Pitt’s files looked out of order. Drawers were open, magazines lay open, papers were everywhere and opened food wrappers and containers had stained many of the documents. A coffee mug had been overturned and the liquid had absorbed into a sheaf of papers. A bottle of Jack Daniels was still uncapped.
By the looks of it, Pitt hadn’t kept his files up to date or in any kind of order. Standing in front of Pitt’s disorganized desk, Dale swiftly examined all the scattered papers on top but found no clues in the disarray.
He moved around the side of the desk to search the drawers and saw Pitt’s body sprawled on the floor, his face frozen in shock, his throat slashed almost as deep as Grant’s had been. The blood had splattered his head, upper body, waist and thighs and pooled around them.
He pulled his gun and crouched behind the desk. Seeing and hearing nothing, he looked again at Pitt’s corpse. From the thinness of the pooled blood, the murder had happened not long ago. Old blood would have thickened.
He then saw the woman on the floor just inside the office bathroom. Sidestepping a pool of blood, Dale ran to the girl’s side, holstering his weapon. Like Pitt, she had been sliced at the neck and suffered the same massive blood loss.
She was no more than seventeen, a dark-rooted blonde with soft features and freckles over the bridge of her nose. She had a ring in her lower lip and her pupils were severely dilated, pinhole pupils telling Dale she’d been high at the time of her murder. Her overwashed T-shirt and white thong were soaked in blood.
He raised her hands and saw what he thought was skin underneath her fingernails.
Dale did one more search with his gun drawn, turning on every light as he went, but found nothing before calling dispatch for the crime scene teams. Then he called Jimmy.
“I thought I told you I was going home for the night.”
“Two people were just murdered, Jimmy.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m tired, but I’ll be there.”
“I’m sorry too. Please apologize to Tina for me. Some things are beyond our control. And call Mark and get him down here too.”
Dale retrieved his equipment from the trunk of the car. Pulling on gloves and disposable paper boots, he went back inside.
Within minutes, he heard screeching and whining ambulance and police sirens. When the officials burst through the front door, he waved them to the back.
“No disruption. This is now a crime scene.”
Jimmy showed up less than ten minutes later and snapped on a pair of gloves. Dale was dusting for prints.
“What we got?” Jimmy asked.
Dale said, “Two dead bodies. One is Pitt and the other is a Jane Doe, maybe a hooker. We’ll have to hunt to see who she is. One killer. Both had throats slashed by what appears to be the same knife. Just like the Grant murder. Same killer or a copycat? Not sure on that.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“CSI is working over the body, so collect any evidence that you can. I doubt we’ll find anything. The murderer was here for something. That’s why he called here from Grant’s office.”
“He did?”
“Sorry, Jimmy. Forgot to tell you. That’s why I came back here for a follow-up interview with Pitt. When I was searching through the phone records of calls made from Grant’s office, the last number dialed was Pitt’s at nine-forty this morning, when Grant had been dead ten or more hours.”
“What do you think? Same guy?” Jimmy asked.
Dale nodded. “I think it’s our guy. I want to say that the murders are a serial killer profile. We have three—let’s expect a fourth to make it official. Knife used every time to cut the victims’ throats with one hand, while he has them under complete control with the other arm. Fast, easy, almost impossible to defend against and little or no struggle.”
He thought it was also someone Grant and Pitt had known and trusted.
While waiting for McAllister to arrive, he skimmed Pitt’s files. He searched through papers, drawers, filing cabinets and any other document container in the front and back offices.
Nothing with Grant’s name.
If Grant didn’t owe Pitt money, then why send Watters to the suite? Could the Pitt-Grant deal, if real, have been a cash job with no paperwork involved? And what about the anonymous phone call? Had the caller been trying to frame Watters, or was he reporting what he thought was accurate information? Pitt had admitted sending his employee to Grant’s suite that morning, but only for collection. Presumably, that meant that neither Pitt nor Watters had known that Grant was already dead.
Mark McAllister walked through the crime scene and over to Dale. “Have you found the safe yet?”
“No. We’re leaving that up to you while we do our own work. Okay, do your magic.”
It took McAllister two minutes to find the safe and less than three minutes to have it unlocked. Without a word, the safe breaker left.
Together, Dale and Jimmy opened the safe and found more than thirty thousand dollars in cash. Underneath the stack of bills, Dale found and carefully removed a stack of papers.
“What is it?” Jimmy asked over Dale’s shoulder.
“Not sure yet, but I’m glad we got them before the killer did. I’m too tired to think straight now, so I’ll go through them in the office tomorrow morning.”
The whole office would be bagged, brought back to the precinct and sifted. But Dale was sure it would yield little or nothing.
He had three perfect murders.
But if you looked hard enough, even “perfect” killers once in a while made mistakes.
Chapter 20
On the bed of his expensive hotel room, he sat cross-legged, naked except for a pair of latex gloves. He stared at the wall and awaited instructions. He had dropped the room temperature, which was now as cold as a meat freezer. Just the way that he liked it. It kept him alert.
The man didn’t sleep much. Sleep was for the weak. Every time he closed his eyes he opened himself to a series of vivid flashbacks—POW camps and torture.
He had only been in Vegas for a little over an hour and already he couldn’t wait to leave. He just didn’t like the town.
He heard footsteps in the hallway and then a knock on the door. Someone slid a manila envelope under it. From the sounds of the footsteps leaving he could tell it was a man.
The name Mr. Scott was printed on the outside of the envelope.
He split open the compact folder and removed its contents. He picked up a black and white photograph and an excited chill climbed his naked skin.
He threw the information on the bed when the phone rang.
“Yeah.”
“Did you get the package?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay in touch.”
He hung up without saying goodbye. He would be checking out and on his way soon enough.
It was late by the time Calvin returned from Pitt’s office, picked up Rachel and crossed the city to their hideout. Rachel, exhausted, excused herself and went to bed. When she left, Calvin went to his computer room to update his database.
He hacked into the LVMPD and learned that Detective Dale Dayton had been assigned twelve officers. With Dayton and his partner, there were now fourteen detectives on Calvin’s trail.
He had to be the prime suspect.
His search on Dayton told him that the detective was thorough and methodical, with a high success rate. If Calvin could find nothing on his own about the real killer, maybe Dayton could.