“Are you going to say it, or am I?” Martine asked.
Levi sighed, studying the body in front of them. Phillip Dreyer was sitting upright in his fancy ergonomic office chair, his forearms propped on his broad mahogany desk as if welcoming a client—though the image was somewhat spoiled by the way his head lolled back and to one side, his throat slit from ear to ear in a gaping arc. Blood soaked the front of his designer suit and pooled at the edge of the desk.
His eyes were still open.
“It’s possible that we have a serial killer on our hands,” Levi said.
Martine immediately took up the position of devil’s advocate. “Two bodies with similar MOs doesn’t mean a serial killer. It’s not even technically a pattern.” Her accent was pure Flatbush, with none of the lingering Haitian lilt from her childhood that shone through when she was excited.
Levi moved closer to the desk. Out of habit, he kept his hands in his pockets, though he was already wearing nitrile gloves.
All around him, the spacious office was abuzz with activity: uniformed officers chatting at the door, the photographer snapping shots from every angle, crime scene investigators trawling the room in the grid pattern they’d established. Levi ignored it all, focused on one detail in particular.
Peeking out from the breast pocket of Dreyer’s jacket, spattered with dripping blood but still legible, was a single playing card—the seven of spades.
Coming around the side of the desk, Levi saw that the bloody pocket square which had originally resided in Dreyer’s pocket had been dropped carelessly on the floor next to him. He noted its position and turned back toward Martine. “Seven of spades. Same as Billy Campbell.”
“Which is creepy,” she said, “but let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“Most killers don’t leave calling cards.”
“They might if they wanted to disguise their motivation and put the cops on the wrong trail.”
He nodded. “You think one person had reason to kill both men?” No apparent connection sprang to mind. Besides being middle-aged white men—and the eerie similarities of their crime scenes—Dreyer and Campbell had nothing in common. Dreyer had been a highly successful wealth management advisor at the prestigious Skyline Financial Services; Campbell had been a lowlife bar rat who’d weaseled his way out of multiple charges for domestic violence and drug possession. They’d inhabited entirely different worlds.
“Maybe. Statistically, it’s more likely than them being targeted by a serial killer.”
They’d kept the playing card from Campbell’s homicide under tight wraps, so unless there was a leak in the department and an in-the-know copycat, both men had been killed by the same person. Levi hoped the murders were personally motivated; that would make the killer a hell of a lot easier to catch.
He stood directly behind Dreyer’s body, his eyes roving over the chair and desk. The coroner investigator hadn’t arrived yet, but Levi had seen enough crime scenes in his four years as a homicide detective to estimate the time of death at around two to three hours prior. Throat slit from behind, death from massive blood loss . . .
Martine frowned, leaning forward to study the corpse from the opposite side. Her short, springy finger coils fell into her eyes, and she shook them back impatiently. “No signs of a struggle.”
He’d just been thinking the same thing. He turned around in a slow circle to take in the room as a whole.
It was a gorgeous office, the back wall consisting of floor-to-ceiling windows with a fantastic view of the glittering Las Vegas Strip twenty-five stories below. Dreyer had positioned his desk in the center of the wall, his chair only a few feet from the glass. The sole entrance to the office was the door all the way on the other side, at a slight diagonal to the desk and across a wide expanse of polished hardwood flooring.
Conclusion: little room for the killer to stand behind Dreyer, and no way for them to approach without giving him plenty of warning. Yet it didn’t seem that Dreyer had even gotten out of his chair. Levi would have to take a closer look once he was allowed to move the body, but he couldn’t see any defensive wounds on the man’s arms or hands, either.
“Killer took him by surprise?” Levi said dubiously.
“How many people do you trust to stand behind you while you’re sitting down?”
Few enough to count on one hand and have fingers left over. He continued his circuit of the desk.
Everything on the desk’s surface was in perfect order—Dreyer hadn’t grabbed for anything, either to defend himself against the attack or in a panic after he’d taken a blade to the throat. Of course, the killer could have rearranged the scene to their satisfaction after Dreyer had died, but in that case, the blood spatter would be telling a different story.
The story Levi read here was that Dreyer had sat obediently still while someone had cut his throat, and then had continued sitting still while he’d bled out. Why?
A crystal tumbler sat a few inches from Dreyer’s right hand, filled with a small amount of amber liquid. Levi’s eyes narrowed.
“Campbell was high when he died, right?” he asked Martine.
“Yeah, on all kinds of shit. I think it was pretty unusual for him to not be high, though.”
“What was he on, exactly?”
She withdrew a notepad from her inner jacket pocket and flipped through it. “Methamphetamines, trace amounts of oxycodone and Adderall, some marijuana thrown in there for good measure, and . . .” She made a thoughtful noise. “Ketamine. Lots of it.”
Her eyes met Levi’s, and then they both looked at the glass on the desk.
Ketamine was a dissociative drug, and at a high enough dose, it could put a user into a trance, even induce temporary paralysis. A person fucked up on enough ketamine wouldn’t be able to fight back against an assailant, which was one of the several reasons it was sometimes used to facilitate date rape.
Campbell had been a habitual drug user, so his toxicology report hadn’t raised any red flags. If Dreyer tested positive for ketamine as well, though—that would be a strong connection, and a solid lead.
Levi waved to one of the crime scene investigators. She stopped what she was doing and hurried over at once.
“Yes, Detective Abrams?”
“When you process the desk, please make sure you take special care with the glass. I need toxicology reports on both the remaining liquid and any residue inside the glass itself. Fingerprints, too.”
“Of course, sir.” The technician jotted down a note for herself before returning to her colleagues.
“So, here’s my question,” Martine said as Levi rejoined her in front of the desk. “If you know you’re gonna murder somebody and you go to all the trouble of drugging them, why not just kill them with an overdose?”
“They wanted to slit his throat,” he said quietly. “Killing someone with drugs isn’t the same as killing them with a knife. There’s no visceral, hands-on satisfaction. No blood. No thrill.”
“Jesus.” She was silent for a moment, chewing her lower lip in thought. “All right. So, you want to slit someone’s throat, but you drug them into a daze first because . . . you want to keep things nice and quiet, don’t want to risk them calling out for help or making enough noise to draw attention. Or because you can’t risk a struggle, because there’s a good chance you’d lose.”
“Perp could be smaller than the victim. Victims.”
“If this is a serial killer . . .”
Levi shook his head. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You were right that two bodies isn’t enough evidence to float that theory. We need to work the personal connection angle first.”
All logic aside, though, he had a sick, uneasy feeling in his gut, born of experience and intuition. Judging by the expression on Martine’s face, she felt something similar.
Though he already knew the answer, he asked, “You want to stay here and run the crime scene, or interview the woman who found him?” Martine was a natural leader, comfortable in a position of command, whereas Levi preferred to work with people one-on-one.
“I’ll stay,” she said, and then added, “I’m not hauling my ass over to the CCDC this time of night.”
That last part was a surprise—there was no reason for a witness to have been taken to the Clark County Detention Center. “What’s she doing there?”
“Didn’t you hear? She assaulted one of the responding officers.”
Levi blinked. “What? Why?”
“She’s an Eastern European national—Ukrainian or something, is what I heard—and I guess she doesn’t trust cops much. One of the geniuses threatened to call ICE when she wouldn’t cooperate. She ran off, he chased her down, and she popped him right in the jaw.”
Rolling his eyes, Levi said, “Which officer was it?”
Martine grinned. “Take a wild guess.”
“Gibbs,” he said in disgust. Jonah Gibbs was an impulsive hothead with a big mouth and more balls than sense. “He’s going to get the department sued one of these days.”
“Well, maybe a nice big bruise will settle him down for a while.”
Levi glanced at his watch, calculating how long it would take him to wade through this mess at the CCDC before he was even able to interview the witness, and heaved a sigh. He’d already been on the tail end of a ten-hour shift when he’d been called out to this crime scene; he and Martine had worked the Campbell homicide, and when one of the uniforms had noticed the connection, they’d been assigned this case as well, even though they weren’t next in rotation on their squad.
“I can’t believe I had to cancel on Stanton again. He’s not going to be happy.”
Martine waved a dismissive hand. “He knows what it means to date a cop. Been doing it three years, hasn’t he? He’ll get over it.”
Levi didn’t respond. Lately, Stanton had been making more frequent and pointed comments about Levi’s long, irregular hours, about the danger he put himself in, and what those things meant for their future together. He’d been especially sensitive about it since—
“Detective Valcourt, do you have a moment?” said Fred, the crime scene photographer. He’d worked with the pair of them many times before, and didn’t have to ask to know that Martine was in charge.
Levi took the opportunity to say goodbye and make his exit. He signed out at the crime scene log maintained by the officers at the door, stripped off his gloves and booties, and headed down the plush hallway to the elevator bank at the center of the twenty-fifth floor, hitting the down button.
While he waited, he noticed a security camera perched up in one corner, giving it a panoramic view of the area outside the elevators and a good chunk of the hallway going in both directions. He pulled out his cell phone to text Martine.
Maybe they’d get lucky.
Dominic rang the doorbell of a house in Henderson, a small stucco ranch with a clay tile roof that blended seamlessly with the desert environment. It was one of dozens that looked just like it on the sleepy suburban block, quiet now as the neighborhood wound down for the night.
While he waited, he tugged on the brim of his bright-red baseball cap and rolled his shoulders under the matching windbreaker, both emblazoned with the flashy logo of Pete’s Premium Pizza. The manager of the local franchise had been eager to lend his assistance, thrilled by the idea of helping recover a fugitive, but even the largest staff jacket he’d had on hand wasn’t quite big enough to comfortably fit a man of Dominic’s tall, heavily muscled build.
The blinds fluttered over the front window. Seconds later, Danny Ruiz opened the door, all his focus on the pizza box in Dominic’s left hand.
Dominic forcibly suppressed a thrill of triumph. He’d learned the hard way to never relax on the job until his bounty was in police custody—there were too many unexpected things that could go wrong between now and then.
“About time, man.” Ruiz reached for the pizza with one hand and thrust a fistful of cash at Dominic with the other. “The guy on the phone told me half an hour.”
The guy on the phone hadn’t known to account for the time it would take the manager to alert Dominic that Ruiz had ordered, or for Dominic to get himself set up. Dominic let Ruiz take the pizza, but he didn’t accept the cash.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Ruiz,” he said.
Ruiz froze, his gaze darting upward to Dominic’s face. He’d ordered the pizza under the name of the cousin he’d been hiding out with for the past two weeks.
“Daniel Ruiz, I’ve been authorized by Sin City Bail Bonds to place you under arrest and surrender—”
Dropping the pizza and the cash right there on the threshold, Ruiz whirled around and bolted into the house. Dominic groaned and gave chase.
The interior of the house was cramped but cozy, toys strewn all across the floor, the walls and tables sporting photographs of two cute kids. Dominic paid them no mind as he ran past—the cousin and his wife had taken the kids to visit their grandmother for the weekend. The planned trip was why Dominic had waited so long to arrest Ruiz, who he’d tracked down days ago.
Though Ruiz swerved around the couch in the living room, Dominic vaulted right over it, which put him on Ruiz’s heels as they raced into the kitchen at the rear of the house. Ruiz tore open the back door and then skidded to a stop with a frightened yelp.
Positioned on the back steps was a hundred-pound German Shepherd–Rottweiler mix. Rebel sat at full attention, her ears pricked up, her entire body attuned to Ruiz’s every movement. She exhibited no signs of aggression, though—she wouldn’t unless Dominic gave the order, which he only used as an absolute last resort.
Ruiz looked back at Dominic, who had stopped at the kitchen doorway. As Ruiz’s head swung wildly back and forth, Dominic could see the struggle playing out on his face: head for the muscle-bound man twice his size, or the dog that could tear his throat out in seconds?
It was no choice at all, of course, and so Ruiz was paralyzed into stillness. Dominic took off his baseball cap and tossed it aside, raking a hand through his hair to get it back in order.
“You missed your court date, Mr. Ruiz. You know I gotta take you in.”
“I couldn’t pay them back,” Ruiz whispered. “I just didn’t have the money.”
“I understand,” Dominic said, which was the unvarnished truth. He empathized with Ruiz’s situation more than most of his associates would have. “But you ignored all of the opportunities you were given to work out the debt before it became a criminal charge, and then you ran away after your own mother posted your bail. The longer you drag this out, the worse it’s going to be for you in the end.”
In Nevada, unpaid casino markers were considered equivalent to bad checks—intentional attempts at fraud, prosecutable as a felony if the amount was high enough. By ignoring the casino’s attempts to settle the debt before filing a complaint with the DA, Ruiz had landed himself in very hot water.
Dominic unhooked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and advanced slowly, his arms spread wide. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He would if he had to, though. He had a concealed carry permit, and he never went on a job without the Glock strapped under his left arm. To date, he’d never had to use it on a bounty, but he did get a lot of mileage out of his stun gun and mace.
Ruiz backed up a step, then stopped short and flinched when Rebel huffed in warning. His body trembled from head to toe.
Wary for any sudden movement, Dominic closed the distance between them. Though Ruiz seemed more a runner than a fighter, people were capable of surprising things when cornered, and the kitchen—chock-full of potential weapons—was one of the worst places to end up in a violent altercation.
Ruiz bounced on the balls of his feet, breathing hard, glancing around as if there were an escape route he’d missed.
His voice soft, Dominic said, “Your mother used her house as collateral for your bail. If you don’t come with me, she’s going to lose it. Is that the kind of son you want to be?”
Ruiz’s eyes fell shut as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fuck,” he muttered, and extended his wrists.
“Thank you.” Dominic clicked the handcuffs into place and patted Ruiz down for weapons. Finding none, as expected, he whistled for Rebel to come inside and then shut and locked the back door.
On their way out the front, he paused to gather up the scattered cash and stack it neatly on the sideboard. He took the pizza with him, though, because he could only imagine what it would be like for the family to come home on Sunday to a box full of days-old rotting cheese.
Besides, there was no sense in letting a good pizza go to waste.