Brian Freeman - Stripped

“There aren’t many secrets in Vegas,” Stride said.

“No. Later, I realized he probably bugged my suite. We thought we were so smart, and he knew all along what was going on between us.”

“Tell me about that night.”

“That night,” Walker murmured. “That horrible, horrible night” He brought his right hand up and touched the frozen side of his face, rubbing it, as if he might feel something there. “After her last show, we were going to Europe. We planned to get married and spend six months traveling the world.”

“But Boni knew?”

Walker nodded. “He and I spent the evening together in his office. We did that a lot. I always thought Boni was charming. We had fun together. But the hours wore on, and there was something wrong. There was something different about him. As it got later, I knew Amira would be waiting in my suite, and I wanted to go to her. Boni kept finding excuses to keep me there, and I just watched the clock. Then Leo Rucci arrived. Boni’s enforcer. He always scared me, because you knew he was nothing but a vicious thug underneath his suit. Boni asked Leo to escort me back to my suite, and I protested, but Boni insisted. And as I left, Boni kissed me on both cheeks. I remember what he said. ’God be with you, Walker.’ Right then, I knew. I knew it was going to be bad.”

Stride didn’t say anything. He remembered standing on the balcony of MJ’s apartment, looking down at the rooftop suite of the Sheherezade.

“Leo followed me into the suite. I tried to stop him, but he just laughed. I expected to find Amira there, but it was quiet, and I thought she had come and gone. And then-I could see the door to the patio was open. I had this terrible feeling. I went outside.” Walker choked up. “She was in the pool. The water was red and cloudy. I just stared down at her. All I could think was that I was the one who killed her. By falling in love with her.”

“What did they do to you?” Stride asked, guessing what had happened next.

Walker looked down at his useless limbs in the chair. “Leo took me into the basement and put me in a limousine. He said they were taking me to the airport, and I was to leave the city and never come back. That wasn’t enough for them, of course. The two men in the car-they took a detour into the desert. Do you know what it’s like to have your knees broken with a baseball bat, Detective? Or to have your skull fractured by brass knuckles? I would have given them any amount of money to kill me, but they were very careful about that. Boni didn’t want me dead. He wanted me to know what he had done to me.”

Sitting in his wheelchair, Walker Lane, billionaire, began to cry.

Stride felt himself getting angry.

He was angry at Boni Fisso, a man he had never met. He was angry at Las Vegas for the lives it left in ruins. He felt a strange kinship with the killer in that sketch, trying to find justice for Amira in his own immoral way. He began to realize that the killer had been ahead of them all along.

This was never about Walker.

It was about Boni.

His name is Blake Wilde,” Serena told Stride. “Or at least, that’s the name he’s been using. He was one of the bodyguards at Premium Security. The guy who runs the agency, David Kamen, recognized Blake from the sketch. He’s our perp, and he’s disappeared.”

It was night, and Stride was in Walker ’s private hangar at the Vancouver airport, waiting for the return of the Gulf-stream. The jet was grounded in Denver by bad weather. It was raining on the coast now, too.

“How long has he worked there?” Stride asked.

“Just about three months. Kamen claims they did a background check on Blake, and it came up clean, but his personnel file is gone. They say Blake must have lifted it. I wonder if Kamen sent it to the shredder.”

“You think they knew each other?”

“Kamen has a military background. A sharpshooter for the marines in the Gulf. But I made some calls, and the rumor is he had ties to a lot of other groups in the Middle East, including smugglers and mercenaries. If you were Blake Wilde and you wanted to make a landing in Las Vegas, wouldn’t you look up an old friend?”

“The question is why Blake came to Las Vegas,” Stride said.

“To kill people.”

“I know, but why? Why him? Why now? I suppose his address was a fake?”

“A house in Boulder City,” Serena said. “Mormon family, five kids, a beagle. They never heard of Blake Wilde.”

“How about his SSN?”

“It traces to a boy in Chicago who died at age five.”

“He had to get paid,” Stride said.

“He cashed his checks at local pawnshops. A different one each time. It cost him ten percent, but no cameras and no questions asked.”

Stride stared through the door of the hangar at the rain falling outside. “So this guy was with Karyn Westermark on Saturday afternoon?” he asked. “He was running her security?”

“Nice, huh?” Serena replied. “It explains the disguise that night. He didn’t care about hiding from us, but he didn’t want Karyn recognizing him.”

“How about Tierney Dargon?”

“Yes, Kamen says he worked with her, too. No problem getting her to open the door in Lake Las Vegas.”

Stride couldn’t believe they were this close, and it still felt like they had nothing.

“There’s got to be something more,” he said. “What about expense vouchers, something with a credit card number or a bank account?”

“Zip,” Serena said. “Everything he gave them was faked. Nice jobs, too. I called Nick Humphrey’s next-door neighbor, Harvey Washington. Call a forger to find a forger, right? He had some names for me. Other local con men. Cordy’s checking with some of his snitches on the street, too. But this guy’s smart. I’m betting he didn’t have it done locally.”

“He probably has a backup identity ready as well,” Stride said.

“We’re getting in touch with all of the people that he did security for. We’re warning them to take care in case he shows up, and we’re interviewing them to see if Blake tipped anything about his personal life while he was with them. Where he shopped, where he ate, anything that might narrow down the area for us.”

“The sketch is on TV?”

“Yeah. We’re getting calls, but nothing solid so far. What did you get from Walker Lane?”

Stride quickly reviewed his day with Walker and what Walker had told him about the connections between Amira’s death and Boni Fisso.

“Do you believe him?” Serena asked.

“It plays either way,” Stride said. “Either Walker really did kill Amira, and Boni had him worked over as punishment, or Boni took it out on both of them because Amira and Walker were trying to run away. That’s what Walker says, and I think he’s telling the truth. The man has more money than God, and he still looks afraid of Boni.”

“There’s more,” Serena said. “Boni owns Premium Security.”

Stride shook his head. Boni Fisso had his tentacles wrapped around the neck of every person in the investigation. “So that means David Kamen has already told Boni everything that’s going on.”

“Count on it,” Serena said. “I wonder if our perp, Blake Wilde, knew that the company had Boni’s fingerprints on it. Maybe that was part of the game, worming his way into one of Boni’s shadow companies.”

“I think Blake Wilde knows Boni a hell of a lot better than we do,” Stride said. He added, “We’ve got to talk to Boni. He must know what the hell is going on. This all gets back to him. Maybe to his Orient project, too.”

“Sawhill says he tried to get us in to see him,” Serena said. “He even asked his dad to call Boni. No luck. The most we can get is an interview with Boni’s lawyer.”