John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

“Doesn’t take a professional killer to hire one.”

“He wouldn’t have any reason to have Sherry killed.”

“Maybe Sherry wasn’t the target.”

“Who would be?” Brad asked.

“If anything happened to Leigh Gardner, who would benefit?” Winter asked.

“The kids. Leigh wouldn’t leave Jacob a ten-dollar bill.”

“Maybe not. But who do you suppose would be their guardian if Leigh Gardner was dead?”

Brad sat up. “The killer shot her babysitter. Leigh wasn’t even in the area. What are you thinking?”

“Maybe the killer didn’t know that.”

Alexa Keen opened her apartment door and had to put down her bag of groceries to answer the telephone. It was rare that her phone rang unless it was someone from the Bureau.

“Yes?” she said.

“Alexa?” a familiar voice asked.

“Sean,” Alexa said. “Hello.”

“How are you, Lex?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

The silence lasted too long. She put down her shoulder bag, made heavy by the Glock. “Sean, is everything all right?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“In the next room. We’re at the Peabody. We’ve been trying to decide on places to visit, but it’s really cold and the kids are ready to go home.”

“Winter told me you were going back to North Carolina.”

“Then you’ve talked to him today?”

“He told me about Faith Ann’s deer. I guess she’s excited.”

“And did he mention the other thing?”

“What other thing?”

“The toothpick.”

“Yes, he told me about it,” Alexa said.

“The DNA results are on their way to the lab for a comparison. If it’s Styer’s, I’m not sure Winter is up to dealing with him. Lex, he’ll kill Winter without thinking.”

“Styer?” Alexa heard her voice crack. “Paulus Styer?”

“He didn’t tell you he’s comparing the DNA to the sample he has for Styer?”

“He left that part out,” Alexa said, apprehension and dread mushrooming inside her. Paulus Styer was one frightening son of a bitch, and she’d thought he was gone for good.

“Because he knew you’d go ballistic on him.”

Damned right I would have. Good Christ! “Sean, you shouldn’t worry. Winter knows what he’s doing.” Alexa hoped she sounded convinced of her words.

“I’m sorry to pour this out on you. It’s just that there’s nobody else Winter will listen to. If I told Hank Trammel, you couldn’t stop the old buzzard from going there with a tank. And he can barely walk.”

“Sean, I’m gonna go down,” Alexa said suddenly. “I have some time off coming to me, and if Styer is involved, I want to be there.”

“That isn’t why I called. I just wanted to talk to somebody who knows Winter and understands the situation. I shouldn’t have called you. You don’t need to go there.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you should have called me. I love that old dog too.”

“I know you do.” Sean’s voice sounded uncharacteristically faint.

“I’m not in the middle of anything at the moment, except writing a procedural manual nobody is going to read. I’ll just go down there for a couple of days and watch his back. I won’t tell him I know Styer may be involved. He can tell me that when I get there.”

“I should argue with you, but I won’t. Be careful. He’ll kill you, too.”

“No, Sean, he won’t.”

After some small talk, Alexa hung up. She dialed her travel agent’s number from memory and made a reservation for the next flight to Memphis.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jack Beals, a security officer for the Roundtable, had tailed the kid in the yellow V-neck sweater straight to the Gold Key Motel, a few miles from the casino. The gambler’s name was David Scotoni, a single twenty-three-year-old resident of Reno, Nevada, whose ID checked out as legit. Turned out that the reason a man who lived in a town filled with casinos would fly across the country to gamble was predictable-he was known in Reno as a card counter.

Counting cards wasn’t illegal, but it gave the player an unfair advantage and was grounds for a casino to invite you to leave and put your mug in the black book system shared by casinos across the country. Scotoni had cashed out his chips to the tune of thirty-five thousand. That was about to be collected and returned to the casino.

Beals waited to call Albert White until Scotoni had gone into his room on the second level.

“Target is in a motel room on the second floor of the Gold Key,” Beals told him. “Easy access. I’ll come by tonight and deliver it.”

White said, “He cashed out for over thirty-five, and he’s won in other places. The thirty-five comes back here. The other we cut up as usual.”

“Your wish is my command,” Beals said, before hanging up. Whatever he’s taken from the others. Not bad money for a day’s work.

He screwed the silencer on the.380. The professional from the outside who Jack had been helping to get the lay of the land, the guy whose name was or wasn’t Pablo, had given it to him. Nice fellow, some kind of top-dollar hit man always measuring the world and the people around him like a film director looking for the perfect shot. After putting on a pair of tight leather gloves, Beals climbed from his 1999 Trail Blazer and made sure nobody was watching as he moved up the stairs to Scotoni’s room. Stopping outside the door, he took out his badge case and knocked hard on the door three times. A TV set went off and a voice asked tentatively, “Who’s there?”

When the young cheater looked out through the peephole, Beals held up a gold five-star badge for the kid to see. “Sheriff’s department, Mr. Scotoni,” he said. “Open the door, please.”

“What’s the problem, Officer?” the kid asked without opening the door. Beals felt anger rise from within, his heart beating like a bass drum.

“I’d prefer not to discuss it from out here, sir. We’ve had a complaint.” Beals looked both ways and down at the parking lot. The lot was graveyard still.

When the kid cracked open the door, Beals shouldered it, propelling Scotoni deep into the room. From the floor, a naked Scotoni looked up at the silenced weapon. The towel he’d been wrapped in was beneath him, and when Scotoni reached to gather it back up, Beals put a boot on it. He heard the sound of water running in the bathtub and he had an idea. He’d been thinking the kid would commit suicide by cutting his wrists, but this was even better. Motioning to the bathroom with the gun’s barrel, he said, “Dave. You need to take that bath.”

After following Jack Beals from the casino to a motel where Beals seemed to have some business with the man he himself was following, Paulus Styer turned to look into the rear of the van at the tarp under which lay the bound and drugged Gardner girl.

He turned his attention to the Gold Key-one of several old motels that had been hastily thrown up on a stretch of highway near the original casinos. When larger and finer casinos were built miles away, with newer and fancier motels to accompany them, the Gold Key and its neighbors had been abandoned by the better-heeled clientele, and now subsisted on dregs and scraps from their poorer replacements.

The Gold Key was a long two-story box, whose rooms faced a parking lot on either side. To access the second and third floors, patrons took one of several stairways or the elevator that was located behind the lobby. Time and lack of maintenance had turned the Gold Key into a place where the clientele, even on days when it wasn’t bone-chillingly cold, wouldn’t pay close attention to the comings and goings of strangers. And most of the clients would be sleeping in after a long night of losing money or turning tricks.