Drawing Dead

by Patrick Logan

  “Thanks, Greg,” Stitts said, making his way back towards his desk.

  Greg turned to leave, but before he did, Chase spoke up.

  “Have the families been informed yet?”

  The man turned and stared at her for a moment before answering.

  “Sgt. Theodore had two officers out doing that before the bomb incident. So far, they’ve informed the mother of the bartender and three of the players. The company that was outsourced for security was also notified.”

  Chase raised an eyebrow at this last part.

  “Outsourced?”

  She’d assumed that the two dead security guards were hotel staff.

  Greg nodded.

  “The company’s called Luther’s Investments. It’s not common for outside help to be contracted for high-roller private games. More efficient that way,” he raised an eyebrow. “And generally safer, too. Companies like Luther’s Investments have a bunch of ex-military men with good track records on call.”

  Chase’s mind flicked back to the single shot fired by security that was embedded in the ceiling.

  Ex-military…

  She chewed the inside of her lip and watched as Stitts spread images from the files across his desk.

  “Information about Luther’s Investments is in their file. LVMPD has even used them from time to time for support on large events.”

  Chase mulled this over.

  If Luther’s Investments used legit ex-military as Greg suggested, and not Army Medics but actual Marines or Frogmen, then what are the chances they would get only a single shot off?

  It was starting to look more and more like an inside job.

  “Anything else I can be of assistance with?” Greg asked from the office doorway.

  “Yeah,” Chase said hesitantly. “I need a list of anybody who stepped foot on the seventh floor of The Emerald in a forty-eight-hour window flanking the time of the shooting. I’m talking maître d’, housecleaning, any waiters that might’ve brought up food, window cleaners, guests, etc. Anyone at all; if they were there, I want a file on them. And video. I want any and all video from The Emerald and the surrounding casinos on the strip.”

  The man grimaced, a subtle gesture that would’ve otherwise been overlooked had Chase not been paying such close attention.

  She got the impression that Greg wasn’t used to his current role, not yet, anyway. And that, combined with the pain so clearly etched on his face every time he shifted his weight, suggested that his injuries were fresh.

  It appeared as if I might not be the only one dealing with changes, Chase thought glumly.

  Eventually, Greg nodded.

  “I’m just down the hall,” he said. “And just a head’s up: it’s going to get crowded in here with what happened at Planned Parenthood. Holler if you need me.”

  Chapter 18

  “Does this make any sense to you? Any sense at all?” Chase asked, staring down at the photographs of the two men that Luther’s Investments had provided for security. The first was an ex-Army Ranger by the name of Terry Ames. The other man, while he wasn’t ex-military, was equally as qualified: Tony Peacock spent four years as a SWAT member in Detroit before moving to Las Vegas for what he likely suspected would be a cushy job.

  AS Chase stared at Tony’s photograph, her mind superimposed an image of his face from the hotel room, blood coating his thick beard.

  You must’ve thought this was going to be an easy job. That you would get away from the grind of Detroit and come to the bright lights of Las Vegas to protect some paranoid millennials with too much money and not enough sense.

  “What do you mean?” Stitts asked.

  Chase gave him a look.

  The man knew exactly what she meant, he just wanted her to verbalize it. Normally, this would annoy Chase, but given the fact that her other talent had failed them, the least she could do was to humor him.

  “Ex-SWAT and ex-Army Ranger taken by surprise, only one of whom fires a single shot at the ceiling no less? The way I see it, either the men who robbed the game were hyper-trained or it was an inside job.”

  “Diminishing returns,” Stitts said quietly.

  Chase raised an eyebrow.

  “Say what?”

  Stitts started rooting through the photographs and notes that were spread across his desk. For some reason, the clutter made Chase anxious, and she scooped up a handful of photos and walked over to the board with them. After sticking them up with the available pins, she said, “Do continue, oh wise master.”

  Stitts chuckled.

  “Well, how big is the hotel room?”

  “Not sure,” Chase replied.

  “22’ by 18’.”

  “Your point?”

  “Well, you have an ex-SWAT member and an ex-Army Ranger in a confined space where a shootout takes place. Even if Ninjas stormed the room, you’d think that security would be able to get off more than one shot. Not to mention, the killers didn’t leave a single piece of trace evidence behind.”

  As Stitts spoke, Chase turned her attention to the images on the board. The man was right of course. Put two or three or maybe even a half-dozen men with guns in combined spaces and training beyond a certain point didn’t matter so much. Bullets were going to fly and people were going to get shot.

  It was possible, however unlikely, that the men from Luther’s Investments were taken by surprise, but with only one way in and out of the room? If surprise was a factor, it would have to come from within the room itself.

  “And that brings us full circle,” Chase said. “There had to be an inside man.”

  She walked over to Stitts’s desk and stared down at the scattered photographs, not of the crime scene — Chase had already put those on the board — but of the victims from the files that Greg had provided.

  “When did you get so damn messy,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Since my parents got divorced when I was nine,” Stitts offered. Chase, unsure of whether or not he was joking, looked at him and shook her head. Then she collected all of the headshots and put them across the top of the board, above the respective images of their corpses.

  “Well, if it was an inside job, then someone got fucked,” Chase said as she scanned the horrific images of the massacre. “Royally fucked.”

  Chapter 19

  Whereas several hours ago Chase had never seen a police station so empty, the opposite was true when ten o’clock struck. She was in the process of going over the details of each of the victims, the many detailed reports of their activities leading up to the poker game, when a portly man wearing an oversized suit that looked like it was straight out of a Dick Tracy movie knocked on the door.

  “Can I help you?” Chase asked.

  The man’s eyes darted around like a frog’s searching for the last fly on earth.

  “I think you’re in my office,” he said.

  Stitts, who had been punching away at his computer since early dawn, finally looked up and unplugged his earphones.

  “I’m sorry? Who are you?”

  The man strode forward, imbued with a sense of purpose and self-confidence, and held out his hand. He shook Stitts’s before turning to Chase.

  “Josh Haskell, DoD. Sgt. Theodore told me I could use this office.”

  Before Stitts could answer, a second man entered the room, this one even larger than the first, his burgeoning belly so huge that Chase felt sorry for his belt.

  “Duane Gwynne,” the man offered without being prompted. “ATF. I’m supposed to use this office.”

  Chase watched as the two men in the doorway shook hands before turning to face them.

  “FBI Special Agent Jeremy Stitts and this is Special Agent Chase Adams,” Stitts offered. “Sgt. Theodore said we can use this office for the investigation. We’re more than happy to share, and as you can see on the board behind us we already have some details about the victims. We also have—”

  “Victims?” Duane barked, his thick dark eyebrows rising up his
dark forehead. “There were no victims.”

  “That’s right,” Josh Haskell replied. “No victims have been identified as of yet.”

  A look of confusion crossed over Stitts’s face and Chase could literally hear the gears inside his head turning. She stared at the two men in the doorway and then turned to look at the photographs on the board.

  Of course, she thought with a scowl.

  “You’re not here for the murders, are you?”

  Duane shook his head, which set the waddle beneath his chin into perpetual motion.

  “No, we’re—”

  Chase didn’t let the man finish.

  “This office is going to be used for the investigation of the eleven murders at The Emerald, not for a fucking pipe bomb that was set off by accident.”

  Duane’s eyes narrowed.

  “Listen, Ms. Adams,” he began.

  Chase felt a whole mouthful of man speak coming her way and aimed to stem this nonsense before it started.

  “No, you listen, Mr. Duane. We were given this office by Sgt. Theodore and it will be used to investigate The Emerald massacre.”

  Now it was Josh Haskell’s turn to get his back up.

  “The FBI has no jurisdiction over DoD,” he said.

  “Nor ATF,” Duane offered with a smug expression.

  Chase nodded and pushed her lips together slightly, mocking them both without them even realizing it.

  “Oh, thank you so much for edumacating me. I mean, I’m just new at this. I’m just a little girl and I don’t know much about anything.”

  Stitts, true to his nature, acted as a peacemaker before things got out of hand.

  “I get it, we’re on different cases with different priorities. But we can share the space. I’ll sit over there with you, Chase, and you two…”

  It was clear by the expressions on all their faces that this was not going to be a solution that would work. Even logistically, what Stitts was proposing would prove problematic.

  Chase couldn’t imagine these two walking heart attacks sharing a desk.

  The headache behind her eyes that had been threatening to mature pulsed and Chase pinched the bridge of her nose to stave it off.

  If it hadn’t been six months since her last fix, the last time she’d used, Chase might have thought this was a withdrawal headache. But it couldn’t be… not now. Could it?

  “Yeah, I, um,” Duane started, speaking so slowly that it was nearly painful. “I just don’t think that’s going to work. We have a politically charged bombing that has terrorist implications here, people. So far as I see it, it takes precedence over the shooting of some ultrarich gambling addicts.”

  The callousness of the man’s words struck a chord with Chase, which was likely his intention, and she lashed out.

  “Oh, I get it. Because they were rich, they don’t—”

  And then, as if this were a Monty Python sketch, a new man poked his head into the room.

  Unlike the first two, this one was slim and gaunt, with arms so long that Chase couldn’t see him putting his hands in his pockets without them folding at right angles.

  “What’s the problem here?” the man asked with an air of authority.

  Chase suddenly felt like she was back in high school; someone had yanked on Becky’s ponytail and everyone was blaming each other.

  Her head started to pound.

  “The feds think they got this room to theyselves,” Duane offered. “For that shooting up at the casino over there. They says that Sgt. Theodore gave it to them.”

  The man looked at Chase, then Stitts, and then managed somehow to squeeze his way between Josh Haskell and Duane Gwynne.

  “Well,” the man said. “This isn’t Sgt. Theodore’s office to give. This is an LVMPD station and he’s part of Nevada DPS — we only loan him the office across the hall.” He shrugged. “You guys are going to have to learn to share.”

  Chase, grinding her teeth against her headache, stood and started toward the door.

  “I’ll tell you what, you guys all take your dicks out, line ‘em up, and see which is bigger,” she looked directly at Duane when she spoke. “If you can find the damn things. Then, when you’re all done jerking each other off, please tell me where I can sit so I can do my fucking job.”

  The men were so shocked by her words, that they nearly toppled as she squeezed by them and into the hallway.

  Chase hurried toward the station entrance, once again desperate for fresh air. Behind her, she heard Stitts apologizing and telling the other men that he’d be right back.

  Chapter 20

  “Well, I’m glad to see that the time off hasn’t changed you completely,” Stitts said in a tone that Chase found difficult to interpret.

  It appeared that her ability to sense what people were feeling or thinking extended beyond the dead and had now crossed over to the living.

  Chase stared at her coffee cup for a few moments while she fought the urge to apologize.

  “It’s ridiculous; we have eleven dead, Stitts. And they’ve got a fucking pipe bomb outside of a Planned Parenthood building where no one was even injured. You know, if this bomb was placed anywhere else, aside from maybe a church or mosque, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In fact, I don’t even know if it would make the news. But as it stands, I bet it’s running 24/7 right now — our case won’t even make an appearance until after the first half-hour.”

  Stitts sipped his coffee and took his time before answering.

  “So what?” he said at last.

  Chase raised an eyebrow.

  “So what? So what? It’s fucking bullshit, that’s so what, Stitts.”

  The waitress came by and asked them if they’d decided on their order. Chase said she’d stick with the coffee, while Stitts ordered himself a bagel with cream cheese and lox.

  “Not hungry?”

  Chase shook her head.

  “Lost my appetite.”

  When the waitress left, Stitts picked up where he’d left off.

  “This might be a good thing, something that we can use to our advantage. You know, with all the other cases—” he cleared his throat and corrected himself. “With the last case, it was all we could do to keep the media at bay. But with this case, with all the news coverage focused on the bombing, maybe we can work undercover for a while.”

  Undercover, Chase thought, her mind turning to her time, albeit brief, that she’d spent undercover in Chicago.

  Stitts must have also realized his poor choice of words, as he quickly continued.

  “We won’t have to waste our time with the media or be bogged down by any of that bullshit. Look at it this way, what if a bomb been used in The Emerald hotel room instead of automatic fire? Then we’d be playing second fiddle to the DoD, ATF, bomb squad, you name it. Everyone would be jamming their fat fingers in the pie, squishing it around.”

  Chase cringed at the analogy, but understood what her partner was saying. He could have left it at that, but he was just getting warmed up. The man interlaced his fingers and leaned forward, his eyes peering into hers.

  “You ever heard of the Pizza Bomber? Of Brian Wells?”

  Both the name and the moniker sounded familiar, but Chase couldn’t quite place it.

  “Well, it’s a long story that revolves around a man — Brian Wells — who robbed a bank with a bomb around his chest. Only thing is, he claimed that he was forced to do it on the threat of detonation. He ended up with a hole in his chest, and it wasn’t until years later that the entire thing was figured out. Apparently, Brian had been in on the plot the whole time under the pretense that the bomb was fake. But he was double-crossed and, needless to say, the bomb was very real.”

  The story came flooding back to Chase, including how Brian’s family rejected the court’s ruling that he was in any way involved in the plot. They claim to this day that he was just a victim. It was a real cluster fuck of a case, and yet Chase didn’t see the connection.

  “Anyways, I wor
ked on that case — first year out of the Academy, I was. And I saw firsthand how fucked up things got when the ATF, DoD, Grandma Jones, Uncle Phil, and Geraldo got involved. Look, my only point is that we’re better off without the involvement of the other agencies. I have faith in you and I have faith in me to get this thing solved. Who gives a shit if we have to share an office with Wilford Brimley and his type II diabetes? You need to let that stuff go, Chase.”