24. Field Trip
Chapter 24
Field Trip
Riverside County—The next night
D arkness had fully descended by the time the small private plane carrying Tig and her crew landed at Ontario International Airport. Tig had invited Brucie to tag along, mostly because he had the keys to Petar’s casino and knew the layout. She’d sent Jayden ahead of them during the day, driving an oversized black van he borrowed from the police department’s fleet, one with enough seats for the entire party and their forensics gear loaded in the back. He met them at the pickup curb.
Tig swung her gun bag into the rear compartment of the van. Liza and Zeke followed suit, loading theirs, too.
“Thanks for picking us up.” Tig got into the front passenger seat and pulled the door shut.
Liza and Zeke took the back seat, with Brucie in the middle.
Tig waited for Jayden to signal and merge the van into the thick airport traffic. She tapped her fingers on the door rest, eager to learn the status of Petar’s casino in Eastvale, but she didn’t want to distract him while driving.
He entered the on-ramp and accelerated onto the freeway, the headlights bouncing as he swerved to avoid debris on the road. “You guys have a pleasant flight?”
Tig glanced over her shoulder and let her team answer first.
“Smooth as silk,” Zeke said.
“Yeah, right.” Liza hooked her thumb in Zeke’s direction. “With that maniac at the wheel? He flies that plane like it’s a fighter jet.”
Tig shook her head and faced forward again, ignoring their squabbling. She’d waited long enough to get down to business. “Did you find out anything today?”
“I scoped out Petar’s casino before coming here.” Jayden signaled and moved to the fast lane. “No sign of any activity.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Brucie said from the back seat. “We shut the place down tight and hung out the closed sign, then drove to the Hill.”
Twenty-five minutes later, they cruised through a seedy manufacturing district, old and dated, with weeds and scattered trash filling the packed-dirt parkways. The busted streetlights were sparsely planted along the road, shadows heavy in the no-man’s-land between them. Tig scanned the area as Jayden drove the van past a flat-roof two-story building, the red bricks tarnished black by smog, and Brucie pointed out the main entrance. An unmarked door. If Tig hadn’t known what she was looking for, she’d have thought the weathered door was a private entrance for staff. No business sign, no light, no doorbell. It didn’t look inviting.
While they circled the casino twice, Brucie described the layout inside, then Jayden parked across from the front entrance. There was no reason for them to be stealthy about their entry.
They gathered at the back of the van to unpack and load their guns. Everyone except Brucie was armed. Tig crossed the street, heading to the door, with Liza and Zeke behind her. Jayden and Brucie covered the rear.
“Someone tore off the closed sign,” Brucie whispered.
Tig motioned for the team to file out along the building’s exterior wall. She leaned in close to Brucie. “Are there any cameras out here?”
“No. Only inside.”
Zeke and Liza framed the door, guns ready.
Tig caught Zeke’s attention and gestured. “See if it’s locked.”
Being closest, he reached past the bricks and twisted the knob. The door squeaked open. “This don’t look good.”
Tig shot him a warning look. The burglar might still be inside. She aimed a two-fingered V at her eyes, then pointed at Jayden and Brucie, hooking her thumb over her shoulder, sending them to the rear again. Zeke got the message. Both he and Liza followed Tig through the dark hall without a word. She gestured low toward each door, signaling them. They each turned different doorknobs, whooshed inside, and cleared the areas. Mostly private card rooms and a few offices. No one was hiding there.
Tig sniffed the air—a mortal had been through the hallway recently. Creeping along, slowly and cautiously, she finally came to a double-wide entryway leading into the small casino and peered around the framed wooden edge. Blackjack, craps, and roulette tables filled the space, in addition to several slot machines.
Silent as the grave, empty as a tomb, the pristine room waited for customers. With Petar gone, they’d probably never return. From what she had learned, he’d been the glue that held the operation together and kept the local police away.
“That way,” Brucie whispered, pointing at a door hung with an “employees only” sign.
Tig sent Liza and Zeke through the doorway and down another hall, which led to an office. Once the two officers cleared the area, she entered. Unlike in the pristine casino, tornado-ravaged file cabinets sat along one wall. Someone had opened the drawers and dumped the contents onto the pricey Persian carpet.
The second thing to strike her was how nicely decorated the room looked, aside from the file-cabinet chaos. The furniture wasn’t more than a year old, hardwoods and expensive leather, with original oil paintings on the walls. Petar had spared no money on his office—except for the desktop computer, which was yellow with age and still had a slot for an obsolete five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk.
“Look!” Brucie pointed at the surveillance monitor on the wall over a couch, the screen divided into eight quadrants. A figure fled down a dark corridor, light blooming in one rectangle when the intruder slammed open a door leading into the rear parking lot.
“Which way?” Tig demanded.
Brucie waved at the door they’d come through. “To the right. Keep going to the end.”
“Zeke, Liza, with me. Jayden, watch the security monitors—make sure he doesn’t circle back in through the front. Brucie, stay here, follow Jayden’s orders, touch nothing.”
She whooshed out the office door and down the hallway. Fingertips pressed lightly on the exit door, she applied enough force to get a peek outside without being seen. The doorway led to a small, chewed-up, four-space parking lot, with an asphalt alley beyond it, and more buildings backing onto the alleyway from the other side.
While she wore tactical gear and bulletproof protection, she didn’t want to take a head shot. That’d slow her. Cautiously, she edged outside. No sign of anyone. Big trash dumpsters were scattered along the alley. Large enough for someone to hide behind—or in.
No choice.
“Liza, go left,” Tig whispered. “Zeke, go right. Watch the dumpsters. Bonus to whoever catches the thief.”
Liza sprinted to the first container, and before Zeke could even open his, she was hauling a scroungy, garbage-tainted perp from hers. “Got ’em.”
“Ow, fuck you, bitch,” the perp whined.
“Right back at you, asshole.” Liza pinned him to the asphalt and put his face into the nasty drain water running along the driveway’s center.
Tig felt no sympathy for the thief. “Zeke, keep looking. Clear all the dumpsters. Make sure no one’s hiding in the others. Then search this bin for anything the perp dropped.”
“Aw, chief. Really?”
“Hey, not my fault Liza won the prize.”
Tig sprinted to the perp and, with Liza’s help, pulled off the guy’s smelly jacket and mask, handcuffed him, then patted him down. She stuffed his wallet in her back pocket and inspected the thin stack of papers sticking out from his pants: signed credit card receipts.
What could he do with those? Only the last four digits of the card number showed on each receipt.
With his ragged beard and deep voice, she tentatively tagged him as male. Clutching the back of his t-shirt, she hauled him to his feet and marched him to the open door. “Liza, please cover Zeke as he works, then bag the soiled clothes and come join us.”
“Got it, chief.”
Once back in Petar’s office, she plopped the perp onto the couch. She gestured for Jayden to process the scene and pointed to Brucie to take the guest chair and stay there.
Then she turned to the perp. “What’s your name?”
He huddled in on himself, looking sullen.
“Why do they think not answering gets them anywhere?” she asked of no one in particular.
Jayden shrugged and smiled at her, but kept searching through Petar’s desk.
Tig opened the wallet she’d confiscated and found his driver’s license. “Bob Dunnings? Or is this fake?”
He glared at her.
“This will go faster if you’d answer my questions.”
“I don’t have to say a thing.”
“Notice I haven’t Mirandized you? Whatever you tell me before I do is inadmissible.”
“Huh?”
“It’s off the record. We can’t use it against you.”
His brow furrowed, like he wasn’t sure.
“You think about it, Bob. Could get you out of here quicker. I’ll be right back. Stay put, or I’ll shackle you.”
She pulled Brucie into the hallway. This whole situation stank, and not just because Bob had been up close and personal with a trash dumpster. The timing made no sense. Why did he break in the same night they arrived? Unless…maybe someone had tipped him off?
Tig motioned at the office. “Do you know the guy?”
“No, but based on the tats, I would say the NSD gang,” Brucie replied. “They have the northern territory in San Diego County.”
“Who’s the leader?”
“Mashawn. Greedy piece of shit. Petar had to convince him to leave our operation alone. Mashawn kept sending his crew this way; Petar kept sending them back empty. He considered it a public service.”
“And you helped Petar drain them?”
“Uh, not quite. Petar always got first dibs. But someone had to take out the empties.”
Tig pinched the bridge of her nose. Maybe Petar got the street justice he deserved.
No, she couldn’t think that way. She had a murder to solve, and whoever was behind it had used the same silver stakes sent to people under her protection.
Besides, this was so far outside her jurisdiction that she could choose to ignore Petar’s past crimes and Brucie’s involvement without taxing her conscience too much. “How would I locate Mashawn?”
“He and his crew live in a housing project, that is, those members of his crew who had the good sense not to come after Petar.” He gave her the location.
“So, could Petar’s death be payback?”
Brucie scratched behind an ear. “Don’t see how Mashawn would know what we are or how to kill us, or why he’d have one of those silver stakes the others got.”
“How did you know—”
“Word travels fast. Liza took me to a basketball game at your community center, and the people surrounding us were all talking about silver stakes. I figured those had to be like the one sticking out of Petar. But I don’t see Mashawn for this. How’d he figure out that Petar was staying at a hotel in Mordida? Unless they followed him somehow? I just don’t see them having the manpower or the strength to kill Petar.”
“So, what is Bob looking for?”
“Cash?”
Tig snorted. “In the file cabinets?”
“Customer lists, maybe. If they killed Petar, or found out about his death, they might want to take over our business.” Brucie rubbed at his eyes. “I kinda guess leaving the closed sign posted was a bad idea. Might have been a green light to Mashawn.”
“Could that be why he took the credit card receipts? To get the names?”
Brucie shrugged. “Could be.”
“Okay. Let me take another shot at questioning him. Stay quiet, but if you hear something and need to tell me, ask to go outside again. I don’t want to discuss any of this in front of Bob.”
“Sure.”
She strode back into the room, turned one of the guest chairs to face Bob, then eased onto the seat. “So you work for Mashawn.” She said the accusation as a statement, not a question. “I have enough to arrest you and him. Conspiracy. Racketeering. Illegal gambling.”
“Fuck, you can’t do that. I’m not working for Mashawn.”
She poked at the NSD tattoos on his right biceps. “These say otherwise.”
“I ran with him when I was younger, but not now.” Bob started rocking himself. “I have a legit job installing wireless antenna towers. But I needed extra money.”
“You were going to get it by robbing the casino?”
“No. A guy paid me to break in and steal an address list, anything with customer names on it. I got the feeling he was looking for someone. Knew the casino was closed and thought the woman he wanted placed bets with the owner.”
“Woman? What woman?”
“Guy didn’t give me a name.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Don’t know his name either. One of the old crew put him in touch with me.”
They never insisted on seeing identification. Stupid, really, not to find out something about who you were working for, just in case they screwed you on the deal. Unless…there was another possibility. A vampire may have bitten him and wiped his mind of the name. But he’d need some way to recognize the guy who hired him. “What did he look like?”
“Uh, Santa Claus? With a mustache and no beard. Curly blond hair that’s almost white. But young. Mid-twenties. Not skinny, but not stocky, either.”
“Think hard. What was his name?”
“Ow, fuck!” he screamed, doubling over then snapping upright, leaning to the side to rub his face against the couch. “My head. The pain—”
Yup. A vampire had blocked his memory. “Listen to my voice. Take a deep breath. Now another. Stop struggling to remember. Let the pain float away.”
“I’m stroking out. I’m going to die.”
“No, you aren’t. Hold still. I’m going to check your pulse.” She laid two fingers against his cardioid artery. A strong, rhythmic heartbeat confirmed her guess. “You’re fine. Keep breathing deeply. Think about your favorite candy bar.”
Telling him what to think about was the best diversion. She’d learned to never tell someone what not to think about. If she told him not to think about Santa Claus, his brain would latch on to the idea and the pain would come back.
A few minutes later, Bob opened bloodshot eyes and stared up at her.
“You better?” she asked.
“Yeah. What the hell was that?”
Tig shrugged. “You get migraines?”
“No, I—”
“Listen. It’s gone now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me what the guy wanted you to do after you left here?”
Thinking about his instructions might revive the pain, but unlikely. Santa Claus had had to leave him with enough memory to be useful at the task he was hired to perform.
“I’m to meet him tonight with whatever I stole, and he’ll pay me.”
“Where are you meeting?”
“Poway.”
Why did that sound familiar? Both the city and the guy’s description.
Zeke strode in, with Liza following. “Found nothing, chief,” he said. “No one else was in hiding, no other stuff about Petar. Looked like the trash was collected recently.”
“Thanks.” Tig turned back to the perp. “Where in Poway are you meeting?”
“A bar.”
She heaved out a deep breath. The cities were sixty miles apart. “Then we’re joining you for a drink.”
It took a while for all the ducks to align, during which Tig powered up Petar’s old desktop computer and, after Brucie gave her the password, explored the data files. Or at least tried to. At a guess, the machine was over twenty years old and still ran on an early version of Windows. She finally conceded defeat, stopped trying to figure out Petar’s document filing system, and had Jayden pack the whole thing to bring back to the Hill.
Afterward, Brucie showed her the second floor, where Petar’s children slept. Janey had her own room, as did Petar. A search revealed nothing useful. The bedrooms looked undisturbed by the thief.
The locksmith Brucie called to fix the casino’s front door arrived an hour later and took forever to secure the place. By then, Jayden had finished documenting the crime scene.
Tig gathered her team and asked for suggestions, and they devised the best spur-of-the-moment plan they could. Jayden would be their inside guy. She asked him to change into the civvies he’d brought along, because he was the only one who could tail Bob without giving away that Santa Claus was about to be busted. If a vampire went into the bar, the white-haired man would skip the meeting and fade into the night.
With Jayden’s help, she used Petar’s computer to put together an innocuous list. They built the list by copying and pasting from an online phone book, with enough information edited that they weren’t sending a killer after an innocent third party.
According to Brucie, none of the made-up names on the fake list were casino clients. It would be her luck to include a common name accidentally and for the person to turn out to be a regular gambler. Hopefully, Brucie’s memory was good for detail.
“Um, Tig?” Brucie said. “Maybe we should grab the credit card receipts for the night of Petar’s impromptu performance.”
Tig snapped her fingers together. “To see who knew Petar was performing at the wedding.”
“Yeah. I hadn’t thought of the idea before. A lot of people use the ATM for cash or just charge their chips. I’ll pull October’s file. The reconciliation from each credit card company lists the names, amounts, date, and last four digits.”
“Do it.”
Brucie grabbed a file from the banking drawer.
She scowled, trying to reconcile why anyone would be stupid enough to charge their chips at an illegal gaming club until she focused on the business name: Petar’s Collectibles and Curiosities.
“Antiques dealer,” Brucie said to her unasked question. “Buy low, sell high.”
Tig chuckled. Finally, with all the preparations done that she could think of, they hit the road to the Loco Horse Bar and Grill.
The drive time to Poway took over an hour, and they were racing against the clock. By law in California, all bars stopped serving alcohol at two in the morning, and most shut the doors then, too.
They arrived for Bob’s meetup only to find the bar already closed.
Fuck . “Okay, everyone, this is going into extra innings. We’ll grab hotel rooms and sack out for the day.”
“But I need to get home,” Bob whined.
“Not happening tonight. Do you have a phone number for your contact?”
She handed Bob his phone and watched as he unlocked the device, then scrolled through his text messages. “Uh, I don’t remember sending these texts, but yeah, I guess I do.”
He showed Tig the phone’s screen. A short series of exchanges about the theft. “Text him. You’ll meet tomorrow at eight.”
She checked before Bob sent the message.
Moments later, a text dinged in. Can’t do eight. Eleven. And don’t be late this time.
Tig huffed out a breath. The response wasn’t ideal, but the extra time would give them an opportunity to plan their approach. “Jayden, drive us around the bar. I want to reconnoiter. Then we’ll head to a local hotel. I have an idea.”