Hot Lights, Cold Steel Page 7

  I gave Miranda the details of our visits to Sin-Dee and Rosalee Kennedy. She took it as progress, but I felt like the day had been a waste. I didn’t tell her that, leaving her this sliver of comfort. Truth was, we had nothing that would lead us to Noel. T-Tommy offered that at least we knew where she wasn’t, and that was something. I couldn’t argue with that logic, but I still felt like we were buried to our hubcaps in mud.

  “What does your gut tell you?” Miranda asked. “Is Noel okay?”

  Should I lie? Give her the usual clichés? Should I tell her the truth? What I truly felt? What my experience told me the end game would be? I did neither. I said, “I don’t know.”

  Miranda sighed. Her fingers trembled as she cupped her wineglass close to her chest. “When I went to lie down earlier, all the ugly images rose up in my head. She’s hurt. She’s sick. She’s captured and locked away somewhere. I never thought I’d pray for her to relapse.” She looked at me. Pain radiated from her face like an open flame. “That’s what we’re hoping for, isn’t it? That she’s strung out and shacked up?”

  There it was. Her pain and fear had driven her right to the heart of it. Better that Noel stumbled and fell and ended up humping another drug addict than something worse.

  “Maybe that’s exactly where she is,” I said. “Wouldn’t be the first time, and history does repeat.”

  Miranda nodded and sniffed back tears. “What now?”

  “Later tonight T-Tommy and I are going to visit High Rollers and see what Rocco Scarcella knows.”

  “Later?” Miranda asked. “It’s already late.”

  “For you,” T-Tommy said. “Rocco’s a night crawler. His midnight is your noon.”

  “You guys just want the lap dances,” Claire said.

  “I like yours better.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You wish.”

  Yes, I did.

  CHAPTER 18

  FRIDAY 12:03 A.M.

  T-TOMMY AND I ARRIVED AT HIGH ROLLERS A SHADE PAST MIDNIGHT. The twenty-foot-high windowless metal building sat near the county line just off West University. Flanked by a liquor store and a fireworks stand, it looked more like a warehouse than a den of sin. Except for the age-faded neon High Rollers sign, that is. The G was dead, and the O flickered as if taking its final breaths. Ten-foot-high painted images of nearly nude women, one blonde, one brunette, each snaking around a stripper’s pole, bracketed the neon lettering. Not exactly works of art, but you couldn’t miss them, so I guessed it worked.

  Beneath the sign, a black canvas awning shaded the entry door. Two twentysomething guys, each familiar with the gym and sporting permanent flexes beneath black High Rollers T-shirts, guarded the entrance. One of them held the door open for us and mumbled something I couldn’t hear over the music that spilled out.

  Just inside, a young woman sat behind a counter. Her halter top hid little, and there was a lot to hide. She stopped texting on her cell phone long enough to extend a palm toward us. We paid the twenty-dollar cover charge and entered the main room, where the music thumped and the girls humped and gyrated as bills were stuffed beneath G-strings. A drunk with an erection was easily separated from his cash.

  While some strip joints were classier with centerfold girls, comfy banquets, gourmet food, and higher dollar liquor and others were skanky, even downright skin-crawling filthy, they were mostly the same. Girls twisted around poles for lonely, horny dudes and collected cash by the fistful.

  High Rollers leaned toward the skanky end of the spectrum. The air smelled of booze and testosterone. Though some of the girls were attractive, most had been beaten down by the stripper life.

  High Rollers hadn’t burned much cash in the decorating department. It looked as much like a warehouse on the inside as it did on the outside: high ceilings crisscrossed with exposed metal beams and conduits; neon beer signs slapped on the walls; ceiling lights that swiveled, slicing red, green, and yellow beams across the crowd; a single long bar to our left; and a main stage straight ahead where two girls, G-strings only, performed a mock lesbian act. Four-tops filled the remainder of the room, most with lap dances under way.

  God bless America.

  A single flight of stairs led to a small balcony and a square room that seemed to hover near the ceiling above and to the left of the main stage. Probably Rocco’s office. Bands of light slipped through the blinds that blocked a large picture window, which, if open, would allow a view over the entire floor. Sort of like God looking down on his people.

  T-Tommy and I hung at the bar, while Sean, one of the bartenders, went to see if Rocco was “available.” His word.

  I took an inventory of the room. Maybe two hundred customers, twenty or so dancers, and a dozen waitresses. Across the way were the private rooms. I knew this because there was a sign above the door that read, VIP Lounges—Private. I was observant that way. I suspected that for the VIPs anything in the realm of sex, drugs, and rock and roll was available. For a price. Looked like Rocco did all right for himself.

  Sean returned and led us upstairs to Rocco’s office. A man, all neck and chest, dark hair, darker eyes, no smile, stood next to the entrance and swung the door open for us.

  Rocco was short, round, combed-over, and wore a white shirt with a pulled down brown tie, thin end two inches longer than the wide one. Rosalee was right. He did have fat fingers.

  The office was large as was Rocco’s desk. The top was clean, no papers, no photos, only a phone and a lamp. The wall behind him held framed photos of two topless women. I doubted they were his family, probably his favorite dancers, but you just never knew about things like that in this world of sin and sleaze. Still, I saw little family resemblance.

  Smoke from the cigar Rocco crushed between his teeth circled his head as he motioned for us to sit, not bothering to get up himself.

  “Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Scarcella. I’m Dub Walker, and this is Tommy Tortelli.”

  “What can I do for the law this evening, Investigator Tortelli?” He smirked.

  “Just a couple of questions,” T-Tommy said.

  “We’re looking for a girl,” I said. “Noel Edwards. You know her?”

  Rocco’s gaze settled on me. “Maybe.”

  “What about Crystal Robinson?”

  His eyes narrowed, and he clamped down on his cigar. “What’s this about?”

  “I understand they dance here. We’re looking for Noel.”

  “Why?”

  “Her mother hasn’t heard from her. Couple of weeks. She’s worried.”

  “She hire you to find her?”

  “She asked if I’d look into it.”

  He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “You think I can help you?”

  “Word is you’re the man that knows everyone and everything, and since Crystal and Noel dance here, we thought you might know where they are.”

  “They’re both missing,” T-Tommy said.

  Rocco hesitated as if working on what to say. “Yeah. Crystal dances here. No regular schedule. Not very reliable but with a body like hers . . .” He turned his palms up.

  “Write her own ticket?” I asked.

  “You bet. She calls when she wants to work, and I make room for her. My customers love her.”

  “And Noel?”

  “Been here a couple of times. With Crystal. Definitely not a regular dancer.”

  “When’s the last time they were here?” I asked.

  “Three, four weeks ago.”

  “Any idea where they might be?”

  “None. Might try their roommate. Sin-Dee Parker. Lives at—”

  “We talked to her,” I said.

  He smiled and spread his hands on the desk. “Not much help, was she?”

  I shook my head.

  “Coke whore. Brain-dead for years.”

  “She ever dance here?”

  “Year ago. Talk about unreliable. She’d show up, just couldn’t stand up most of the time. Can’t run a business that way.”

 
I handed him a card with my cell number on it. “If you hear from Crystal or Noel, I’d appreciate a call.”

  Rocco took the card. “You can count on it.”

  I stood and looked down at him. “Any other of your girls missing?”

  “They come; they go.” He offered a fleshy smile. One of those inside-joke-man-to-man deals. “They’re dancers and whores.”

  Translation: meat. Furniture. Consumable commodity. I wanted to hit him square in his fat lips.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help,” Rocco said. He pulled open a desk drawer, came out with a couple of business cards, and gave them to me. “Lap dances. On the house.”

  We left.

  Rocco picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  Lefty answered after one ring.

  “I just had a couple of guys in here. Investigator Tortelli.

  HPD. Him I know. The other guy’s Dub Walker. See what you can find out.”

  CHAPTER 19

  FRIDAY 10:39 A.M.

  THE SEVERELY CHEWED ARM WAS MOSTLY BONE, THE FLESH STRIPPED away by predators. The barely attached hand had fared a little better, two fingers missing, the others gnawed and cracked, remnants of bright red nail polish still visible. No sign of any other remains.

  T-Tommy stood in a small clearing near the edge of a heavily wooded area, which was sandwiched between an old cemetery and a rarely used county road. He watched as two coroner’s technicians prepared to wrap the arm in plastic sheeting for transport to the Department of Forensic Sciences. He hated bodies, especially those that were damaged, decayed, hacked, or chewed on. And to think that just yesterday he had lamented the fact that he had no murders to investigate. Should’ve kept his mouth shut.

  “Anything else?” T-Tommy asked.

  Head criminalist Sidau Yamaguchi looked up, shading his eyes from the morning sun that stabbed through the trees. “This is all so far. I’d suspect the rest of the corpse isn’t far away.”

  “Who found it?”

  Sidau spun on his haunches and pointed through the trees to where a man and a boy stood at the edge of the cemetery next to an off-kilter tombstone. The boy looked about ten. They were talking with Derrick Stone, one of HPD’s uniformed officers. T-Tommy headed their way.

  Stone introduced him to Bill Jenkins and his son Robbie. The older Jenkins told him what had happened. As he spoke, Robbie leaned against his father, who clasped a protective hand on the boy’s shoulder. They had been out hiking. Nothing unusual, a beautiful day, and then Robbie spotted the arm.

  “You hike here often?” T-Tommy asked.

  “Sometimes,” Jenkins replied. “We have several trails we follow. Really like a couple over near Paint Rock, don’t we, sport?” He ruffled the boy’s hair.

  Robbie gave a slight nod but kept his gaze on the ground.

  “We live near here and decided to stay close to home today since Robbie has a birthday party to go to at noon. We were headed home when we found this.”

  T-Tommy looked at the boy. Tear trails marked his cheeks. I don’t like this, either, son. “And the guns?” He motioned toward two shotguns that leaned against a nearby tree. Looked like a double-barreled 12-gauge and a smaller pump. Probably a 20-gauge.

  “We always take them. Find some old stumps, things like that, for target practice. Teaching Robbie how to handle his new gun. Get ready for next hunting season.” Jenkins squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “It’ll be his first.”

  “You a good shot?” T-Tommy asked Robbie.

  Robbie rolled a sneakered foot up on one side, shrugged, and looked at T-Tommy. “Pretty good.”

  T-Tommy smiled and then faced the father. “See anyone else out here this morning?”

  “Not a soul,” Jenkins said.

  “You didn’t move or touch anything, did you?”

  “No. We watch CSI. We know what to do, don’t we?”

  This time the boy managed a weak smile.

  “Investigator Tortelli?”

  The shout came from his left. He turned and saw a uniformed officer emerge from the trees and motion to him.

  “You better take a look at this,” the officer said.

  T-Tommy excused himself, telling Jenkins that he’d contact him later if he had any more questions. Then he and Stone followed the officer through the forest.

  After about fifty yards, the uniform said, “Just a bit more.” He pushed aside a cedar limb and held it as they moved past him.

  T-Tommy picked up the odor of freshly turned soil, a smell that he knew well from his farm-raised childhood. The scent was laced with something else he recognized—the faint odor of decay.

  They reached a clearing where three other uniforms stood near a rectangle of gouged away earth. The first thing T-Tommy saw was the gnawed remains of a shoulder, bone and gristle exposed, flesh shredded. It was framed by torn plastic sheeting. As he moved closer, he saw a leg protruding through another rip in the plastic. Like the shoulder, large chunks of flesh were missing, the bones clearly visible. Attached to the damaged leg was a bare foot, nails painted purple, not the bright red polish he had seen minutes earlier. Two bodies or a fashion statement?

  The decay odor was weak, and though flies buzzed around the shredded flesh, he saw no maggots. The victim hadn’t been dead long. He backed away and watched as the evidence team went to work.

  Forty-five minutes later, Sidau and his crime lab crew had photographed the site, completed a grid walk of the immediate area for other evidence, and collected what they could find. The coroner’s techs then excavated the grave, finding two nude bodies. Young girls. Early twenties, give or take. Each had been wrapped in plastic. They removed them from the grave and sliced open the wrapping, careful to keep each corpse cupped within its sheeting, preserving any trace evidence. One of the bodies belonged to the arm, the other to the leg.

  “Pigs,” the tech said.

  “You sure?” T-Tommy asked.

  He nodded. “Seen it before. Drummond and Cooksey can tell us more, but that’s what it’ll be.”

  “There was a pack near here a couple of months ago,” Stone said.

  “Wiped out a chicken coop and killed a few calves. The local farmers put together a hunting party. Killed six of them. Must have been more.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “My uncle was one of the hunters.”

  T-Tommy knelt next to the bodies. He scanned them for strangulation bruises and evidence of gunshot wounds but saw none. What he did see was not what he expected. Each corpse had several small wounds over the abdomen. Not open gashes as in a stabbing, but rather each wound was closed by a neat row of little metal clips. “What the hell is all this?”

  Stone leaned closer. “Looks like when my dad had his gallbladder taken out.”

  “He had these metal things?”

  “Yeah. They sometimes use them instead of sewing things up.”

  “These girls must have had a bunch of shit wrong, then,” T-Tommy said. “Maybe they were in an accident of some kind.”

  Stone squatted beside him. “Or a knife fight.”

  “With each other?” T-Tommy shook his head. “Then they went to the hospital and got fixed up?”

  “You don’t think this could be some kind of torture deal, do you?”

  At first T-Tommy thought Stone must be kidding, but when he looked into the younger officer’s eyes, he saw that he was dead serious.

  “What kind of sick fuck would do that?” T-Tommy asked. “Hack up these girls, patch them up, and then kill them?”

  “The world’s full of candidates,” Stone said.

  “Maybe some surgeon decided to dump his bad cases,” one of the techs said.

  Stone offered a grim laugh. “Probably an HMO.”

  T-Tommy returned his attention to the bodies. Cause of death? No way he could tell. He’d leave that to the MEs.

  He stood and circled the corpses. He noticed the edge of a tattoo peeking around the side of one of the bodies. It was low, near the base of the s
pine. He tugged on a pair of latex gloves, dropped to one knee, and rolled the body on one side. The stiffness told him that death had been at least twenty-four hours or so earlier and not more than forty-eight. Fit the level of decay and the lack of visible maggots. Sometime Wednesday most likely. He could now see that the tattoo, a yellow rose wrapped in thorns, extended across the victim’s lower back. “Shit.”

  “That’s her,” Stone said. “In report this morning we got a BOLO on a missing girl. Blonde, nineteen, rose tattoo on her back. I’ve got it in my car. I’ll see who filed it.”

  T-Tommy stood. “Dub Walker.”

  “What?”

  “Dub Walker filed it. He’s looking for her.” T-Tommy sighed and looked up. The sun approached its noonday zenith in the cloudless sky, and the temperature had begun its daily rise. “Nothing like a double homicide to screw up a perfect spring day.”

  CHAPTER 20

  FRIDAY 11:49 A.M.

  ROCCO SCARCELLA PICKED UP THE FAT ENVELOPE LEFTY TOSSED ON his desk. He rolled off the rubber band, removed a stack of one hundred dollar bills, and thumbed through them. Twenty grand always felt good. He counted out four grand for Austin, the same for Lefty, and slipped the remainder into his desk drawer.

  Austin stuffed his cut into his jeans’ pocket and sat facing Rocco. Lefty carefully folded his money, slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket, and then leaned against the wall, working on a cuticle with a small red Swiss Army knife.

  Rocco fired up a fresh cigar, leaned back in his chair, and propped one foot on his desk. “Good work.”

  “Alejandro didn’t talk to anyone,” Austin said. “And the girl don’t know shit.”

  Rocco nodded. “Knew that from minute one. The girl was fun, though.”

  Austin laughed. “And knew her stuff.” He massaged his crotch. “Wouldn’t mind having a go at that.”

  “You got that right,” Lefty said.

  “Our friend would have a coronary if he found out,” Rocco said.

  “Fuck him,” Austin said.

  “I thought it was the girl you wanted.” Rocco wheezed out a laugh, followed by a fit of coughing. Once he composed himself, he looked at Austin. “But since he pays the bills, leave her alone.”