Freezeout: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  “Dead end,” Sarge said.

  “Completely,” Robin said.

  Pickett shook her head. “I would have lost that bet. I thought there was a chance the months of disappearances of the women matched the months of the cleaning for some reason.”

  Robin shook her head. “Nope. No connection anywhere. None of them ever worked for the company either.”

  Pickett felt disappointed in that. For some reason she was convinced the disappearances had to do with those return air ducts. No idea why she thought that, but she did.

  “Any pattern to the months the five women disappear?” Sarge asked.

  “Every other month for ten months,” Robin said, “January, March, May, July, September. Same woman uses the same month every year.”

  “So we are past the last one,” Pickett said.

  Robin nodded. “Missing person’s case on the last September one is still active but cold. As all eighty-five of the cases with these five women are.”

  “These five women’s disappearing acts have sure been brutal to a lot of good people,” Sarge said.

  Pickett could tell he was really disgusted. She felt the same way.

  FOURTEEN

  November 16th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  IT WASN’T UNTIL Sarge was working on a wonderful cheesecake that he remembered to ask if Robin had discovered when Sandy left the hotel.

  “She didn’t,” Robin said. “I have one of Will’s people going over facial recognition of all the security footage in the file one more time, but for three days after she vanished into that hotel, she did not leave. We’re pretty sure of that.”

  Pickett had been sipping on a glass of wine and she looked startled. As startled as Sarge felt.

  “She sure didn’t stay in those return air ducts,” Pickett said.

  Sarge knew instantly what had happened. “Robin, is it still possible to get the room reservations from that hotel for that time?”

  “Sure,” Robin said, nodding. “You thinking she had a room for a few days?”

  “Starting the day before,” Pickett said. “I’ve been wondering how she would have gotten a change of clothes, new hair color, and so on. If she had a room booked the day before, she could have had clothes already there.”

  “And she would have been able to get into it easily through the return air system,” Sarge said nodding.

  Robin had out her notebook and was taking notes. “I’m thinking she would have stayed a full week. But this is going to be hard to narrow down.”

  “The names would be fake, more than likely a couple’s name,” Pickett said.

  Sarge agreed. That was exactly what he was thinking.

  “And if we can find that fake name, it might lead us to their next name,” Robin said.

  Both Sarge and Pickett shook their heads at that.

  “I wouldn’t expect that,” Sarge said. “All signs are that these women are very, very careful and have been for a lot of years.”

  “Can’t hurt to check, though,” Pickett said.

  “Agreed,” Robin said. “So we have a pretty good idea how each woman vanishes now. But not one idea as to why.”

  “Or even who they are,” Pickett said.

  With that, they all sat in silence and then went back to working on their desserts.

  Thirty minutes later Robin headed for home.

  Sarge took Pickett’s hand once they got out of the hotel and they headed up Fremont toward the Ogden condos. The air had a solid bite to it as he had expected and he was glad he had grabbed a jacket.

  “Beautiful night,” Pickett said as the strolled along once they got past the party atmosphere of the Fremont Street Experience.

  Sarge had to agree. Even with the cold chill, the night was peaceful and the air clear and fresh.

  “You up for a movie?” he asked after a half block. “Get our minds off of this crazy case.”

  “I’d love that,” Pickett said, squeezing his hand.

  When they reached the top floor of the Ogden, Pickett opened her door and he opened his, leaving it slightly open for her to follow in a few minutes. She needed to feed Nose her nightly treat and change her clothes. Pickett usually wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt around her condo and had started doing that when she came over.

  Basically, he did the same.

  He first gave Pete and Ree a snack and when they were munching away, he got out the popcorn machine and got it ready, then he went to change clothes. By the time he finished, Pickett and Nose were in the kitchen and she was picking up the cat dishes, rinsing them off, and putting them in the dishwasher.

  The three kittens were already scampering off to play down the hallway toward the bedroom. He couldn’t imagine living in this place without those kittens, now.

  And living here without Pickett at his side.

  As far as he was concerned, two retired detectives and three cats made a perfect family.

  As the popcorn was starting, Pickett said, “Got a phone call from my friend Jean on my machine.”

  Sarge nodded. Pickett still had a home phone and all her friends had been trained to call her there for personal stuff.

  “Jean said the secretary my ex left with has now left him.”

  Pickett was smiling and shaking her head.

  Pickett’s husband, about five years before, had left with his twenty-something secretary. That was why Pickett had enough money to buy the wonderful condo next door. Her settlement had been enough to buy the condo and have enough to live the rest of her life without even getting her retirement payments from the city.

  Sarge and his former wife had parted on good terms about seven years before. Being a detective had basically killed that marriage, Sarge had no doubt.

  “Think he’s going to contact you?” Sarge asked.

  Pickett just laughed. “Not a chance in hell. He always hated it when I was right and I got a hunch he’s remembering my last words to him.”

  “And what were they?” Sarge asked, smiling.

  “Nothing nasty,” Pickett said. “I just told him to get as much as he could as often as he could from the young thing because it wasn’t going to last.”

  Sarge laughed and Pickett just grinned.

  “Karma is a bitch, isn’t it?” Pickett said.

  Sarge could only agree as three kittens streaked past the kitchen area, making enough noise to pretend to be a herd of elephants. Amazing that three creatures so small could make so much noise.

  They even drowned out the popping corn.

  PART THREE

  Mucking the Hand

  FIFTEEN

  November 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  PICKETT FINISHED HER omelet and sat back sipping on her morning coffee in the Golden Nugget Buffet. The normal customers and tourists were mostly on the other side of the restaurant, near the windows looking out over the pool area. The morning walk to breakfast had been chilly, but invigorating.

  And the movie last night had been wonderful. They had decided to watch the original Ghostbusters movie, since when it first came out they had both been too busy with work to see it. It was wonderfully silly and just what she had needed.

  And curling up next to Sarge and falling asleep with three kittens sleeping in different places around the bedroom had also been perfect as well. She wasn’t sure how she had gotten so lucky to have him enter her life, but she was going to enjoy it as long as it lasted.

  And he said he felt the same way.

  Robin had met them for breakfast with a ton of reports she had generated last night, more than likely working while they were enjoying watching a giant marshmallow man roam the streets of New York.

  Each report was the missing person’s case on the women. All eighty-five times someone had cared enough to file a missing person’s report. These five women had hurt a lot of people along the way with whatever they were doing.

  Robin had then called each woman by the name of the month she vanished every year and
done a summary of the jobs, traits, hair colors, looks, and so on for all five.

  After Sarge finished looking at the last summary, Pickett asked, “Patterns at all that we could use to pinpoint who they are at the moment?”

  “Nothing,” Robin said. “All the changes seem to be random. Even the types of car they drive changes from incarnation to incarnation.”

  “They are all in their late thirties, now,” Sarge said, “How are they aging?”

  Robin dug through a file and pulled out pictures of all five from the last disappearance cycle. Pickett studied them. There was nothing at all outstanding about them. Attractive late-thirties women. Nothing more.

  “The detectives on the last cycle of disappearances got DNA samples of the women from the last husbands and boyfriends and have them in the system,” Robin said. “No hits at all as to history. But they are sisters.”

  “Sisters?” Pickett asked, shocked. She couldn’t believe that all five were sisters.

  Robin nodded. “Sisters. We are running DNA searches for any close or other family match in the system around the country, but that’s going to take days. If not longer.”

  “But next time they vanish and the DNA is collected, it will hit,” Sarge said.

  Pickett nodded. “I’m betting they know that and don’t care.”

  “Certainly won’t help us find them now,” Robin said.

  “And the very first disappearances were as fake as all the others?” Sarge asked.

  “They were,” Robin said. “As best as we can find, all five sisters appeared out of the blue and got fake names and started into a new life.”

  “But why?” Sarge asked.

  Robin only shrugged.

  Pickett sipped on her coffee and Sarge leafed through the files as Robin went to get something more to eat.

  The five women, five sisters, had to be doing this for a reason. And a carefully planned reason right from the start.

  They weren’t taking anything, they weren’t actually hurting anyone in a criminal way. Pickett knew there wasn’t a law saying it was against the law to run away from a life. So on the surface these women were doing nothing against the law.

  On the surface.

  But why would five sisters start down this road? None of this made any sense at all.

  Pickett looked around at all the tourists enjoying their morning in the buffet. Maybe the view on this case was too narrow. People came into Las Vegas from all over the world. These five women had to have been from somewhere.

  Robin put a plate of French toast in front of her chair and grabbed her napkin and sat down. As she bit into the toast, Pickett asked, “Where are these women from?”

  “No idea,” Robin said.

  Sarge was looking at Pickett with his puzzled expression, so she went on.

  “Is there a way to find out if say five sisters vanished somewhere in 1997 or 1998 at the same time?” Pickett asked. “All short, young women. Wouldn’t that be in a file somewhere?”

  Robin nodded, wiping off her hands and taking her pen and making a note. “Sure worth a computer search.”

  Sarge nodded, then suddenly grabbed the picture of Sandy Hunter at thirty-nine. “Computer search gave me an idea. You think these mid-to-late-thirties women might use a dating service to find the next husband?”

  Pickett laughed and Robin again wiped off her hands from the syrup from her waffle and took notes.

  “It will take some time to run facial recognition on the major dating sites around the time the women disappeared,” Robin said. “But again, worth the search.”

  Pickett shook her head. “I doubt you will find anything. These women line up their next husbands a year ahead of leaving the last one.”

  “That’s right,” Sarge said.

  “Still worth a search,” Robin said.

  “So you got some things to do,” Pickett said to Robin. “Got any ideas about what we could do?”

  “Ex-husbands,” Robin said, sliding two folders toward Pickett. “Here is everything about March’s last two husbands. Both of them are technically still married to her. Maybe one of them has something to add to this craziness.”

  “You thinking that after seventeen times,” Sarge said, “Sandy Hunter, aka March, might be getting sloppy.”

  “One can only hope,” Robin said.

  Pickett could only agree to that statement. She had no doubt it was going to take some luck and more than likely a mistake one of the women made to break this open. And so far these five sisters didn’t seem to be the types to make mistakes.

  SIXTEEN

  November 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ROBIN LEFT AND Sarge and Pickett sat and worked on their coffees while reviewing the files of the last two times Sandy Hunter had vanished. Two years ago her name had been Karen Dross and last year she had been named Kathy Charles.

  They decided that they should talk to her husband Buddy Charles first, so Sarge got on the phone to the Detective Guy from the University Station who had caught the case. It was still an active case, so they needed to get the detective in charge permission to talk with Buddy Charles.

  Detective Guy just laughed. “Be my guest. That case was cold from the first moment it hit my desk.”

  “Yeah, kind of like the one we’re working,” Sarge said. “Not sure if there’s a connection, but we’ll let you know if there is. Anything you can tell us about this Buddy Charles?”

  “Nice guy, but really torn up that his new wife suddenly vanished. He’s blaming himself even though he had absolutely nothing to do with it. Calling me every week for an update I just don’t have.”

  “We’ll see if we can talk him off the ledge a little,” Sarge said. “Maybe give him some faith that the police are working on it.”

  “Thanks,” Detective Guy said. “I think anything’s going to help the guy.”

  Sarge hung up and looked at Pickett who had been listening.

  “Put on your counselor hat,” Sarge said. “We got a husband taking this really hard. And can’t say as I blame him.”

  “Neither can I,” Pickett said. “I wonder how many of the husbands didn’t make it through this?”

  Sarge just sort of shuddered and stood. “Not a question I want Robin looking into.”

  “Yeah, with that I agree.”

  It took them fifteen minutes to walk back to the Ogden as they had been doing every morning now for a month. Sarge loved the routine and the blocks of exercise. It wasn’t much, but the walk to the casino and back every day made him feel like he was doing a little something.

  Most days since he had met Pickett they had managed to spend a little time in the condo’s exercise room. But he honestly liked walking more, especially walking with Pickett.

  Pickett again drove. She liked to drive and it didn’t stress her out and he didn’t mind her driving in the slightest. In fact, he was pretty convinced she was a better driver than he was. So after just weeks of working together, they were already in a habit of her driving.

  Pickett had called Buddy Charles at his work and asked if they could talk and he was more than welcoming. He was the CEO of a major grocery chain and they met him in his main store in his office suite. There was no doubt at all to Sarge that this guy had money.

  He looked to be about forty, with a slight paunch and graying hair combed back. He stood about Sarge’s height and seemed in shape. He had his suit jacket draped over the back of his desk chair and his tie loosened. The office was on the second floor and looked out at the Strip. A picture of his wife, Kathy, still occupied the corner of his desk.

  Sarge and Pickett both identified themselves and showed their badges, then took seats in front of his large oak desk.

  “So why more detectives on Kathy’s disappearance?” Buddy said as they sat down. “Did something come up?”

  “We’re working all sorts of paths on this,” Pickett said. “Detective Guy will call you at once if we have any leads?”

  Buddy nodde
d and Sarge could see instantly what Detective Guy was talking about. This man was really, really depressed.

  “We need to ask some personal questions about Kathy if you don’t mind,” Sarge said.

  “Not at all,” Buddy said. “Anything you think might help.”

  “When and how did you two meet?” Sarge asked.

  “About two years ago now,” Buddy said. “My first wife and I had divorced about five years ago and I was eating lunch at a little diner around the corner from here and she came in. We got talking and ended up running into each other a few other times until I finally got up the nerve to ask her out in April. We were married four months later.”

  Sarge nodded and wrote all that down in his notebook. It fit the pattern of the women setting up the men while still with the previous husband.

  “So before she vanished, did you sense anything was wrong?” Pickett asked.

  “Nothing,” Buddy said, shaking his head. “I thought we were happy. She sure seemed happy.”

  “Did she have any old friends?” Sarge asked. “Friends she traveled with?”

  “Yeah,” Buddy said. “Some old girlfriends back east. She got together with them twice while we were together.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “She said she was going to Seattle in April, but turned out she went to San Francisco.”

  Sarge glanced at Pickett who suddenly sat forward.

  “How did you know that?” Pickett asked.

  “I had only known this woman for a month,” Buddy said. “I got a lot of money and I would rather have that money go to my kids from my first wife than someone trying to take me. So I had her followed.”

  Sarge nodded. “Very smart. Did she meet some old friends?”

  “She did,” Buddy said. “Four other women around her age. They spent most of the time in a big suite in an older hotel there. Then she came home.”