Sin City Homicide (3 page)

5

McCarran International Airport was packed with the weekend crowds when Stanton stepped off the plane and into the terminal. He walked down to the baggage claim and gathered his two gym bags. Being without his firearm felt odd, but he had already put in a request to Orson for a .45 Desert Eagle.

Outside the terminal
, a man in a button-down shirt and sports coat held a sign that said,Stanton.

“I’m Jon Stanton.”

“How’s it goin’? Marty Scheffield. I’m with the police. Sheriff Hall’s havin’ me pick you up.”

Marty took his bags and loaded them in
to the trunk of a Cadillac CTS parked on the curb. He climbed into the driver’s side as Stanton sat in the passenger seat and secured his seat belt.

“I love the car,” Stanton said
. “Yours?”

“I wish. This is your car while you’re here.”

Stanton noticed the slight delay in Scheffield’s speech, which was indicative of damage to his Broca’s area, the portion of the brain that was just in front of the motor cortex and controlled speech. He wanted to ask about it but knew it would be rude.

Scheffield
drove out of the airport and onto the congested freeway. Stanton hadn’t been there in a long time, and he was struck by the number of billboards. They were spaced hardly more than fifty feet apart, and the majority advertised personal-injury or criminal-defense lawyers.

“So how long you been with LVPD, Marty?”

“Two years now.”

“What’d you do before?”

“I was a student over at UNLV.”

“What’d you study?”

“Criminal Justice. I heard you was a professor before being a cop?”

“Yeah, psychology.”

“Do you really have a PhD?”

“Yeah.”

“So, why are you still a cop? If I had a PhD, I wouldn’t be a cop.”

“It’s hard to do too much good grading papers.” Stanton began searching restaurants on his phone. “Where do you think the best pizza is, Marty?”

“Um, pizza? Probably the Pie at Caesar’s Palace.”

“Can we stop there really quick?”

“Yeah, sure.”

The strip was clogged with cars, cabs, trucks carrying billboards for strippers and escorts, and the occasional city bus. Stanton watched the shows playing on the large screens set up near the roadside by the casinos
. Then Marty pulled the car to a stop out front of Caesar’s Palace.

“I’ll be right back,” Stanton said.

He ran and took two wrong turns before he asked one of the employees in a clothing store where he could find the Pie. She pointed him toward the fountains. He ordered three pizzas and pasta then waited near the fountains while his order was prepared. The water was far louder than he’d expected it to be, and the people sitting outside the restaurant couldn’t hear each other over the noise unless they yelled.

He looked
around at the statues, which imitated the original marble statues in Italy, remnants of Rome and the Renaissance. They portrayed an ideal of physical and intellectual perfection that he felt had been lost through the centuries. While his culture emphasized the physical, they had demonized the intellectual. He had heard one of his professors say that modern humanity lived as half-men.

The hostess signaled to him that his order was ready
, and he walked back, paid, and left the mall, to find Marty sitting on the hood of the car, smoking.

“Ready?” he
asked.

“Yeah.”

They climbed in, and Marty pulled away from the curb.

“What are the pizzas for?”

“Just a welcoming gift.”

Because of
the traffic, the trip to the precinct on Martin Luther King Boulevard took nearly half an hour. The precinct office building was a modern design, made of steel and glass. Where the Northern Precinct in San Diego was neglected and forgotten, the Las Vegas Metro Police headquarters looked as though it were being constantly cleaned and renovated, as did the surrounding property.

Marty parked up front in a reserved spot
, and Stanton got out then waited for Marty to tuck in his shirt, which had come out in the back. The pizzas were cold now, and he could feel the grease soaking through the boxes.

They walked into a building that ignored them. Uniforms, detectives, sheriffs, lieutenants, secretaries, lawyers, and paralegals
bustled from one room to the next, answering calls and having meetings. The energy was vibrant, and Stanton could feel the drive of the people in the building. They were focused and disciplined. He watched them just a little too long, and Marty asked him if he was okay.

“Fine.”

“Sheriff Hall’s office is upstairs.”

They took an elevator to the top floor
, then Marty led him down a long hallway to a corner office.

“I’ll see if I can find him.”

Stanton sat down in the brown leather chair set out for guests. The office was cluttered but not messy, and it was filled with photographs of Orson with sports figures and local and national politicians. In each one, he was wearing finely tailored suits. Not a single photograph showed him in a uniform.

“Jon Stanton,” a voice bellowed. “Didn’t think you had the balls to come back here after the ass
-kicking you took from me last time.”

Stanton smiled and
rose to shake Orson’s hand. “Two strings on my racquet were loose, and you wouldn’t stop long enough for me to grab a new one.”

“Your racquet was fine. It was your attitude that was bad. You think too much and choke. You gotta learn to turn off your brain sometimes.”

“It may not turn back on, as you’ve demonstrated.”

Orson laughed as he went behind the desk and sat down. “How the hell are you?”

“Good. Better than I’ve been in a long time. How’s everything here? You keeping this cesspool relatively clean?”

“You have no idea, brother. San Diego’s got its scumbags, but every piece of shit in the world comes here, at least for a couple of nights. We busted someone from fucking Tuvalu few days back for beating up a hooker. You know that Tuvalu was even a country?”

“No.”

“Me neither. But that’s what we got.” He played
absent-mindedly with a pen on his desk, rolling it a few inches one way then the other. “Sorry as hell to hear about Melissa. She was a good woman.”

“She is. Sometimes
, it just doesn’t work. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“Did you have any idea it was coming?”

“Yeah, some. Just a vague feeling. We knew it was over, but we kept trying to make it work for the kids. I think we went on for about six months like that. Then we just couldn’t take the denial anymore.”

“Well
, you’re young and good-looking. What the hell would I do if Wendy ever left me, Lord forbid?”

“Probably just get fatter. What have you been eating
, by the way?”

“Hey, don’t knock it. I can rough and tumble with the best of them still at two-sixty. Man needs some fat on him to tell the world he doesn’t care that much about what it thinks.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I appreciate you coming out here, Jon. I really do.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I really don’t know what you expect me to do. You got some of the best detectives in Robbery-Homicide that I’ve ever seen. I’m sure I can’t do anything they already haven’t done.”

“Maybe, but I gotta try. We’re getting desperate. The file’s with the assigned detectives. I’ll call over and get them to bring it here.”

“No, don’t do that. Let me meet them on their turf.”

“Gotcha. I was gonna ask you that, but I didn’t know how you’d take it. Their names are Jay Reed and Javier Trujillo. Marty’ll take you over to
’em when you’re ready.”

“Thanks.”

“Marty’s going to be your guide while you’re here. He’s a good guy but a little slow, so go easy on him. He’s had some brain trauma from a motorcycle accident.”

“He’s great. Thanks
, Orson.”

“No, thank you. I’m sure you wanna get started so you can get back to the beach, but let me just say, anything you need, you call me directly. You have my new cell number?”

“No.”

“I’ll
text it to you. And Jon, I ain’t kiddin’. You call me if you need anything at all.”

“I will
.” Stanton rose. “Hopefully, I won’t be a total waste of your money.”

“Well, probably, but if you ain’t a gambler
, you got no business being in this town.”

Stanton turned to walk out of the office and realized he’d left the pizzas on the chair next to him. He grabbed them
, and Orson stared but didn’t say anything.

“Do you want some?”

“If you don’t mind. I had a small lunch.”

“Not at all
.” Stanton gave him a box. “Enjoy.”

Marty was waiting down the hall
, his arms crossed, staring blankly at the floor. When he saw Stanton, he straightened up. “How’d it go?”

“Fine,” Stanton said
. “I need to see Jay and Javier.”

“They’re downstairs. Come on
. I’ll take you to ’em.”

Walking side by side, they
were quiet for a long time.

Then
Marty asked, “Did Sheriff Hall say anything about me?”

“He said you’re a good cop and that you’re going to be showing me around while I’m here.”

“Yeah, it should be fun. I’ve lived here since I was born, and I know all the fun places. I thought tonight, you’d want to go to a club. It’s a good place to meet people when you don’t know anybody.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ll probably just head back to the hotel after I’m done here.”

“Oh, okay.”

On the walk
back to the elevator, Stanton watched Marty’s footsteps. He hadn’t noticed it before because he wasn’t looking for it, but Marty had a spastic gait: a stiff walk dragging a foot, caused by contractions of the muscles on one side of the leg. It was typically attributed to a conversion disorder, which was a quasi-scientific way of saying that science couldn’t explain the cause. Typically, symptoms appeared after stressful events and could be as severe as blindness or complete paralysis. Psychotherapy was the only known cure.

They got down to the first floor and
hurried through the maze of corridors before reaching a large door marked ROBBERY-HOMICIDE. Stanton opened the door, but Marty grabbed his arm.

“Did Sheriff Hall tell you about Captain Parr?”

“No, what about him?”

“Well, you’ll see. But, Jon, just be careful
, okay?”

“I will
. Thanks, Marty.”

Marty nodded then walked away, glancing back once before stepping onto the elevator.

6

Stanton waited nearly twenty minutes before the detectives were ready to see him.
Instead of sitting at their desks, they were in an interrogation room, where a video was set up. Stanton walked in and waited by the door. The two of them were sitting a couple of feet from a television, watching a boxing match.

“I thought you guys might be hungry,” he said, placing the pizza down on a large table.

The two detectives turned to him. Jay was tall with red hair, and he was wearing a crisp white shirt with suspenders. However, Javier was wearing a T-shirt, his badge clipped to his belt. Tattoos on his forearms ran from his wrists to his elbows.

“You must be Orson’s boy,” Jay said. “Come in to clean up the mess, huh?”

“Just here to look at some evidence, as a favor.”

Javier opened the pizza box and took a slice, folding it in half before taking a large bite.
“Good pizza,” he said. “Thanks.” He pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jay
remained standing when Stanton sat down.

“I’m Homicide
, too, and I could tell you what I would think if my boss brought in some jerk from another city to look at my case. But it’s not like that. He offered me a free trip if I would look over the evidence. I couldn’t say no to that.” Stanton waited a beat before adding, “Besides, IAD’s investigating me back home, and it seemed like a good time to leave.”

Jay looked him up and down.
Stanton could see the change in his face, his posture, and the way his hands fell. The minutiae that others were blind to screamed at Stanton as loudly as any bold actions. He had noticed those sorts of things since childhood.

“What’re they on your ass for?”
Jay asked.

“Shooting. Perp held a young girl and her baby hostage. I got off one round that hit him in the throat but caught her shoulder.”

Jay shook his head. “Fuckin’ bastards. That’s why they’re in internal affairs, you know. They can’t hack it anywhere else. Any monkey can push papers behind a desk.”

Javier
added, “They had a file on me last year.”

“Oh yeah? For what?”

“Conduct unbecoming.”

Jay smirked. “He threatened some fucker who
drove into a crowd crossing the street out on the strip. Hit and run. He searched the guy’s house without a warrant. The dude confessed in, like, a second.”

“No law against a threat like that,” Stanton said.

“Nah, but it don’t look good,” Javier said, wiping the grease off his lips with the back of his hand. He turned to the television. “Lemme switch it. Hang on.” He swapped some wires in the back then inserted a DVD. “This is the video.”

A
still photo on the television showed an empty portion of what looked like a subway, train, or bus. The camera was positioned on the roof, capturing about ten square feet of space.

“I gotta warn you, Jon, this ain’t pretty.”

“I’m ready.”

“This is the tram up there on the strip.”

The video began to play. There was a timestamp in the corner: June 12. 10:12 pm. There was no sound, but the images were clear. It was the car at the end of the tram. A few people piled on, and the tram raced across the Las Vegas strip, twenty feet above the ground. Three people got off at one of the stops, and a couple came into view. They were middle-aged, perhaps in their fifties. The male had a fake tan and was wearing a tuxedo. The female was blonde, with her hair pulled up, wearing a red jacket over a black evening gown. They were kissing and joking around. From their mannerisms, Stanton could tell they were thoroughly drunk.

Then, just as the tram started moving, the woman’s face contorted with fear
, and she screamed. The man jumped to his feet then held up his hands as if he were surrendering. Another person came into view from the bottom of the screen. He was wearing a green jacket and had a ski mask over his head. He pointed a handgun at the man’s head.

The man in the ski mask grabbed the woman by her hair
, nearly lifting her off her feet. He threw her against one of the seats while keeping the gun aimed steadily at the man’s head. He bent her over, lifted her dress, pulled down his pants, and began to rape her.

The man in the tuxedo watched and yelled, but
he didn’t intervene. Stanton kept his eyes on the screen. The video pained him deeply, but he could shut down the human part of him that told him to turn off the video, quit his job, and go back to being a psychology professor. When he shut that off, he could function. He could watch the video and keep going.

Finally, the man in the tux had
seen enough, and he lunged at the other man, who shot him twice in the head. The man then pressed the gun to the back of the woman’s head and pulled the trigger just as the tram came to a stop. He pulled up his pants and moved out of view.

Javier turned off the video. “The fucking
cojones
on this guy. That was the Flamingo and Caesar’s Palace stop, right in the middle of the line. He could’ve been seen by a hundred people, and he didn’t give a shit.”

“Did anybody see anything?”

“Not a one,” Jay said. “Haven’t found a single witness.”

“Did you go to the media?”

“Posted some of the video, and they played it on all four major stations. Nothing.”

“Who were they?”

Javier got another slice of pizza. “Daniel and Emily Steed. Residents of Vegas.”

“Any reason why a guy in a tuxedo is riding the tram?”

Jay shrugged. “People get wasted all the time and take the tram home to avoid driving.”

Stanton glanced back at the video. Jay had misunderstood the question. A man who could afford a tuxedo like that could easily hire a limousine or a cab.
He didn’t need to ride the tram with the public.

“Do you need to watch it again?” Javier asked.

“Not right now. Would you guys mind if I got a copy of the file to take to my hotel room?”

The two detectives looked at each other
. Then Javier said, “I guess that’s okay. I was just gonna let you look at it here.”

“I would appreciate that. I’ll get everything back to you as soon as I’m done.” Stanton rose. “It was nice meeting you guys.”

Javier nodded, but Jay turned back to the video without saying a word. As Stanton walked out, he knew instinctively that the file would be missing the most important details. His finding the perp would be the worst-case scenario for those two. They would always be reminded of it, and they would never receive the respect that police officers’ egos sometimes required.

Stanton knew they would do everything in their power to stop him from finding the man who
’d killed those two people.