Brian Freeman - Stripped

“No!” Stride retorted, and then realized Amanda was giggling. “I’m sorry,” he added. “This really is perfect. Sawhill is sending me a message, you know. ‘Bet you don’t have any non-ops back in Nowhere, Minnesota, hey, Stride?’ ”

“Is it going to be a problem?”

Stride thought about it. He had lived his entire life, until a couple of months ago, on the shore of Lake Superior, in a city that was liberal about labor unions and health care and conservative about religion and sex, but he considered himself strictly nonjudgmental about anything that went on behind closed doors, so long as no one got hurt. He shrugged. “Like I said, you’re smart, and you’re the prettiest guy I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m a girl now. But thank you. Most of the others on the force, men and women, haven’t been so open-minded.”

“I bet.”

Stride had lots of questions for Amanda, but he wasn’t ready to ask anything that would make him look even more like a fool.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Stride turned and looked up into the olive-colored face of a very tall man who wore silver sunglasses even in the middle of the night inside the casino. His black hair stood up, a flattop cut to a perfect oneinch height.

“Detective?” he said. “I’m Gerard Plante, Oasis head of security.”

Stride introduced himself, and Amanda stood up, doing the same. Gerard wore a navy suit whose fabric glistened under the lights. A burgundy handkerchief, embroidered with the Oasis logo, peeked out from his breast pocket. When he shook hands, his skin felt like the smooth leather of a hundreddollar wallet.

“Let’s go in the back, shall we?” Gerard said.

He guided them behind the security desk, and when the heavy oak door closed behind them, the din of the casino seemed to vanish magically, replaced by a calming white noise. No sound track. No electronic pinging. This was where the volcanoes and white tigers vanished, where it was about nothing at all except money, the river that never experienced a drought.

Gerard led them into a vast office without windows, decorated in perfect taste and immaculate. He obviously wasn’t a man who believed in paper, because there wasn’t a scrap to be seen anywhere in the office, and his desk and credenza were both glass-topped with triangular steel legs and not a drawer in sight. Stride couldn’t pick out a smudge or fingerprint anywhere on the glass.

Behind Gerard, on the credenza, was the largest computer monitor Stride had ever seen, sleek and chrome, more like a plasma TV. A sliding drawer suspended underneath the glass top held a keyboard, mouse, and joystick.

Gerard motioned Stride and Amanda to two minimalist chairs in front of the desk and took his own seat in a black Aeron chair behind it. He moved with an arrogant grace. When he sat down, he inclined the chair, but his legs were long enough for his feet to remain flat on the floor. He carefully removed his sunglasses, folded them and laid them on the glass desk, and then steepled his fingers. His eyes were blue-gray underneath trimmed eyebrows.

“I assume this is about Mr. Lane?” Gerard asked. He held up a hand before Stride could interrupt. “I sent one of my security men there as a liaison when we saw the police arrive. He kept me informed about the incident.”

“Incident?” Stride asked. “One of your guests was brutally murdered less than a hundred yards away from your door.”

“Yes. It’s very unfortunate.”

“Because of all the bad publicity?” Stride remarked acidly, not sure why the man got under his skin. He had considered casino security himself for a day or so over the summer, but he decided he didn’t want to live in the lion’s mouth.

Gerard smiled thinly. “Not at all. The sad truth is, Detective, that publicity only helps us. Our gross will go up for weeks because of the murder. If it were all about that, I would have shot him myself. No, Mr. Lane was a regular customer, and a generous one. We will miss him.”

“Did you know MJ was in the casino this evening?” Stride asked.

“Of course. Mr. Lane and Ms. Westermark arrived together around ten o’clock and were escorted to a private gaming room to play blackjack.”

“Is this gaming room visible from the main casino floor?”

“No. The guests who play there don’t wish to have an audience.”

“Was it just the two of them, or were there others in the same room?” Stride asked.

“It wasn’t uncommon for MJ to be part of a crowd,” Gerard said. “But tonight it was just the two of them.”

“How long did they play?”

“About two hours. Around midnight, the two of them left the gaming room to visit her suite.”

“Did they go through the main casino to access her room?” Stride asked.

“No, there’s a private elevator,” Gerard replied.

“Did you watch them?” Amanda asked.

Gerard didn’t blink, and his voice was like honey. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we both know you have a camera in that private elevator. So we can sit here while you find the video clip, or you can tell us that you got a call when MJ and Karyn were leaving, and you tracked them on the elevator on that nice big monitor back there.”

Stride wasn’t sure if Gerard was the kind of man who ever sweated, but he had to believe there was a sticky film gathering on the back of the man’s neck. All three of them knew Amanda had scored a bull’s-eye.

Gerard inclined his head slightly, like a politician conceding a point in a debate. “They were frisky,” he acknowledged.

“But your valet told us that Karyn left early.”

“That’s right. Ms. Westermark left her suite after five or ten minutes, alone. Mr. Lane followed a few minutes later. He looked agitated.”

“We know Karyn left the casino,” Amanda said. “What did MJ do?”

“He returned to the blackjack table and played for another hour. He was drinking heavily. Around one in the morning, Mr. Lane told me he was planning to take a walk. I got the picture.”

“What did MJ talk about after he came downstairs?”

“He mainly talked about Walker Lane, his father. It’s no secret to anyone who knows Mr. Lane that he and his father don’t see eye to eye. I don’t exactly get along with my father, either.”

“Have you had any unusual troubles with casino security lately?”

Gerard actually laughed enough to show a glint of teeth. “Unusual would be a day when we did not have something unusual, Detective. Casinos run on money, alcohol, sex, and emotion. I don’t have to tell you, it’s a volatile combination.”

“But nothing involving MJ?” Amanda asked.

“No. Our VIP patrons rarely cause that kind of trouble. They’re more like children who play too hard. Sometimes their toys break.”

“We want to see some of the casino tapes from this evening,” Stride said. “Can we do that from here?”

“Of course. But nothing odd happened in the blackjack suite, I assure you. And there’s no sound on the tapes.”

Stride shook his head. “I don’t want the blackjack suite. I want the casino floor. If someone was following MJ, I want to know if he was in the casino.”

Gerard was proud of his eyes in the sky.

When he clicked a button on the mouse, dozens of thumbnail video feeds fanned onto his screen like cards dealt on a table.

“We were among the first casinos to go all digital in our cam system,” Gerard explained. “Everything’s burned for permanent storage. No more swapping out hundreds of tapes every day. You win more than a thousand dollars at a sitting, we keep your face on file forever. And we can capture anyone’s face in the casino and run a comparative search against our database and the Metro and Gaming Control files in a few seconds. Some of our technical staff used to work for the Bureau.”