Sin City Homicide (22 page)

“Freddy Steed.”

He laughed. “All this bullshit over a queer like Freddy Steed? Fuck Freddy Steed.”

“You killed him.”

“Fuck yes, I killed him. I can’t have no fudge-packers in my city. That other queer, Tyler—that queer’s gonna get what’s comin’ to him, too. I can tell you that.”

“They were lovers?”

“They weren’t lovers,” he said angrily. “Queers can’t be lovers. They can just be queers.”

“Well, you’ll find out soon enough in the can.”

He smirked. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I can’t live in a cage.”

Parr looked at the dog then down at the shotgun. Brody moved behind the girl, shielding most of his body with her
s. For a moment, neither of them moved or even breathed. They existed in that moment separately, but they knew it was the last moment of one of their lives, and they shared something. It was brief, like a flash of heat that comes and goes, but Parr recognized it. He closed his eyes, just for a fraction of second, and as he opened them, the gun came up.

Brody released the girl
, and the dog lunged for her. Parr fired right through the dog’s throat, and it collapsed into a heap of growling pain, blood, and wet fur. The blast from the shotgun struck Parr like a truck, and he flew backward, off his feet, and hit the wall in the hallway. He slid down to the floor, and as he did so, he fired his last three rounds as Brody got to his feet with his shotgun at his shoulder for better aim.

Suddenly, Brody lowered the gun. He looked at Parr, a smile on his face, and blood began to
leak from the small hole in his forehead. Then blood sprayed out in time with the beating of his heart in such enormous quantities that it soaked the girl at his feet, dying her clothes a dark red, sticking her hair to her head.

Parr got to his knees as she huddled on the floor,
in shock. Boots stomped up the hall as Parr ripped the smoking vest off his chest and wrapped his arms around the crying girl.

39

Stanton sat across from Mindi in the booth at the café while she recounted what she had heard that morning regarding the raid on the compound. He twisted an Equal packet in his hands as he listened, picturing the space littered with empty shells and bodies. Nine members of the Brotherhood and two officers were dead. They had found a weapons cache unlike anything they could have dreamed. From grenades to rocket launchers to sniper rifles, the Brotherhood had been preparing for war. It had also turned up one of the largest stashes of methamphetamine in Nevada’s history. Two young girls who had been kidnapped from different parts of the country had also been found; they had been used as sex slaves.

The story of the hero cops who
’d freed two captive children was all over the Internet and in all the papers. A photo of Alma Parr being taken out of an ambulance and into an emergency room was featured prominently in every story. There were also two of the sheriff and Orson Hall standing next to a mountain of weapons and methamphetamine wrapped in thick plastic bricks.

“I can’t believe I missed that,” Mindi said. “I should’a been there for them. Oh, by the way, I talked to Alma in the hospital. He doesn’t think you did anything to Freddy. You’re in the clear.”

“Is he doing all right?”

“Yeah, he’s going to be okay. He’s one of the toughest guys I’ve ever known.”

“Did they find anything related to the Steeds?”

“No. Why? Do you think Brody did that?”

“They killed Freddy. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think they killed his parents, too. I was hoping they might find something.”

“Not that I know of, but I wasn’t there. I can go talk to Orson about it. He’s been there all day.”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

“What’re you going to be doing?”

“I need to go to the Flamingo.”

“Why?”

“That’s the last place I asked Marty to go. I need to see if he actually went. Maybe someone there saw something.” He finished his glass of orange juice and wiped his lips before leaving cash on the table. “Call me if Orson knows anything.”

“I will.”

Stanton walked out of the café and to the car he had rented that morning. It was an old Toyota, not much more than four wheels and a frame, but it was cheap and safe. He glanced back at the café and saw Mindi mulling something over, absent-mindedly nibbling at her food. There was something between them, but acting on it was a different matter. He got the impression that she would never leave the force for any man, and he didn’t have plans to live in Las Vegas. Stanton wondered if a normal man would have thought about dating and having fun rather than a long-term relationship.

He
parked at a meter outside the precinct then went to reception and asked for Detective Stewart in Narcotics. The receptionist told him to hold on and buzzed the detective. Stanton waited in the lobby, where a couple of the officers recognized him and murmured under their breath. Ignoring them, he picked up a
Time
magazine. The person of the year was “The Protestor;” a person whose face was hidden behind a scarf graced the cover. He threw the magazine back down without opening it and leaned back in the chair.

Before long, a detective with a thick mustache came out. He had white, hairy forearms exposed by a short
-sleeved button-down shirt.

“Mr. Stanton,” he said in a thick voice, “I’m Ian Stewart. What can I do for you?”

Stanton stood up. “I have a message from Brody.” He took out the slip of paper and handed it to him.

“What is this?”

“The date and time of a large shipment of cocaine.”

Steward folded the slip of paper and put it in his pocket. “Brody’s dead
, you know.”

“I know, but I promised him I would do this. I keep my promises.”

Stewart nodded and glanced around to see if anybody was within earshot. “It’s a shame, actually. He was a good soldier in the war against the mud people.”

Stanton was so caught off guard by the comment that he didn’t respond. He just turned and
walked away.

“What? You think you’re better than me?” Stewart
asked. “’Cause you stand by while the niggers and spics take over our country, and I actually want to do something about it?”

Stanton turned back to him. “Whatever you put in
to the world is what you get back. All that hatred and fear, one day it’s going to come to your house to collect.”

Stanton checked his watch. It was nearly five p.m. He had been sitting in his car for over an hour, watching the security guard at the Hilton Vacation Suites-Flamingo front desk, a man in his mid-sixties, just waiting for retirement. He spent most of his time surfing the Internet or reading magazines. He fell asleep for a little while, then someone with a question woke him. This wasn’t a man who would be impressed by the badge or go out of his way to help anyone in need. His primary motivation was laziness.

Stanton got out of the car and went inside. Soft music was playing over the speakers
, and a family brushed past him to get outside.

The
young boy whined, “But I don’t want to go there!”

The parents didn’t respond
, and when he protested by trying to sit down, the father dragged him by his arm until he started walking again.

Stanton stood at the desk and glanced at the computer screen that the guard was glued to.
The net browser was open to a sportsman’s website, which discussed the benefits of bow hunting versus rifle.

“Hi,” Stanton said.

“What can I do for ya?” he said without looking up.

Stanton took out his badge
and held it within the guard’s field of vision. The guard looked up at him but didn’t read the badge. Stanton replaced it in his pocket.

“A colleague of mine might have come by here in the last ten days or so.” He took out his cell phone and brought up the photo Mindi had emailed him. “Do you recognize him?”

The guard looked at the photo of Marty. “Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Yup,” he said, turning back to his computer screen.

“Well, that’s too bad. This officer was murdered recently. I’m going to need you to come down to the station with me.”

“For what?”

“I think you were one of the last people to see him alive, so we need to go through the tapes from the lobby together.”

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“You can come with me voluntarily, or I can arrest you for obstruction.”

“Obstruction! What the fuck you talkin’ about? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“You’re hampering the murder investigation of a police officer. It won’t take more than a day or two. We’ll have some forms for you
, too, but a lot of those can be filled out at home. I’ll clear it with your boss.”

The man grew flustered, his lips trembling. “I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Then was he here or not?”

“Yeah, yeah
, he was here. Some… I don’t know, five or six days ago.”

“What did he ask you?”

“He asked for a tape. Um, some tape from the camera near the tram.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“Yeah, I gave it to him.”

“Do you have a copy of that tape?”

“No, it was on a disc, like a DVD, and we just throw ’em away after a few weeks. We don’t keep copies.”

“Was anyone with this man when he came to see you?”

“No… no, he was alone.” The guard thought a second. “But he got a call. Yeah, I remember that. He got a call from someone and told them he had a tape that they thought … I don’t remember exactly what he said, but somethin’ about having caught something on tape.”

“Did he mention the name of the caller?”

“No, the guy seemed kind’a slow, so I didn’t ask no questions. I just gave him the disc, and he signed for it and left.”

Stanton tapped the counter. “Thanks.”

“Hey, wait a second. Is that it? I don’t need to come down and fill out no papers or nothin’, right?”

Stanton walked out without
responding. He dialed Mindi. The call went to voicemail, and he said, “Call me back right away. I know what he was looking for inside Marty’s house.”

40

Prickly excitement in his belly, Stanton sped down the freeway to Marty’s house. He suddenly realized he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since that morning. He felt lightheaded and weak, and a headache was coming on. He pulled off the freeway into a burger joint and went inside, where he ordered a vegetarian burger and a Diet Coke with fries. It took all his willpower to simply place his order and sit at a table rather than run out to his car and get back on the freeway. He ate slowly so he wouldn’t upset his stomach and stared out the window at the passing traffic. Watching groups of people made him uncomfortable. It hadn’t always. When he was a kid and his mother had taken him to the mall or Disneyland, the groups had excited him, but ever since he’d joined the force, his thoughts always drifted to unpleasant things. How many of the men out there beat their wives? Or how many were drunk and would kill somebody on the road? How many of them were planning a rape or a home invasion? How many of them thought about these things but didn’t act on them?

The numbers were unknowable.
It would be impossible to get someone with a family and a nine-to-five job, someone who is heavily involved in his church and community, to admit that he’s thought about raping children, shooting his next-door neighbor, or torturing another man. The good ones fought that dark part of themselves with everything they had. The weak ones gave in and fantasized. The line between fantasy and action was thin. It was just a matter of opportunity, and if that opportunity ever came….

“Are you done, sir?”

Stanton snapped back to where he was and what he was doing, realizing the young busser cleaning tables had spoken to him. “Yeah, thanks.”

He took his Diet Coke with him and headed back to his car. He caught a glimpse of his eyes in the
rearview mirror, and it made him pause. His son, Mathew, had the same eyes. An intense ache gripped his chest, and he had the urge to drive back to San Diego and take his kids in his arms. But the draw of Marty’s house was too strong. It was a magnet, and he was a piece of steel, sliding toward it on a smooth surface.

The freeway drive was pleasant
, and U2’s “Zooropa” was playing on the radio. He rolled down his window and let the evening air fill the car. The light scent of smoke mingled with the warm night air. The fire was somewhere off in the distance, far enough away that the smell was pleasant.

He turned off the freeway and found Flower Avenue. He counted the homes until he came to the fifth one down
, where he parked in the driveway. He was glad for the streetlamp behind him, illuminating the sidewalk and part of the driveway. He got out of the car and shut the door. Then he leaned against it for a moment, listening to the neighborhood. A television was on in the house next door, some sitcom with canned laughter. The blue flicker of the screen illuminated the curtains, and he could see a man sitting in his boxer shorts sipping on a tall can of beer.

His heart pounding,
Stanton walked up the driveway. He had been kidnapped the last time he was there, and the full impact of it hadn’t settled yet. He was able to disassociate experiences in his mind and keep going. The kidnapping was an experience to be analyzed and dissected and to draw conclusions from. If he treated it like an intellectual exercise, it didn’t bother him. It didn’t have the impact on him that it would have had on someone who wasn’t used to seeing what he saw every day.

At the
front door, the doorknob was unlocked, but the deadbolt wasn’t. He went around back, checking the windows. The backyard was dark, and he took out a penlight he had on his keychain and flashed it on the backdoor. It was locked as well. The basement window hadn’t been replaced yet, but the broken glass had been cleared away. Taking a deep breath, he climbed down and went inside.

I
nside the house, he paused. He put the penlight between his teeth, took out his firearm, and held it low. The weight of it, the smooth steel of the trigger, and the rough edges of the barrel against his thigh were like slipping into a well-worn silk shirt that fell over his shoulders like water. It was familiar and warm. It calmed him, allowing him to focus. He could see why egotists chose law enforcement more often than any other profession. There was a sense of power in being allowed to carry and take out a gun wherever one wanted.

Upstairs, h
e came to the three doors he had been to before and chose the one on the right. It was a sparsely decorated bedroom with little more than a bed and a painting on the wall. The house was still and silent, so quiet that he could hear the crickets outside. He began to whisper to himself.

“Marty was dead two days before we found him. You had two days in here by yourself. You were here two days,” he said, sliding open
the closet. “Two days by yourself.” He reached down, brushing through some clothing. “Two days, and you didn’t find anything. You tried to stay so neat. You didn’t want anyone to know that you were here, but you couldn’t clean everything. I interrupted you before you put the cushions back and cleaned up the drawers. You had to leave those out.”

After closing the closet,
Stanton checked under the bed. He stood up again and looked around. He went back to the hall and opened the other door, which opened into a storage closet. He began going through the shelves.

“
Two days, and you didn’t find anything. You must’ve gone crazy looking through here. You wished you hadn’t killed Marty. He could’ve told you where it was, and now you’re stuck. But you couldn’t spend the whole two days here, either. You had other things to do. People would notice you were gone. When you were doing other things, your mind was still here. This was all you could think about.”

The storage closet was packed with two feet of junk. Marty
had clearly filled it with everything that had nowhere else to go. It would take Stanton all night to search through it. He stepped back out into the basement and stood in the center of the room. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the house as it settled for the night.

“You were so meticulous. You thought you were checking everywhere you could check, but you couldn’t find it. Marty hid it too well. He
watched the disc. He saw what was on it. It was your face, and he knew who you were. That’s the only reason he would take this much effort to hide it. He knew you, and he knew you would come after him. But if you couldn’t find it in two days, I won’t, either. The house is too big. There’s too much to go through. Unless it’s…” He opened his eyes and turned, looking out the window at the backyard. “Unless it’s not in the house,” he said, making his way to the window.

He
climbed out and stood in the large backyard. The quickest and most effective way to search a large space was with constricting circles. Stanton started at the edge of the fence and worked his way around, the penlight pointed at the ground. He took off his shoes to feel for any bumps or displaced dirt or grass.

He
finished the first circle then continued with the second, the third, and the fourth. Somewhere near the center of the yard, his foot hit a small indentation. He stepped on it again, gingerly, so as not to disturb it too much. He knelt and put the penlight over it. There was a small bump in the lawn. Someone had cut a square into the grass, placed something underneath, then put the grass back over it. He lifted the sod, and underneath was a plastic case. Stanton wished he had thought to bring latex gloves.

He opened the case, making sure only to touch the edges.
The disc inside was labeled June 12.