Calling Dead: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  It seemed she was having as rough a time with this horrid case as he was.

  Over the week, Doc and Fleet had narrowed down the list of missing to about eleven women with black hair per year that had gone missing since 1998. And they had found out the identities of the two unknown women in the mine that the Las Vegas police could never identify.

  He and Julia and Annie had spread out all over the entire area, interviewing anyone who might have known the two girls in the mine with black hair. But there were some classmates that were dead, others just had no memory from school in 1988.

  Now they were all headed once again after the poker game for the café at the Bellagio Casino, just as they had done a week before.

  Over the game, the five attending retired detectives all brainstormed on various ways to come at this case.

  Nothing at all came out of that.

  Just more questions.

  Why eleven per year?

  Why the black hair?

  And the question that bothered Lott the most was where were the missing women and why in fifteen years had no others been found?

  As the leads with the students seemed to be fading, Doc and Fleet were digging deeper into the mines involved, both the one above the broken down school bus and the one they had found the women in. There was no connection at all between the two mines, but the one with the murdered women seemed to have a somewhat shady past.

  Of course, for mines in Nevada, that was not at all unusual. But it was taking time even for Fleet’s miracle computer people to dig through the layers of ownership on that mine.

  Lott and Julia dropped his car in valet parking and stepped quickly through the heat and into the coolness of the casino. The sounds of machines and bells and people laughing and talking seemed almost comfortingly normal as Lott and Julia took their spot in a back booth at the cafe, neither saying a word.

  A minute later, Annie joined them, followed by a sweating and red-faced Andor. He had clearly parked out in the lot. Even though it was after ten and the sun had just gone down an hour before, the temperature outside still topped one hundred and twelve degrees.

  “I had an idea on the way over here,” Andor said as he slid into the booth and took a cloth napkin to wipe the sweat off his face. Then he dipped the napkin in a glass of ice water and put it on his neck.

  “So what’s the idea?” Lott asked.

  “We’re going about this wrong,” Andor said.

  Julia laughed. “No kidding.”

  “We need to focus on why those women were cut up like they were,” Andor said, the red flush in his face slowly fading.

  “We are pretty convinced it started in the bus tragedy,” Annie said. “But nothing in that tragedy leads to harvesting flesh.”

  “Exactly,” Andor said.

  “We think the ghost that Kirk saw in the mine is our perp, right?” Andor asked. “The one that gave Kirk a little water, took off the women’s underwear, and then left.”

  All three of them nodded. Lott had learned a long time ago that when Andor had an idea, it was just better to not say anything and let him run with it.

  “So what did our perp learn to do that forces him to cut off the meat from his victims after he roasts them?”

  Lott understood where his partner was going. “And how does he bake them?”

  “Exactly,” Andor said, pointing at Lott as he often did when Lott had something right. “We looked into that some back in the day, but this baking has, in theory, been going on now for another fifteen years. Which one of Kirk’s classmates owns either mines or something that could bake a person?”

  “Or both,” Annie said.

  Annie grabbed the phone and a moment later was explaining to Fleet what they wanted. Doc had stayed in Boise to help out and had been calling in favors all over the West investigating some of the women’s disappearances to try to get any little detail that would help. So far he had come up empty, but he was still going at it.

  The petite brown-haired waitress took their drink order and their food order at the same time just after Annie finished.

  “None of the men in Kirk’s high school has any interest or family in mining at all,” Annie said. “They had already done that search. They are now going after ovens and class members.”

  “Damn,” Andor said. “So why, beyond some strange sexual thing I have never heard of, would a guy cut off a woman’s butt and large muscles in her thighs?”

  “Steaks, roasts, maybe jerky,” Annie said.

  “Damn dry steaks and roast,” Lott said. “From my little experiment. But jerky makes sense if the flesh was going to be eaten.”

  “How much was taken from each body?” Julia asked.

  “A lot,” Andor said. “Maybe twenty pounds or so from each woman if I remember the autopsy reports right.”

  “That’s a lot of jerky every month,” Lott said.

  “So we let Fleet and his people do the searches and see what they come up with.”

  Everyone nodded and then sat there silently, just letting the casino sounds wash around them.

  Lott felt the frustration of the week climbing back. Just so many odd details and none of it was fitting together. He knew it had to be the mines that were at the center of this in some fashion or another. He just couldn’t figure out how.

  He turned to Julia. “You up for a trip to visit a couple of mines tomorrow while we wait for Fleet’s search to be done?”

  “Not really,” she said. “But I see where you are going and I think I need to see them as well.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Annie said. “I’ve been feeling that the mines are the key to this all along, just don’t know how.”

  “I’m in,” Andor said. “But I’m going to be bringing a cold pack for my neck.”

  Lott laughed. “Field trip.”

  “Let’s hope it turns out a bunch better than the field trip those girls in the bus took,” Andor said.

  “We’re bringing cases of bottled water,” Annie said, “cell phones, and telling Doc and Fleet exactly where we are every hour.”

  “Where’s the adventure in that?” Andor asked, shaking his head.

  “Thank you,” Julia said, smiling at Annie.

  Lott could only smile at his daughter as well and say the same thing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  August 14th, 2015

  9 A.M.

  Outside of Las Vegas

  WHERE THE BUS had gotten lost was surprisingly close to Las Vegas city limits, yet it felt remote and very isolated. But in the intense heat of a summer’s day, close was still a death sentence without protection.

  Lott took the Cadillac SUV expertly along the narrow dirt road up the rocky canyon. He could only imagine a bus up here in this kind of heat. It was well over a hundred already outside and would be climbing as the day went on.

  That kind of heat got very deadly very quickly.

  Lott had on a light long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up and suntan lotion all over his arms, face and neck. He smelled more like a coconut than he liked, but he also didn’t spend much more than a few minutes a day in this sun and he wanted to be prepared.

  He had also brought a wide-brimmed hat.

  They all wore jeans and hiking boots and both Julia and Annie had on tank tops with a light open jacket over that to protect their arms some and wide-brimmed Panama hats.

  Andor had on a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a ton of lotion smeared all over his arms and face and neck as well. He had on a baseball cap and a wet towel over his neck that he planned on dipping in iced water from a cooler before he got out.

  They had a couple cases of bottled water and some food in the back, plus a cooler full of ice and water bottles. They were about as ready as four detectives without any desert experience could get to go look at some mines in hot desert heat.

  Lott decided to come into the canyon from the top of a slight ridge, the same way the bus had gone. From the top of the ridge, it took him only a
few minutes going along the winding, one-lane dirt road of the canyon before he found where the bus had broken down.

  He pulled the car over and stopped, letting it run and the air conditioning working to keep the inside of the car cool. The car blocked the dirt road completely.

  On the left side of the car were steep rock walls. The mine was up a brush-covered slope on the right and still in operation, from what it looked like from the fresh dirt. A rough dirt road twisted up through the brush toward the mine tailings.

  No cars or people were in evidence.

  Lott was surprised at how far up the hill the mine was from the road.

  They had expected that the mine would be in use, but it still sort of surprised Lott. It had actually been in operation when the girls died in there, but the owner had been out of town.

  “We need to get a complete background check on the owner of this mine,” Andor said.

  “Fleet already has it,” Annie said, handing Andor the file. “The guy that is working this now is an attorney from Las Vegas, working the mine on weekends. He bought it from the guy who owned it when the girls died. Seemed the guy could never go back into the mine after all the death in there and it took him five years to find a buyer.”

  “What happened to that guy?” Andor asked a moment before Lott could.

  “Died seven years ago,” Annie said.

  Lott nodded. Figured that would be yet another dead end on a case full of them.

  Lott glanced at Julia, then around at Annie and Andor behind him. “Anyone have any desire to walk up there and look around?”

  “Not a bit,” Andor said. “That’s a pretty good hike.”

  “I can’t see a reason to now that I see it from here,” Annie said.

  Julia nodded. “Carrying those girls up that road must have been almost impossible.”

  “Especially for two men who had just tried to go for help in heat like this,” Annie said.

  Silence filled the car.

  Lott stared at that road. Impossible described the feat. Kirk and his father could not have done it. Not after trying to go for help and getting turned back by the heat.

  Lott swung around and looked at his old partner in the back seat.

  Andor was staring up at the mine and frowning.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lott asked.

  Andor nodded. “No chance in hell Kirk and his dad carried those eleven girls up that hill. More than likely they got back to the bus after trying to go for help and just passed out with everyone else.”

  Julia frowned. “So who carried them up there and why?”

  “And then why not admit it?” Annie asked.

  Lott shook his head. “More questions. No answers.”

  “This damn case is driving me crazy,” Andor said.

  Lott and Julia nodded together, both staring up the hill at the mine.

  “Let’s see the other place, Dad,” Annie said. “Maybe we can see something there that will make sense of this.”

  Lott nodded and with one last look at the mine up on the hillside, he put the car in gear and headed down the dirt road.

  About a quarter mile down the winding narrow dirt road, he glanced at Julia. “What in the hell was the bus full of kids doing up here anyway?”

  “I didn’t see the answer to that in the file,” Andor said. “They were supposed to have been up between Boulder City and the dam on the other side of town. That’s why it took so long to find them out here, on the north side of town.”

  “There’s a ton more to this tragedy than what is in that record,” Annie said.

  Lott could only agree with that.

  “There sure is,” Andor said. “And I think the chief of police can help me get to the bottom of it all this afternoon.”

  Lott smiled. He knew that tone in his old partner’s voice and no way in hell was he going to take no for an answer.

  “I’m going to get Fleet and Doc digging as well,” Annie said, pulling out her cell phone.

  “Good idea,” Andor said. “Usually when I smell this much fish, there’s an ocean nearby.”

  Julia and Annie laughed and Lott just smiled and shook his head as he kept working the SUV down the canyon and back toward the city. He had heard Andor use that phrase a bunch over the years. And when he did, there had always been something very wrong about a story.

  Always.

  And Lott had a hunch, this time would be no exception.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  August 14th, 2015

  9:45 A.M.

  Outside of Las Vegas

  JULIA WAS SURPRISED when Lott pulled off the paved highway and headed along a straight dirt road toward some low hills, dust billowing up behind their SUV.

  After leaving where the bus tragedy had happened, Lott had wound his way back to Highway 95, gone only about two miles back toward Vegas, and turned off again.

  “These two sites are very close together in the scheme of things,” Julia said.

  “They are at that,” Lott said. “We didn’t know about the bus tragedy fifteen years ago, so this didn’t seem odd.”

  “It seemed like a long damn ways out in the desert,” Andor said.

  The dirt road went into a narrow canyon and Lott slowed down, moving up through the curves slowly until the canyon seemed to open up and there, beside the road, was an old mine entrance.

  This one had no climb to get to it at all. Hauling bodies from a van or truck or car and getting them into the mine would be easy.

  “Well, this brings back nightmares,” Andor said.

  Lott had stopped the SUV directly across from the mine and was sitting there, just staring at it.

  Julia eased her hand over and put it on his leg for support as she too just stared at the mine entrance.

  “Boarded up just as we found it,” Andor said. “Shit I hate this place.”

  Julia understood that. She had seen the pictures of what those women in there looked like. She could only imagine finding them.

  Lott glanced at Julia. “I think I’ll wander over there and chase some demons away.”

  Julia squeezed his leg and nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t need to,” Lott said.

  “But I do,” Andor said as he opened the cooler between him and Annie and dunked in his towel in the ice water, then put it around his neck.

  “We’ll all go,” Annie said. “We’re here to look for something, anything, that might give us a clue to move forward.”

  Lott shut off the car as Julia opened the door and stepped out into the heat. It felt like putting her head in an oven. The air off the dirt and rocks was so hot, it just seemed to radiate from everywhere.

  “We can’t be out in this too long,” Annie said as she got out and moved to the side of the road with Julia.

  “Luckily that mine is only about thirty paces off the road,” Andor said.

  “Think that fact might be important?” Annie asked.

  Julia nodded. “It could be.”

  With Andor walking ahead of them in his normal bullish fashion, Julia followed with Annie and then Lott right behind her. There was a rough path to the mine, but nothing really. More than likely still left from fifteen years ago.

  And she knew it was far, far too hot for snakes to be moving around, but she watched the shadows along the path anyway.

  The mine opening had been dug between a large rock outcropping. A massive sign was faded, but plastered across the wood covering the mine entrance. It said, “No trespassing. Dangerous Conditions!”

  “This is exactly how we found it,” Lott said. “Same sign and all.”

  Julia touched Lott’s back for comfort. This had to be almost impossible for him to come back to.

  “We were about to not open it and just ignore the psychic,” Andor said, “but Mr. Nose here thought he smelled something.”

  “I still smell it,” Lott said. “That memory is so damn strong.”

  Julia frowned and glanced at Annie,
who was also frowning.

  “A musty smell, like something had gotten wet in a closed-up garage?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the smell,” Lott said.

  “I’m smelling it now,” Julia said.

  “So am I,” Annie said.

  Lott had a panicked look in his eyes that Julia could never imagine the man she loved having.

  “That smell can’t still be here,” Lott said.

  “But it is,” Annie said.

  Julia watched as both Lott and Andor went at the side of the boards.

  They pulled them and the sign off without so much as a grunt. That was not a good sign. That meant this mine had been entered a bunch of times and the boards put back up.

  The smell hit them all hard the minute the mine opened up.

  Julia just sort of held her ground. She had smelled a lot of smells over the years as a detective, but this one seemed to just clog every pore of her body in the heat.

  All four of them pulled out their phones and turned on their lights.

  Lott turned to Annie. “Stay out here. One of us has to call for help if this thing collapses.”

  Julia saw Annie start to protest, then nod.

  Lott stepped into the smell of the small tunnel first, followed by Andor.

  Julia followed, bracing herself for what she would find just as she had done all the time when on full duty.

  The thick overhead wooden beams were low and Lott almost had to duck.

  Julia was right behind Andor, but she couldn’t see much ahead of them since the tunnel was so narrow.

  Ten feet in both men stopped, side-by-side in the narrow tunnel, holding up their lights to illuminate what was in front of them.

  Julia moved up and looked between them, gently touching Lott on the shoulder to get him to lean a little out of the way.

  Eleven women, dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, were sitting against the mine wall on the left. All had black hair, cut and trimmed exactly the same.

  All were mummified completely.

  It was the most horrific sight she had ever seen.

  Ever.

  And with the thick smell of dried death clogging her every sense, she had no doubt that she would ever be the same.