Cash Plays Read online

  They were greeted by Dr. Maldonado, one of Clark County’s five full-time medical examiners. She was an older woman, with graying black hair pulled up in a bun, wearing a pair of cat-eye glasses on an old-fashioned jeweled chain. Since she’d been expecting them, she had the deceased ready on the table in the middle of the room.

  “Paul Yu,” she said, pulling the sheet down to the man’s waist. “DOA at UMC Trauma at two thirty this morning. Hospital staff followed all protocol as far as I could tell. I removed the resuscitative equipment myself.”

  “Oof,” Martine said as she looked the man over, and Levi silently agreed. They’d both read the reports from the EMTs and responding officers; Yu had been found shot in the parking garage of his apartment building, no suspects at the scene and no direct witnesses, and had died in the ambulance en route to the University Medical Center.

  But the reports hadn’t gone into detail about how badly he’d been beaten. His face was bruised and bloody, half the bones smashed, and it looked like he’d taken several severe blows to the ribs as well. Someone had been venting serious rage.

  “Cause of death was two GSWs to the abdomen.” Maldonado pointed to the wounds in question—the skin was charred and ripped in a star-shaped pattern, indicating that the gun had been pressed right up against Yu’s stomach when it was fired. “As you can see, however, he was involved in a serious physical altercation prior to being shot.”

  “Looks like he might have given as good as he got.” After pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves, Levi gently lifted Yu’s right hand. The knuckles were ripped up in a way he was quite familiar with, the fingernails caked with blood and tissue.

  “That’s a hefty DNA sample right there,” said Martine.

  Maldonado nodded. “I’ve completed the external examination, and I’ll begin the autopsy shortly. There are no exit wounds, so hopefully I’ll be able to recover the bullets more or less intact.”

  They discussed the case for a few more minutes, then thanked Maldonado and headed back the way they’d come. Out on the sidewalk once more, Martine said, “You want to hit up the crime scene while I interview the vic’s family?”

  “Sounds good. Also, if Yu really did put up a good fight, the killer may have needed backroom medical attention. I’ll put the word out to our informants.”

  “We may need to touch base with Organized Crime too,” she said.

  He stopped mid-stride. “What? Why?”

  “Well, it’s hard to be sure when the guy looks like a horse kicked in his face, but I think Paul Yu was with the Park family.”

  “Shit,” Levi muttered. The Parks were a Korean-American crime family who maintained an eminently respectable front in the city. Most of the members of the nuclear family itself were lawyers in Vegas’s most prestigious criminal defense firm, Hatfield, Park, and McKenzie. Every now and then a handful of their subordinates would take the fall for one of their many white-collar crime operations, but no law enforcement agency had ever been able to charge one of the Parks with a single crime.

  What made the prospect of involving Organized Crime particularly unpleasant was that the cops in the OC Bureau were arrogant dicks. They thought they were still living in the days when the Italian mob had ruled Las Vegas; although that time had long since passed, you’d never know it from the way those OC pricks acted. The only cops worse were in Internal Affairs.

  As Martine unlocked the car, she said, “You do understand that when I say we need to touch base, what I really mean is that I will reach out to the bureau and you will do and say absolutely nothing, right? The last thing we need is another interdepartmental incident that ends in a shouting match and a broken window.”

  “That was one time, Martine,” he said, scowling at her over the roof of the car.

  Paul Yu had lived in a mid-range apartment building Downtown, a couple of miles away from Levi’s own building in Rancho Oakey. It was nice enough to have an attached parking garage, and Yu had been shot only steps away from where he’d parked his Nissan.

  Levi stood alone at the crime scene, which was still cordoned off with yellow tape. A large reddish-brown stain marked the spot where Yu had bled out; smaller flecks of blood all around it could belong to Yu or his attacker or both. Uniformed officers had found and bagged the shell casings before the crime had officially been declared a homicide and turfed over to his squad. Other than that, there was nothing of much interest here.

  He walked in a slow circle. This was a relatively isolated spot, a corner far from the entrance to the apartments. Yu had arrived home in the middle of the night, gotten out of his car, and been accosted immediately—most likely by someone he knew, given the fury evident in the assault and the fact that nothing had been stolen. He and his attacker had engaged in an all-out slugfest before the other person had drawn a gun and shot Yu point-blank in the guts.

  Bad way to go.

  Several residents had heard the gunshots and called 911, though none had ventured out to the garage. By the time the cops and EMTs arrived, the shooter had long since fled. Levi would have to check the garage for any skid marks or other signs of a car departing in a hurry.

  His guess was the shooter hadn’t entered the confrontation intending to kill Yu; if they had, they would have just shot him to begin with rather than risk a fight. But things had gotten out of hand and now they were on the run.

  Martine might come up with some leads during her interviews with Yu’s family and friends, and a personal connection would make the killer easier to find. In the meantime, Levi would scour the garage from top to bottom and obtain the security camera tapes from the exit, as well as the footage from every traffic camera in a ten-block radius. Murderers fleeing the scene of the crime in the middle of the night tended to ignore red lights.

  His cell phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket to read a text from his mother, which she’d sent in a group chat that included his father.

  On our way to the airport now! Your father and I are looking forward to meeting your new young man. See you soon xoxo Mom

  Safe flight, love you, Levi texted back. He was returning the phone to his pocket when it buzzed again.

  Your father and I can always take a cab to the hotel if it’s too much trouble for you to pick us up.

  Levi rolled his eyes, but before he could write that of course it was no trouble at all, a message from his father popped up on the screen.

  She means an Uber. Nobody takes cabs anymore!

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Levi watched in bemusement as his parents, who were no doubt sitting next to each other in the car of whichever friend had volunteered to drive them to the airport, proceeded to get into a fast and furious argument about cabs vs. Uber via group text.

  “Oh my God,” he said to the empty garage.

  He returned to his substation south of the Strip in the early afternoon, a cup of black coffee with two shots of espresso in one hand. Lost in thought, he was operating on autopilot as he entered the bullpen. Then he looked up and banged hard into the side of his desk as he was confronted with the most stunningly beautiful man he’d ever seen.

  The man looked like a prince in a historical drama, lean and toned with gleaming bronze skin. A halo of loose, silky dark curls tumbled around a face that Michelangelo would have creamed himself over, all strong, proud nose and chiseled jaw. His eyelashes were so lush that Levi could see them from fifteen feet away.

  Levi couldn’t help but stare. The man was deep in conversation with Jonah Gibbs, a stout, ruddy-faced cop who was slowly but surely becoming the bane of Levi’s existence, and James Wen, Levi’s sergeant. He knew he’d never seen the man before—he’d remember a face like that.

  Wen was the first to notice Levi’s arrival. “Abrams!” he called out, beckoning Levi forward.

  After a flustered moment in which Levi started toward them, remembered he was holding his coffee, and found a place to set it down, he joined their small group. The man regarded him with frank interest.

&n
bsp; “Abrams, this is Special Agent . . .” Wen paused. “I’m sorry, could you pronounce your name for me again?”

  “Rohan Chaudhary.” The man had the kind of soft voice that instantly commanded attention, urging one to lean in to hear him better. “But please,” he added as he extended his hand, “call me by my first name. I’m not one for formality.”

  Levi blinked, preoccupied by the shape of Rohan’s generous mouth, until a quiet snicker from Gibbs jolted him into action. “Levi Abrams,” he said, shaking Rohan’s hand more firmly than was warranted. Only then did the full impact of Wen’s statement sink in. “Wait, you’re the—”

  “The FBI agent from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime,” Wen said, giving Levi a significant look. “Yes.”

  “Detective Abrams,” Rohan said with a bright, charming smile. “It’s truly a pleasure to meet you. I’ve read so much about you over the past couple of weeks that I almost feel like I know you.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” said Levi, for whom tact had never been a strong suit—still less so when he was caught off guard.

  Rohan didn’t seem offended. “I decided to catch an earlier flight. I won’t officially present to the department until Monday, but I like to spend a few days doing my own field work first, getting a concrete sense of the case I’ve been studying.” He tilted his head and added, “Speaking of which, do you think you and I could sit down for a one-on-one? There’s only so much detail I can get from written reports, and I’d love to pick your brain. It’d be even better if your partner Mr. Russo could join us. I have a lot of questions for him.”

  “Um . . . actually, I have family coming in tonight for the weekend. I don’t think that’ll work out. Maybe next week?”

  Rohan nodded amiably, but Wen and Gibbs were both gaping at Levi. Neither of them had ever heard him pass up work in favor of family—or anything else, for that matter.

  Tough shit. Levi was in no mood to have a criminal profiler “pick his brain” about how he’d utterly failed to catch the Seven of Spades, especially when said profiler was so surreally attractive that it would be a legitimate distraction.

  “Agent— Ah, Rohan, why don’t I show you to your temporary work space so you can settle in?” Wen said.

  The two men went on their way. Levi returned to his desk, slumped into his chair, and took a long, burning gulp of his coffee.

  “You’re not really going to let Russo meet that guy, are you?” Gibbs asked, hovering beside him.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Hey, I may not be gay, but I know a good-looking guy when I see one.” Gibbs eyed him up and down. “And if you ask me, your boyfriend has kind of a thing for skinny dudes with curly hair. You might want to watch your back.”

  Gibbs strode away, whistling. Levi glowered after him and reminded himself for the thousandth time that it was unacceptable to hit a coworker just because he was a massive douchebag.

  Four days into his new job, and Dominic still hadn’t adjusted to the fact that he had his own office. Granted, it was roughly the size of a closet, but it was his—his name on the door, his pictures on the desk.

  The whole thing was a foreign experience for him. Out of high school, he’d done one restless semester of community college before he’d enlisted in the Army for eight years. After he was discharged, he’d started bartending—an easy way to make great money in Vegas, and something he still did to help pay off his gambling debts. Then he’d quickly picked up bounty hunting as well on the advice of a fellow veteran. This was the first time he’d ever had an actual office job, and as far as those went, it was a pretty awesome one.

  Though he could do without wearing a suit every day.

  He yanked at the knot in his tie yet again as he clicked through a database of DMV records. The cases he was working on this week only required research that could easily be done via computer and phone. On the one hand, it was nice to have some time to settle into his new position, but on the other, he was starting to get bored. As much as he enjoyed having an office, he’d never been great at sitting still for long.

  So when an email from his boss popped up on his screen, he’d never been happier to hear from her.

  Got a case for you. My office.

  Terse and to the point: very much Kate McBride’s style. Dominic grinned, saved what he was working on, and shrugged into his suit jacket on his way out the door.

  McBride was the third generation in her family to run McBride Investigations, a discreet and exclusive firm right off the Strip. Dominic was unsurprised to find an e-cigarette in her hand when he entered her office. She must single-handedly support half of Vegas’s vaping industry with the number of cartridges she went through in a day.

  He sniffed the air as he sat in the chair across from her desk, catching the scent of the vapor she’d just exhaled. “Is that . . . piña colada?”

  “It’s called Malibu,” she said, scowling at the cigarette. Her voice was permanently lowered to a husky rasp by decades of chain-smoking before she’d switched. “Moira gave it to me—she hates that bourbon flavor I like. I told her she’s the reason I quit real tobacco to begin with, so she can make her peace with whatever flavor I choose.”

  He didn’t point out that she obviously had ditched the bourbon one. If McBride had a soft spot, it was her beautiful and much-younger wife. He’d met Moira, though, and he knew the adoration went both ways.

  “Anyway, we got a case that’s right up your alley.” McBride dug a file folder one-handed out of a towering stack and tossed it across the desk. “You’re good at finding people. Find her.”

  He opened the folder and studied a photograph of a young black woman with long, straight hair and a brilliant smile. She was dressed in a graduation cap and gown, holding a diploma and radiating pride. A small silver cross hung around her neck.

  “What’s the story?” he asked.

  “Jessica Miller. Dropped out of college seven months ago and then disappeared. Cops won’t touch the case because she’s an adult and she left of her own free will.”

  He didn’t need to read further to guess the reason behind Jessica’s vanishing act. “Who’s the guy?”

  McBride chuckled. “Jessica’s parents knew him as John Williams, but that’s not his real name. This case was referred to us by the PI in Bakersfield they hired over the summer. He tracked Jessica and her boyfriend all over Southern California for months until the trail went cold in Vegas. He doesn’t have the resources or manpower to pursue a case across state lines, so it’s your lucky day.”

  Nodding, Dominic scooped up the file and said, “I’ll get started right away. Anything else?”

  She kicked back in her chair. “Your tie’s crooked.”

  Back in his office, the first thing Dominic did was call Gary Hopkins, the referring PI. He continued perusing the file while he waited for the receptionist to put him through.

  “Hopkins,” said a brisk voice on the other end.

  “Mr. Hopkins, this is Dominic Russo with McBride Investigations. I’m working the Jessica Miller case you referred to us.”

  “Oh, hey. Sad story, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I’m reading the file right now. Mind giving me a quick rundown?”

  “Sure.” Hopkins cleared his throat over the sound of rustling papers. “Pretty much your classic tale of a bright future ruined by a shady guy. Jessica was a smart girl, a good student at UC Santa Barbara. Then this so-called John Williams character comes along and everything goes to shit. Her grades decline, behavior changes, the whole nine yards. She dropped out in the middle of the semester after a huge fight with her parents and took off with him.”

  “It was definitely voluntary?” Dominic shifted the phone to his left hand and grabbed a pen.

  “Seemed like it. After she left, Jessica called and texted her parents every once in a while, but the communication became less frequent as time went by, until it stopped altogether in June. Her number was disconnected,
and her parents had no idea why or where she was, so they hired me. They’re worried Williams was emotionally manipulating her somehow and that if she ever did want to leave, he wouldn’t let her. Honestly, I don’t think they’re far off the mark.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I followed these two around for months, and they were always one step ahead. I mean, they did have a considerable head start, but it still should have been a cakewalk.” Hopkins sighed. “There’s more to Williams than meets the eye. He’s got no legitimate job as far as I can tell, but he always has plenty of cash to burn—and only cash. He rotates through several identities, he knows how to cover his tracks, and it’s all a little too slick. Your ordinary user wouldn’t be this skilled at evading pursuit.”

  Dominic sat back. “What are you thinking, a con artist of some kind?”

  “Could be. The Millers are pretty wealthy; they’re tied in to Bakersfield’s agricultural industry. But Williams never made a play for Jessica’s money, so who knows? They wound up in Vegas a couple of weeks ago and then dropped off the grid. I know they were wise to me, so chances are they found a place to lay low for God knows how long. I’m a one-man operation. This is as far as I can take this one.”

  “All right.” Absently spinning his pen between his fingers, Dominic gazed at the blank wall opposite his desk. “Thanks for your time.”

  “No problem. If there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

  Dominic hung up and spent the next few hours immersed in the Miller case file. Hopkins had forwarded along everything he had, including months’ worth of detailed investigative reports, and there was a lot of material to absorb. He read everything in the folder from front to back, marking the pages up with his own notes, not realizing how much time had passed until he glanced at his phone and saw it was almost five.

  “Shit,” he said, jumping to his feet. He was supposed to go with Levi to pick the Abramses up from the airport, but first he had to drive his truck back to his apartment so Levi could come get him in his own car.