Dead Money

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Grove stared at the dead guy again. He had already made some good money on this job, and was going to get a bunch more if he went down into that hole one more time. He had done a lot of stupid things over the years, for a lot less money. He could do this.

  He took a few more deep breaths of the fresh morning air, then covered his nose with the sleeve of the maintenance suit and slid back down the slope of dirt and into the hole.

  Trying to hold his breath, he knelt on the edge of the casket and liner and opened the guy’s suit coat. At first it didn’t want to come loose, sticking as he pulled.

  “Oh, man, that’s gross.”

  The odor thickened, smelling like rotted fruit left in a dirty outhouse on a hot summer day.

  “No amount of money is worth this.”

  He tried to keep his head turned away while at the same time working to unbutton the man’s shirt.

  The cloth had stuck to the dead guy’s chest like a bandage soaked in blood. Through his gloves, he could feel the guy’s skin where the fluids trapped by the shirt and coat had turned it to jelly. He hoped that by opening the shirt the guy was not going to just melt and run like Jell-O left in the sun.

  Grove finally managed to get two buttons open and the shirt pealed back enough to see the key he was after. It looked like a stupid bank key. For some reason, after all this, he expected it to look special.

  He scooped the key off the guy’s chest, tape and all, trying not to take too much of the guy with it. He tucked the key into a plastic bag and stuck the bag in his pocket.

  Then he climbed out of the hole and walked away. He had no doubt he was going to have nightmares about this for months.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 19

  “GUN!”

  The shout echoed down the hall from the Las Vegas Police main precinct room.

  Uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives dove for cover behind whatever they could find, pulling suspects and others to the ground with them.

  Detective Annie Lott had just stepped off the elevator coming up from the photo lab and was headed for her desk. She had on a jogging suit and tennis shoes, and had her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. In her hand were pictures of what twelve years of being buried had done to professional poker player Jeff Taylor.

  As she ducked for cover near a short, metal drinking fountain tucked between the two restroom doors, she realized that the man in the middle of the hallway a few steps in front of her was the one with the gun. He was twisting from side to side, the gun waving in the air as everyone scrambled for cover.

  He was clearly focused on the men and women in the big room in front of him and not looking around at all.

  Annie’s gun, along with her street clothes, was in her locker downstairs. In fact, most of the police in the big room had checked their guns when they came in. It was standard policy.

  From behind, the guy appeared huge, with linebacker shoulders and no neck showing above his tee shirt. The gun looked small in his hand. From his movement, she could tell he was panicked and angry.

  Without really having a plan, she took three quick and silent steps toward him. Then, as his hand came around with the gun, she used her forward motion and did her best impression of a field-goal kicker, keeping her attention focused completely on the gun.

  The top of her foot caught the guy’s lower arm, right above his wrist, and she could feel and hear the bone in his arm snap.

  The impact jarred her foot and leg, but not enough to hurt her.

  The gun went flying toward the main room. She just hoped like hell it wouldn’t go off when it landed.

  It didn’t. It bounced twice and then smashed into a chair leg and stopped.

  She caught her balance as the guy, holding his wrist, spun around to face her.

  There was a craziness in his eyes. And a ton of anger. Someone was going to have to shoot this bastard to stop him, that was for sure. More than likely, he was on some sort of drug. And now he was going to take out his anger on her. Smart thinking on her part.

  He was far too big and wired to let him even have an instant to come at her. She kicked again, this time right between his legs, trying to drive his family jewels right up and out of his mouth.

  Direct hit.

  And with a lot of force.

  The crazed idiot’s eyes went wide, like he was some sort of poorly drawn cartoon character, then he went to his knees as the shock hit him. He tried to grab his crotch with both hands, including his broken arm, and managed a pitiful choked sound of pain.

  “Pulling a gun in a police station is damn stupid,” she said to him.

  Then, as he bent forward, she planted one more solid kick to his nose, heel first this time.

  He went over backwards, his nose crushed.

  The back of his head hit the tile floor hard and bounced.

  He was out like a light.

  She was panting. And her heart was racing as she stood over him. What a morning this had turned out to be. Staring at an open grave and taking down a lunatic wasn’t the way she had hoped to start the day.

  “Clear!” someone shouted.

  Then the round of applause started, along with the cheering, as everyone climbed to their feet.

  She just smiled as two uniforms grabbed the guy, flipped him over onto his bleeding nose, and roughly put handcuffs on him. She was going to have to soak her foot for a few hours tonight, but otherwise, she wasn’t any worse for the event.

  By the time the congratulations, back-patting, and jokes about her soccer ability for kicking two balls at once had stopped, she had made her way to her desk.

  She still had the folder of pictures from the cemetery in her hand.

  She put it on her desk, then took off her shoe and rubbed her foot. It was going to be bruised, but at least nothing was broken. That was a hell of a lot better than she could say for the guy they were hauling out on a stretcher. Served the bastard right.

  Thank heavens she made it a habit to stay in shape. At thirty-four, she had no intention of stopping the running and sessions in the gym just yet. They kept her at her desired 140 pounds, which for her five-ten frame was perfect. And allowed for her to be able to deal with events like crazed gunmen.

  She left her shoe off and forced herself to focus on the pictures of the grave robbery.

  The Las Vegas Sun would have a field day with this. The captain wanted it solved, and solved quickly, before it started hitting every national poker broadcast. She had no doubt it already would. It wasn’t often that a former World Series of Poker champion had his grave robbed.

  From what she could tell, twelve years hadn’t done much to Jeff Taylor. The embalming must have been done correctly and the casket and concrete liner must have remained sealed fairly tight. That often wasn’t the case, but with this body, it clearly was.

  As she studied the pictures, everything around her went back to normal as street patrolmen, detectives, and brass came and went, sometimes with civilians, sometimes alone. After six years with full detective rank, she was used to it.

  She had been called in on this case because of who Jeff Taylor had been while alive. At the time of his murder, he was considered one of the best poker players in the world, if not the best. The case was still unsolved, but almost everyone figured it had been a robbery gone bad, one of those types of cases that took luck or a confession to solve.

  She tucked a few errant strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear, a gesture that her father always told her meant she was stressed.

  Hell, she was stressed, both because of the idiot with the gun and this case.

  As a kid, she had idolized Jeff Taylor and a bunch of the other poker players of that time. It had been her dream to play full-time professional poker, and she was moving closer and closer to the dream with each day.

  Before this case had come up, she had asked for some time off during the next week to play in a few poker tournaments at the Bella
gio. And grave robbery or no grave robbery, she was still going to be there.

  Six months ago, she had gone half-time with the force, working almost on a case-by-case basis, spending her free days playing ring games and smaller poker tournaments around town. She had enough of a bank built up that poker would soon be her life full-time, and she couldn’t wait. She would miss the police work at times. But not that often.

  She glanced again at the pictures. She hated the smell of a long-buried body. It was enough to make any hardened cop head for the nearest bush.

  That key must have been damned important for someone to fight through that sickening odor, crawl down in that newly dug hole, shove open the casket, and take the key from the decomposing skin and chest fluids trapped by Taylor’s shirt and suit jacket.

  Really important. And that was what was going to lead her to the solution to who opened the grave.

  And with luck, maybe even solve the cold case of Jeff Taylor’s murder along the way.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 19

  IN THE HALLWAY, the elevator signal dinged.

  Grove was coming.

  With a glance, Steven made sure everything was as he needed it to be in the huge Monte Carlo penthouse suite. The marble floors and columns shined in the recessed lighting. Lush couches and chairs filled one section in front of a huge stone fireplace. A dining table with a dozen chairs around it was slightly elevated to one side of the big room. Heavy drapes shaped the fifteen-foot-high windows that looked out over the Strip and downtown Vegas beyond.

  A towel blocked open the door leading to the elevator. He adjusted the room service uniform, then stepped back into the shadows toward one bedroom, out of sight.

  He could hear as Grove pushed open the door, kicked the towel away, and let the door close behind him.

  “Yo,” Grove shouted, his voice echoing through the five rooms. “Anyone home?”

  Steven put a hand-held voice-changer to his mouth. “Do you have the key?” The words sounded low and powerful and echoed in the big suite.

  “Of course I do. And let me tell you, opening that casket was one smell I ain’t gonna soon forget.”

  “Just place the key on the dining table.”

  Grove’s footsteps clicked on the marble floor as he moved toward the table. Steven wanted to peek out at the man he had hired, but restrained himself, instead trusting his ears. So far Grove couldn’t identify him, and that’s the way it needed to stay if Grove was going to live. Steven hadn’t decided yet if that would be the case. One moment he planned on killing the man, the next he decided it was just too much of a problem.

  He had found Grove by listening to a conversation between two off-duty cops in a poker game down at the Golden Nugget. He had called Grove, who had not been interested in the job until he understood that it paid one hundred thousand dollars.

  Grove put the key on the hard table of the penthouse suite with a click. “Okay, where’s my money?”

  “Describe the key.”

  “It’s just a damn key. Looks like it belongs to a bank. Long and thin, has a three etched on the side of it.”

  Steven’s heart skipped, and he wanted to race out there and pick the key off the table. Taylor’s key. It was actually here, in the suite with him.

  “Good,” he said, keeping his voice level and powerful-sounding. “Look on the second chair on the window side of the table.” Again his altered voice seemed to echo in the huge suite like a bad movie character.

  Grove’s heels clicked on the tile as he moved around and pulled the chair out with a scraping sound. There was a rustling of paper and then a gasp.

  Grove should gasp. There really was seventy-five thousand in the bag. But the price was worth it, especially for Taylor’s key.

  Steven shook his head. Wait. Now that he thought about it, seventy-five thousand was too much to waste on a petty thief.

  “Thanks,” Grove said. “Man, you need anything else, you just call me.”

  “I have your number. I know where you live. I know more about you than you want me to know.”

  Steven stepped out of hiding and walked toward Grove, putting the voice device in his uniform pocket as he did.

  Grove looked shocked to see him. He studied Steven’s room service uniform. “Tips must be good,” he said, holding up the bag.

  “Not that good,” Steven said. He pulled out a pistol and shot Grove in the chest before the man could even move.

  The loud explosion echoed around the room, but Grove knew these suites were very soundproof. And at the moment, there was no one else on this floor.

  Grove went over the dining room railing backward, landing facedown on the white carpet. Blood splattered against the window and over the couch.

  Steven took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of cordite mixed with the copper-smell of blood. By the time this game was over, he might come to love that smell.

  He walked down the few tile steps and shot Grove through the side of the head.

  The paper bag full of money had fallen near the couch. Using a plastic bag he had brought, Steven picked it up, wrapped it tight and put it in his pocket, making sure that as little as possible of Grove’s blood got on his gloves or uniform.

  Then he put the gun beside Grove on the coffee table. It was untraceable, from a robbery in Salt Lake City five years ago.

  Steven then moved back up to the dining table, putting the chair Grove had moved back into place. Then he picked up the key in his white-gloved hands and studied it for a moment, like he was studying a great piece of art.

  Jeff Taylor’s key.

  He actually had it.

  The thrill of success cut through him like an expensive scotch whiskey, warming him.

  He put the key inside his vest pocket, then moved over and picked up the towel beside the door. He hung it back on the towel rack in the bathroom, then walked slowly through the suite, making sure nothing was out of place. A whale from Japan would arrive in twenty minutes and find Grove’s body.

  When Steven was satisfied that he had missed nothing, he stepped out of the door and into the corridor, moving like an employee toward the service area, his head down, his face hidden, just in case the camera in the corridor had been brought back online sooner than he had expected.

  One key down.

  Eight players with keys remaining.

  This game was going to be more fun than he had imagined.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Central Idaho Mountains. August 19

  “MAN, I STILL can’t believe Carson left you everything,” Fleet said as he took the SUV off the comfort of Idaho’s main north-south Highway 55, turned east and headed away from the small crossroads called Banks.

  I had been stunned as well. We had stopped by to see if Ace was all right. Without even a good morning, or asking if we needed a cup of coffee, the old man had tossed me Carson’s will. “Wanted you to know this before you got started. He left everything to you.”

  “I don’t want it,” I had said, tossing the paper back at my grandfather like it was on fire and about to burn me.

  “Too damn bad,” Ace had said, smacking me in the chest with the will. Fleet had taken it from me before I could toss it back once again.

  I actually felt insulted, and damned angry, that my father might think that giving me a bunch of money might make up for leaving and never coming back. Nothing made up for that cold, cruel act. Certainly not money.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. Just thinking about it made me mad.

  “There,” I said, pointing to a gravel road on the left heading north up a wide valley. “The Middle Fork Road.”

  Fleet left the pavement and hit the gravel going a little too fast. The first chatter bumps forced him to slow down. Behind us, a cloud of dust billowed in the warm morning air.

  “How far do we have to go?” Fleet asked. “This is going to jar my fillings loose.”

  “Until it ends, actually,” I sai
d. “Thirty-five miles, maybe forty. I’ve never been up this way.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, as he unsuccessfully tried to dodge a series of chatter bumps that looked like standing waves across the road. “You bring a map?”

  “Who needs a map? We’re guys, remember?”

  Fleet only snorted.

  I glanced at my watch, twisting it on my wrist to a normal, more comfortable position. It always felt odd putting the watch back on after coming off the river. Out there, I didn’t have to worry about time. Everyone lived by the rise and fall of the sun.

  Eleven-thirty.

  The NTSB team wasn’t due to be on-site until two. We were ahead of schedule. Amazing for two guys who never seemed to make a class on time in college.

  “You get some sleep last night?” Fleet asked. “I’d suggest you doze now, but no one could sleep on this bump-fest.”

  “Doing fine.”

  Actually, I had managed a really hot shower and three hours of sleep after spending time consoling my mother and getting her to go to bed after taking a couple of sleeping pills. Carson had left her twenty-five years ago, divorced her, flat walked out of her life. And mine. How could she be so upset at his death? She had never even been angry at Carson for leaving, and had never allowed me to speak poorly of the man in her presence. Maybe she thought he was coming back at any moment and was just away on a very long poker jaunt.

  She had never remarried, never even dated. I had tried to get her to date when I was in college, at one point even signing her up for a singles weekend dance. She had flatly refused to go. For decades, my mother had to be in the worse case of denial in modern record, and it wasn’t anything that could be changed without a whole lot of counseling, something else she refused to do.

  Maybe, now that the bastard was dead, she could move on. More than likely, she was going to just be waiting for him to return, like she had done for years.

  “How’s your mother doing?” Fleet asked as he cut to the right along the gravel road, avoiding the biggest of a dozen potholes.