Sin City Homicide

6

Stanton waited nearly twenty minutes before the detectives were ready to see him. Instead of sitting at their desks, they were in an interrogation room, where a video was set up. Stanton walked in and waited by the door. The two of them were sitting a couple of feet from a television, watching a boxing match.

“I thought you guys might be hungry,” he said, placing the pizza down on a large table.

The two detectives turned to him. Jay was tall with red hair, and he was wearing a crisp white shirt with suspenders. However, Javier was wearing a T-shirt, his badge clipped to his belt. Tattoos on his forearms ran from his wrists to his elbows.

“You must be Orson’s boy,” Jay said. “Come in to clean up the mess, huh?”

“Just here to look at some evidence, as a favor.”

Javier opened the pizza box and took a slice, folding it in half before taking a large bite. “Good pizza,” he said. “Thanks.” He pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jay remained standing when Stanton sat down.

“I’m Homicide, too, and I could tell you what I would think if my boss brought in some jerk from another city to look at my case. But it’s not like that. He offered me a free trip if I would look over the evidence. I couldn’t say no to that.” Stanton waited a beat before adding, “Besides, IAD’s investigating me back home, and it seemed like a good time to leave.”

Jay looked him up and down. Stanton could see the change in his face, his posture, and the way his hands fell. The minutiae that others were blind to screamed at Stanton as loudly as any bold actions. He had noticed those sorts of things since childhood.

“What’re they on your ass for?” Jay asked.

“Shooting. Perp held a young girl and her baby hostage. I got off one round that hit him in the throat but caught her shoulder.”

Jay shook his head. “Fuckin’ bastards. That’s why they’re in internal affairs, you know. They can’t hack it anywhere else. Any monkey can push papers behind a desk.”

Javier added, “They had a file on me last year.”

“Oh yeah? For what?”

“Conduct unbecoming.”

Jay smirked. “He threatened some fucker who drove into a crowd crossing the street out on the strip. Hit and run. He searched the guy’s house without a warrant. The dude confessed in, like, a second.”

“No law against a threat like that,” Stanton said.

“Nah, but it don’t look good,” Javier said, wiping the grease off his lips with the back of his hand. He turned to the television. “Lemme switch it. Hang on.” He swapped some wires in the back then inserted a DVD. “This is the video.”

A still photo on the television showed an empty portion of what looked like a subway, train, or bus. The camera was positioned on the roof, capturing about ten square feet of space.

“I gotta warn you, Jon, this ain’t pretty.”

“I’m ready.”

“This is the tram up there on the strip.”

The video began to play. There was a timestamp in the corner: June 12. 10:12 pm. There was no sound, but the images were clear. It was the car at the end of the tram. A few people piled on, and the tram raced across the Las Vegas strip, twenty feet above the ground. Three people got off at one of the stops, and a couple came into view. They were middle-aged, perhaps in their fifties. The male had a fake tan and was wearing a tuxedo. The female was blonde, with her hair pulled up, wearing a red jacket over a black evening gown. They were kissing and joking around. From their mannerisms, Stanton could tell they were thoroughly drunk.

Then, just as the tram started moving, the woman’s face contorted with fear, and she screamed. The man jumped to his feet then held up his hands as if he were surrendering. Another person came into view from the bottom of the screen. He was wearing a green jacket and had a ski mask over his head. He pointed a handgun at the man’s head.

The man in the ski mask grabbed the woman by her hair, nearly lifting her off her feet. He threw her against one of the seats while keeping the gun aimed steadily at the man’s head. He bent her over, lifted her dress, pulled down his pants, and began to rape her.

The man in the tuxedo watched and yelled, but he didn’t intervene. Stanton kept his eyes on the screen. The video pained him deeply, but he could shut down the human part of him that told him to turn off the video, quit his job, and go back to being a psychology professor. When he shut that off, he could function. He could watch the video and keep going.

Finally, the man in the tux had seen enough, and he lunged at the other man, who shot him twice in the head. The man then pressed the gun to the back of the woman’s head and pulled the trigger just as the tram came to a stop. He pulled up his pants and moved out of view.

Javier turned off the video. “The fucking cojones on this guy. That was the Flamingo and Caesar’s Palace stop, right in the middle of the line. He could’ve been seen by a hundred people, and he didn’t give a shit.”

“Did anybody see anything?”

“Not a one,” Jay said. “Haven’t found a single witness.”

“Did you go to the media?”

“Posted some of the video, and they played it on all four major stations. Nothing.”

“Who were they?”

Javier got another slice of pizza. “Daniel and Emily Steed. Residents of Vegas.”

“Any reason why a guy in a tuxedo is riding the tram?”

Jay shrugged. “People get wasted all the time and take the tram home to avoid driving.”

Stanton glanced back at the video. Jay had misunderstood the question. A man who could afford a tuxedo like that could easily hire a limousine or a cab. He didn’t need to ride the tram with the public.

“Do you need to watch it again?” Javier asked.

“Not right now. Would you guys mind if I got a copy of the file to take to my hotel room?”

The two detectives looked at each other. Then Javier said, “I guess that’s okay. I was just gonna let you look at it here.”

“I would appreciate that. I’ll get everything back to you as soon as I’m done.” Stanton rose. “It was nice meeting you guys.”

Javier nodded, but Jay turned back to the video without saying a word. As Stanton walked out, he knew instinctively that the file would be missing the most important details. His finding the perp would be the worst-case scenario for those two. They would always be reminded of it, and they would never receive the respect that police officers’ egos sometimes required.

Stanton knew they would do everything in their power to stop him from finding the man who’d killed those two people.