that she seduced him - and has been trying, ever since, even if not so aggressively, to do it again.

  And now, Siobhan is gone.

  And at the root of this whole, wicked, evil tragedy, Dodge knows, is his one moment of weakness, his adultery, his infidelity, kick-starting a series of events that ended in two brutal murders.

  Siobhan’s murder.

  Dressler.

  And now, perhaps even more.

  And this is what keeps Dodge and Jaime apart right now.

  She knows this, too.

  So she just cuts Dodge off before he says whatever he is going to say.

  “I know, Dodge,” she says, laying her hand gently on his arm.

  They hold each other’s eyes for a moment, and allow themselves, despite the wall of guilt between them, a moment of tenderness.

  Which itself is enough to make him just want to grab her now.

  That he knows she won’t stop him only makes it worse.

  But he’s glad when she does stop him, simply by looking away.

  She lifts her trembling hand from his shaking arm, and the spell is broken.

  “I think he’s gone,” Dodge says, trying to change the topic. “Something just feels abandoned here.”

  “I think you’re right,” Jaime says, relieved to feel the tension dissipate. She’s amazed at her own restraint. She doesn’t want to hook up with him too soon, and raise suspicions that they have been having an affair. It will make Dodge look guilty.

  Or guiltier, she should say.

  “Let’s go check the credit card bill,” he suggests. “See where he’s blowing my money.”

  Jaime takes over Siobhan’s computer while Dodge watches over her shoulder, his eyes resting on a framed picture of Siobhan and him on the desk. The glass is cracked, like someone slammed it down.

  Dodge is not sure if Chuck did this, or Jaime.

  But it’s telling either way - all of these events are not coincidence - they are the result of dark desires and dangerous impulses.

  Everyone’s dirty little secrets clawing their way toward the daylight.

  “He’s been on Craigslist,” Jaime announces. “Looking for women to meet.”

  “The woman the police found,” Dodge blurts out.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jaime gasps. “Chuck killed her.”

  Dodge nods. “Maybe those women in Amsterdam weren’t an overdose after all.”

  “Oh my God,” Jaime snaps, looking over her should up at him. “Do you think he’s a serial killer?”

  “If there’s more,” he agrees. “We’ve got to find him before he spends any more of my money on his sick, twisted murder spree.”

  “I think I found him,” Jaime announces, pointing at the credit card bill on the monitor.

  Las Vegas.

  *****

  Las Vegas shouldn’t exist. It’s America’s not so dark secret, sprawling across the desert floor, glowing like some day-glo Shangri La.

  Vices like this are usually hidden from sight. Like when you get to know a neighbor and you have a couple of good times together, and one day he asks you if you want to know what he really does to have a good time.

  And then he opens a door you never noticed before and you suddenly see the dirty secret that was always lingering beneath the surface - the leering, perverse, uninhibited nature of man.

  Funny that we l
et this city of vice grow in the same deserts where we blow up nuclear bombs and dissect aliens.

  Chuck feels like he should feel right at home in Las Vegas, America’s seedy underbelly, but the truth is, this is not a city of hidden shame - this is a full-on visual assault of glamour and glitz and excess. He feels like a bug under a microscope.

  An alien on the dissection table.

  As he wanders the strip, it’s the Cosmopolitan that pulls him in, following the throngs of gorgeous women flowing into it. Not that it’s only women flowing in there. It’s that he only notices the women.

  What he realizes, though, is that he’s a long way from Checkpoint Chili’s, or even Amsterdam, for that matter. These women are out of his league, so far that he can’t even approach them.

  And no matter how emboldened he feels by pretending to be Dodge, stealing his money, he really has no idea how he’s ever going to make a move.

  Being here, he realizes he’s not ready for the big stage.

  So he checks into the Cosmopolitan and settles into the lobby bar, putting Dodge’s credit card to work with the one thing he does know how to do - get drunk - and hopes something will unfold of its own accord.

  *****

  Dodge and Jaime land in Vegas mere hours after learning that’s where Chuck is headed. He doesn’t have that much of a head start on them. There are charges from the Cosmopolitan already, so they know where to start looking, at least.

  Hopefully they can catch a break – finding someone randomly in Vegas is a pipedream. It’s only a matter of how quickly Chuck goes from the glitz to the guts of the city that he eludes them.

  They are monitoring his spending, so they don’t cancel the credit card or report it stolen.

  It would only blow Dodge’s alibi for Amsterdam anyway.

  “Oh my god, I’m so excited to stay here,” Jaime proclaims.

  “Why, what is it? I’ve never even heard of it,” he tells her.

  “It’s a new hotel,” she explains. “You’ve seen the commercials on TV. With the bunny rabbits in the hallway, and the old women in the fetish boots? The Right Kind of Wrong.”

  “Jesus, where are you taking me?” Dodge laughs, but it’s decided already, of course.

  They go where Chuck goes, and it’s probably only going to get weirder from here.

  There is a moment at the front desk, where Dodge doesn’t know whether to get one room or two, and he freezes when the desk clerk asks him what he needs. He tries not to glance at Jaime, unsure what she’s thinking, but he can’t help himself, of course.

  Now that they’re here, away from the drama - and police scrutiny – he feels suddenly liberated.

  And wants more than anything to liberate Jaime.

  From her clothes.

  Screw finding Chuck.

  He really just wants to find himself screwing Jaime.

  She doesn’t favor him with a look back, though, and Dodge assumes she’s enjoying his dilemma too much to tell him to just go for it, just get the honeymoon chambers.

  Make an anniversary of it.

  The clerk makes it a little easier, seeing his hesitation. “I can upgrade you to a suite, with a living room and an adjacent room with a king bed. The couch folds out into a bed. Hot tub.”

  Dodge breathes an inaudible sigh of relief. “That’s fine, thank you.”

  When Jaime steps up to hand over the credit card, she flashes him her wicked smile, and he finds himself almost giggling in anticipation.

  Vegas is their own nuclear test ground all of a sudden.

  There will be explosions.

  They’re turning toward the elevators, both grinning at the momentary awkwardness now that it’s behind them, and in anticipation of what it means. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

  Dodge lets his arm drop around her waist as they walk away from the lobby, caressing her hip as she smiles up at him.

  He’s never going to take his hands off of her again.

  And everything else is forgotten for a moment.

  Finally.

  Until Dodge sees Chuck sitting right at the lobby bar.

  The honeymoon is over before it begins.

  He drags Jaime into the elevator well, trying not to make a scene that would attract any attention, but trying also to get out of Chuck’s possible eyesight as quickly as possible.

  “He’s here,” he whispers in her ear as he pulls her into the elevator behind him.

  “Where?” she asks.

  “Right in the bar there,” he says.

  “What do we do now?” she wonders, looking more afraid than he’s ever seen her.

  He’s been so busy letting her take care of him, he forgets how young she is, how uncertain she must be, thrown in the center of this maelstrom.

  An idea is starting to form. But he’s not ready to say it out loud.

  If Chuck catches a glimpse of them at all, Dodge wants to be gone before Chuck can make it over there to confirm what he sees.

  H needs to get Jaime to the room.

  But not for the same reason he wanted to get Jaime to the room a minute ago.

  He needs get back down to the lobby before Chuck bolts.

  Dodge wonders what he’s supposed to do then.

  Just get the credit card back?

  Confront Chuck somehow?

  And do what?

  He can’t arrest him. He can’t tell the police - at this point, Dodge’s credit card is the only thing that really links Chuck to anything - and Dodge and Jaime are the only ones who even know that. So he’d have to give up that secret to get the police involved.

  But giving up that secret gives up his alibi for the night of Siobhan’s murder.

  Too risky.

  If Chuck is really killing women, though, there’s the danger too that his credit card will be linked to a murder here.

  Which is totally not cool.

  Even if Chuck did conveniently provide an alibi for a different murder.

  Paying for Chuck’s murder rampage, and taking the blame, imposes just a little too much on Dodge’s generosity.

  No, Chuck needs to get caught in the act.

  He can’t have been smart enough to cover his tracks very well. DNA evidence, or something, will implicate him. But if his DNA isn’t on file, it could take the police a while to catch up to him.

  Dodge could volunteer for a DNA test and exonerate himself, but for all he knows, he left some kind of DNA evidence at Dressler’s.

  If the cops have DNA, they would have asked for a sample.

  Unless the alibi is preventing them from doing that.

  No probable cause.

  No matter what is keeping Dodge out of jail right now, it’s just a thread.

  That much he is certain of.

  Chuck has to get caught in the act. Then they’ll have his DNA, they can match it to the other murder - or murders, even. There may be more.

  It all becomes suddenly clear to Dodge.

  He needs to frame Chuck for Siobhan’s murder, and Dressler’s as well – not just get him busted for the crimes he actually committed.

  He’s not sure how to plant DNA evidence, or if it’s too late for that - they’ve already combed the scene.

  No, he needs to create a fake cyber trail that ties Chuck to Dressler or Siobhan or both that night.

  If Chuck is getting convicted for crimes, the flimsiest evidence could be enough to get this one thrown into the mix. Even if he doesn’t get convicted, Dodge just needs the case closed. If everyone believes Chuck did it, and he goes to jail for other crimes, they will consider justice served - close the books.

  Suddenly, Dodge sees the way out. He just needs to implicate Chuck in the one murder he didn’t commit, and catch him in the next one. If the police bust Chuck here in Vegas, and they investigate his activities, Dodge needs to make sure something points them to the murder of Siobhan too.

  So two things.

  Create a cyber trail tying Chuck to Siobhan and Dressler the night
they were killed.