Dead Hand: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery Read online

  “Beats the hell out of the paperwork,” Sarge said, laughing.

  “Got that right,” Pickett said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  PICKETT DROPPED SARGE back at the Golden Nugget parking garage and then headed back to her condo in the Ogden.

  She was surprised at how instantly she missed having Sarge beside her. She hadn’t felt that way about anyone for a very long time, and she had only known Sarge for just a day. Yet she felt completely comfortable beside him and liked having him around a lot more than she wanted to admit.

  And besides all that, she found him amazingly handsome. She wasn’t sure how all that combined could be possible.

  She spent forty-five minutes putting in some miles on the treadmill and then took a quick shower. It didn’t help her come up with any new ideas, but it made her feel better.

  Two hours later, she was back at the Golden Nugget, this time in the steak house with the big fish tank in the center. Sarge was already there and Robin had called and said she would be twenty minutes late. Picket had to admit she didn’t mind the alone time with Sarge at all.

  Sarge looked even more handsome than earlier. He had on a light suit jacket with an open-collar blue shirt under it. His thick, gray hair was combed back and shaped his square face perfectly. She now felt glad she had decided to dress up a little.

  Sarge had said he was buying dinner tonight. He said he had been looking for an excuse to try out the steak house here, but could never make himself go in alone.

  Pickett had gladly agreed to help out with his test run of a new restaurant. The place had cloth tablecloths, cloth napkins, three empty glasses in front of each place, and a bunch of silverware including one fork turned sideways across the top of her clearly expensive plate. She never felt that comfortable in these sorts of high-end restaurants, but she had a hunch Sarge would ease that discomfort a lot.

  He stood as she approached their table and pulled out her chair. She just shook her head. “Always a gentleman, huh?”

  He laughed as they sat down. “I’m sure many people would call me far worse names than that.”

  “Why detective,” she said, smiling at him. “Are you telling me you have made enemies over the years?”

  He smiled and laughed. “Maybe a few. But they tend to be locked up or a long ways from a place like this.”

  They chatted for a few moments, then Sarge got a serious look on his handsome face. “I had an idea after I woke up.”

  “On the case of something else?”

  “Case,” he said.

  She nodded. “Want to wait for Robin?”

  He shook his head and looked slightly worried. “I would rather run it past you first and have you shoot it down than both of you laugh at me at this point. Fragile male ego and all that.”

  She laughed and indicated that he go ahead. She had no doubt his ego was far from fragile, but it made her feel great that he was already trusting her enough to talk with her about things he might not mention in front of others.

  “I have an idea where the cars might be going,” Sarge said. “I think they are going into the tunnels.”

  It took her a moment to realize just what he was talking about. Then it dawned on her and she nodded and sat back, thinking. Around them the sounds of laughter and conversations seemed to fade slightly.

  When Las Vegas first started growing, flash floods tended to wipe out areas of it regularly, including roads and some buildings, so the city in conjunction with the county, built a vast network of concrete storm drains, called “the tunnels” by locals under the desert to take the run-off.

  The tunnels were like a vast spider web under Las Vegas and for decades and decades they just were added on to seemingly without much pattern or thought as Las Vegas expanded.

  The tunnels varied from around thirty feet across and ten feet tall to the size of mine shafts four feet wide and eight feet tall. All had concrete on all four sides. She had been down into the tunnels near the entrances a few times on murder scenes, but had had no desire to go farther into the pitch darkness of the hundreds and hundreds of miles of concrete.

  Now the tunnels were known as shelter for the homeless from both the heat and the cold. No one knew how many, but the estimates ranged from five hundred people to far higher in numbers.

  Full families lived down there in makeshift houses, often up on wooden pallets to get above the small amounts of water that sometimes ran through the concrete tunnels.

  Pickett figured the tunnels were at least better than being on the streets or in a car in the wind and cold and hot sun of the seasons.

  But not much.

  She looked up at Sarge, who seemed to be thinking a long ways away from their table at the moment.

  “Did you check to see if the tunnels ran under or near that August Tux Shop area?”

  He came back into his eyes and nodded. “That area of the tunnels is so deep and so far away from most of the tunnel entrances, very few people have been in there, at least that I could find reference to before dinner.”

  “Wouldn’t city and county maintenance people check the tunnels regularly?” Pickett asked.

  “I’m sure they do every year or so, but if something was dug off to one side of the tunnels and then hidden, they would never see it,” he said.

  “You think they might be driving the cars out?” Pickett asked.

  She doubted they were, considering that all the large tunnel entrances were heavily monitored. Cars coming out of the tunnels without going in would surely be noticed eventually.

  Sarge shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m betting they are all still down there somewhere. It would take nothing to dig hidden rooms off to the sides of some of the deep tunnels in that area, let the water slowly take out the sand and dirt on the occasional storm.”

  “Wow,” she said, laughing and shaking her head. “That must have been a hell of a nap.”

  He smiled. “I’ve always said I do my best thinking while asleep.”

  She laughed and at that moment Robin walked up and sat down. “Do I get to hear the joke?”

  “Not a joke,” Pickett said, looking intently at her partner. “Sarge may have figured out where all the cars have been going.”

  Robin stopped and stared at Pickett, her cloth napkin halfway unfolded.

  “The tunnels,” Pickett said. “They’ve been hiding them all off the tunnels.”

  All Robin could do was just blink, the perfect response.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  SARGE COULDN’T REMEMBER a fancy dinner that he had enjoyed as much as this one. Even his crazy idea about the cars being in the storm drains hadn’t ruined it.

  And Pickett looked fantastic in a light blue jacket, a white blouse and pearl earrings that seemed to set off her beautiful brown hair and wide smile. He was really glad he had decided to put on a jacket as well. He would have felt really out of place beside her. She just looked wonderful and he had no memory of being this attracted to a woman in a very long time.

  They had talked about the case, about their lives, about Will’s business, about Sarge’s time as a security guard after he first retired, and so much more. And, of course, they had all talked glowingly about their kids. After all, that’s what parents their age did.

  And from the sounds of it, they all had fantastic kids. Clearly they had all been lucky, especially raising kids while being a detective. Nothing ever easy about that.

  As they all three declined the dessert menu and went for coffee instead, Robin brought the case back up again.

  “We’re getting even more reports in various places about the missing being seen in voyeur videos. Mostly just living in some house somewhere that is filmed twenty-four-seven in every room.”

  Sarge sat back with that. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around why someone, or some group, would do this to so
many people. But with the vast amount of money to be made from porn, maybe that was the core of everything here, from the wedding rapes to men and women being taken.

  Stranger things had happened over his years as a detective, but not at this scale they were facing here.

  “Any way to trace any of the film stuff?”

  “No chance,” Robin said, shaking her head. “And the money into the August Tux Shop family seems to be a bust as well at the moment, but we are still digging very, very carefully.”

  “You want me to get Mike and his people looking deeper?” Sarge asked.

  Robin shook her head. “At the moment we’re all right. But we might need that at some point. Will and his people just won’t cross a few lines, but they have no problem letting others cross those lines for them.”

  Sarge nodded. He was clearly going to enjoy meeting Will at some point.

  “So how about after the coffee we walk over to my place,” Pickett said, “and get on a big screen computer and see if we can make sense of the old maps of the tunnels.”

  Robin nodded and reached for her phone. “I’ll have Will e-mail you all the links and data about the tunnels in that August Tux Shop area, including how big they are and how often they are checked.”

  Sarge liked the idea and liked how they were both taking his tunnel idea seriously. And the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea as well. It was crazy enough to make sense.

  “Can you get him to send the information as to how far underground those car sensing devices would work?” Pickett asked.

  Sarge nodded to that as well.

  Then, for the next fifteen minutes, the three sipped their coffee, maybe the best-tasting coffee Sarge could remember, and talked about cats. And how Pickett was going to help him find a cat or two when this was all over. And how Robin thought it was about time Pickett got another cat or two as well.

  Sarge liked that conversation because it meant that Pickett planned on spending time with him even after they stopped working on this case. And he liked that more than he wanted to think about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  PICKETT FELT INSTANTLY worried as she and Robin and Sarge got off the elevator at the top of the Ogden and moved to her door. There were only two other doors off this lobby and she had never met any of the other residents of the other two condos. She didn’t even know who they were and had never bothered to ask. They seemed to be very quiet people.

  She now just hoped her place was clean and she hadn’t left underwear or something draped over a chair. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been in her condo. More than likely it was right after she moved in when she made dinner for Robin and Will.

  Luckily, she hired a cleaning service every week to take off the rough edges. Even retired, she hated cleaning things. She seemed to always think of better things to do.

  As she unlocked her door and led them into the tiled entranceway, she felt as if she was seeing the place through Sarge’s eyes. Her brown wood floors, tan and brown soft cloth furniture, and dark oak bookcases filled to overflowing gave the place a comfortable and lived-in feel.

  She made herself take a deep breath and headed for the kitchen after slipping out of her shoes She never wore shoes around her apartment. Shoes were for going out.

  “Coffee, water, or Diet Coke is all I got at the moment.”

  “Water,” Robin said.

  “Same,” Sarge said. “And wow is this a nice place. Comfortable.”

  He had moved to the big windows looking along the Strip. The view was spectacular and one of the reasons Pickett had bought the place. But it pleased her that Sarge thought it comfortable as well.

  “Thanks,” she said, pulling out three bottles of water from her fridge.

  “Where are you hiding the computer?” Robin said as Pickett handed her a bottle.

  “Office through that door there,” Pickett said, pointing to a closed door beside the kitchen. She wasn’t sure why she always kept that door closed, but she did. Sort of like an unofficial boundary between work and the comfort of her home.

  “How big is this place?” Sarge asked as she handed him a bottle and then they turned to follow Robin into the office.

  “Three bedroom, two bath, about twenty-six hundred square feet,” Pickett said as Robin dropped into Pickett’s black leather office chair and got the big Mac computer started up.

  “Wow!” Sarge said.

  “You ought to see the deck,” Pickett said, smiling at him. “I spend a lot of evenings and early mornings out on that deck just staring out over this stupid city I love so much.”

  “With a view like this,” he said, pointing at the big windows behind them, “it would be a crime to not stare at it.”

  Robin took only a moment to get the map of the storm tunnels under Vegas opened. She did a few quick strokes and a circle appeared in one area off the strip.

  “Where the cars vanish from tracking,” she said, pointing at the circle.

  Pickett was surprised at how large that area actually was and she and Sarge stood behind Robin in front of the computer.

  “Only two tunnels run under this area,” Robin said. “One is a really old one and it’s down about a hundred feet and the second is a newer one from thirty years ago. Both are too far for any kind of ground penetrating radar.”

  “Can you isolate just those two tunnels on the map and show the entrances on either end?” Sarge asked.

  Robin nodded and a moment later it was clear that the older tunnel merged into the newer tunnel on both ends. And it was smaller.

  “Any bet that old tunnel is blocked off on both ends, with only small holes to allow the water to run out,” Sarge said.

  “No bet,” Pickett said.

  She just kept staring at the screen. Could it really be possible that the old tunnel running close to the August Tux Shop was where all those people had disappeared into?

  And if so, why?

  And could any of them still be alive down there? That idea just made her stomach tighten into a knot.

  This entire thing was a nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  October 19th, 2016

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  SARGE HAD KNOWN from the first night that Pickett lived in the Ogden, but he had never expected her to be his neighbor.

  On the penthouse floor.

  Her view faced the Strip, but he was pretty sure she didn’t know that his penthouse next door was two stories tall and had an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the entire area on the upper level.

  He couldn’t believe that in the years they had both lived here they had never run into each other in an elevator or either of the lobbies or in the parking garage. He was sure he would have recognized her and remembered if he had.

  And he was a little worried about what she was going to think when she discovered he lived next door. His living in the Ogden had just never come up in conversation over the last two days. He wasn’t sure how he would feel considering his interest in her. He had a hunch he would like that she was close, but he was going to have to tell her soon or there would be other problems.

  But there was no doubt that as ex-cops, they both lived pretty darned good. He loved how she had decorated her place. His looked similar, with brown tones and lots of books. And he loved how she got comfortable in front of them when she came in.

  For about fifteen minutes Robin explored every angle about the tunnels they could think of. He liked standing next to Pickett watching Robin work on details from the tunnels. It felt right to be beside Pickett.

  The old tunnel had been dug out of solid sandstone and was about ten paces wide and eight feet high. And it hadn’t been inspected since the city had closed it up in 1996.

  Finally, there was no more to get from the computer so they all headed back out into the living room and sat down.

  Robin sat in a large brown chair facing a l
arge brown and tan cloth couch. Pickett sat on the couch near one end, clearly her favorite spot and Sarge sat on the other end. A large coffee table filled the space between the chair and the couch. It was covered with a few books, one without a dust jacket that was clearly in the process of being read. Sarge couldn’t see the title, but he was very curious.

  “So what next?” Pickett asked.

  “We keep digging,” Robin said. “I would like to know what we might be running into down in those tunnels before we ever go down there or send anyone else down there.”

  Sarge could only nod to that. “We are working on just guesses at this point anyway.”

  “Let’s tick off what we do know,” Pickett said. “We know first off that a lot of people about to get married have gone missing over the last number of years.”

  Sarge again nodded, as did Robin.

  “We know,” Pickett said, “that their cars vanish into an area and never come out again, at least in any fashion that has been traced.”

  “Center of the area is the August Tux Shop,” Robin said. “Which is the tie to the weddings.”

  “Circumstantial,” Sarge said, “but the only central tie to all of the men and women disappearing that we have at the moment.”

  Pickett and Robin both nodded.

  “And we have unsubstantiated reports that some of the vanished people have been seen in voyeur porn videos,” Pickett said.

  “But we have no way to check that or any money trail yet,” Robin said.

  “And we know for a fact that someone has hacked the marriage license records in the county,” Pickett said.

  Sarge had to admit they didn’t have anything that pointed to anyone at all except in very general terms. They really needed to find some sort of hard evidence or this was all going to grind to a dead halt again, as all these cases had done before.

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Pickett said, “Something Mac said when we talked to him is haunting me.”