Freezeout: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  On the way to lunch from Strickland’s office, Pickett had explained to Sarge how it might be possible for Mike to find out some information about what those women were doing, even a year-and-a-half later. It was going to depend on how the hotel internet connections worked and if they stored usage data on the cloud.

  Sarge took away from what Pickett said that what Mike was doing was a long shot, but worth the try.

  Pickett hung up her cell and also sipped her iced tea.

  “Robin is about ten minutes out,” Pickett said. “She wants us to order her normal for her if she isn’t here by the time the waitress comes back.”

  Sarge nodded. Frighteningly enough, the three of them had normal meals they ate regularly when working a case like this. He wondered if that had anything to do with their age or if it was just what he had always done. He honestly had no memory of that, but if he had to guess, he would guess it was set-in-our-ways age.

  “So,” Sarge said, smiling at the wonderful woman beside him, “We have made a lot of headway to go nowhere real.”

  “We solved all the missing person’s cold cases,” Pickett said. “That’s something. Might be a record for the most cases closed at once. And we know they are all alive.”

  “But alive where?” Sarge asked.

  “I’m betting right here,” Pickett said, shrugging, “all married or getting married, setting up husbands number eighteen.”

  They sat for a moment in silence, then Pickett said, “You think at some point we might move in together?”

  Sarge laughed and looked at the woman he had fallen in love with.

  “So why did this topic come up now?”

  “Just thinking of those five women rushing into marriage,” Pickett said, “for clearly the wrong reason, whatever it may be, and that got me wondering about our two condos and our situation.”

  “You want an honest answer or my safe answer,” Sarge asked, smiling.

  She laughed. “I want both. First the safe answer.”

  Sarge nodded. “Safe answer would be I think given time I would hope it would happen.”

  “Honest answer now,” Pickett said.

  “I would love to move in with you or you move in with me tomorrow. And besides, the kids would love it as well.”

  He was surprised that he didn’t feel the slightest bit worried about admitting that to her.

  She smiled and leaned over and kissed him. “I agree. And I had a thought if we can get the building management to sign off.”

  “Listening,” he said.

  “We put in an archway with pocket doors between our two places,” she said. “We can leave the doors open most of the time, but if we have guests, we can close the door and let them use my place. And if we ever have to sell one place or the other, we just close it back up.”

  “Oh, god,” Sarge said, smiling. “We’re going to have guests all the time.”

  “So you like the idea?” Pickett asked.

  “I like it a lot,” Sarge said.

  “Like what?” Robin said, sliding into the booth across from Sarge and next to Pickett. Neither of them had seen her coming across the restaurant.

  “Some condo ideas,” Pickett said. “We’ll tell you later.”

  At that moment the waitress also appeared and took their orders for lunch. After she left, Robin said, “I have some news.”

  Sarge was stunned at that. Even though they were moving fast on this case, it felt to him as if they had hit the spot where the case would go cold again.

  “What?” Pickett asked.

  “We found who these sisters were originally,” Robin said.

  She opened a notebook and started reading. “We got a hit on the DNA from a distant family member and were able to track to the five sisters. Their original name was Jones.”

  “Jones?” Sarge asked, trying not to laugh. “Five women who change their names every year were originally Jones?”

  Robin nodded. “Our March woman is the oldest at forty. Her original name was Beverly Jones. Then there were two sets of twins, not identical. So they are all within three years of the same age.”

  “Wow,” Pickett said.

  “Here is what gets interesting,” Robin said. “When Beverly was fourteen, their father killed their mother. Seems he had been beating on the mother and the girls for years. Finally went too far.”

  Sarge felt his stomach twist. Now they were getting a glimpse of maybe why these women didn’t stay with their husbands, but from all of the reports, the husbands were good men.

  “What happened to the girls?” Pickett asked.

  “Father went to jail, died there a year later in a knife fight,” Robin said. “The girls were split up and put into foster care since they had no real other family that could deal with five kids.”

  “Oh, shit,” Pickett said.

  Sarge felt the same way.

  Robin just nodded. “Five abused sisters split apart and put into a child care system. What possibly could go wrong with that?”

  Sarge just shook his head.

  “Beverly kept them all in touch,” Robins said, “and together as much as possible, from the reports we found. When the last set of twins aged out, the five girls vanished. They never talked to even distant family members again.”

  The three of them sat there in silence for a moment, the sounds of the restaurant and the distant casino background noise.

  The five sisters had lived through a nightmare made worse by no relatives being able to take them in. They had stuck together to get through it, which made sense to Sarge. But so many other things still made no sense at all.

  Finally Sarge asked. “So why would that background, that history, that tragedy, make these women marry and then leave a husband, seemingly good husbands, every year?”

  Neither Pickett nor Robin had an answer for that question.

  The more they learned about all this, the more puzzling it became.

  TWENTY-ONE

  November 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  THEY ATE LUNCH while bouncing questions around about the motives of the five sisters, finding none at all that made any sense to Pickett. What had happened to those young girls, the horror they had survived, would certainly scare anyone.

  And it made sense they were still very tight and had disappeared from any contact with a family that had allowed that horror to continue. But vanishing every year from good spouses just made no sense.

  As they were just finishing their meals, Sarge’s phone rang and he answered it. After a moment he said, “Hi, Mike. Any luck?”

  As Sarge spoke and Pickett and Robin watched, Sarge got out his small notebook from his shirt pocket and started to write.

  Pickett wanted to lean over and see what he was writing, but instead just sat there.

  Finally, Sarge said, “Thanks, Mike. We owe you.”

  Mike must have said something because Sarge laughed before hanging up.

  “Mike was able to get into the hotel servers and cloud storage,” Sarge said, “but you didn’t hear me say that.”

  Both other cops nodded and smiled. This would have been another matter if they were all still officially on the force, but they were just mostly private citizens who could bend rules far more than regular detectives could do.

  “He said the hotel doesn’t record exact connections or things like that, but they store usage from each room and basic levels for three years.”

  “Makes sense for lawsuit reasons,” Robin said.

  Sarge nodded. “Mike said he couldn’t dig out specific addresses or anything like that,” Sarge said, “but the activity from that room showed all five were online most of each day on the five computers. He said their activity looked like they were searching all sorts of databases.”

  “Searching for what?” Robin asked a half second before Pickett could ask the same question.

  “Mike was wondering the same thing,” Sarge said, shaking his head.

  They sat there for a momen
t. Pickett knew they needed to get focused again. Somehow.

  “Okay,” Pickett said. “We have solved a bunch of missing person cold cases.”

  “And a few active ones,” Sarge said.

  “So we could quit right now,” Pickett said, “get this to one of the active duty detectives and get him to get it in the papers to flush out the five women.”

  She hated that idea, but she wanted to float it to Sarge and Robin. Both of them were shaking their heads.

  “So why are we not calling this one closed?” Pickett asked. “For me it is a gut sense that something bigger is going on.”

  “Agree,” Sarge said, nodding.

  “Completely,” Robin said.

  “So,” Pickett said, “we need to change this focus to a conspiracy focus. We don’t know the crime, but we know something is happening.”

  Both Sarge and Robin nodded.

  The part that was bothering Pickett the most was that these women actually hadn’t committed any real crime. At least that they could find.

  “So,” Sarge said, “with that focus, what about tracing how those fake ids and backgrounds are done.”

  “Will has two people on that,” Robin said, nodding. “It bothers him that these five sisters could have such perfect and deep backgrounds for fake names year after year. That takes work, time, and preparation and it is driving Will nuts.”

  Pickett was very glad to hear that. When Will got focused, he found things that no one else seemed to be able to find.

  “Good,” Sarge said. “So everything keeps twisting around to their motive for pulling these vanishing acts.”

  “We have three theories,” Pickett said. “Cover for a crime is the first. A lack of ability to commit to one relationship is second. A giant game is third. And the more I learn about these women, the more I think the first one is the only logical conclusion.”

  Again, both Sarge and Robin agreed.

  The sounds of the distant casino filled the quiet in the booth. Finally Pickett asked, “Anyone got any ideas?”

  Sarge nodded. “It’s a long shot, but I think we get permission from the active detectives to tell Rich Hunter and Buddy Charles who his wife really was, her background, what happened to her, what she was doing.”

  Pickett stared at Sarge. “You think them knowing who she was and her background might put a puzzle piece into this mess?”

  Sarge smiled. “As I said, it’s a long shot, but damned if I can think of anything else to do this afternoon.”

  Pickett could only nod to that because she didn’t have any better idea either.

  TWENTY-TWO

  November 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ROBIN LEFT TO go back to help Will on his searches. Sarge and Pickett got their iced teas refilled and stayed in the booth, working together on a piece of key lime pie. From there they called Detectives Bower and Guy and told them what they had discovered so far and asked them to keep quiet on it for the moment, since they were working something bigger. They asked for permission to go talk with the two husbands again.

  Both detectives agreed, as Sarge knew they would.

  Pickett called Rich Hunter and he was surprised, but agreed to once again meet them in his office in forty minutes.

  Buddy Charles said he would be open at 4 p.m. which gave them more than two hours to talk with Rich.

  Sarge had no doubt at all that this would prove pointless and difficult to say to both husbands. But someone had to do it, so they might as well be the ones giving the news to the two men they had talked to.

  Pickett paid the bill and thirty minutes later Sarge held the heavy door of the old office building on campus open for her.

  “Always a gentleman,” she said, smiling at him.

  “Old school,” he said.

  She smiled at him. “We’ll see how old later tonight.”

  All he could do was smile and hope he didn’t blush at where his imagination went immediately.

  Rich Hunter was behind his desk when they got to his open door. He signaled they should come in and have a seat and close the door, which Sarge did.

  “So twice in two days,” Rich said, “after all these years. Have you discovered what happened to Sandy?”

  “We have,” Pickett said.

  Rich actually sat forward, stunned at that. “You know what happened to her? Is she dead?”

  “No,” Sarge said, “she is very much alive.”

  With that Rich sat back in his chair, the look of shock on his face clear.

  Sarge figured the only way to get this out clearly was to start from the beginning.

  “Sandy’s real name was Beverly Jones,” Sarge said. “She is the oldest of five sisters from back east. From the best we can figure, she was married three times before she met you, staying in each relationship about one year.”

  Rich started to object and Sarge held up his hand to stop him.

  “We know how insane this sounds, but hear us out,” Sarge said. “From 1998 to this year, Beverly Jones married and then vanished seventeen times. Her four sisters did the same thing.”

  Rich was shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  “The five sisters grew up in a very abusive home,” Pickett said. “When Beverly was fourteen, their father basically beat their mother to death. Beverly held the sisters together while they were all in foster care until they all vanished without a trace when the youngest two turned eighteen. Two years later in 1998 they started their vanishing routine here in Las Vegas.”

  “But why?” Rich asked, his voice not much more than a whisper. “She didn’t take anything from me. Nothing. The police checked and we didn’t have much to take as it was.”

  “Why is what we are trying to figure out,” Pickett said.

  Sarge just watched Rich’s reaction. It was as he had suspected it would be. Stunned. Sarge had no doubt anger would come soon enough.

  “Did Beverly, I mean Sandy say anything about children’s homes?” Sarge asked. “Or about abusive relationships, sisters, anything that you can remember?”

  “No,” Rich said, shaking his head slowly. “She seemed so happy. Never said anything about sisters or abusive men or anything. She didn’t even seem to mind my cousin Karl who treated his wife like shit. It didn’t seem to bother her the few times we were around him.”

  “What happened to Karl?” Pickett asked a fraction of a second before Sarge could.

  “Died just after Sandy vanished,” Rich said. “But I was so focused on finding Sandy, I didn’t even bother to go to the funeral.”

  Sarge glanced at Pickett, then asked Rich, “How did Karl die?”

  “Food poisoning of some sort,” Rich said, shrugging. “Or drank himself to death. I don’t think anyone on the planet missed him, including his wife.”

  Pickett nodded.

  Sarge wasn’t sure what they had just discovered, but he had a hunch it might go deeper.

  “Rich,” Sarge said, “Other than your wife, can you please keep this to yourself for a few more days?”

  “I can do that,” Rich said, nodding. “You trying to figure out why she did this?”

  “We are,” Pickett said as she and Sarge stood.

  Rich stood as well. “Is what she did to me and the other men illegal?”

  “No,” Sarge said. “But trust me, we will make her pay if we can.”

  Pickett reached out and shook Rich’s hand. “Thanks for your help and sorry for the bad news.”

  “You figured out what happened to her,” Rich said. “After this long, that’s actually good news.”

  Sarge shook his hand as well. “Detective Bower will be in touch when it is all right to tell more people than your wife.”

  “Thank you,” Rich said.

  Sarge had a hunch that Buddy Charles, the next husband they planned on telling, wasn’t going to take the news as well.

  TWENTY-THREE

  November 17th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  WHEN
THEY GOT back to the car, Pickett called Robin, put the call on speakerphone, and told her about the abusive cousin dying right after Beverly vanished.

  Robin said, “Holy shit. We’ll get right on it.”

  And then hung up.

  Pickett and Sarge both laughed.

  “I love it when she does that,” Pickett said. “Means she is excited.”

  Pickett knew that was going to be a tough search, through eighty-five husbands’ extended families to find abusive men. But there was no doubt Robin and Will and his people could do it and do it quickly.

  As Pickett headed them to Buddy Charles’ office, she couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe they had found the reason behind all of this.

  They had just pulled up into the parking lot of Buddy’s store and main office complex when Robin called back.

  Pickett put it on speakerphone and Robin instantly started talking.

  “Every husband’s family we have checked so far, and that’s twenty, had an abusive male die right after the fake wife disappeared. All of them, in one form or another, from food poisoning. Ten of them actually died in the hotel the woman vanished into.”

  “No one put any of this together?” Sarge asked.

  Pickett felt the same sort of shock that Sarge had in his voice.

  “Seems there was no need to,” Robin said. “No one before us put these women together to see this kind of pattern, remember.”

  Pickett nodded on that.

  “Think we need to talk with Buddy?” Sarge asked.

  “Not yet,” Robin said. “Head for home and I’ll call you in an hour or so when we get the full picture in place.”

  “Oh, thank god,” Sarge said.

  Pickett laughed. “Yeah, not looking forward to this conversation.”

  And she hadn’t been. She wanted to leave that to the active detectives on the case.

  “When you cancel, tell him we are making progress and we’ll be in touch,” Robin said. “And I’ll call you in an hour or so.”