Stripped (8 page)

“When did you get to work?” Serena asked. She didn’t like where this was going.

“Around noon, like always.”

“You mean you parked the car in the Fremont ramp before noon?” she repeated, just to be sure.

“ ’Course. That’s what I do every day. That’s what I’m saying.”

Serena closed her eyes, feeling sick again. This time it was because she knew they were wrong. He had an alibi. She thought about Cordy teasing the man about his gut and then remembered, too, the tight fit as she slid into the Aztek to search. Wrong, wrong.

“Anybody work with you?” Serena asked. She knew she was wasting her breath. He wasn’t the one.

“Well, yeah, you’ve got a bunch of other cooks and waitresses in and out all day.”

“Did you take any breaks? How about a lunch break in the afternoon?” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it.

“No, I don’t take a lunch break. I work straight through.”

Serena couldn’t help smiling. She eyed the man’s whalelike physique. “Come on, Mr. Busby. No lunch break? You?”

Busby smiled for the first time, too. “The fact is, I’m trying to cut back. And, well, I guess I do have a little snack from time to time on the job.”

Serena sighed. “So tell us what happened to your car.”

“Not much to tell. I left work at the usual time, went back to the lot. No car. I always park in the same spot, so it’s not like I could have lost it. It just wasn’t there.”

“Any relatives have keys to your car?”

“I don’t have much in the way of relatives,” Busby said. “Mama’s dead, Daddy’s in the nursing home. Nobody wanted to marry me looking like this.”

Serena nodded. She felt like shit now, putting this poor man through the ringer. A sad, lonely life, and all she could do was sprinkle in a litde more pain and fear. Then she was going to have to tell him that he couldn’t have his car back tonight

She gestured to Cordy, and the two of them huddled. Cordy popped a piece of gum into his mouth and began chewing loudly. “He didn’t do it, did he?”

“Nope.”

“So what does that mean?” Cordy asked.

Serena stopped and thought about it The more she did, the less she liked the implications of what they had found. It didn’t feel like an accident anymore. It felt like something much worse.

“Somebody steals a car downtown and then just happens to get into a vicious hit-and-run in a suburb the same afternoon?”

“He killed the kid deliberately,” Cordy concluded.

“It sure feels that way.”

Serena remembered the receipt for the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. She returned to the patrol car, where Busby was waiting, and leaned inside.

“Did you go to Reno last month, Mr. Busby?”

Busby frowned. “No, I’ve never been to Reno. Not ever.”

Stride waited in Lieutenant Sawhill’s office, swirling coffee in his mug and staring down through the third-floor window at a black cat slinking across the street outside and disappearing into a garbage-strewn backyard. Not long after, a policeman sped by on a mountain bike that looked several sizes too small. His ass hung over the seat, and his knees were almost at his chin. The cat and the cop, both patrolling for rats.

The Homicide Detail was housed in the Downtown Command, Metro’s flagship building, modern and beige, its entrance lined with palm trees. The city fathers had located it in one of the city’s uglier neighborhoods, a few blocks from the downtown casinos, as if the presence of the police headquarters might somehow bring down the surrounding crime rate by osmosis. It wasn’t working.

Stride checked his watch and saw it was almost noon. His stomach was growling. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do more, sleep or eat.

Behind him, the office door opened and closed. Stride nodded at Lester Sawhill, who frowned and pointed a finger at the chair in front of his desk. The phone rang, and Sawhill picked it up. The lieutenant settled himself into his own leather chair, which was so large compared to his small frame that it made him look like a child visiting Daddy’s office. Stride took a seat, too, and waited.

“Good morning, Governor,” Sawhill announced, looking unimpressed, as if he talked to the governor every day.

Serena said she couldn’t remember ever being in Sawhill’s office when he wasn’t on the phone. He liked an audience. It reminded everyone of where he stood in the pecking order.

In Minnesota, Stride had reported to the deputy chief, a leprechaun of a man named Kyle Kinnick—K-2, they called him—who had elephant ears and a reedy voice that sounded like a clarinet played by a six-year-old. Sawhill wasn’t much taller than K-2, but he was a smoother piece of work. He seemed to get a haircut every five days, because the neat trim of his balding brown hair never changed at all. He had a narrow face like a capital
V
, pockmarked cheeks, and half-glasses that he wore on a chain around his neck when they weren’t pushed down to the little round bulb at the end of his nose.

Sawhill wore a modestly priced gray suit, old but well kept. His uniform. It didn’t matter if it was a July day under, the blistering sun, according to Serena. Sawhill never went so far as to open the collar button of his shirt or loosen the knot in his tie. He never raised his voice, which was toneless but utterly in control. He didn’t seem to have any emotions at all, at least none that made their way onto his face or that lit up his brown eyes.

“That’s a very nice gesture, Governor,” Sawhill said into the phone. He had a pink stress ball on his desk that he squeezed rhythmically, his slim fingers tensing. Every now and then, he studied a fingernail, as if it might need filing.

Stride might as well have been invisible, listening to the one-sided conversation.

It had taken years for Stride to trust K-2, because deep inside, Stride always believed that moving up the ladder in the police bureaucracy meant being a smart politician and giving up the things that made you a good cop. K-2 was different. For him, the cops came first. Stride respected him for his loyalty.

Maybe someday Lester Sawhill would convince him that he, too, was on the side of the angels, but Stride didn’t think so. That wasn’t to say that Sawhill was a bad man. He wasn’t. Stride knew he was intensely moral. A Mormon, like so many senior officials in Sin City. No caffeine. No tobacco. No alcohol. Lots of kids—at least seven, Stride figured, counting up the photographs he saw propped on the bookshelves behind Sawhill’s desk. But Sawhill put God and Vegas first, not his cops.

Stride didn’t know how Sawhill and the other Mormons survived here. They could work in the casinos but not gamble. They were religious in a godless town. He found it strange and a little hypocritical, like a bartender who thinks drinking is evil but doesn’t mind watching others pour poison down their throats.

Sawhill hung up the phone. “That was Governor Durand,” he explained, in case Stride had missed it. “That should give you an idea of the concern that exists over this homicide.”

“I’m aware of that,” Stride replied.

“This is a very public case, Detective,” Sawhill added. “A celebrity murder. The communications department is already fielding press inquiries from around the world.”

Stride could translate Sawhill’s meaning easily enough. If the lieutenant had known it would turn out to be such a high-profile case, he would never have turned it over to his black sheep, the untested detective from Minnesota and his transsexual partner. Not in a million years. Now it was too late to yank them. Unless Stride gave him a reason by screwing up.

“That reminds me,” Sawhill continued. “Direct any media inquiries to the PR office. Okay? You’ve got a case to solve. I don’t want you wasting your time with reporters. That goes for Amanda, too.”

Amanda most of all, Stride thought. Sawhill didn’t want either of them representing the city or, worse, snatching the limelight.

“What’s the status of the investigation? I need to tell the mayor something.”

“We have the perpetrator on film,” Stride said. “He left us his fingerprint. Deliberately. That’s a pretty ballsy move, and not like a hired gun who’s just doing a job.”

Sawhill narrowed his eyes. “Were his prints in the system?”

“No. We couldn’t get a good read on his face, either. He knew where the cameras were. All in all, one cool customer.”

“You’re sure he was after Lane? This wasn’t a random thrill kill?”

“It wasn’t a typical hit. But random? No. He was after MJ. Tracked him and killed him.”

“You have a line on a motive?” Sawhill asked impatiently.

“Drugs, gambling, women. Pick one, you’ve got a motive. But so far no reason to think any of them got him killed.”

“So how do you plan to crack the case?” He was the inquisitor now, probing for a weakness, looking for Stride to give him an excuse to pull him off the murder.

“We’re doing a sketch from what we’ve got, which isn’t much. The Oasis guys are reviewing their entrance tapes for the last month, to see if he was inside casing the joint and may have been a little less careful about keeping his face hidden. We’re backtracking MJ’s route that day and using the sketch to see if anyone spotted the perp when he picked up MJ’s tail. Amanda and I are talking to everyone who knew MJ or saw him recently, to see if we can pick up a thread on who he might have pissed off. And I want to talk to MJ’s father. There was something going on between them. It may be nothing, but it’s the only sign so far that anything was amiss in MJ’s party-boy life.”

Sawhill shook his head. “It might be better if I talked to Walker Lane myself.”

“Why is that?” Stride asked, struggling to betray no irritation in his voice.

“Walker Lane is a wealthy, influential man,” Sawhill said. He sounded like a teacher lecturing a slow student. “The governor himself was the one to break the news to Mr. Lane about the murder. I assume you’re not suggesting Mr. Lane is a suspect?”

“I have no reason to think so,” Stride said, “but a dispute was going on between Walker and MJ. We think they talked an hour before he was killed. It’s possible that MJ was involved in something that led to his death, and Walker might know what it is.”

Sawhill drummed his fingers on his desk. He nodded, looking unhappy. “All right, fine. You do the interview. But tomorrow, not today.” Stride began to protest, and Sawhill waved it aside. “Let’s give Mr. Lane a decent time to grieve. You’ve got plenty of other leads to follow. And kid gloves, Detective. He’s a powerful man who just lost his son.”

“Understood,” Stride said.

“How are you and Amanda getting along?” Sawhill asked. His face was stony, but Stride wondered if the man was hiding a smile.

“No problem. She’s smart. I like her.”

“Ah. Good.”

He sounded disappointed.

Stride barely had time to return from Sawhill’s office when Amanda poked her head around his cubicle wall.

“We’ve got company,” she told him brightly, her eyes twinkling. “Karyn Westermark in the flesh. And I do mean flesh.”

Stride followed Amanda to the third-floor conference room, which sported large windows looking out on the rabbit’s den of cubicles that made up the detective squad.

“Why’d they put her in the fishbowl?” Stride asked.

Amanda just grinned, and Stride understood when he reached the windows and saw that Karyn wore a white dress shirt, unbuttoned, with its flaps tied in a loose bow beneath her breasts, which were in serious danger of spilling out each time she leaned forward. Stride also noticed that most of the detectives had found reasons to take the long way to the kitchen to buy soda, a route that steered them past the windows of the conference room.

He went in and told Amanda to close the blinds.

“Sure, make me the bad guy,” Amanda muttered under her breath.

Karyn stood up and reached across the desk to shake his hand, offering another expansive view of her cleavage. Stride didn’t dare let his eyes drift south, and he saw a faint amusement in Karyn’s face, as if she were enjoying his struggle.

“I’m Karyn,” she said, pronouncing her name as if it were spelled Corinne.

Stride wasn’t familiar with her as an actress, but Amanda had already prepped him.
Us
magazine, Amanda told him again. Karyn was an up-and-coming soap star, trying to make the leap to the big leagues. She was L.A. stunning, with straight blond hair that reached well below her shoulders and glowed like a summer wheat field. She had a model’s long face and cool blue eyes, which reflected the sharp intelligence of someone who knew exactly how much power she had simply because of how she looked. Through the glass tabletop, he saw a red skirt that ended at the middle of her thighs, and then a long, silky expanse of bare legs.

“Thanks for coming in to talk to us, Ms. Westermark,” Stride said. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“A skinny no-foam latte would be great,” Karyn replied.

“I’m afraid we have black coffee, and we have white powder with little plastic spoons,” Stride replied. He added, “The powder goes in the coffee.”

Karyn smiled at him, but there was ice in her eyes and the barest nod of appreciation. “No coffee.”

“I’m very sorry about MJ. It sounds like the two of you were close.”

“I don’t think I’d go that far,” Karyn replied.

“No? We heard you spent a lot of time together. Including last night at the Oasis.”

“We were fuck buddies,” she said with a shrug. “We’d hook up when we were both in Vegas. Party. Gamble. Screw. That’s all.”

“Were you shocked to hear he’d been murdered? Right after you left him?”

“Sure.”

Stride didn’t think she was likely to break down crying.

“Do you have any idea who killed MJ? Or why?”

Karyn shook her head. “None at all.”

“When the two of you got together, was it usually at the Oasis?”

“Most of the time, but we’d go other places, too. The Hard Rock. Mandalay. If there was a fight or a concert, we’d be there.”

“How long had you known him?” Stride asked.

“A couple of years. I met him at a party at the Oasis. You know, he was young, cute, threw money at everyone. What’s not to like? He had a limo with him that first night, and we went for a ride, and I guess that’s how it all got started.”