Stripped (22 page)

As Serena’s confidence in herself came back, though, she realized that their relationship was built on sand. She loved Deidre, but she didn’t want to be her lover anymore. She wanted to see what she could build for herself, on her own, not leaning on anyone or running to someone to rescue her.

They argued about it. Deidre became hysterical. It finally dawned on Serena that Deidre was the frightened one, the one who needed love and was afraid of men. Deidre was the one who couldn’t live without Serena.

Serena ended it anyway. That was how Deidre’s new life started—the dive into prostitution and drugs. She always thought Deidre did it to get back at her, to throw it in her face. Serena still blamed herself. Her fault. Her guilt. Deidre had been there for her at the worst time in her life, and in the end, Serena walked away when Deidre needed her help. She just let her die without going to see her, without trying to comfort her.

Serena sat in her car, watching the memories play out in her head. She was eighteen-again. That was how it felt. When Claire walked out on that stage, Serena saw Deidre. When Claire touched her, she felt Deidre’s hands. They were nothing alike, but that didn’t matter. Claire was right. Serena wanted her. She wanted to follow Claire back into that shower, strip, kiss, touch, and find a way to make love to Deidre again. To tell her how sorry she was. To tell her everything would be fine.

What’s next?” Amanda asked. They stood outside Moose’s house.

“I’m calling Walker Lane again in the morning,” Stride said. “I don’t care what the hell Sawhill says.”

“Walker won’t admit killing Amira.”

“No, but he may know who’s doing this and why. This isn’t some random vendetta. It’s personal.”

“If Walker did kill Amira, why didn’t Boni erase him?” Amanda asked. “Assuming Moose is right about Boni and Amira being lovers.”

Stride thought about the penthouse suite in the Charlcombe Towers and Boni Fisso looking down on his old casino—and his new Orient project. “It’s one thing to kill members of the family, but a CEO and a celebrity like Walker—that’s a lot harder to cover up. If Walker Lane was murdered or disappeared, people would ask questions.”

“Walker did disappear,” Amanda said. “He ran to Canada.”

Stride nodded. “Maybe he was running from Boni. Maybe he’s still running.”

He heard his cell phone ringing. He grabbed it, expecting a call from Serena, but he didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.

“Stride,” he answered.

He heard a man’s voice, flat and unemotional. A stranger. “Have you found her yet?”

Stride knew without having to ask. From the moment he had seen the killer leave the fingerprint for them at the Oasis, he had suspected that a time like this would come. The man would find a way to make contact. To make it personal.

He snapped his fingers sharply at Amanda to alert her. She read his face as he gestured at the phone. He punched the speakerphone button. “We’re at Moose’s house now,” he said.

“Not her,” the voice retorted impatiently. “Not the girl.”

“Who are you talking about?” Stride asked. He mouthed to Amanda,
Another victim
?

“You’re going to have to move faster, Detective. I don’t have time to spoon-feed you clues. I drove out in a silver Lexus. That should narrow it down.”

Stride listened for gloating in the man’s voice and didn’t hear it. He didn’t sound unbalanced, like a monster. “Why call me now?” Stride asked.

“I’m doing your job for you, Detective. I’m going to catch a murderer.”

“Why commit murder to catch a killer?” Stride asked him sharply. “These people, the ones you killed, were innocent. Why not just come in and tell us what you think you know about Amira’s death? Let us get justice for her.”

“Like you’ve done for forty years?” the man asked.

“You killed a little boy,” Stride snapped. “That’s worse than any thing that happened back then.”

There was a long silence in which he thought he’d succeeded in finding a vein and drawing blood. He heard the man’s breathing become more rapid and harsh.

“You don’t understand what happened back then,” the man said finally.

“Explain it to me,” Stride said. “And tell me what all of this has to do with you.” He wasn’t talking to an older man—at most, maybe someone his own age. There was no way he had been a participant in the events that happened at the Sheherezade.

“Are you there?” Stride added when the man didn’t reply. “Hello?”

The silence stretched out into dead air. He checked his phone and found the call was over. The caller had disconnected.

When he punched a button to redial the number, it rang and rang without being picked up.

“Shit,” he said. “There’s another body here.”

This one was alive.

Half an hour later, they found Cora Lansing, a seventy-five-year-old widow, tied to an oversized walnut chair in her dining room, in another house not far from Moose’s MiraBella estate. A strip of duct tape was pasted across her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fright, and she had soiled herself, throwing a stink into the lavender-scented home, but she hadn’t been harmed.

They called in a medical team, who gave the woman oxygen and carefully removed the tape from her mouth. It left behind a rash and a sticky residue that she picked at with irritated flicks of her finger nails. She was bird like and frail, but she was hopping mad, even after a shower and a change of clothes. Stride poured her a large glass of Rémy Martin from her liquor cabinet to calm her down.

They soon extracted her story. She had been shopping at Neiman’s and returned to find a stranger in her Lexus. The man forced her to drive back through the hills to the south shore entrance to Lake Las Vegas, and he hid in the backseat while she greeted the guard. He made it clear that if she tried to alert the guard, he would shoot them both, and his tone was such that Cora had no doubt he would do it.

She drove him to her home, where he tied her up, gagged her, and waited until night fell. Then he took her car and left.

“Did you see what he looked like?” Stride asked.

“I certainly did,” Cora replied immediately, surprising him. “I’ll never forget his face.”

Stride felt a rush of excitement, mixed with apprehension. He told Amanda, “Get a sketch artist down here.”

Stride looked at Cora and thought to himself what he would never say to the woman aloud.
Why the hell are you still alive
?

“
Can
you describe him for me?” he asked.

Cora swiftly painted a man similar in build to the man Elonda had seen at the bus stop before MJ was killed: not as tall as Stride, lean but very strong, with short dark hair and an angular face. Either he had shaved his beard or the one he had used on Saturday night was a fake. Cora provided enough detail that the police artist would be able to do a solid rendering. Stride glanced around at the tasteful, expensive art in Cora’s house. She had a good eye.

“Did he say anything to you?” Stride asked. “About who he was or why he was doing this?”

Cora shook her head. “Not a word. He hardly said anything. But he was very intense, very scary.”

Stride thanked her and tracked down a policewoman to sit with her while they waited for the artist to drive in from the city. He left Cora’s living room and made his way back outside. The killer’s phone call was vivid in his mind. He wished it had lasted longer, because he wasn’t sure the man would call again. He had said what he needed to say, enlisting Stride in the hunt—but the hunt for what?

Amanda joined him. “You don’t look happy,” she told him. “Isn’t this what we call a break? A lead? That’s a good thing, right?”

“We’ve only got it because he gave it to us,” Stride said. “He could have killed that woman, and we wouldn’t have a damn thing, but now he wants us to know what he looks like. Why?”

“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?”