Stripped (11 page)

Lane married a young actress in the early 1980s, after she interviewed for a role in a science fiction film he was bankrolling. She didn’t get the part, but she got Walker, and two years later, MJ was born. There were no public details about the relationship between Walker and his twenty-something wife, but somewhere along the line, it went badly wrong. Stride found news reports from 1990 about the woman’s suicide. There was no public memorial, no photograph of a grieving Walker Lane, and no public comment. She might as well not have existed.

Stride couldn’t find any evidence that Lane had given an interview in decades. That wasn’t a good sign. He didn’t expect the man to open up and discuss all his father-son secrets with a police detective from Las Vegas.

“You ready for your close-up?” Amanda asked, dropping into the chair squeezed inside his cube. She looked scrubbed and rested, which made him feel old. He had taken Serena to McCarran to catch an early flight to Reno, and two cups of coffee hadn’t dented the haze in his head. On the other hand, his body still had the pleasant ache from cramped, sweaty sex with Serena a few hours earlier.

“I’ll be lucky if he takes my call,” Stride said.

“He’s still a father with a dead kid. He’s got to be anxious to find out what happened.”

Stride shrugged. “Maybe. Sounds like Sawhill practically had to beg the governor to get Lane’s number. Nobody wants me to make this call.”

“Except me, because I want to hear what the big guy sounds like. So make it.”

“Let’s go in a conference room.”

They took over a small, windowless office and shut the door behind them. Stride had another cup of coffee with him, and Amanda had a cruller and a glass of orange juice. They sat down on opposite sides of the conference table, and Stride dragged the phone to him. Amanda had a yellow pad in front of her. He punched the hands-free button and dialed the number.

He expected to go through five layers of secretaries, personal assistants, and senior aides. Instead, almost immediately, the man answered his own phone.

“Walker Lane.” His voice sounded exactly like the one they had heard on the answering machine in MJ’s condo, but flat, without the emotional pleading. It was a terrible voice, as gritty as sandpaper, an old hound trying to bark like a fierce dog in its prime.

Stride couldn’t help but think of the photo he’d found of Walker Lane in the 1960s: absurdly tall, a mop of blond hair, Clark Kent glasses. Cocksure, as if he would someday own the world, which he pretty much did today. The price he’d paid was chiseled in his voice.

Stride introduced himself and Amanda. Lane didn’t sound surprised. Stride wondered if the governor had tipped him off to expect the call.

“Do you have any idea who killed my son?” he demanded.

Stride explained what they had found on the casino video-tapes and the steps they were taking to retrace MJ’s movements. “We were wondering,” he added, “if you had any idea who the killer might be or why he wanted your son dead.”

“No, I don’t. I just want you to find him.”

“Did MJ talk to you about any problems he was having?” Stride asked.

“No.”

“Do you know of anyone in Las Vegas he was particularly close to?”

“No,” Lane repeated.

“What about women in his life? Did you know who he was involved with?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Walker Lane didn’t waste unnecessary words. Stride realized he was just going to have to lay down his cards.

“Mr. Lane, we heard the message you left for MJ on his answering machine. We know you talked to MJ shortly before he was killed. There was obviously a significant disagreement between the two of you. Can you tell us what it was about?”

This time there was a long pause.

“That’s a private matter, Detective. It has nothing to do with his death.”

“I understand you feel that way, Mr. Lane,” Stride said, choosing his words carefully, “but sometimes we find connections in ways we don’t anticipate. Or we can pursue more productive areas of investigation because we can cross things off the list.”

In other words, we’ll keep digging until we find out
, Stride wanted to say.

Lane didn’t take the bait. He didn’t say a word.

Stride finally gave up after the silence stretched out too long. “How long had MJ lived in Vegas?”

“Since he turned twenty-one.” Lane’s tone was clipped, unhappy.

“You didn’t approve?” Stride asked.

“No.”

Stride began to understand why the man had never made a movie longer than eighty-seven minutes. “Why is that?”

“Because the city is a sewer,” Lane snapped. “It’s immoral. A wasteland. There are only two kinds of people living there, users and suckers.”

Amanda casually held up one hand and extended her middle finger at the phone. Stride shrugged.

“When were you last here?” he asked.

“A lifetime ago, Detective.”

“A lot’s changed since then,” Stride said.

“Nothing’s changed. Nothing at all. Now, if you have nothing else, let me go back to my job, and you can go back to yours. Finding out who killed my son.”

“I do have a few more questions,” Stride said.

Lane’s impatience crackled through the phone line. “What?”

Stride was running out of ideas for making the man talk and decided to take a wild leap. “MJ seemed to be very interested in that new casino project near his building. The Orient project that Boni Fisso is launching. Do you know why?”

“I have
nothing
to say about Boni Fisso,” Lane hissed.

Stride and Amanda looked at each other. Boni’s name had obviously struck a raw nerve.

“Was MJ somehow involved with the Orient project?” Stride persisted.

Lane exhaled in disgust. Stride wished he were there in person to read the man’s body language.

“MJ didn’t care about the
new
casino,” Lane retorted. “All he could talk about was the Sheherezade.”

“Why is that?” Stride asked.

There was another stretch of silence.

“The Sheherezade,” Lane said. “When I read it was coming down, I thought finally it would all be over.”

He paused, but Stride could hear the fissures in the dam grow wider. Lane wanted to tell them. Just like he had wanted to tell MJ.

“Boni couldn’t just drop it in the dead of night. Let everyone wake up and find a pile of rubble. All its secrets leveled, ready to be carted away. No, no, make it another goddamn tourist attraction. The governor’s going to push the button. Half the congressional delegation will be there applauding. Like it was something noble. Like they were saying goodbye to something sacred.”

“What happened there?” Stride asked.

“Las Vegas killed me, that’s what happened,” Lane retorted. “Now it’s killed my son. Both of us. My God, it never ends. Sins live forever in that city. I just never believed it could reach out and destroy me again.”

Stride waited until he was done. He could hear Lane gasping for breath.

“You sound like you think you know why MJ was killed,” Stride said. He added, “Does it have something to do with Boni Fisso?”

“No, Detective, I don’t know why. The past is the past, and I have no reason to think what happened then has any relevance to what happened to MJ. Or any connection to Boni. I don’t see how it could.”

“Still—” Stride began.

“Still, you want to know. You’re curious. That’s your lot in life. I’m sorry. I’ve said more than I should have already, and I can’t say anymore.”

Amanda leaned closer to the phone. “But if it was so long ago, Mr. Lane, why not tell us?”

“No, I can’t. I’m grieving over MJ. I’m wishing I had been a better father. That’s enough pain without dredging up mistakes I made when I was a young fool.”

“Mr. Lane,” Stride said, “we know that MJ called you a murderer.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Why?”

Lane sighed. “You’ll have to ask Rex Terrell about that, Detective.”

Stride remembered the answering machine message in MJ’s condo. He quickly checked his notes.

MJ, it’s Rex Terrell I thought we could trade some secrets. I showed you mine, how about you show me yours?

“Who’s Rex Terrell?” Stride asked.

“He’s a writer,” Lane replied, his voice curling around the word with contempt. “He’s the one who dragged this trash up about the Sheherezade and put ideas in MJ’s head. Ask him to tell you what I did, and maybe you can find a way to kill me again. I’ve died many times, Detective. What’s once more?”

Serena sped south out of Reno in a rented Malibu, gulping in the sweet mountain air that whipped through the car, and cranking Terri Clark on the stereo until the speakers of the Chevy vibrated.

“I think the world needs a drink,” Terri sang in her Canadian twang.

People sometimes told Serena she looked like Terri Clark, without the cowboy hat. Both tall, with silky dark hair. Maybe that was why Serena liked her so much.

Like the world in the song on the radio, Serena realized, she needed a drink. When she licked her lips, she could still imagine the taste of vodka, although it had been more than a decade since she quit. A drink was a no-no, off-limits,
verboten
. She imagined it was like Jonny and cigarettes. It didn’t matter if it was one year or twenty, the desire could come back in an instant and take your breath away.

Her mother’s face flashed in her brain. She tried to will it away by gazing out the window at the crown of Mt. Rose in the distance, but her mother might as well have been standing by the side of the road like a hitchhiker in some old episode of
The Twilight Zone
. Appearing over and over, following her. Of all the things her mother had done to her that she couldn’t forgive, the worst was passing along her addictive genes. For her mother, the demon was cocaine. For Serena, the demon was alcohol. For two years in her early twenties, she had drunk her way into deadness. She was grateful for AA and for a crowd of strangers who had pulled her back.

Those were the two years after Deidre died. Funny that she didn’t start drinking when the two of them left Phoenix, when the flashbacks of the drug dealer’s dirty hands on her breasts still visited her every night. Or that she didn’t start when Deidre began having sex with men for money and encouraging Serena to do the same. No, it was years later, when Deidre was out of her life. A week after her funeral. One drink became two, two became ten, and ten bled so easily into hundreds.

Someone had told her that Deidre weighed sixty-eight pounds when she died. Serena shivered in the car. The girl she had known was so different, so alive. Red, kinky hair. A trashy way of dressing and walking that men loved, like they loved the tattoo above the crack of her ass, a coiled serpent that seemed to wriggle with pleasure whenever her shirt rode up. She had pale skin, not made for the southwestern sun. Her whiteness set her apart in a town of bronzed bodies. When she was naked in the shower, she almost seemed to glow.

The truth was that Deidre and Serena were never from the same world. Deidre was fast in a fast town, a perfect fit. For the first few years, Serena was grateful that Deidre had plucked her out of the lion’s mouth, but sooner or later, she was bound to split off and go her own way. Eventually, she left Deidre and moved out.

They never talked again. When Deidre died, the guilt came crashing down on Serena, and she filtered it through bottles of Absolut.

She remembered how amazing it was to her that she could put bottles in the freezer and let the alcohol get colder and colder and colder, and still it didn’t freeze.

Sixty-eight pounds, God.

Following the directions that Jay Walling had given her, she pulled onto the shoulder at the end of a long dirt track off old 395, near the house where the murder had taken place. She got out of the car and enjoyed the silence. The few sounds she did hear were crisp and clear, like the crunch of gravel under her feet and the distant rumble of a plane climbing over the hills out of the Reno airport. A hawk pin-wheeled above her, scanning the fields, but otherwise, she didn’t see another living soul anywhere around her.

A handful of old ranch houses dotted the overgrown fields. Farm machinery lay rusted and unused nearby, and telephone wires sagged between poles. She saw the tall mountains to the west, with evergreens climbing the sides and patches of snow clinging to the very peaks. Closer by, the foothills were covered with auburn down, which would turn green when the rains came.

The house she had come to see was modest, a gray twostory with an RV parked on the side. Its closest neighbor was a half mile away. There was a large white-fenced meadow in which she expected to see horses, but it was empty, its bitter-brush bending in the cool breeze. The air was fragrant with wild flowers.

She had a large cup of coffee. She sipped it while she waited, leaning against the hood of the car. Fifteen minutes later, she watched a white Ford Taurus pull up behind her. It was glossy, as if it had just been washed. Serena figured that Jay Walling probably took personal offense at any dirt particles that had the audacity to affix themselves to his car. She knew Walling well. They had worked a nasty homicide the year before, in which a body had been found in the Las Vegas desert and its head had turned up in the ball rack of a Reno bowling alley. Who said murderers didn’t have a sense of humor?

“What say, Jay?” Serena said as Walling got out of the car. “What’s with the bird crap on your coat?”

He looked down in horror, and Serena laughed. Walling wore a black shearling overcoat that must have cost him two thousand dollars, and he pampered it like a baby. He also wore a black fedora that made him look like a holdover from 1950s Manhattan. He was tall, with a long face and a boxy mustache.

“I’ve missed your sense of humor, sweetheart,” Walling told her. “I hope my phone call last night didn’t interrupt a little love fest between you and Detective Stride. I was truly figuring I would get your voice mail.”

“Ten minutes earlier, and you might have heard some heavy breathing.”

“Ah, good” Walling looked a little uncomfortable with the details. “So is it serious?”