Sin City Homicide

5

McCarran International Airport was packed with the weekend crowds when Stanton stepped off the plane and into the terminal. He walked down to the baggage claim and gathered his two gym bags. Being without his firearm felt odd, but he had already put in a request to Orson for a.45 Desert Eagle.

Outside the terminal, a man in a button-down shirt and sports coat held a sign that said,Stanton.

“I’m Jon Stanton.”

“How’s it goin’? Marty Scheffield. I’m with the police. Sheriff Hall’s havin’ me pick you up.”

Marty took his bags and loaded them into the trunk of a Cadillac CTS parked on the curb. He climbed into the driver’s side as Stanton sat in the passenger seat and secured his seat belt.

“I love the car,” Stanton said. “Yours?”

“I wish. This is your car while you’re here.”

Stanton noticed the slight delay in Scheffield’s speech, which was indicative of damage to his Broca’s area, the portion of the brain that was just in front of the motor cortex and controlled speech. He wanted to ask about it but knew it would be rude.

Scheffield drove out of the airport and onto the congested freeway. Stanton hadn’t been there in a long time, and he was struck by the number of billboards. They were spaced hardly more than fifty feet apart, and the majority advertised personal-injury or criminal-defense lawyers.

“So how long you been with LVPD, Marty?”

“Two years now.”

“What’d you do before?”

“I was a student over at UNLV.”

“What’d you study?”

“Criminal Justice. I heard you was a professor before being a cop?”

“Yeah, psychology.”

“Do you really have a PhD?”

“Yeah.”

“So, why are you still a cop? If I had a PhD, I wouldn’t be a cop.”

“It’s hard to do too much good grading papers.” Stanton began searching restaurants on his phone. “Where do you think the best pizza is, Marty?”

“Um, pizza? Probably the Pie at Caesar’s Palace.”

“Can we stop there really quick?”

“Yeah, sure.”

The strip was clogged with cars, cabs, trucks carrying billboards for strippers and escorts, and the occasional city bus. Stanton watched the shows playing on the large screens set up near the roadside by the casinos. Then Marty pulled the car to a stop out front of Caesar’s Palace.

“I’ll be right back,” Stanton said.

He ran and took two wrong turns before he asked one of the employees in a clothing store where he could find the Pie. She pointed him toward the fountains. He ordered three pizzas and pasta then waited near the fountains while his order was prepared. The water was far louder than he’d expected it to be, and the people sitting outside the restaurant couldn’t hear each other over the noise unless they yelled.

He looked around at the statues, which imitated the original marble statues in Italy, remnants of Rome and the Renaissance. They portrayed an ideal of physical and intellectual perfection that he felt had been lost through the centuries. While his culture emphasized the physical, they had demonized the intellectual. He had heard one of his professors say that modern humanity lived as half-men.

The hostess signaled to him that his order was ready, and he walked back, paid, and left the mall, to find Marty sitting on the hood of the car, smoking.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

They climbed in, and Marty pulled away from the curb.

“What are the pizzas for?”

“Just a welcoming gift.”

Because of the traffic, the trip to the precinct on Martin Luther King Boulevard took nearly half an hour. The precinct office building was a modern design, made of steel and glass. Where the Northern Precinct in San Diego was neglected and forgotten, the Las Vegas Metro Police headquarters looked as though it were being constantly cleaned and renovated, as did the surrounding property.

Marty parked up front in a reserved spot, and Stanton got out then waited for Marty to tuck in his shirt, which had come out in the back. The pizzas were cold now, and he could feel the grease soaking through the boxes.

They walked into a building that ignored them. Uniforms, detectives, sheriffs, lieutenants, secretaries, lawyers, and paralegals bustled from one room to the next, answering calls and having meetings. The energy was vibrant, and Stanton could feel the drive of the people in the building. They were focused and disciplined. He watched them just a little too long, and Marty asked him if he was okay.

“Fine.”

“Sheriff Hall’s office is upstairs.”

They took an elevator to the top floor, then Marty led him down a long hallway to a corner office.

“I’ll see if I can find him.”

Stanton sat down in the brown leather chair set out for guests. The office was cluttered but not messy, and it was filled with photographs of Orson with sports figures and local and national politicians. In each one, he was wearing finely tailored suits. Not a single photograph showed him in a uniform.

“Jon Stanton,” a voice bellowed. “Didn’t think you had the balls to come back here after the ass-kicking you took from me last time.”

Stanton smiled and rose to shake Orson’s hand. “Two strings on my racquet were loose, and you wouldn’t stop long enough for me to grab a new one.”

“Your racquet was fine. It was your attitude that was bad. You think too much and choke. You gotta learn to turn off your brain sometimes.”

“It may not turn back on, as you’ve demonstrated.”

Orson laughed as he went behind the desk and sat down. “How the hell are you?”

“Good. Better than I’ve been in a long time. How’s everything here? You keeping this cesspool relatively clean?”

“You have no idea, brother. San Diego’s got its scumbags, but every piece of shit in the world comes here, at least for a couple of nights. We busted someone from fucking Tuvalu few days back for beating up a hooker. You know that Tuvalu was even a country?”

“No.”

“Me neither. But that’s what we got.” He played absent-mindedly with a pen on his desk, rolling it a few inches one way then the other. “Sorry as hell to hear about Melissa. She was a good woman.”

“She is. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“Did you have any idea it was coming?”

“Yeah, some. Just a vague feeling. We knew it was over, but we kept trying to make it work for the kids. I think we went on for about six months like that. Then we just couldn’t take the denial anymore.”

“Well, you’re young and good-looking. What the hell would I do if Wendy ever left me, Lord forbid?”

“Probably just get fatter. What have you been eating, by the way?”

“Hey, don’t knock it. I can rough and tumble with the best of them still at two-sixty. Man needs some fat on him to tell the world he doesn’t care that much about what it thinks.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I appreciate you coming out here, Jon. I really do.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I really don’t know what you expect me to do. You got some of the best detectives in Robbery-Homicide that I’ve ever seen. I’m sure I can’t do anything they already haven’t done.”

“Maybe, but I gotta try. We’re getting desperate. The file’s with the assigned detectives. I’ll call over and get them to bring it here.”

“No, don’t do that. Let me meet them on their turf.”

“Gotcha. I was gonna ask you that, but I didn’t know how you’d take it. Their names are Jay Reed and Javier Trujillo. Marty’ll take you over to ’em when you’re ready.”

“Thanks.”

“Marty’s going to be your guide while you’re here. He’s a good guy but a little slow, so go easy on him. He’s had some brain trauma from a motorcycle accident.”

“He’s great. Thanks, Orson.”

“No, thank you. I’m sure you wanna get started so you can get back to the beach, but let me just say, anything you need, you call me directly. You have my new cell number?”

“No.”

“I’ll text it to you. And Jon, I ain’t kiddin’. You call me if you need anything at all.”

“I will.” Stanton rose. “Hopefully, I won’t be a total waste of your money.”

“Well, probably, but if you ain’t a gambler, you got no business being in this town.”

Stanton turned to walk out of the office and realized he’d left the pizzas on the chair next to him. He grabbed them, and Orson stared but didn’t say anything.

“Do you want some?”

“If you don’t mind. I had a small lunch.”

“Not at all.” Stanton gave him a box. “Enjoy.”

Marty was waiting down the hall, his arms crossed, staring blankly at the floor. When he saw Stanton, he straightened up. “How’d it go?”

“Fine,” Stanton said. “I need to see Jay and Javier.”

“They’re downstairs. Come on. I’ll take you to ’em.”

Walking side by side, they were quiet for a long time.

Then Marty asked, “Did Sheriff Hall say anything about me?”

“He said you’re a good cop and that you’re going to be showing me around while I’m here.”

“Yeah, it should be fun. I’ve lived here since I was born, and I know all the fun places. I thought tonight, you’d want to go to a club. It’s a good place to meet people when you don’t know anybody.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ll probably just head back to the hotel after I’m done here.”

“Oh, okay.”

On the walk back to the elevator, Stanton watched Marty’s footsteps. He hadn’t noticed it before because he wasn’t looking for it, but Marty had a spastic gait: a stiff walk dragging a foot, caused by contractions of the muscles on one side of the leg. It was typically attributed to a conversion disorder, which was a quasi-scientific way of saying that science couldn’t explain the cause. Typically, symptoms appeared after stressful events and could be as severe as blindness or complete paralysis. Psychotherapy was the only known cure.

They got down to the first floor and hurried through the maze of corridors before reaching a large door marked ROBBERY-HOMICIDE. Stanton opened the door, but Marty grabbed his arm.

“Did Sheriff Hall tell you about Captain Parr?”

“No, what about him?”

“Well, you’ll see. But, Jon, just be careful, okay?”

“I will. Thanks, Marty.”

Marty nodded then walked away, glancing back once before stepping onto the elevator.