Dead Hand: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  Sarge laughed. “Wow, we really do think alike. I felt exactly the same way. Exactly.”

  “How much did you travel?” Pickett asked.

  “The worst was a ten-day cruise,” Sarge said. “All alone, bored out of my mind, and I couldn’t eat enough or drink enough to change that, so I ended up reading a couple dozen novels. That I enjoyed.”

  “Robin and I were going to try that,” Pickett said, shaking her head. “Came to our senses before it cost us too much.”

  Sarge decided to just plow on ahead. “Are you seeing anyone. None of my business, I know, but figured I would ask.”

  Pickett’s brown eyes lit up and she smiled. “Nope. And you?”

  “Nope,” Sarge said. “Been thinking of getting a cat though.”

  Pickett actually laughed at that. “Can I help you pick it out? The shelters around here are always looking to find homes for some of the cats. I would love to help you rescue a few from the cages.”

  “You like cats?” Sarge said, actually surprised.

  “Had one named Vice, but he died a couple of months before the ex left town with the bimbo. Haven’t felt settled enough since to go for another.”

  “I love the name,” Sarge said. “My wife and I had two named Come and Go. But they were her cats and she took them with her when she moved to Chicago. I missed the cats more than I missed her, which is kind of sad to say.”

  Pickett shook her head. “You know there is a horrid joke there about two cats named Come and Go leaving?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sarge said. “And thanks for the restraint.”

  Picket laughed. Then said, “Feels empty at home, doesn’t it?”

  Sarge nodded. “And a goldfish just wouldn’t do it.”

  Pickett laughed. “Then a cat it is.”

  “And I would love the help finding one.”

  “Deal,” Pickett said.

  At that moment their waitress came back with the chips and salsa and their coffees.

  Sarge just smiled at Pickett as she dug into the chips. Damn he was starting to really be attracted to this woman.

  He just hoped she felt the same. But only time was going to tell on that. Now at least he had help finding a cat or maybe two.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ROBIN JOINED THEM just a few minutes after the chips and salsa arrived. Pickett was very much enjoying the conversation with Sarge. Not only was he handsome, he wasn’t seeing anyone, and he liked cats.

  And he made her laugh. She hadn’t laughed much in a very long time, so that felt great.

  He felt a little too perfect, but at this point, at her age, she wasn’t going to question too much an almost-mister-perfect. She was just going to enjoy her time with him and see what happened.

  But she had to admit, after less than a day of knowing him, she was hoping a lot would happen between them.

  Robin sat down, putting a couple of folders off to one side and dug into the chips as Sarge told Robin about the list of names they were getting from the August Tux Shop.

  Robin just shook her head. “I didn’t hear that,” she said, “but I’m glad we are getting the records. They should help some.”

  “That bad?” Pickett asked. She knew the sound of her partner’s voice and Robin sounded discouraged right now.

  “Massive numbers,” Robin said, opening a manila folder in front of her.

  Pickett glanced at Sarge, who looked suddenly very worried.

  “We dug only back to Trudy Patterson’s disappearance in 2010,” Robin said. “In a quick search, we found in six years over six thousand missing person’s cases filed, men and women that had something to do with a marriage. That’s out of the five hundred or more missing persons cases filed every month.”

  “Oh, wow,” Pickett said. That sounded like an impossible number.

  “We were able to eliminate just about half of those we targeted because the person actually was just running away from the marriage, either before or after, and showed up at home or called in when they discovered a report had been filed about them.”

  “That leaves three thousand in six years,” Sarge said. “All attached to marriages, right?”

  Robin nodded. “We eliminated another five hundred because of drunk marriages and one party or the other woke up and ran.”

  “Walk of shame with a marriage attached,” Sarge said. “The worst kind.”

  Both Pickett and Robin laughed. Pickett was really starting to enjoy Sarge’s sense of humor. He had a way of cutting building tension and keeping them focused.

  “We got rid of another thousand,” Robin said, “because the couple was reported missing by family members, mostly parents of the bride.”

  “And they never showed up later?” Pickett asked.

  “We never went any farther with those,” Robin said. “And since missing person cases are never investigated unless there are suspicious circumstances, those had little information attached.”

  “So that leaves about fifteen hundred over six years,” Sarge said.

  Robin nodded. “Not quite one per week for the entire six years. All somehow attached to weddings. All now officially missing persons’ cold cases.”

  “That many, huh?” Pickett asked. That number shocked her. She knew there were a lot of missing person cases in Vegas, but to hear it put that way was hard to grasp.

  “I learned a ton about that side of our job today,” Robin said. “The detectives that work missing persons are an amazing bunch in every precinct. And Las Vegas is the only city in the country at the moment to have a dedicated missing persons’ cold case detective.”

  “You’re kidding?” Pickett asked.

  “Nope,” Robin said. “We never met him. Started the job after we all retired. He works out of the main offices. And the missing person detectives around town use a lot of volunteers from the VIPS Program.”

  “What’s that?” Sarge asked a half second before Pickett did.

  “Volunteers in Police Service,” Robin said. “We were really sheltered on the homicide side of things because volunteers were the last people we wanted messing around in a case. But with missing persons, quick action and lots of boots on the ground can often save lives.”

  “Wow,” Sarge said, shaking his head. “Never knew.”

  Pickett shook her head as well.

  “Lot of this is new, coming in about the time we three were calling it quits,” Robin said. “There is now NCMA, the National Center for Missing Adults. We searched all their data bases as well this afternoon, plus a bunch more.”

  Pickett just looked at Sarge. For the first time in a while she was feeling in over her head on something, and from the look on Sarge’s face, he wasn’t feeling much different.

  “So here is what my husband’s people are doing,” Robin said. “They are trying to file down that list by data-mining every database they can find around the world. Comparing everything from DNA to fingerprints to blood types and so on.”

  “Looking through morgue records as well?” Sarge asked.

  “First place they are looking,” Robin said. “Homicide cases, everything.”

  “So they might be able to get the number down to one per week since Trudy Patterson went missing and turned up dead,” Sarge said.

  Robin nodded. “If we’re lucky.”

  Pickett stared at her partner, who was studying the file in front of her, then at Sarge, who seemed to be lost in thought.

  “We also need to focus on the women who were falsely married, raped, and then let go,” Pickett said.

  Robin took a deep breath and Pickett didn’t like that at all. Robin only did that when she had really bad news.

  “About one per week,” Robin said, “over the same time period, if you figure a certain normal percentage were never reported.”

  “Please tell me that number isn’t certain,” Sarge said.

  Pickett just wanted to be sick.

  “As c
lose as we can figure it from the records,” Robin said. “We figured that about a quarter of the cases would not be reported. Maybe more. That’s why the August Tux Shop records will help us firm that up some.”

  Sarge sat back for a moment.

  Robin went back to staring at the folder in front of her.

  Pickett wanted to just toss this entire thing in and run away. Women abducted and raped right before getting married. The same number of women and men vanishing right before getting married. This was just too ugly to even try to wrap her mind around. As it was, she had no doubt she wouldn’t be sleeping well over the next few nights. Something major was going on and regularly for a lot of years.

  Sarge sat forward suddenly and looked at Robin. “Witnesses to the abductions? If these numbers are correct, we are having men and women abducted off Las Vegas streets at the pace of two per week. Someone has got to have seen something. Can we put the witness descriptions together to make a pattern?”

  Robin shook her head. “So far we haven’t found a single witness to an abduction in any of these cases.”

  “Nothing?” Pickett asked, now feeling even sicker.

  “Nothing,” Robin said. “The victims are just vanishing without a trace and the ones that come back from the rape have no memories.”

  “We’ll,” Sarge said, sitting back again and shaking his head. “That settles it.”

  Pickett looked at the handsome detective. “Settles what?”

  “It’s aliens,” Sarge said. “Aliens in spaceships came and beamed them all up.”

  It took Pickett a moment to see the slight grin on Sarge’s face before she and Robin both broke into laughter, breaking the tension of the moment.

  But it was sad that the situation seemed so hopeless, alien abduction sounded plausible.

  PART THREE

  The Problem Gets Bigger

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  SARGE AND PICKETT and Robin spent the rest of their lunch at the Bellagio Café working to figure out where to start into all this. And what they came back around to was focusing on Trudy Patterson’s abduction and then death.

  But at the same time, Robin would continue looking for patterns among the fifteen hundred that had gone missing around their own future wedding and stayed missing. And also look for patterns in the rape cases focused also on marriages.

  Around them the normal world went on with the distant sounds of the casino and other lunch customers eating and laughing. Sarge bet most of the people near them would be appalled at what the three of them had been talking about so casually.

  It was right at the end of lunch, when Robin was about to head back to her computer people, that Sarge had one more idea. He didn’t much like the idea, but it seemed logical to at least add it in.

  “We’re dealing in three different areas of detective work,” Sarge said. “Missing persons, sexual assault, and homicide. Right?”

  Pickett looked at him with a puzzled look and nodded.

  “So how many unsolved homicide cases do we have similar to Trudy Patterson’s case that had a future wedding in the mix?”

  Robin flipped back open her notebook that she had closed and started writing.

  “Good thought,” Pickett said, nodding.

  “A little more in our wheelhouse, at least,” Sarge said.

  At that point Robin closed her book and scooted out of the booth. “I’m headed back to the computer elves. We got a lot of information to crunch to pull some patterns.”

  Sarge watched her go and then glanced at Pickett. “She always leave that suddenly?”

  “Always,” Pickett said, laughing, “when she’s focused on a case.”

  “So any idea how we figure out how these women and men are being targeted?” Sarge asked, sipping on the last of his coffee. He had almost finished his club sandwich before finally pushing it away for the waitress to take. After that much food, coffee tasted wonderful.

  “I had a thought after we talked with Stein,” Pickett said. “These couples will have a bridal registry for gifts. That has an outside chance of being a link and I mentioned it to Robin.”

  “I wouldn’t even begin to know how those work,” Sarge said. “Are the gifts picked out and bought delivered to the chapel or hotel room or something? Or just brought by the people who bought them?”

  “Yes,” Pickett said, smiling.

  Damn he was coming to really enjoy her smile. And she had the whitest teeth he had seen in a long time, especially for a detective who drank a lot of coffee.

  “The problem with bridal registry is that not many do it these days,” Pickett said, “and gifts are often just sent to their homes. So after I had that thought and talked with Robin, we have pretty much ruled it out.”

  Sarge smiled. “I do that all the time. Come up with an idea and then talk myself away from it. At least on this case that is considered progress.”

  “Agreed,” Pickett said. “So we need to really figure out how these women and men are being targeted. There has to be one point all of them walk through.”

  Sarge instantly knew where that was. “County clerk is the only common thing they all do ahead of time.”

  Pickett nodded. “They must show proof of identity to pick up their license.”

  Sarge quickly picked up his phone and called Mike Dans.

  “Still early,” Mike said.

  “This is another lead,” Sarge said, smiling at Pickett who looked a little puzzled. “Would it be possible for you to check, very, very carefully, to see if a system database has been hacked?”

  Pickett smiled and nodded, now understanding what he was doing.

  “Sure,” Mike said. “Which one are we talking about?”

  “County clerk’s office for marriage licenses,” Sarge said. “At this point, until we get more data, it’s the only place we know for sure every person touched who disappeared or was raped or murdered with a wedding in their future.”

  “Ahh,” Mike said. “Damn good thinking. It shouldn’t take too long to carefully see if there was a hack without setting off alarms. Back with you in ten minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Sarge said, and clicked off his phone.

  He turned to Pickett. “Figured we had better determine if there was a hack from the outside before digging into the county employees.”

  “A really, really good idea,” Pickett said. “How long until he can figure it out?”

  “Ten minutes,” Sarge said.

  “He’s that fast?” Pickett asked, clearly shocked.

  “He’s that good,” Sarge said, grinning. “He’ll go in and leave no trace or set off any alarm a hacker might have installed.”

  “Damn,” Pickett said. “We turn over enough rocks, we might actually find a slug.”

  “You believe that?” Sarge asked, smiling.

  “Nope,” Pickett said. “Not with this case. But a girl can hope.”

  “I like hope,” Sarge said, laughing. “And some luck might be nice here as well.”

  Pickett’s beautiful face suddenly became very serious. “I have another rock we really need to turn over.”

  Sarge looked at her and nodded for her to go on.

  “If this is all tied together,” Pickett said, “which it sure seems like it might be, I think we need to focus on what kind of person could be doing this.”

  Sarge sat back in the booth, thinking. Pickett was right. They hadn’t given any thought at all to the type of person, or group of people who could do these crimes. And do them so perfectly as to not have even one witness in six years.

  “And why?” he said, looking at her. “If fifteen hundred people have vanished right before their weddings, where did they go?”

  “And why release some and not others,” Pickett asked.

  “Assuming this is all tied together,” Sarge said.

  “Yeah, assuming that.”

  Sarge had no doubt that it all was tied together. And until n
ow, no one had put the entire picture together before because of the vast size of the wedding industry in Las Vegas.

  And that worried him more than he wanted to admit.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  PICKETT LET THE soothing sounds of the restaurant and casino wash over her as she sipped on her coffee and thought about the problem of profiling the person or people doing this.

  She knew they were making an assumption that all of this was tied together, but it was the only assumption she felt comfortable with at this point.

  It seemed unlikely that fifteen hundred people could go missing before weddings and never be found in such a short amount of time. Sure, thousands went missing all the time in Vegas, but they could account for most of those now over the last six years.

  And they knew that the rapes were tied together because of the exact same circumstances of each one.

  So it wasn’t that far of a leap to tie the missing persons with the rapes. They just needed to figure out why some victims were handled differently.

  “I might have someone who could help us with the profiling,” Sarge said after a moment when they both sat sipping their coffee. “We’ll check him out this afternoon, see if he’ll help us, but I have another question that might help Robin do some connections.”

  Pickett stared into the handsome face of the detective sitting beside her in the booth. In less than one day she had become amazingly comfortable being beside him and talking with him.

  And she flat loved looking into his hazel eyes. At this point his face was puzzled and very serious, which made him even more handsome.

  Pickett managed to nod and look down at her coffee before she did something like a young school girl.

  “Rental cars,” Sarge said.

  Pickett instantly looked back into his eyes. “What are you thinking?”

  Sarge shrugged. “Wondering if there is a pattern with rental cars. They are hard to ditch and easy to track.”