Brian Freeman - Stripped

“Maybe he’s an arrogant bastard. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer to get tripped up by his own ego. Look at BTK. They never would have nailed him in Wichita if he hadn’t started sending letters to the papers again after thirty years.”

Stride shook his head. “He knows he’s taking a risk. He knows we might find him. His picture is going to be all over the papers. Someone could spot him.”

“He may think he’s covered his tracks so well that it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t think so, Amanda. I’m sure he’s covered his tracks, but I don’t believe he’d give us something this big if it wasn’t part of his plan. Hell, he could have killed Tierney in the city any time he wanted. He didn’t need to figure out a way to get inside the security out here. And he sure didn’t need to give us his face.”

“He was showing off,” Amanda suggested.

Stride thought about it. He heard the killer’s voice in his head again. Cool, focused. Complaining about spoonfeeding them clues. As if the police were interfering with his schedule.

“Or sending a message,” Stride said.

Serena appeared in the doorway of his cubicle on Wednesday morning. He was leaning dangerously far back in his swivel chair, and he had his feet propped on the laminate desk.

“Hey, stranger,” he said. He had arrived home long after Serena went to bed, and he had been up and out at dawn, leaving her to sleep.

“Hey yourself,” she said.

“You really should try the perp power breakfast,” he added. Serena gave him a confused look, and he gestured at the desk. Her brow unfurled, and she laughed, seeing a sack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a large plastic bottle of Sprite,

Serena came in and sat down, but Stride could see that her body language was uncomfortable.

“Something wrong?” Stride asked.

He was glad that she didn’t try to bullshit him with a fake smile and pretend that he was imagining things.

“Something happened last night,” she said.

“Oh? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She hesitated and added, “I’m not really ready to talk about it yet.”

Stride was good at poker. Nothing showed on his face.

“Should I be concerned?” he asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Clears that right up for you, huh? Sorry about that.”

He stared at her for a long while and tried to see behind her eyes and understand what she was hiding.

’I’m here when you’re ready,” he told her. “But don’t push me away.”

“You’re not that lucky,” Serena told him. She winked, trying to make everything fine again. It made him feel a little better.

Amanda came around the cubicle wall with a sheaf of white paper. “Here’s our perp,” she said. She handed each of them a copy of the sketch the police artist had produced from Cora Lansing’s description. Stride was immediately drawn to the man’s eyes, which were dark but remarkably expressive. He thought if he hung it on the wall, the eyes would follow him as he walked around the room.

“We’ve got uniforms reworking each of the neighborhoods where the murders took place, to see if anyone recognizes him,” Amanda said. “I faxed it to Jay Walling in Reno, too. Sawhill’s going to be releasing the sketch to the media at a press conference this morning.”

Stride smiled, knowing that Sawhill loved the limelight. He’d make it seem like this was the product of brilliant investigative work by his division, not a gift from the killer.

“Did you call Walker?” Amanda asked.

“Sawhill wanted a couple of hours to confer with the politicians,” Stride said. “I told him if I didn’t hear anything by noon, I was just going to pick up the phone.”

“How about Boni? We make any progress there?”

Stride turned to Serena. “Did you talk to Claire?” he asked.

She nodded. “They’re estranged. I don’t think she’ll call him, but she didn’t close the door entirely.”

“What’s she like?” Amanda asked.

“She’s fiercely independent. She didn’t seem to care that she might be in danger. As a singer, by the way, she’s exceptionally talented. And charming. I think, like her father, she’s driven in getting what she wants.”

Stride spoke to Amanda. “We need to warn people. Fast. There were a couple other people mentioned in Rex’s article. They or their families might be in danger. Let’s track down Leo Rucci, too. He was Boni’s right-hand man at the Sheherezade, the one who was sleeping with Helen. Anyone who started looking at what happened to Amira would find Leo’s name.”

“He’s already on my list,” Amanda said. “Maybe I can sweat him about Amira’s murder, too.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s a talkative guy. If you can, find out about that fight the night of the murder. And that kid Mickey. That bothers me.”

“Right.”

He turned to Serena. “Can you or Cordy run down a lead for us? Tierney used a security agency in town. Premium Security. I don’t know if Karyn Westermark used them, but she told us she had a bodyguard with her during the afternoon, before she met MJ. It’s worth taking a sketch of the perp down there. Maybe this guy had access to inside information about the schedules of the victims.”

“Sure, you got it.” Serena grabbed a handful of the sketches and was about to walk out of the office. Then, with a smile at Amanda, she bent down and gave Stride a long kiss.

“That help?” she asked him.

“That helps.”

She winked again as she left.

“If I were you, I’d sue for harassment,” Amanda teased him.

“Not a chance.”

The phone on his desk rang, and Stride snatched it up. He was still a little breathless from the kiss. “Stride.”

“It’s Walker Lane, Detective. I understand you want to talk to me.”

Stride recognized the wheezing voice. He leaned back in his chair and gathered his thoughts. “Yes, I do, Mr. Lane. Do you have a few minutes?”

There was a long pause on the line, as he had come to expect from Walker. “I had something else in mind. I thought we could meet personally.”

“Are you coming to Las Vegas?” Stride asked, surprised.

“No, no. You know how I feel about that city. I’m sending my private jet for you, Detective. You can meet it at McCarran at two o’clock, and it will take you to Vancouver. Will that be acceptable?”

The secretary at Leo Rucci’s Henderson office told Amanda that Rucci always spent Wednesdays on the golf course. Amanda hung around long enough to find out that Rucci owned a successful chain of fast oil-change shops throughout Nevada and southern California. He was a multimillionaire, divorced, with one son whose primary occupation, like MJ’s, seemed to be spending Daddy’s money.

It wasn’t hard to tell who had set Rucci up in business. There was a large photograph in the office lobby of Leo Rucci and Boni Fisso together at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for his first quick-lube station.

Rucci wasn’t welcome in Boni’s casinos anymore. Or any casinos. He was in the Black Book-the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s list of persons whose ties to organized crime and other illegal activities got them banned from so much as using the bathroom in a casino within the state. According to Nick Humphrey, Rucci had taken the fall for Boni in the 1970s, when the feds raided the Sheherezade on the hunt for evidence of tax evasion. Boni walked away in the clear, but the feds needed a trophy, and Leo was it. He spent five years in prison on tax fraud charges but never sang a note about his boss.

When he got out in the early 1980s, Boni set him up in a legitimate business. Loyalty pays , Amanda thought.