Michael Connelly - Murder in Vegas

“Two guys.”

“What about them?” Braddick wrote carefully.

“At the drop before this one. Here, I wrote it on my drop sheet,” Perez handed it to Braddick, explaining. “Jessie said two rollers got too close to the truck. She sounded the horn to make them back off.”

“Maybe a distraction for something else?”

“You think so? What if they killed her, there was three point seven million left in the load. I was the money man today.”

“Yes, you said. And she was scheduled to drive?”

“Yes.”

“And the truck without the finder? You knew about that today?”

“Yes. Each crew is scheduled in advance to take it.”

“ In advance?” Braddick continued writing. “How long has Jessie been with the company?”

“Four, nearly five months.”

“And you? How long?”

“Three years.”

“What do you know about Jessie? You two socialize after work?”

“No. She’s shy, quiet.”

“Any money problems? Debts? Drugs? Gambling? She living beyond her pay?”

Perez shook his head.

“You know what she does after work? Who her friends are?”

“Like I said, she’s very quiet.”

“So you really don’t know her at all, do you Gil?”

“I-I guess, I, man, I worked with Jessie four months.”

“Gil, tell me why you said she was so quiet.”

“I figure, by the little she told me, she’d had a sad life.”

“How?”

“She started to tell me once how bad things always follow her.”

“What bad things?”

“Death.”

“Death?”

“Detective Braddick, what if she’s dead already?”

A few doors away, in a dim office, Elmer Gask fished out a stick of gum and a fresh toothpick from his chest pocket, crossed his arms, leaned back hard in his chair and watched King.

“She was a bitch to me all morning, is all I can attest to her ‘demeanor.’” Gask’s toothpick moved rhythmically with his chewing.

“What do you think happened?”

The toothpick froze as the gum chewing stopped.

“I’ll tell you what happened.” Gask’s eyes widened with cold rage. “I just lost a twenty-two thousand-dollar bonus because of that stupid squaw.”

King waited for an explanation.

“I retire at the end of the week. You clock out with a loss-free sheet, you get a grand for every year.”

“That’s a tragedy. What do you think happened?”

“If I knew that, we’d recover our load,” Gask resumed chewing. “She wasn’t careful. I told her to be cautious after the incident with the two jerks at the previous drop.”

“The two guys who approached the truck?”

“I told her to log it, to call it in to dispatch when we were in here servicing the ATMs.”

“Did she?”

“I doubt it.”

“What about her past, her personal and career history?”

“Squaw or half breed from some welfare-eating reserve in Montana, or some end of the world state like that. Supposed to have done a good job at security for some faggy antique dealer in New York. If you ask me, she was an equal opportunity hire. Right gender, right race, right useless.”

“You don’t think she was qualified?”

“I don’t hire ’em, Chester.”

“What kind of driver was she?”

“Substandard.”

“What about her past, any debts, habits, anybody leaning on her?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that shit.”

“Tell me about today, what sort of day was it?”

“Routine, we were just making our drops.”

“What about the truck? It had no finder?”

“That was her job as driver to deal with that. I told her to get that finder fixed. She ignored me.”

“Aren’t you her supervisor?”

Gask gave some thought to how he should answer.

“Yes and I supervised her to see the finder was fixed. I was intending to write her up for not following through.”

“I see. What do you know about Jessica Scout, her circles?”

“Not a goddamned thing. She never spoke to me. I told you, she was an ice bitch who acted like she was better than everyone.”

“Tell me about Gil Perez?”

“He’s kind of a shifty beaner.”

“That right?”

“Always talking about his dream of going away and starting his own car wash business. Only thing holding him back was lack of cash.”

“That so?”

“That’s so.”

“And what about you, Elmer, what do you talk about?”

“Football and America.”

“What about America?”

“She’s fucked up real good.”

“What really happened to the money?”

“Jessica Scout got herself jammed. Thought she knew it all. Let her guard down, now she’s gone.”

“That prospect doesn’t exactly bring tears to your eyes.”

Gask shifted his toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth then leaned to King. “Her stupidity cost me twenty-two grand.”

“But you break even.”

“How’s that, Chester?”

“Scout may have paid with her life.”

Later, Braddick and King compared notes at a quiet table at the casino’s nearest bar, which serviced a keno lounge.

Braddick started. “My guy fears she is dead.”

“Mine hopes she is,” King said before his pager went off. He read the caller’s number. “Looks like the feds.” He squinted, tilting the pager for better light. “Yup. FBI’s offering to help. I’ll call.”

“Three point seven. What do you make, Chester? Inside? Outside?”

“All of the above.”

Joe Two Knives’s dark glasses reflected the sun, cloudless sky and warehouses of a light industrial section of Las Vegas.

What if something went wrong? He watched the garage one hundred yards away. He did not want to be near it in case something went wrong. Nothing appeared suspicious. Everything had gone smoothly. Every detail of preparation had come off cleanly.

He checked his watch then the cell phone on the seat beside him. His hands were sweating inside the two pairs of surgical gloves he wore. The car’s air conditioner kept him cool. He kept himself calm. He had been through this before. Twenty-five years ago. No one will die this time. But what if she didn’t make it? What would he do? He didn’t know. It was the one event he did not plan for.

His phone trilled.

“Yes,” he said.

“ETA seven to ten.”

“Thank you.”

Two Knives drove along a back service alley, stopping at the rear of the garage which bore a small painted sign: AAA Armored Repair. It was a rectangular cinder block building. One story. The garage had three auto bays each with an electronic door in the front and rear. He unlocked the building, parked his car in one of the bays then closed the rear electronic door. The garage was clean and empty. It had a small office and a bathroom. He went to a worktable, switched on a scanner, listening as Las Vegas police dispatches echoed clearly.

A horn sounded two quick beeps in front of the building.

Two Knives hit a switch, the door rose, a motor revved, and a U.S. Forged armor-plated Ford van edged inside, the electronicdoor closing behind it. Jessica Scout stepped out and studied her watch.

“Nineteen minutes since I left.”

He tossed Scout two pairs of rubber gloves. “Every second counts. You know what to do.”

Scout unlocked the truck’s side door, entered, then slid three canvas bags to him. All together, they weighed about forty pounds, he figured, carrying them to the work table. The cash was wrapped in blue plastic, three packages of one hundreds, fifties, and twenties. They covered the table with the bundles, laying each one flat.

“Three million, seven hundred thousand,” she said. “Unmarked.”

He then took a metal detector wand and slowly passed it over the cash several times. No transmitters. He took one bundle, pulled up his pants leg and rubbed it against his moist skin. Then he took an ultraviolet lamp and illuminated his leg. Nothing. No chemicals. He carefully packed the bundles into white plastic medical containers, with lids cautioning: