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  PART ONE

  First Bad Beat

  Bad Beat:

  A poker term referring to calling a bet despite having neither the best hand nor the right pot odds or implied odds to call, then winning anyway.

  PROLOGUE

  March 3rd, 1987

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  BECKY PENN TIED her long brown hair back away from her face and laughed as her mom stood in their bathroom door, arms crossed over her chest, the worried look on her face that Becky saw so much from her.

  Her mom had raised her since their father had left when Becky was three. The two of them were more like sisters at times and Becky loved that.

  Becky was dressed in a light skirt, a new blouse she had just bought, and had on sandals, since the weather was already starting to warm up.

  Becky’s mom had already changed from her nursing scrubs into a light sweatshirt and jeans. She seldom wore shoes around the house and tonight was no exception.

  “It’s all right, mom,” Becky said, smiling as she finished up and turned from the mirror. “Paul and I are headed to a party just off the strip. I’m going to meet him there.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” her mom said, shaking her head.

  “I know, I know,” Becky said. “You don’t like him.”

  “I’m not sure why you do,” her mom said.

  Becky laughed. Paul was a good guy who worked hard. And he was a very gentle soul. Becky liked that about him.

  Becky kissed her mother lightly on the cheek as she went past and out into the hallway of the small two-bedroom toward the front door. “You worry too much.”

  “Sometimes I wish you worried more,” her mom said.

  Then both of them laughed. That exchange had happened for every date Becky had ever gone on from a freshman in high school and all the way through four years at UNLV. It made them both feel better.

  “Don’t wait up,” Becky said.

  A minute later she was in her red two-door Toyota and headed out toward the Strip.

  It was the last time anyone saw her.

  She just simply vanished.

  And just like so many other missing persons, after no leads came up, her case went cold.

  Almost thirty years cold.

  ONE

  April 10th, 2015

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  RETIRED DETECTIVE BAYARD Lott ran a hand through his short white hair and sighed. They weren’t supposed to find a body. Lott hated every time they did that. Finding a body was never the way they wanted to close missing person’s cases.

  But more often than not, it was exactly how they closed them.

  “Looks like we found Becky,” Retired Detective Julia Rogers said.

  Julia stood beside Lott staring down at the skeleton that was slowly emerging from the desert sand and dirt where it had been buried for twenty-eight years, as far as they could tell.

  Lott didn’t want to watch, but he felt he had no choice.

  Beside him, Julia had on a light white blouse and a sports bra under it. She wore jeans and tennis shoes and a wide-brimmed white golf hat to keep the intense sun off her face.

  Lott had on a short-sleeved dress shirt, jeans, tennis shoes and a wide-brimmed Panama hat. They had expected to spend time in the sun in the desert to the north of Las Vegas, so even though it was still early spring, they were both smeared with sunscreen that smelled like they belonged on a beach instead of out in the desert.

  They might have looked silly and smelled funny, but he was in his sixties and Julia in her late fifties and they were smart enough to take no chances with the heat and sun of the desert. At their age, too much sun did not do well on either of them.

  And besides, they were both past the age of caring that much about what other people thought of how they looked.

  The open grave in front of them was being carefully worked by a couple of Las Vegas police’s best forensic lab people. They were in white suits that had to be hot in the morning April sun in the desert. And they were being very careful to brush away sand from the bones of the body and then shovel it into containers to be sifted for personal effects or bits of cloth and hair.

  Lott could visualize the wonderful college graduation picture of Becky Penn. She had been a beautiful woman with a promising future. She vanished on March 3rd, 1987, on her way to a party to meet her boyfriend.

  It was her boyfriend, Paul Vaughan who had reported to Becky’s mother three hours after they were supposed to meet that Becky had not shown up. He had called concerned that Becky had been sick or something.

  Her mother filed a missing person’s report that very night.

  Nothing had ever come of it. The detective assigned to the case did some fine interviews, found nothing.

  Lott didn’t want to think of how many missing person’s cases ended up that exact same way. During his active days on the force, most of his missing person’s cases ended up cold and open. Las Vegas seemed to attract an unusual share of people either wanting to escape from others or people falling in with the wrong crowd.

  On the surface Vegas was welcoming. And as long as a tourist stayed in the normal tourist channels, it was a pretty safe town. But just below those channels, mostly driven by vast amounts of money and greed, was a very dangerous level.

  Two months ago, Retired Detective Andor Williams, Lott’s former partner, brought the thin file on Becky Penn’s case to the weekly meeting of the Cold Poker Gang.

  Lott loved the weekly sessions in his card room in his house. Retired detectives got together, played poker, and talked about cold cases. Then during the week between games, they worked the cold cases.

  The Las Vegas Chief of Police had given the Cold Poker Gang special status to carry badges and guns because they had solved so many cold cases and wanted no credit for any of it.

  For the retired detectives, it was just the sense of feeling valued that mattered and continuing at their own pace, without paperwork, the job they had loved for decades.

  Lott flat loved everything about being part of the Cold Poker Gang and couldn’t imagine his life without it. He had no idea what he would be doing.

  When Julia joined the group, she had retired from Reno because of a shattered bone in her leg where she had been shot. She had moved to Vegas to be near her daughter, Jane, who was going to UNLV.

  So far Julie was been the only woman in the gang, but in a year or so, two of Las Vegas’s best women detectives would be retiring. Both wanted to take a couple months vacation and then join the group.

  Now the Cold Poker Gang often had seven or eight people at the table on a Tuesday night. Made his wonderful poker room a lot of fun. And sometimes noisy, which Lott felt gave life to his home every week.

  There were eleven official members and every active detective on the force liked helping them.

  At any given moment, the gang might have eight or nine cold cases they were working in some fashion or another, often in pairs.

  “Let’s sit in the car for a while,” Julia said, turning from the grave.

  Lott agreed to that idea. Not only did he not want to watch the bones of a beautiful young girl come into the open, but the sun was getting warmer by the minute.

  And there was absolutely nothing they could do to help in that shallow hole. Getting Becky Penn’s remains out of that hole would take time and painstaking work. Lott was just glad he wasn’t doing the work, especially in one of those white suits they wore these days.

  Lott got his white Cadillac SUV started and the air-conditioning running as Julia dug them both out a cold bottle of wa
ter from the ice chest sitting on the back seat.

  Then they just sat in silence for a moment, drinking, cooling down and watching the two men in the shallow hole work.

  Lott was always surprised at how wonderful cold water tasted after being out in the Nevada sun for a while.

  “I can’t believe we found her,” Julia said after a moment.

  “We’re still not one hundred percent that it is her,” Lott said.

  And they weren’t, but that was just a technical issue now. They had figured out where she was buried exactly from notes in a journal left by her boyfriend, Paul Vaughan, when he killed himself in 1997, ten years after Becky vanished.

  From what they could tell when they got the journal, still stored with Paul’s things by his sister, Jennifer Season. She had found the journal while she was packing to move and read it and called them. The journal basically told the story about how Paul and Becky had gotten into a fight and he had killed her.

  The journal went on to give exact directions to where he had buried her and then what he had done to cover his crime.

  Lott had found the writing creepy. Impassionate while being angry.

  Lott had been upset that the guy was dead. But if he hadn’t been dead, there was no telling if they ever would have solved Becky’s cold case. They were lucky in a couple of ways. That he was dead and that his sister had just stored what few things he owned in boxes in her basement.

  But something felt off to both Julia and Lott. And Lott couldn’t put his finger on it at all.

  First, they had no idea why a killer like Paul would write down what he had done, then give exact directions to the grave.

  And his sister had told them that Paul hated to write anything, let alone in a journal.

  But it seemed, at least on the surface, that Paul had started the journal when he and Becky started dating and they had confirmed with Becky’s mother some of the dates and times in the journal as best as she could remember.

  So it all seemed real enough.

  But to Lott the operative word was “seemed.” It seemed right but didn’t feel right.

  The second thing that puzzled him was what had happened to Becky’s red Toyota? The car had simply vanished and Paul made no mention of it in his strange journal. And he should have. Getting rid of that car had to be a lot harder than burying her in the desert.

  Something was off on all of this, but darned if Lott could figure out what was bothering him about it all.

  Then, in front of them, one of the two men working in the shallow grave in white suits stood up, turned and waved for Lott and Julia to come over.

  Then both men climbed out of the shallow grave and one headed for their vehicle, pulling off his white suit as he went.

  “Something went wrong,” Julia said as both she and Lott climbed out of the car.

  The other man who had waved them over had pulled off the top of his white suit as well and was working on a bottle of water. His face was covered in sweat.

  “What did you find?” Lott asked.

  The guy just pointed for them to look into the grave and kept drinking.

  It took a moment for Lott to see it, but then he did.

  Nowhere in any report did it say that Becky had three arms.

  “There’s another body under her,” Julia said softly.

  “Shit,” Lott said. “Just shit.”

  TWO

  April 12th, 2015

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  JULIA LOVED THE lunches with Lott and Andor. Especially when it came to discussing cases. But she had a hunch she wasn’t going to like today’s topic at all.

  Lott set the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on his kitchen table while Julia pulled out three bottles of water from the fridge. Andor had just parked outside in the driveway and was going to join them for lunch.

  The smell of the chicken filled Lott’s remodeled kitchen. In the remodel, he had put in the best counters, all new cabinets and flooring, all in tones of brown. And stainless steel new appliances. But he said the floor plan of the kitchen was exactly as it had been when he and his wife had lived here.

  Julia loved what he had done with the kitchen. It felt comfortable.

  And the wood-topped table sat in a sunny nook and looked out over the yard and desert plants outside of Lott’s home, giving anyone sitting at the table a sense of comfort and serenity.

  Lott’s wife of thirty years had died of cancer almost four years ago. He told Julia that it wasn’t until she walked into his life that he could ever imagine enjoying the company of another woman. But now he did.

  And she was enjoying being with him, the first real relationship she had had in a very long time.

  She loved Annie, his daughter, and Annie really liked Julia as well. Annie was a professional poker player and the girlfriend and partner of Doc Hill, the best poker player in the world at the moment. They were a power couple if Julia had ever seen one.

  And combine Annie and Doc with Doc’s best friend, Fleet, and there was nothing they couldn’t do. And they had the money to do it as well.

  They also spent a lot of time working with law enforcement in various ways. Since Annie was a former detective and Doc and Fleet had the money and desire to help, it turned out to be a good match for many things.

  Julia finished putting the bottles of water on the table as Andor slammed his car door outside. She and Lott and Andor, Lott’s former partner back on the force before they both had retired to take care of sick wives, formed a team in the Cold Poker Gang. They all just felt like they got more done with three of them working together.

  And outside of the nights with the Cold Poker Gang playing cards, the three of them often met over KFC in Lott’s kitchen to talk over cases.

  Today the topic was Becky Penn’s cold case and the other bodies in her grave. Julia had a hunch they would be off the case, but she hadn’t said that to Lott.

  And he had said nothing either, although she could tell he was angry, very angry, that there were other bodies in that grave.

  Lott spread around three paper plates and Julia got some forks for pulling the hot chicken apart and some spoons for the sides that came with the bucket. They didn’t often eat much of the sides. All three of them just loved the fresh chicken.

  Andor came in the back door, his solid frame and balding head moving like a bull. He had a cold towel around his neck and was sweating. Andor was almost square with his wide shoulders seeming to always be slightly hunched. But he had a mind that didn’t miss much and she liked him a great deal.

  Andor’s wife had died of cancer about the same time as Lott’s wife. They both had retired to take care of them, so the Cold Poker Gang allowed them to keep going with the job they both loved.

  Julia handed Andor a fresh hand towel to wipe off his face and head and neck, then she sat next to Lott at the table.

  Andor dropped some files at the back of the table and all three of them dug into the chicken.

  Finally, after pretty much demolishing their first pieces and starting on seconds, Julia couldn’t take it any longer.

  She looked at Andor. “Well, was one of them Becky Penn?”

  When the other bodies were found in Becky’s grave, the case had reverted back to the regular younger detectives. By the end of the day, the techs doing the digging had found a total of four bodies in that grave, all stacked on one another with a very thin layer of dirt between them.

  And all of them had been killed with a blow to the head that clearly caved in the skull bone.

  From what Julia had heard, the techs were now doing ground radar sweeps around the grave to see if others were buried close by.

  Paul Vaughan’s journal had led them to the location, but he had said nothing about killing and burying other women.

  This entire case just was off.

  Way off.

  But Julia had no idea at all how to even find the next lead.

  Andor nodded, wiping chicken grease off his mouth with a paper towel. �
�It was Becky on top,” Andor said. “Confirmed by remnants of what she was wearing, hair color, and the remains of her ID buried with her. They will run some DNA tests, but no one is doubting it is her.”

  “And the other three?” Lott asked.

  “They don’t have a clue,” Andor said. “But they are treating all four as live murder cases at the moment.”

  Julia shook her head. All were very cold cases if they had been buried under Becky’s body.

  Andor just looked at them. “We’re out of this one for now. You both know that, don’t you?”

  Julia knew they were. As long as the younger detectives considered the bodies open and live murder cases, there was nothing anyone retired in the Cold Poker Gang could do.

  And actually, by doing anything, they might jeopardize the entire existence of the Cold Poker Gang.

  They worked cold cases.

  Period.

  That was the firm rule the Chief of Police had put on them.

  Becky’s case was now officially a live murder case. Along with the other three.

  The Cold Poker Gang was done with them.

  Lott was nodding, and not looking happy.

  Julia just sat there, not sure if she was even interested in another piece of chicken.

  “This day just sucks,” Lott said.

  “Yeah, it does,” Andor said. “But we have to give the hotshot young detectives a crack at this first. Remember, we were young once as well.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Julia said. “I’m still young, thank you very much.”

  She felt just as upset about this as they did, but she knew the rules, just as they did.

  Lott and Andor both laughed.

  Julia smiled. “Not sure how I should take that laughing.”

  “Oh, oh,” Andor said, winking at Lott.

  “So what are the files?” Julia asked, indicating the folding files that Andor had at the top of the table. She had a hunch they were the active files of the four cases. But she wanted Andor to tell her for sure.