The Case of the Sin City Sister (28 page)

“Something going on?” Daniel asked. “Seems like a lot of excitement for a Sunday morning.”

“We had an incident.”

There was a pause.

“You taking someone home?” he asked, and Eve knew the guard had noticed that someone was sitting on the passenger side wrapped in the blanket.

“My wife,” Daniel answered.

The lie surprised Eve. What would she do if the guard asked to see her face? She hoped Daniel could talk himself out of this one.

“We’ve been in the emergency room all night.” His voice quieted. “Migraine headache, she gets them all the time. Usually we can handle them at home, but she needed a shot. Lost the feeling in her face, vomiting. She’s finally stopped, but if she sits up and has that morning sun in her eyes, it’ll start all over again. I think she’s asleep.” He reached over and touched Eve. She didn’t respond.

“Oh yeah, I had a migraine once,” the guard replied. “It’s okay, no need to wake her. Sounds like she’s had a pretty awful night.”

“Yeah, nothing like a weekend in the ER!”

The guard gave a slight laugh. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

Eve thought it sounded like he was about to tell Daniel the whole story of the escaped patient, the man who chloroformed a nurse, a woman on the run. She hoped he would think better of that.

“Okay.” She heard a tap on the side of the car. “Be careful going home. I’m glad she’s better.”

“Thanks,” Daniel said, and she could tell he had rolled up the window and felt the car moving forward.

She waited.

“You can get up now,” he said. “The coast is clear.”

Eve pulled the blanket hood from her head and face and sat up a bit. “Your wife?” she said.

“What, you don’t think you look like a wife?”

She sat up fully and shrugged. She kept the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it before.”

“Well, it was better than saying you were my sister,” he responded with a grin. “We might have some ’splaining to do about that, Lucy. I’m not sure we could have pulled that one off. We do look a little different.”

Eve glanced over at Daniel. “Yeah, that probably would have stumped the guard a bit more than wife.”

Daniel sped out of the parking lot and onto a side street.

“Speaking of ’splaining, you got some to do,” he said.

“I’ve got some explaining to do?” she replied. “You’re the one who doesn’t seem to know how to work his phone.”

He shook his head. “Okay, you got me on that one.”

She turned back to look at the hospital parking lot as they passed, just to see if the motorcycle she had seen before might be parked somewhere nearby. There was one near the side of the hospital, but it was not the Harley she remembered.

“Did you call him and tell him you found me?” she was asking about the Captain. After hanging up on him, she was concerned he might have gotten upset. She knew stress was not good for a diabetic.

“He called me again before I could dial his number. He was pretty anxious, said your call got disconnected and then you didn’t pick up when he tried to call you back. He was worried about you.”

Daniel stopped at a light and looked at Eve.

“Are you all right?” He seemed to be studying her.

She nodded. “Just a close call,” she replied. She thought about the events of the evening and realized how lucky she was to be out of the hospital and in Daniel’s car. She leaned back against her seat.

“I can’t believe Dorisanne was there,” he said.

“I know. I was so close to her.”

“Did she ever see you?”

Eve shook her head, recalling how the stairwell exit door had closed before she shouted out her sister’s name. She thought about her assisting Pauline down the stairs and wondered where the two of them had gone. She turned to Daniel, who seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“We can stop and check out the apartment, but that seems way too easy.” He glanced in his rearview mirror.

“I know. I can’t imagine them going back there either, but I don’t know where else they could have gone.”

“Back to the hiding place where she’s been, I guess. Must be a good one.”

The light turned green and Daniel hit the gas. Eve could see he was heading in the direction of Dorisanne’s apartment. She closed her eyes, feeling the lack of sleep and coffee.

Daniel had noticed. “You know, why don’t we go back to the hotel and you can get a nap? I’ll check out the apartments myself. There’s no need for both of us to go over there. Look at you, you’re exhausted.”

She turned to him. “Last I heard, you hadn’t gotten any sleep last night either.” She could see that he appeared to be as tired as she felt.

“I’m used to this,” he said with a wink. “Police officers are built to run without sleep.”

“Well, so are nuns,” she responded with a wink of her own.

“Yeah, but sometimes praying can look a whole lot like nodding off.” He leaned over and elbowed Eve in the side.

“Yeah, well, sometimes so can police work.” She grinned.

He made a turn, and Eve recognized the street as the one where Dorisanne’s apartment was located. They quit talking as he made his way into the parking lot.

FORTY-SEVEN

It turned out that no one was at the complex. Both Dorisanne’s and Pauline’s apartments were without tenants present. The manager, a different guy from the one they had met earlier, let Eve and Daniel into both places after Daniel flashed his badge. Once they got in, they both saw that nothing had changed since they were last there. Neither of the women had returned.

While Daniel took a look around the back of the building, Eve called the Captain to explain what had happened. He sounded relieved, and when he asked when she was getting home, she didn’t have an answer. “Soon,” was all she could tell him, and she hung up after she promised to call later in the day.

Daniel returned to the car shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said as he got in and started the engine. “I don’t think they came back here,” he added. He sat back and scratched his chin. “I didn’t expect that we’d find anything, but I don’t know . . .”

Eve waited. “What?”

“I just hoped I would walk up there and she’d answer the door. It sure would make things a lot easier.” He gripped the steering wheel.

“We could go to the Rio,” Eve suggested. “See if anybody there might know a friend she has or where she might go to get away.”

She felt like they were starting back at ground zero, and there was a heaviness inside her. They’d figured out that Dorisanne was working with the FBI, and Eve had even seen her and knew that she was okay at that moment, but she was still missing, and because the guy on the motorcycle was still out there, she was still in danger.

Daniel looked at his watch and shook his head. “Too early,” he said. “There wouldn’t be anything going on there now. The night crew, the people she worked with, are all likely to be gone and won’t be back until later.”

Eve didn’t respond. She knew he was right. They sat in the car in silence.

“Doesn’t the FBI know anything?” she asked. She suddenly realized she hadn’t had a chance to hear what Daniel’s conversation had been about the previous night. He hadn’t reported much about what the FBI told him.

“No,” he replied as he put the engine in Drive and headed toward the exit out of the lot. “They were waiting to see what we found out.”

“They have no idea of a place she might hide?” She was surprised that the law enforcement team placed on Dorisanne’s case wouldn’t have any clue as to where she might go with Robbie.

He shook his head. “Her departure was as big a surprise to them as it was to us,” he answered.

“What about the motorcycle guy?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Do they know who he is?”

Daniel thought about the question. “He didn’t come up,” he replied. “But I’m sure he’s with the theft ring. That only makes sense.”

Eve nodded. That’s what she thought too. She watched as Daniel stopped at the apartment exit. He seemed unsure of what direction to take.

“Are they worried about her?” She had to ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know everything they knew, all the details of her brother-in-law’s involvement in illegal activities, all of Dorisanne’s engagements, but she at least wanted to know if they were as concerned about where her sister was as she and Daniel were.

Daniel didn’t answer, and after a few moments she understood that his silence meant they probably weren’t worried. It seemed likely that her sister was just an informant to them and that was all. Any danger Dorisanne found herself in was danger she was likely going to have to get herself out of, without any help from the FBI.

Even though Eve knew now that Dorisanne was not a fugitive and was not involved in the theft ring, the search for her was just as urgent as it had been when they first arrived in Las Vegas.

“What else is in the book?” Daniel wanted to know, breaking the silence.

For a moment, Eve didn’t follow.

“The address book, the one you found the FBI code in, is there any other clue in there? We have the customer’s name, right?” He turned with the traffic onto the Strip.

Eve pulled the book from her back pocket and flipped through the pages again. Nothing stood out to her. She dropped it in her lap
and shrugged. “Yeah, we have that one, and now that we know she was leaving clues, we could just go through every listing,” she said, thinking that might be the best option.

“Call and just ask if Dorisanne is there?”

She paused. “It’s all I can think of to do.”

“I could go back and see Pauline’s boyfriend,” Daniel suggested. “I’m pretty sure that he’s still in the same place. Maybe he knows more than he has let on.”

Eve considered the idea of Daniel going back to the jail and interviewing Steve again. “It doesn’t look like he’s the bad guy after all,” she noted.

“He’ll probably find out from one of the officers that she’s out of the hospital,” Daniel noted. “Not that I guess that matters,” he added.

“You think they’ll keep him in much longer?” Eve wanted to know. She wasn’t sure what evidence would be necessary to keep him locked up.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “If they figure out what happened at the hospital, that somebody was looking for her and she escaped, somebody on the force might put two and two together and decide he might be innocent and let him out. But I don’t expect that to be the case,” he said. He turned to Eve. “We sort of like to keep abusers behind bars for as long as we can.”

“Well, then I think we should go and talk to him. Maybe you can make him a deal. Maybe he’ll give you something new.”

Daniel acted surprised. “I’m in no position to make a deal. If you recall, I don’t have any power in the state of Nevada.”

“No, but he doesn’t really know that. If you use your persuasion
powers, he might truly see that you are likely the only official person who believes he didn’t do this to Pauline. I would imagine that counts for something. You can promise that you will at least plead his case to someone who can make a deal.”

Daniel seemed to be thinking it through. “I guess it’s worth a try.” He made a quick turn. “But I don’t want you in there,” he said. “I’ll drop you off at the hotel and then I’ll go. You can take a nap.”

“I’ll just take a taxi and meet you there,” Eve replied. “I’m not sleepy, and I’m starting to learn my way around the city.”

Daniel shook his head. “You can stay out in the car and start making some calls from that address book.”

Eve smiled. “Yes, sir,” she replied.

Daniel headed away from the Strip and onto Highway 10 toward the city jail. He was just making the exit off the thoroughfare when an ambulance came flying up behind him. He quickly pulled the car off to the shoulder of the road and they both watched it pass.

FORTY-EIGHT

The new inmate had been stabbed while standing in line for breakfast. He did not survive. This information was given to Daniel by one of the guards who had been called to the cafeteria after the stabbing occurred. The officers had separated all the other inmates and were still trying to find out who had killed Steven Albright and how a weapon had gotten inside the jail. The interviews were expected to last all day. So far, no one was saying anything, and the video recording of the incident had just been witnessed by the jail staff. There were so many men in the breakfast line and standing around the victim that the perpetrator couldn’t be identified.