The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “Let her ask,” Verity said. “Just tell her we have friends too, and one of ’em took care of us. I’m not gonna complain about free food, or our room. Let’s get going.”

  When most people thought about Las Vegas, the first thing that came to mind was the Strip, with its huge, themed casino complexes—Roman orgies, white tigers, medieval pageantry—or the neon-lit, hyperactive excess of Glitter Gulch downtown. What nobody ever thought about was the dozens of smaller hotels off the two main drags—the ones that offered a place to sleep and little else, or perhaps a quiet location to get some work done or to meet up with someone you didn’t want anyone else to know you were meeting. These were the sorts of places that never got any publicity or showed up on the glitzy advertising brochures trying to entice tourists to the town. They catered mostly to locals, or people for whom anonymity was more important than amenities.

  The Oasis was one of these places. A neat, beige, three-story hotel two blocks off the Strip, it bordered a Denny’s on one side and a strip mall on the other. In the filtered, overcast light of late morning, it appeared almost embarrassed about how nondescript it was—a frumpy wallflower huddled at the edges of a dazzling, star-studded party. Its only concession to its Vegas roots was the small marquee sign out front, featuring a palm tree topped with three minarets and the silhouette of a camel. The sign beneath it advertised FREE BREAKFAST, POOL, $3.99 STEAK DINNERS M-TH.

  Verity frowned. “He was staying here? That’s…kinda weird. Why go to Vegas and not stay at one of the big hotels? It’s not like they’re all sold out or that expensive, especially not this time of year.”

  “Good question,” Jason said. “Let’s find out.”

  The lobby proved to be a little more interesting than the outside, at least. The walls were covered in weathered-looking murals of sparkling desert oases, complete with camels, harem girls, and more palm trees. A bank of slot machines lined one wall.

  Verity and Jason walked past the jewel-toned furniture groupings up to a front desk designed to look like it was carved from sandstone. “Morning,” Jason said to the bored-looking female desk clerk, who’d perked up at the prospect of a customer. “We’d like to speak to Mr. Chesney. Is he here?”

  “One moment, please.” She punched a number into her phone, murmured something they couldn’t hear, then said, “He’ll be here in a moment. Please have a seat.”

  They didn’t sit down. Verity switched to magical sight, looking around the room. Nothing jumped out at her—the clerk’s aura looked as bored as she did, and the general feel of the room could best be described as “resigned.”

  A moment later, a slim, older black man emerged through an unmarked door. “Mr. Thayer? Thank you for coming. Come on back and we can chat.” He wore a beige button-down shirt with the Oasis’s colorful logo above the breast pocket.

  Verity studied him too, as they followed him back through the door and into a small office. Like the desk clerk, his aura was close to his body, unremarkable—the sort she often saw on people who went through life on autopilot, never deviating from their routine.

  “I’m Leon Chesney,” he said, pointing them toward chairs. “I understand you’re looking for some information on one of our guests.”

  “Yes,” Jason said. He took out his wallet and withdrew his business card. “I’m a private investigator in training. My boss’s number’s on the back, if you want to verify that.”

  “It’s fine,” Chesney glanced at the card and waved him off. “I believe you. And anyway, we’ve got nothing to hide here. I don’t know how much I can tell you, but I’m sure we can…work something out. Ask away.”

  Verity didn’t miss the subtle pause, and was glad they’d stopped at an ATM this morning to pick up some cash. At least since they didn’t have to pay for the room at the Obsidian, they’d still come out ahead even if Fran refused to reimburse Jason for bribes.

  “We’re looking for a man who stayed here a few days ago. Our contact mentioned that you said he’d left without checking out.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Ames. Very unusual, I must say. He was a regular guest here. I do hope nothing’s happened to him. Unfortunately, the local police haven’t seemed to consider this case important enough to investigate as yet.”

  Verity watched his aura again; it didn’t flare at all. On the one hand, that probably meant Chesney didn’t have anything to do with Ames’s disappearance; on the other, it also probably meant he couldn’t rouse himself to care one way or the other.

  “We hope so too,” Jason said.

  “Are you investigating Mr. Ames? Do you mind if I ask what for?”

  “Indirectly. My client’s actually the wife of another man, who went missing and turned up dead in Las Vegas. We have reason to believe he might have been connected with Mr. Ames, so we were hoping to find him and ask him some questions.”

  “I see.” Chesney’s gaze shifted to Verity. “And is this young lady also a private investigator?”

  “I’m his sister,” Verity said. “I help him out with cases sometimes, when I can. Strictly unofficially.”

  “Fair enough,” Chesney said. He paused a moment to sip his coffee, but didn’t offer to get any for Jason and Verity. “Well…as I said, Mr. Ames was—continues to be, I hope—a regular customer.”

  “How regular?” Jason asked. “How often does he stay here?”

  “A couple of times a year, for the past three years or so.” Chesney pulled a folder over and consulted a series of papers in it, but didn’t reveal them.

  “Could we get dates for those stays?”

  “Well…I’m not sure it would be appropriate for me to…”

  Jason took a twenty from his jacket pocket and pushed it across the desk. “We’re willing to pay a processing fee for your time, of course.”

  Chesney’s thin hand made the twenty disappear. “Of course, of course. I’m glad to see you understand how this sort of thing works.” His tone never changed from its even disinterest. He consulted the papers again, then wrote something on a notepad and handed the sheet to Jason.

  Verity looked over his shoulder. The dates covered the last three years, with two sets of ranges for each year. The last one began a few days ago and had no end point. She couldn’t recall for certain without asking Jason, but they looked like they corresponded with the dates of Gary Woods’s business trips.

  “What kind of guest was Mr. Ames?” Jason was asking. “Did you ever talk to him? Did he make any unusual requests?”

  “I don’t remember him very well, which means he probably didn’t do anything to cause trouble or draw attention to himself. He seemed a…normal sort of man. Probably a businessman of some kind. Paid for his stay with cash, but that’s not unusual here in Vegas.”

  Jason pulled out the photo of Gary Woods. “Did he ever have guests here? Have you ever seen this man before?”

  Chesney took the photo and studied it. “No…no, can’t say I have. He doesn’t look familiar at all. I’m not certain whether Mr. Ames ever had guests, but I certainly don’t remember any.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Jason took the photo back and glanced at Verity.

  Chesney’s aura still hadn’t moved. Either he was a very good liar, or he just didn’t care. She gave her brother a subtle shrug.

  “You mentioned that Mr. Ames didn’t check out when he was supposed to, and the maid found his property in the room when she went in to clean,” Jason said. “Is it still here?”

  “It is. As I mentioned, the police haven’t come by yet, and no one’s called asking about Mr. Ames, so we’ve put it in storage for now. If no one claims it in thirty days and the police still haven’t been by, we’ll probably donate it to some charity organization.”

  “Could we take a look at it? And maybe the room he was staying in? Is there somebody in it now?”

 
This time, before Chesney even drew breath to say he didn’t know if he should, Jason pulled out another twenty. “We wouldn’t need long,” he said. “Just a few minutes to look it over.”

  Again, the bill disappeared. “I suppose I could let you see his property. But I can’t let you take anything with you.” He looked at his list. “Room 217 is where he was staying, but I’m afraid someone is occupying it, so I won’t be able to let you inside.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll take what we can get. Thanks, Mr. Chesney.”

  “Glad to be of assistance. Come with me, please.” He stood, but paused in the doorway. “Is the man in the picture you showed me the one who you said turned up dead?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss the details of the case.”

  Behind Jason where Chesney couldn’t see, Verity smirked. Two could play at that game—maybe they could bribe Chesney with information instead of cash, if they needed anything else.

  The man led them into what looked like a storeroom next to his office, full of file cabinets, piles of bedsheets, and a rack holding packages of toilet paper, plastic cups, and other consumables. He grabbed a cardboard box on the floor next to one of the file cabinets and put it on a small conference table in the middle of the room, then paired it with a medium-sized black suitcase. “It’s all in there. I can only give you a few minutes to look, though—I need to get back to work.”

  Because the place was so busy, Verity thought. She wasn’t worried—Jason still had sixty dollars of the hundred he’d designated for bribes.

  Jason donned a pair of latex gloves from his messenger bag, put the suitcase on the table, and opened it.

  Inside were the typical items you might find in a businessman’s suitcase: a toiletry bag with razor, shaving cream, and other personal items; a bag containing dirty laundry, a pair of folded dress shirts, a leather belt. Jason opened the cardboard box and found a suit jacket and pants and a pair of leather dress shoes. A zip-lock bag held a small quantity of spare change. “No wallet?”

  “None was found in the room,” Chesney said.

  Jason frowned. “Really? That’s weird. Are you sure the maid didn’t—”

  “I…can’t be certain, of course,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “But the maid assigned to that room has been with us for years, and I stand behind her honesty.”

  While Jason poked through the suitcase, Verity watched with magical sight. Once again, Chesney’s aura didn’t change much when he mentioned the maid, which probably meant he was merely nervous about some kind of police inquiry. She glanced at the bag, and was surprised to notice traces of the same faint magical energy she’d spotted around the dumpster where Gary Woods had been found. Had she been right that the energy had come from David Ames’s ID instead of Gary’s body?

  Carefully so she didn’t draw attention to herself, she sidled around the table until her back was to Chesney, then caught Jason’s attention and mouthed check that thing carefully, with a nod toward the bag.

  He didn’t respond directly, but removed everything from the soft-sided bag and began feeling around its structure.

  “What are you—” Chesney began, but his eyes widened when Jason pulled up part of the lining to reveal a small hidden compartment.

  Verity leaned in closer. “What’d you find?”

  Jason ran his hand around the compartment, then brought out a zippered fabric bag. “Interesting…I take it you didn’t find this, Mr. Chesney?”

  Chesney shook his head. “No.”

  Jason unzipped the bag and pulled out the contents, laying each item on the table in turn.

  “Jewelry?” Verity asked, confused. She’d been expecting cash, or perhaps some kind of drugs. Certainly not a small collection of sparkly necklaces, rings, and earrings.

  “Looks like kids’ jewelry,” Jason said. He was frowning too. “Too small for adults. I don’t think it’s real—or if it is, it’s not valuable.”

  “Wait,” Verity leaned in for a closer look. “Didn’t Gary have two little girls? Maybe David brought these for him to give them?”

  “Yeah, he did…but why would he hide them in a secret compartment? That’s weird. Especially if they’re just costume stuff.” He pulled out his notebook and made a couple of notes, then put the pieces back in the zippered bag and returned them to the compartment. “Anyway, thanks, Mr. Chesney. I think we’ve got all we need here.”

  “Glad to help. I do hope you find Mr. Ames alive and well.”

  Jason and Verity didn’t speak until they were out in the parking lot. “Good call on the suitcase,” Jason said. “What tipped you off?”

  “I got the same magical traces around it that I got from the dumpster,” she said. “The more I’m thinking, the more I’m sure David has to be connected with magic somehow.”

  “Do we need to get inside the room? Can you even do that?”

  “Maybe I can…but I don’t think it’ll help. If they’ve had other people in there since, any magical traces will probably be gone or overwritten by now.”

  They got in the car, but Jason didn’t drive off yet. He pulled some papers out of his bag and looked them over, then checked the notes he’d made. “I was right. The dates of David’s stay here correspond to the dates of Gary’s last three business trips. I don’t have any data about him prior to that, but I’d bet all the money in my pocket that if I did, they’d correspond too.”

  “So Gary was coming here to see David, for whatever reason,” Verity said. “Either they were lovers, or maybe David was helping Gary out with something.”

  “Still going with lovers as the working theory. But that still doesn’t explain the magic.”

  “Or the jewelry,” Verity said. “If they were lovers, why would David give Gary jewelry for his daughters? And even if he did, why cheap stuff, and why would he hide it in a secret compartment?”

  “Damn good questions. And I have another one.” He pulled a small, folded piece of paper from his notebook. “Who’s ‘Xavier’?”

  “Where’d you get that?” The little slip had the name scrawled on it, along with the word delightful, a local phone number, and ‘11 p.m.’.

  “It was in with the jewelry. I palmed it. Maybe not the most ethical thing to do, but given I don’t think the cops around here are gonna show up before Chesney hands the stuff off to the Salvation Army, I don’t feel too guilty about it.”

  “You gonna call it?”

  “Not yet. Let’s talk to the Forgotten first. Maybe they’ll shed more light on who this guy is.”

  “You think this Xavier guy has anything to do with that group the Forgotten guy mentioned? The one where you can do anything you want if you have enough money?”

  “Maybe so. Maybe David got himself hooked up with them somehow. I dunno—maybe the guys we talk to tonight will know more.”

  Verity looked at her watch: it was a little after noon. “So we’re stuck until tonight? Have you got any more angles to pursue?”

  “Not really. Fran already asked Gary’s wife about David when they found the ID, and she’d never heard of him. Other than calling Roper and seeing if he’s come up with anything—which I want to do—or going back down to the area around the Pussycat Club—which I don’t until we have more to go on—I can’t.” He grinned. “Welcome to detective work, V. It’s not all car chases and gun battles. Sometimes it’s a whole lot of boring.”

  “Maybe not this time, though.” She pulled something out of her jacket with a magician’s flourish. “You weren’t the only one who sneaked something out of that bag.”

  Jason frowned. “A dirty sock?”

  “Hey, you take what you can get. I didn’t want to take something they might miss.”

  “Ah, I get it,” he said as light dawned and he too grinned. “Nice work, V. But can you do a ritual with
a dirty sock?”

  “It’ll be harder—unless this was, you know, his favorite sock or something. But if David’s still alive and still in Vegas, maybe I can find him.”

  Roper had grim news when they called him on their way back to the Obsidian: the body of the stripper from the Pussycat Club had been found, dumped off the side of a freeway overpass a couple miles from the building. “Her throat was cut,” he said through the cell phone’s tinny speaker from the Mustang’s dash. “Time of death suggests it wasn’t long after you found her hand in your room.”

  “Damn,” Jason said.

  Verity stared at her lap. She was certain the woman was killed because she’d talked with them, which meant—indirectly at least—it was their fault she was dead. More than anything so far in the case, this fact drove home to her just how real this whole thing was. It wasn’t just a puzzle to be solved or some kind of magical game—at least two people were dead now because of it. And they weren’t much closer to the answers than they’d been when they arrived.

  “Anything else?” Jason was asking.

  “Not yet. Like I said, I can’t devote a lot of attention to this, so I’m hoping you can come up with something.”

  “Have you ever heard of anyone named Xavier, who might be connected in some way?”

  “Where’d you get that name?” Roper asked.

  “Somebody we talked to mentioned it last night.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar, but I’ll look into it.”

  Verity took a chance. “Sergeant Roper—I know you said it wouldn’t be possible for us to see Gary’s body, but I think it might really help us. Are you sure you can’t make it happen?”

  Jason gave her a sharp look, but she waved him off.

  Roper didn’t answer for several seconds. “Lemme put you on hold for a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”