Lemons 03 Stroke of Genius (17 page)

It felt to him like he was moving in slow motion. Various scenarios flashed in his head. If worse came to worst, he could always just carry the woman back to his room two floor above. If he was spotted, the simple, yet brilliant excuse of Hey, it’s Vegas would work perfectly. I’m sure she wouldn’t be the first person to pass out from massive intoxication here. Hell, people probably wouldn’t think twice about it, he thought. Perhaps they would laugh about it.

As he strode silently past room 3716, the door opened directly behind him. He was incognizant to it. He was mad at himself, in hindsight, for not noticing. His sights were on the woman just a few steps ahead. She was just starting to turn around when he reached her, grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the wall. The woman fell to the ground, dazed. That’s when that little fucker attacked him from behind. He felt something hard slap against his head and draw blood. He turned to see his attacker. The boy had removed his belt and struck him with the metal buckle. The boy had attempted to bear upon him again but Larry was simply too brawny for the weak kid. He grabbed the belt and yanked it from the boy’s hands. He slung the belt around the kid’s neck and strangled him with it. He turned around to check on his subject. She was still on the ground, struggling to get to her knees. He pulled the boy like a puppy on a leash towards the woman and delivered a powerful kick into the woman’s side, sending her fully down to the carpeted floor. The boy’s body went slack. He had passed out. Larry let the boy fall. He looked up and down the hallway, still no one in sight. He saw the door to the boy’s room was being held open by the inside hook-lock being engaged, making it unable to close fully.

He left the boy on the floor and picked up the subject. He uncaringly threw her in the room then went back into the hallway and picked up the boy. He walked back into the room with the boy in his arms, delivering another kick to the woman as he passed by, this time in the face, causing her to black out and fall limp again.

Larry quickly thought of a plan to properly dispose of the boy. He held the belt tight around the boy’s neck until all life escaped him. When he was dead, Larry dragged the body to the closet, hooked the belt to a loop and pulled down the boys pants. It was a good cover. It would have to work. It was the first time he ever killed someone. It felt good. Invigorating.

He looked on the desk for a room key. He found it sitting on top of the kid’s wallet, grabbed it and made his way back out into the hallway, making sure the door was locked behind him, and proceeded down to the elevator. He remembered checking his watch and noticing a mere two minutes had passed since he stepped off it, initially. It had felt like much longer. He was impressed. He took the elevator to his floor and went into his room to retrieve his suitcase. He emptied the clothes on the bed. He would be able to come back for his stuff later and could transport it out in his suit bag.

He made his way back down to the 37th floor and entered room 3716 with the keycard, finding the woman still on the floor unconscious. He absentmindedly put the key back into his rear pocket then picked her up, smashed her head into the side of the table for good measure, then stuffed her in his suitcase. He gave the room a good once-over, making sure there was nothing he left behind. The boy was over in the carpet, lifeless and pathetic. Everything else was untouched. There wasn’t even blood on the carpet where the woman had lain. He was good to go. He wheeled the suitcase out into the hall and into the lift. He remained cool and calm. When the elevator doors opened up in the lobby, he strolled out like he owned that bitch. His ego even got the better of him and he decided to stop and play a few slots. Nobody was wise. And nobody noticed.

That was his fifteenth time and only the first time he’d ever had any problems.

28.

I explained to Elise my theory. Apparently my brain had had it all along and was just being uncooperative prick with the rest of my body, choosing instead to leave me heartbreaking messages in the form of unrelenting dreams. Thanks brain!

I told Elise to discard all the information we had and just go simply by the video. To hell with the time, to hell with the keycard logs, we we’re going to trust our eyes. The elevator lingered on the 37th floor for way too long. It was obvious once you looked for it. Then it went up, then all the way down, then up again then down. The last time it reaches the lobby the fat, bulbous pile of shit comes wobbling out.

“Look, the thing that finally clinched it was I finally realized what was missing from the room. There was no room key. Balls obviously came up alone, set his wallet and change on the table; it would stand to reason the key would be there too. When I got into his wallet for his ID, it wasn’t there either.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think Larry followed our girl off the elevator and attacked her. While he was doing that, Balls either heard something or was leaving the room and saw it. I think he tried to intervene. Balls and Larry were probably fighting while our girl was a little woozy. That would account for her thinking two men attacked her. Larry kills Balls, stashes him and our girl in Balls’ room, takes the key then goes back up to his room, gets what he needs and comes back down and finishes the job. It fits, and if we look at the timesheet for the keycards, I’m sure it will fit too. When Balls left to help, he probably wedged the door open, that’s what most people do when they’re just stepping out for a second. That would account for his card only registering two openings. Once when he first arrived at the room and once when Larry came back to finish up.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right.”

“We’ve got to go to Detective Howard with this.”

“I agree. The only problem is this is far from hard evidence.”

“The room would have his fingerprints all over it, so would the door handle.”

“You’re right. But unless this guy has a record, there is nothing to match it to. And judging by the amount of DNA he left behind on the victim, it stands to reason he’s been untouched.”

“So, now what?”

“Now we need to find him and get a DNA sample.”

“And how the hell are we going to do that?”

“We find him and set up a sting.”

I looked at Elise. She had a blank stare on her face and she was trying to comprehend what I was suggesting. “Oh mannn,” she finally said. “Shit.”

“Sorry, baby girl!”

“It’s okay. There’s nothing I hate more than a fucking rapist.”

“Nobody hates anything more than a fucking rapist. They’re cinema’s greatest villains this side of the Nazis.”

She lowered her head and mumbled, “Ugh.”

“Great! Now will you go call Detective Howard and Mulroney, tell them what we’ve got. I’m going to call this assholes firm, see if I can trick them into telling me where he is. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just call him straight out.”

“Wow, good luck with that.” She picked up her phone and walked to the far corner of the room to make her calls. I picked up my phone and dialed the business number Mark had given me. I hung up before it had started to ring.

“Elise!”

“Hold on.” She finished her first call then walked back over to me. “What?”

“We so stoopit, we have this asshole’s cell number. The odds are pretty goddamn good he’s got a smartphone for all his business dealings.”

“Oh shit. We can totally track him. Call him and get his connection.”

I dialed his phone number. When he picked up, I talked as if our signal was bad then hung up. Our hope was to get him to call us back. It worked. The call came in a few second later. I picked up and told him sorry for bothering him. I had simply dialed the wrong number. He voice was calm and collected. There were noises in the background. He was somewhere with a large crowd of people. I hung up and tossed my phone on the desk. “Got it!”

Elise got up and dug through my bag, retrieving my iPad. Every phone number has a code, and that code can be obtained, if you know how, every time someone places a call to you. It’s illegal but at this point I wasn’t very worried about it. This code could be used to hack into mobile tracking devices and used to monitor the movements of someone without their knowledge. It’s a lot easier to do, and legal, when you own both phones and simply want to keep close tabs on your children or whatnot. It proved to be much more difficult and outside the law when you hacked someone without their knowledge. That’s what we would be doing now. Nobody had to know. My ethics had dropped pretty low lately, but for a rapist, a possible multi-offending rapist, my ethics reached the nether regions of the planet. Fuck this guy.

I turned the iPad on and linked it with my phone with Fatty’s connection code. After a few minutes of snooping around, I noticed he didn’t even have a Mobile-Me account. This would be easier than I thought. All I had to do was set up an account for him and turn on his Find My Phone feature. I had all the information I needed after a quick background check Elise conducted on the MacBook. After the account was set up, I clicked on Locate. A GPS map popped up on the screen and dropped a pin up north about four hundred and fifty miles away, in Reno.

Map Quest told us it would take around eight hours. Elise checked her watch, deciding it was early enough. “Pack it up, Stud, and let’s move it out!”

“All our equipment is already in the car.”

“Gun?”

“Oh, I never leave home without that, anymore.”

“Good. I’ll go get our clothes and meet you back down here in ten minutes.”

“Good luck in the elevator.”

“I’m not the weirdo in this duo, remember?”

29.

We stopped at a gas station on the edge of town, filled the tank on the company card and picked up plenty of caffeine and snacks. It was going to be a long drive. A long and boring drive, actually.

We got into Reno a little before 8pm, less than seven hours after we left. The town wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. It had vague similarities to Vegas, but was actually quite different. I haven’t been here in twenty five years when my dad toted me along with him for some random, distant family member’s wedding. We parked in a hotel’s parking lot and got our bearings. I needed a Wi-Fi signal so we ended up driving to a Starbucks and sitting inside with our laptop and iPad like a couple of shaggy-haired, broke-ass hipsters.

We located Larry. He was less than a mile away. The map had him pinpointed almost exactly.

“Well, what’s the final plan here?” Elise asked. We had discussed several during the long car ride up. Elise had also placed a call back to the Myra Hotel and left a message for Mulroney. We still hadn’t gotten through to Detective Howard, either. Elise had left him a message before we left and two more during the drive, but he had yet to return them. Common sense would have told us to wait and let the police deal with this, but I told common sense to go fuck itself. We had a dirty rapist to catch.

“We need his DNA. I don’t care how we do it but we just need a sample of it.”

“Well, let’s just find him and follow him around. He’ll have to leave a few strands behind eventually. If that doesn’t work, just run up to him and rip out some of his hair.”

“Yeah, I’d like to not be killed, thanks. We’ll save that as a last resort.”

“Agreed. Let’s go.”

We packed up our stuff and left the Hipster’s Paradise. We followed Larry’s marking on our map to Reno Heights Hotel and Casino. We parked and went inside. I was holding my iPad, keeping tabs on the blinking blue dot of Larry. I added our location to help us. We were the solid red dot. And we were close. We followed the screen for less than a minute before I spotted him at a blackjack table. He was wearing a flannel shirt and a baseball cap. If we could snatch that hat it would surely have a few hairs in it.

“That’s him,” I said as I pointed him out to Elise.

“Holy shit.” She moved in front of me, stopping my forward progression and faced me. “Archie, let’s just shoot the fucker.”

“Yeah, that’s a hell of a plan. Walk into a crowded casino and open fire. You feel free. I’ll stand here and watch.”

“Argh! Fine. What now?”

“I’m going to sit at his table, get a feel for him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, why not. It’s worth a try. Can you extract DNA from a cup someone drinks out of?”

“How should I know? You’re the expert!”

“Google it and text me. Here, take this.” I handed her the iPad and my bag full o’ gadgets. “Go find somewhere close to sit and watch.”

“Ay yi.”

I began walking through the small crowd of people loitering around the casino floor. I took a seat directly next to Larry. “Hey hey, how’s the table treatin’ ya?” I asked.

“It’s been rough,” Larry answered. I recognized his voice from the phone. He still had that easy demeanor to him. Thinking of what he was capable of sent chills down my back.

“That’s okay. I like it rough.” (What the hell was that, Lemons! He’s going to think you’re hitting on him! stupidstupidstupid!)

“Right. Well, good to know. Are you going to join in or just sit there?”

“I’ll join.” I had forgotten to lay some cash on the table. Good thing I still had plenty left over from Vegas. I pulled out two hundred dollar bills and threw them on the felt. The dealer, whose name tag identified her as Georgia, pushed me a stack of chips and I put out a twenty dollar bet. The dealer got blackjack. Of course. I had no idea what to say to a rapist, so I just winged it. I turned to him and said, “Fuckin women. Am I right?”

“Ha. Yeah.”

“Georgia, you are NOT on my mind!”

Georgia gave us a well-warranted dirty look as I pressed on with Hairy Larry. “Hey, what do you do when your dishwasher stops working?”

He gave me a puzzled look and asked, “What?”

“Your dishwasher. What do you do when your dishwasher stops working?”

“Um. I have no idea.”

“You punch her in the face!”

This actually caused him to laugh a little and got me another fuck-you look from the dealer. I set out another twenty dollar bet. The dealer got blackjack again. “Good god, are you fucking kidding me?” I asked her.

“Sir, watch the language,” she instructed.