“It’s no wonder Hensley was murdered,” Martine said the next morning, looking up from her stack of papers. “I’d kind of like to go back in time and kill him myself.”
“You’re not kidding,” Levi muttered. They’d spent the last two hours absorbed in printouts of every email and text message Hensley had sent and received over the past six months, and just reading this stuff made him feel the urgent need to shower.
Clarissa Northridge had undersold what a horrible man her husband had been. She’d used the words “abrasive” and “challenging”; Levi would have gone more with “vicious, hateful son of a bitch.” His conversations with everyone he knew, from colleagues to students to family members, were bitter and rancorous, peppered with vile profanity and aggressive insults that crossed the line into straight-up verbal abuse. Though electronic communication with his wife was sparse, what little existed was so disrespectful Levi couldn’t believe she’d never sought a divorce. And the guy’s poor son was probably going to be in therapy for the rest of his life.
Sitting back in his chair, Levi said, “This isn’t going to help us with motive. I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole group of people got together to cook up a conspiracy to kill this guy.”
“Hmm. Did you see this, though? Look at the way he communicates with Dr. Kapoor.”
Martine pushed a pile of papers toward him. He flipped through them and then shook his head, giving her a questioning glance.
“He’s way less gross with her than he is with everyone else.” She tapped the top page. “He rarely curses, and he never insults her intelligence or competency, which is his go-to with all the other people in his life.”
Levi took a second look at the printouts. Martine had a point—Hensley’s texts and emails to Kapoor were still obnoxious, and nothing Levi would tolerate himself, but they were markedly different from his other conversations.
“They were research partners. Maybe it went against his best interests to be nasty to her.” He caught the look on Martine’s face and said, “You think they were sleeping together?”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Levi struggled to explain why the idea triggered such a deep aversion in him. “He may have been less terrible with her, but this is still not the way you treat another human being. I don’t understand why anyone would sleep with a man like this unless they were being paid for it.”
“There’s no accounting for taste.” Martine shrugged. “Is Dr. Kapoor married?”
Levi closed his eyes, thinking back to their brief meeting in the interview room. Kapoor had been wearing a wedding ring, a simple platinum band with no stones. “Yeah.”
“So there’s a number of possible motives. She got tired of him screwing around with call girls and decided to put a stop to it. Or she tried to end things, and he threatened to tell her husband. Or he tried to end it, and she wasn’t having that.”
“Normally, I’d be on board,” Levi said, “but I don’t think it was her. She’s one of the few people who has a strong alibi—surveillance cameras have her well-documented all over the casino floor until almost three. Technically within the window for Hensley’s time of death, but not smart if she was planning to frame a woman who left two hours earlier. And there’s no way she could have slipped out of sight long enough before that to kill Hensley without it being noticeable in the security footage.”
Martine pursed her lips. “That’s probably true. Still, it won’t hurt to ask her about it when you meet her later. It might rattle something else loose.”
“Valcourt, Abrams!”
Levi and Martine looked up as their immediate superior, Sergeant James Wen, strode into the bullpen from his office. Wen had the military bearing of an ex-Marine, and he was always impeccably dressed and clean-shaven no matter the time of day or night.
“Got a new case for you,” he said, stopping at their adjoining desks. “Homicide at a home in Copper Crest.”
Levi exchanged a puzzled glance with Martine. They weren’t next in the rotation, which meant—
“There’s a possible connection to the Hensley murder.”
“How so, sir?” Martine asked.
“The victim was working the front desk at the Mirage the night Hensley was killed,” Wen said.
The crime scene was an attractive Southwestern ranch in a suburban housing tract northwest of the Strip. Levi made note of the Mercedes parked in the driveway as he and Martine walked up.
Hanna Ostrowski, the responding officer, met them at the front door. “Victim’s name is Alan Walsh,” she said while they put on their protective equipment. “Twenty-four. His girlfriend found him this morning—he hadn’t been answering her texts all night, and she came over to confront him. Thought he might be cheating.”
“Yeah, that’s going around,” Levi said under his breath.
Ostrowski blinked but didn’t comment. Leading them deeper into the house, she said, “The coroner investigator isn’t here yet, but the cause of death is pretty obvious.”
Walsh lay awkwardly crumpled on his back near the desk in his living room, one arm flung out to the side. He was a short, chubby white man—literally white now, because he’d died of massive blood loss. No visible lividity at all.
“I know this guy,” Martine said. “I talked to him on Sunday when I was questioning the hotel staff who’d worked the night of Hensley’s death.” She whistled as she circled around the body. “One direct stab to the carotid artery. From behind, judging by the blood spatter and the way the body fell. Either the killer got in a lucky hit or they knew exactly where to aim.”
“Like a doctor would?” Levi said grimly.
No attempt had been made to conceal the murder weapon, a steak knife with a fancy engraved pewter handle. It had been left on the floor next to Walsh’s body, still caked with blood. Walsh had a scratch across his forehead, though no bleeding or bruising—he must have sustained the injury after he’d been stabbed. Rigor mortis had fully set in, so he’d been dead for at least twelve hours unless there were complicating factors at work.
The Chopard watch on Walsh’s wrist caught Levi’s eye, and he frowned. “You’re sure his girlfriend didn’t live here with him?” he asked Ostrowski.
“Positive. He lived alone.”
“This is a nice house.” Levi gestured around the room. “Expensive furniture, top-of-the-line electronics, a Mercedes out front . . . how much do hotel desk clerks make?”
“Not enough to afford this lifestyle alone,” said Martine. “Family money?”
“Detectives, I’ve got something here,” one of the CSIs said. She was crouched a few feet away, passing a handheld forensic light source over the floor. When Levi and Martine joined her, she pointed to a fluorescing stain on the carpet. “Traces of recent vomit. Someone tried to clean it up, but they didn’t do a thorough job. There may be enough for useable DNA.”
Martine made a face and backed away. Levi had once seen her help a gunshot victim hold in his intestines with her bare hands, but she couldn’t stand even the discussion of vomit.
“Has to be the killer’s,” Levi said. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
“I don’t disagree, but why would the killer throw up?”
Levi moved to the far side of the room and took in the scene as a whole, envisioning the sequence of events. Walsh had been standing right in front of the desk—looking at something on the surface, or maybe using the computer—and the killer had taken him by surprise from behind, jamming the knife into his carotid artery and quickly withdrawing it and stepping away.
Walsh would have instinctively grabbed for his throat, though it wouldn’t have done any good. He may have managed to stay on his feet for a few seconds, but then he’d fallen to his knees, banging his forehead on the edge of the desk, and collapsed backward with his legs still tangled up underneath him. His death had been almost immediate.
Then . . . what? The killer had dropped the knife, stumbled away, and vomited.
“They weren’t prepared for the way it felt,” Levi said. “If this is the same person who killed Hensley . . . poisoning is totally different from stabbing. Using a knife is one of the most personal, visceral ways to murder a person. The killer was disgusted by it.”
“This definitely wasn’t your usual passionate stabbing, that’s for sure,” Martine said, examining the body more closely. “Just the singular wound, no other incisions or serious damage to the body. The murder weapon must have been a matter of necessity rather than personal preference. Why, though? There must be a stronger connection between Walsh and Hensley than just being at the Mirage on the same night, but what?”
Neither of them had an answer for that question, so they split up. Levi rifled through the desk while Martine went to search the bedroom—both good potential hiding spots for any secrets Walsh may have had. He inspected the papers littering the surface, careful not to disturb the body as he moved, but it was just bills and junk mail. His jaw dropped when he saw the charges on Walsh’s MasterCard. Either Walsh had been living far beyond his means and was deeply in debt, or he had some other source of income.
The computer was silent, the monitor dark, so Levi had assumed it was turned off. When he crouched to search the desk’s bottom drawers, however, he came face-to-face with the dim orange light on the computer tower. It was just in sleep mode.
Straightening up, he nudged the mouse with the tip of his gloved finger. As the computer stirred back to life, he sent up a short prayer that it wouldn’t require a password.
For once, luck was on his side. The computer simply returned to the previous session in progress on the desktop. A folder had been left open, full of dozens of subfolders that were all named with strings of numbers in no obvious pattern.
He opened the first subfolder, trying to handle the mouse as little as possible. It contained a bunch of JPEG files with blank thumbnails, similarly titled with numbers. He clicked the slideshow button.
The first image popped up on the screen, and he sucked in a breath.
Though the lighting was dim, he recognized the interior design of the hallways at the Mirage. An older woman dressed to the nines and dripping in precious jewels was wrapped around a gorgeous man who couldn’t have been older than twenty, kissing him fervidly. The slideshow continued, displaying a series of photographs documenting their groping, borderline obscene progress down the hallway until they disappeared into a room.
Levi navigated back to the original folder and repeated the process with the second subfolder. This time, the pictures had been taken in one of the Mirage’s lounges. A man in a killer Balenciaga suit discreetly accepted a small baggie of pills from another man and passed him a wad of folded bills in return.
“Holy shit,” Levi said, and then shouted, “Martine!”
She emerged from the bedroom with a small lockbox under one arm. “Look what I found under Walsh’s bed—whoa. What’s that?”
“Being a front desk clerk may not pay well, but blackmail sure as hell does.” He showed her the first folder. “Walsh has been spying on the Mirage’s wealthy guests and blackmailing them with their indiscretions; that’s how he pays for all this. There are files here going back a couple of years. I bet when we run his financials we find a history of suspicious deposits for the same time period.”
Her eyes wide, she said, “He knew who killed Hensley.”
“And tried to leverage that information for a price. I’m thinking the same thing.”
“What kind of idiot tries to blackmail someone who’s already proven they’re willing to commit murder? Dumbass.” Martine looked at Walsh’s body, winced, and crossed herself. “Ah, no disrespect.”
“Walsh was standing at the desk with this folder open on the computer when he was killed. There’s no signs of forced entry or struggle; he invited the killer inside.”
“Yeah, to show them whatever evidence he had,” she said. “I would have done the same thing—asked to see it in person so I would be able to get rid of it once Walsh was dead.”
“Even if the files we want have been deleted, which seems likely, Carmen may be able to recover them.” Levi pointed to the box Martine was carrying. “What’ve you got?”
“No idea. Let’s find out.”
One quick snip with a pair of bolt cutters, and they got the lockbox open. Its only contents were a portable hard drive.
Levi and Martine’s eyes met as they let out simultaneous noises of triumph. “Let’s hope Walsh had the sense to back up his files before letting a murderer into his house,” he said.
Dominic’s phone rang during the drive to Dr. Tran’s office. He pressed the Answer button on his dashboard and said, “Hey, Jasmine.”
“Hey, Dom. My dad just texted me about the cookout this weekend—he wants to know if Levi keeps kosher.”
“Not completely. He doesn’t eat pork or shellfish, but those are the only dietary rules he usually follows. He doesn’t need separate cooking utensils or anything.”
“It wouldn’t be a problem if he did,” said Jasmine. “You know how my family is. We’re like the freaking United Nations.”
Dominic chuckled. Jasmine was multiracial—her father was black and her mother half white, half Paiute Tribe—so her extended family was diverse in itself. But in addition to Jasmine and her two biological siblings, her parents had fostered more than twenty kids over the past two decades, all just as much a part of the family as those who had been born or married into it. As a whole, her family included more than a dozen ethnicities and national origins, five different major religions, and seven spoken languages.
“Anyway,” she continued, “we’re really glad Levi can come. My parents are looking forward to meeting him.”
“It was nice of them to invite him.”
Her smile was audible when she said, “I told them I’ve never seen you like this with any other guy.”
“Levi’s special,” Dominic said absently, concentrating more on merging into the exit lane than the conversation.
Her soft laugh crackled over the speakers. “I know. Well, I’ve gotta run, but I’ll talk to you later.”
They said their goodbyes, and Dominic arrived at his destination a few minutes later.
Dr. Angela Tran’s psychiatry practice was west of the city, on a street where various professionals’ offices were clustered together in buildings that looked like attractive residential townhouses. Dominic had been here once before while searching for leads on the Seven of Spades; there was a private mailbox franchise less than a quarter mile away that the killer had used in their plot to frame Keith Chapman.
This time, he had left Rebel at home. He parallel parked his truck at the curb and mounted the steps to the front door, where he pressed a buzzer to be allowed inside.
The waiting room was what he’d expected—calm and quiet, furnished like a comfortable living room with the exception of the thick glass enclosing the receptionist’s desk. Bland landscapes hung on the wall next to poster advertisements for various psychotropic drugs.
Seasonal Affective Disorder got you down? read one with a picture of a beaming woman cuddling a dog in a meadow. Ask your doctor about Hybitram today! A Solantia product.
Nobody was waiting in the seating arrangement of a few plush loveseats clustered around a coffee table, which had been spruced up with some potted flowers and a little Zen garden. An end table held a pile of magazines along with a display of drug pamphlets. One quick scan proved they were all manufactured by Solantia Pharmaceuticals.
Dominic frowned, but he replaced the expression with a friendly smile as he approached the receptionist. She was already eyeing him with appreciation.
“Hi, I’m Adam Smith,” he said, giving her the highly creative pseudonym Levi had booked the appointment under. “I have a one o’clock with Dr. Tran?”
“Welcome, Mr. Smith. Let me get your intake paperwork.”
The false identity was possible because the appointment wasn’t being paid for by insurance. Levi had handed him an actual envelope full of cash the other day, and his jaw had hit the floor when he’d seen the amount. He’d protested, thinking he should contribute part, even though he couldn’t afford it, but Levi had waved him off. Only when Dominic pressed the issue had Levi admitted that because he’d paid for so few of his expenses during the time he’d lived with Stanton Barclay, he had almost two full years of his salary saved up.
He’d been so mortified that Dominic had changed the subject immediately—though not before experiencing a moment of self-doubt. What was it like for Levi to go from dating a powerful billionaire to a working-class guy with terrible credit and a mountain of gambling debts?
He shook off those stupid thoughts as the receptionist handed him a sheaf of papers through a window in the glass. Both the pen and the clipboard bore the Solantia logo.
“Thanks,” he said, dialing up the brightness of his smile a bit. She giggled and tucked her hair behind her ear.
Settling on one of the loveseats, he reviewed his goals for this visit. Dr. Tran had continued prescribing Chapman antipsychotics despite what seemed to be severe side effects—though they’d discovered after his death that he’d been poisoned with a mix of contraindicated drugs—and had ignored Natasha Stone’s repeated concerns about his physical and mental state. Dominic’s purpose here was to assess Tran’s personal qualities and clinical style to judge whether Levi needed to investigate her more closely.
As Chapman’s psychiatrist, Tran would have known he’d make the perfect fall guy for the Seven of Spades. She would have had access to the drugs used to poison him, not to mention the ketamine used on the Seven of Spades’s victims, and the mailbox used in the setup was a short walk from her office. One question needed to be answered: had her blasé attitude toward Chapman’s difficulties been the result of clinical misjudgment or something more sinister?
Dominic filled out the paperwork with the cover story he’d devised, which was pretty much his own real story with just a few details changed. A lie was always most convincing when it resembled the truth as much as possible. He dreaded talking about his gambling for fifty minutes, but there was too great a chance Tran would call his bluff if he tried to fake something else. He could power through it.
After he returned the papers to the receptionist, he only had to wait five minutes before another man left the inner office, barely sparing Dominic a glance as he walked by. Tran herself emerged a short while later.
“Mr. Smith, I’m Dr. Tran,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He tossed aside the magazine he’d been pretending to read and rose to shake her hand. “You too.”
Tran was somewhere in her mid-forties, of average height, her black hair pulled up in a bun. She had a benevolent smile and gave off a composed, professional vibe as she showed Dominic into her office.
Unsurprisingly, there was no evidence just lying around that screamed I’m a serial killer! There were, however, a ton of drug posters on the wall, more even than in the waiting room. Dominic felt like he was at a Solantia convention as he took a seat in the cushy armchair Tran indicated.
She sat across from him with an open folio on her lap. “I’ve been reviewing your intake forms—I see you describe your condition as ‘compulsive gambling’?”
He knew what she was getting at. “I’ve never been a fan of the term ‘pathological gambling.’”
“Understandable. In fact, the new DSM doesn’t use that term anymore either; the diagnosis is ‘gambling disorder’ now. But of course we’ll use whatever language you’re most comfortable with.” Crossing her legs at the knee, she leaned back in her chair, pen at the ready. “Why don’t we start with a brief history of the problem? Anything you think is important to my understanding.”
Dominic gave her the bullet points—how he’d been fascinated by gambling throughout middle and high school, but it had only become an obsession after he graduated and was bored out of his mind at community college. Realizing he was on a dangerous path was one of the reasons he’d enlisted in the Army. Eight years of purpose and structure with the Rangers had kept him out of trouble; once he’d been discharged home, it had surged back with a vengeance. He’d spiraled out of control over the following two years, getting himself into some very deep shit, until a nasty shock with Rebel’s health had driven him to commit to abstinence. He’d been in recovery ever since.
Tran gave him her full attention, listening without comment, jotting down the occasional note. So far, her behavior had been above reproach.
“Have you sought professional treatment for compulsive gambling in the past?” she asked when he was done, even though there was a section on the intake form where he’d put all that information.
“Yeah, I had a couple sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy with a counselor when I first quit.”
“Mmm. So—why now?”
“I’m sorry?” he said.
She smiled. “It’s a question I ask all my new patients. What drove you to seek help now, as opposed to a week or a month or a year ago? Has something changed in your life? Some new source of stress, perhaps?”
My quasi-boyfriend thinks you may have killed five people and framed an innocent man. “Uh . . .” Dominic went with the first explanation that came to mind. “I started a new job recently, and I couldn’t avoid being exposed to an environment I shouldn’t have been in. It might happen again, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some help.”
“I see. You’re in . . .” She flipped back to his forms. “Personal security?”
“That’s right.”
“That must bring you into frequent contact with gambling triggers in a city like Las Vegas.”
“They can be difficult to avoid, yeah.”
Tran was quiet for a moment, tapping her pen against her pad. “Tell me, Mr. Smith, how do you feel when you gamble?”
He thought it was an odd question, but he didn’t see the harm in an honest answer. He’d explored this topic ad nauseam in Gamblers Anonymous. “Excited, I guess. During the times I was gambling, it was my go-to whenever I was bored, which was a lot. I enjoy the social aspect, the skill involved—everything about it, really. I’ve always been kind of a thrill-seeker. I’m competitive, I like to take risks, and I like to win.” Flashing a self-deprecating grin, he added, “But who doesn’t, you know?”
“Sounds like it would be challenging to give up something you enjoyed so much.”
“Well, I only enjoyed it while it was happening,” he said. “Afterward I would feel sick and ashamed, especially if I’d lost a lot of money or if I’d had trouble stopping. And the things it did to the people I cared about—I know now that the consequences aren’t worth the pleasure I might feel in the moment. For whatever reason, I can’t gamble in a healthy way, so I shouldn’t gamble at all.”
She looked at him intently. “What do you think that reason is?”
Though he knew what she meant, he shrugged as if he didn’t understand the question. Unease crawled across his skin.
“Why do you think gambling became a compulsive behavior for you, rather than remaining a relatively harmless leisure activity?” she said, undeterred by his evasion.
“Why does anyone get addicted to anything?” He forced a laugh. “We have no idea, right?”
“That’s true. There’s an enormous amount of controversy about the causes of addiction even after decades of research. But I’m not asking what you think about the field as a whole. I’m asking how you personally attribute the causes of your own addiction.”
Dominic didn’t answer; he couldn’t. He swallowed hard and looked at the diploma hanging on the wall. There was a clock ticking somewhere in the room that was incredibly loud all of a sudden.
The silence dragged out for about a minute before Tran said, “You’ve been abstinent for two years. That’s very impressive. But I have to wonder about your lack of support.”
“I have support. My family, my friends, they’ve done everything they can to help me.”
“That’s excellent, and I’m happy to hear it. I actually meant professional support, though.” She rifled through her papers. “In your own words, your attendance at Gamblers Anonymous is sporadic, and you don’t have a sponsor. You haven’t signed up for any of the voluntary self-exclusion bans offered by any of the casinos in the city. You ended your CBT counseling long before it could have had any measurable effect. You’ve created a debt repayment plan, which is commendable—but you haven’t made any actual changes to the way you handle your finances, which is one of the first steps any clinician would advise to someone with a gambling disorder.” Meeting his eyes, she said, “To me, this paints the picture of a man trying to white-knuckle his way through recovery.”
He felt like she’d knocked the wind out of him, and he had to take a couple of shallow breaths before he could respond. “I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said, more harshly than he’d intended.
She didn’t even blink, just sat there with an expression of infinite patience.
Briefly closing his eyes, he got a grip on himself. He was letting her throw him off-balance, and that wasn’t going to help Levi. “Look, I just—it’s difficult for me to talk about this stuff. Nobody likes to think of themselves as a loser.”
“A ‘loser’?” she said slowly. “That’s a particularly loaded term for a gambler, don’t you think?”
Dominic rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. He didn’t know why he’d said that at all.
“And I’d imagine a compulsive behavior that’s difficult to control would be very threatening to someone whose self-identity is strongly rooted in their sense of competency and physical strength.”
He stared at her, a faint ringing in his ears.
“You’re obviously well-motivated to abstain from gambling, but at the same time, you’ve chosen not to pursue the many treatment options available to you,” said Tran. “I have to wonder if maybe you view your compulsive gambling as an inherent weakness, a personality flaw that can be overcome with willpower, rather than an illness deserving of professional treatment and regular management.”
“It is a weakness,” Dominic whispered.
She nodded, though she seemed to be more acknowledging his opinion than agreeing with him. “Many people struggle to accept a medical model of addiction, especially with behavioral addictions as opposed to substance abuse. But the truth is that disordered gambling shares many features in common with addiction to drugs and alcohol—an inability to stop despite negative consequences, increasing tolerance, even withdrawal symptoms. You don’t have to try to beat this on your own, and it’s not a personal failing to admit that you need help. Coming here was a great first step.”
He said nothing. He’d completely lost track of why he was here, and try as he might, he couldn’t regain his equilibrium.
“I’m going to recommend a combination of CBT, psychodynamic therapy, and continued participation in GA.” Tran glanced at the clock. “We’re almost out of time, so we’ll put together a treatment plan during our next session. In the meantime . . .”
She retrieved her prescription pad from the back of her folio, scribbled on the top page, and ripped it off. Dominic snapped out of his stupor as she handed it to him.
“This is an SSRI,” he said. “I’m not depressed.”
“I’m not prescribing it for depression. There’s no FDA-approved pharmacotherapy for gambling disorder yet, but studies have shown promising results for off-label uses of SSRIs. The theory is that the brain activity involved in compulsive gambling has similarities to obsessive-compulsive disorders, so the dosage is similar to what I’d prescribe for that condition. It should help decrease cravings and mental preoccupation with gambling, though chances are it’ll take about ten to twelve weeks to really start working.”
“Trolexin—Solantia makes that, don’t they?”
“Mm-hmm,” Tran said, absorbed in her notes.
Dominic suppressed a snort as everything finally clicked into place.
She showed him to the door and shook his hand goodbye. In the waiting room, he politely declined to schedule another session with the receptionist and walked straight outside. Back in the bright sun and blazing heat, he caught himself on the bed of his truck and stood there for several minutes, breathing deeply.
Tran’s words echoed through his head, bouncing around his skull like an out-of-control pinball. He had her number now, and he could tell Levi to scratch her off the list—but he wasn’t sure it had been worth the cost.