“So what’s the theory?” Serena asked. “What happened to Amira?”
“Try this. Walker gets carried away in his suite when Amira rejects him. Or maybe rough sex gets out of hand. She winds up dead. Then Boni helps Walker get away clean and finds a patsy in L.A. to take the fall.”
“Why’d Walker stay away after the police closed the case?” Serena asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe Boni had a secret deal with the cops back then that Walker wouldn’t set foot in Vegas again. Anyway, it’s ancient history until Rex Terrell drags the story into LV and brings up all the old rumors about Amira, Walker, and Boni. Then MJ gets hold of it and starts asking questions.”
“And gets killed.”
Stride nodded. “I keep coming back to Boni’s plan to implode the Sheherezade and launch the Orient project. The last thing you want to deal with when you’ve got that kind of money on the line is a skeleton in the closet from forty years ago. Like Amira’s murder.”
“I hate to point this out, but Sawhill doesn’t want you asking questions about this. What are you going to do?”
“Ask questions about this,” Stride said.
Serena laughed. “You could wind up the fastest-hired, fastest-fired detective in Metro history. Come on, let’s get out of here, and you can buy me lunch.”
“Deal.”
Stride gathered up his copies and shoved them inside his blazer pocket. He stacked the boxes of microfiche together and balanced them unsteadily. “Can you grab that copy of LV? That’s the one with Rex Terrell’s article.”
Serena picked up the magazine. One of the pages had a Post-it note, and Serena opened it to look inside.
“That’s Amira,” Stride told her.
There was a large black-and-white photograph in the magazine from the 1960s, with Amira in a sexy Spanish black dress, her black hair spilling across her sweaty face, her hand pulling up her skirt to reveal her bare, muscular leg. Behind her, in white, another showgirl struck a similar pose.
Stride dropped off the boxes with the librarian. He looked back and realized Serena hadn’t moved. She was holding the magazine in her hands, staring at it.
“What is it?”
Serena didn’t seem to hear him. Then she folded the magazine back and pointed at the photo.
“This girl in white behind Amira. That’s Peter Hale’s grandmother. The boy who was killed in the hit-and-run.”
PART TWO. CLAIRE
FOURTEEN
Breaking into the car was child’s play.
He waited in the backseat of the Lexus, parked in the shadows of the underground ramp at the Fashion Show Mall. His gun, a SIG-Sauer.357, was on the seat beside him.
The Lexus was near the entrance to Nieman’s. Of course. She was a fashionable lady. Seventy-five years old, widowed. Thin as a bird. She parked in a handicapped spot, because she had arthritis in her legs. The windows of the car were smoked, and no one could see inside. But he could see out and see her when she came.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. He found himself staring back at his own dark features: thick black hair, heavy beard line, and his eyes, so deep brown they appeared to have no color at all. He scared people with his eyes. He always had. It was as if, when they looked into his eyes, they were inside a closet, black, without light, with the walls closing in.
He was like his eyes. Without emotion. Focused only on his goal.
Except he knew that wasn’t true when it came to the boy. Peter Hale. He had felt something then, despite all his training, despite the soldiers who had showed him how to view pain and death through the lens of a microscope. Study it. Learn from it. But feel nothing.
He did feel something about the boy, so much that he changed his plan in the middle, which he never did. He changed targets.
His plan had been the mother. He took the boy instead.
No one would know about his lapse except himself, but it bothered him. He didn’t like to think that he was a creature of anger anymore, not like in the old days. Those creatures made mistakes. He was a strategist, a mercenary in the field, with a goal and a plan.
He saw the doors that led to the ramp elevators open, and the old woman came out, shopping bags in both hands. She walked gingerly. Each time her right foot came down, she winced, feeling pain in her joints. He could see her clearly, but she couldn’t see him, not when she approached the car and put the bags in the trunk, not when she fumbled with her keys by the driver’s door. The ramp was dark, and the car was dark. Even when she pulled open the door and maneuvered her frail body inside, she didn’t see him. She pulled the door shut. He was right behind her, watching her. He heard her exhale, sighing, the pressure finally off her feet.
She hunched over, struggling to fit the key in the ignition. When she finally did, the engine turned over, and light classical music filled the car. She settled back, resting her head against the cushion, relaxing.
Then she glanced in the mirror and saw him.
His hand was already around her face, clamping off her scream. He didn’t bother with his gun. There was no need. Instead, he leaned forward, his quiet voice at her ear, soothing her.
“We’re just going for a little drive,” he said.
He didn’t want her dropping dead of a heart attack, and he needed her calm for what she had to do. The old woman had to get him through the security gate at Lake Las Vegas. She lived there, alone, in an estate where he could wait safely for night to fall.
He knew this was the hard way. If it was only about killing the girl, there were easier ways to get it done. She partied at the casinos. She stripped off at the spa. He could take her in any of those places. But he was sending a message.
Security doesn’t mean a thing.
I can strike anywhere.
I’m coming for you.
FIFTEEN
Linda Hale told them to take Bonanza Road east until they wanted to become Mormons. That was where her mother lived.
Her mother-Peter’s grandmother-who had been a dancer onstage with Amira Luz.
Stride didn’t understand the reference to the Mormons until he and Serena took the drive. Where Bonanza ran out, on the border of the eastern mountains, they were less than a block from the city’s giant Mormon temple, with its white spires visible throughout the valley. In the neighborhood surrounding the temple were lavish homes with Jaguars parked in the driveways, rock gardens landscaped with tall saguaros, and kidney-shaped clear blue swimming pools.
Linda’s mother, Helen Truax, had a house of luminous white stucco almost directly opposite the temple, with a view down the valley that Stride figured was worth at least two million bucks. According to Linda, her mother was no Mormon, and she enjoyed having her wealthy religious neighbors know about her past as a barely clad dancer.
When Helen Truax opened the door, she looked nothing like any grandmother Stride had ever seen. She was dripping wet, with a diaphanous white robe slipped over her shoulders, open, revealing a one-piece teal swimsuit underneath. She was barefoot and at least as tall as Stride himself. He knew she was sixty years old, but she could have passed for forty.
“Please, come in.” She smiled at Stride, and her teeth were snowy white. She held a bell-shaped glass of white wine and had the dirtiest blue eyes he had ever seen.
“Your daughter said you had showgirl looks,” Serena told her. “She was right.”
Helen laughed. “I’d love to tell you this is all original equipment, but it’s not. If it starts to sag, I lift it. If it starts to wrinkle, I tighten it.” She cupped her full breasts in her hands. “Without help, these babies would be pointing at my toes by now.”
She turned on her heels. The robe didn’t stretch to the bottom of her swimsuit, and Stride watched the rhythm of her ass as he followed her. Serena landed a sharp elbow against his ribs.