Neither looked back.
18
Alexis was out front when they pulled into the estate.
She sat on a broad outdoor chair, knees curled up to her chest, arms looped around them. Slater knew she’d been stargazing. She did it every night. No phone, no thought, just a rare bout of stillness to end a predictably chaotic day. She said it re-energised her, centred her for the exertion that would come tomorrow.
She was still getting used to the upheaval of her life.
Quietly, he thought she was handling it better than anyone he’d ever known.
They pulled up to the closed roller door of the triple-garage and got out together.
Alexis stared. ‘The Bentley sure looks different.’
Slater said, ‘We’re going back tomorrow. To pick it up, and send a message.’
‘What happened?’ she asked.
They told her. There was no shame. No guilt. No skirting around the cold hard facts. She was a civilian, yes, but she’d always known who Slater was. What he was. She never would have entered this world if she needed to whitewash the story she told herself each day.
Her life partner was a killer.
And she still trusted him completely.
That took a rare kind of objectivity.
She sat back and squeezed her legs tighter against her chest and soaked in the tale.
She said, ‘Why did you kill them if you knew you weren’t really in danger?’
‘They weren’t very polite,’ King said. ‘And that was the plan all along. Strip Gates of his muscle. I spotted an opening when we were in the club and went for it. I knew he’d overcompensate. Four guys? One with a gun would have been enough. But he needed to show off, and now he’s exposed.’
‘I thought you two said you weren’t going to smash heads together.’
‘We weren’t,’ King said. ‘Not at Wan’s. Not in front of Gates.’
‘I think he might figure out it was you,’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s not Sherlock Holmes but, you know, something tells me he’ll put it together…’
‘No he won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re going to go back and give him a piece of our mind.’
She threw her arms up. ‘You’re the brains, I guess. But this might be the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.’
Slater said, ‘We’re going to ask him why we’re getting caught in the crossfire of his little street war with a rival gang. We’re going to be outraged and indignant.’
She lowered her hands and mulled it over. ‘Oh.’
‘No witnesses,’ King said. ‘The truth is what we want it to be.’
‘What if he doesn’t believe you?’
‘He’ll believe us.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘We can’t,’ Slater said. ‘Welcome to our lives.’
She chewed her lower lip. ‘Let’s go in. Violetta needs to hear this.’
They entered the house and found Violetta in the kitchen. She’d pulled a bar stool up to the kitchen island, still hunched over the same laptop, still furiously scrolling. The quiet was punctuated by the occasional burst of typing, her fingers flying over the keys.
She looked up when they walked in, noting the dried blood on the side of Slater’s head. ‘What happened?’
King explained.
The same way they’d told Alexis.
Holding nothing back.
Violetta paused for longer after they were finished. Calculating, analysing.
She said, ‘You should have brought Melanie back here. She’s in danger now. She’s going to get interrogated.’
‘She’s not in danger,’ King said. ‘Gates is protective of her. And that would have ruined the act.’
‘What act?’
King laid out the foundations of a plan for the following day. Violetta mulled it over.
She said, ‘That’s good. He’ll believe you.’
‘He’ll be angry at first,’ Alexis said. ‘That’s when he’ll be volatile.’
‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take,’ Slater said. ‘We could have razed that place to the ground whenever we wanted. But that wouldn’t have solved anything. We need him to get to the big dogs.’
‘He’s not a big dog?’ Alexis said.
Slater shook his head.
Violetta said, ‘I’m already scouring the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department database for everything they have on Gates. Potential connections in law enforcement, et cetera.’
‘This will help, then,’ King said. ‘He gave us information unwittingly.’
He fed her the line about a District Attorney and a sheriff on the payroll.
Violetta said, ‘I know who the sheriff is already.’
King paused. ‘You do?’
‘I came across it by chance. I was deep in the LVMPD archives, and there were endless inconsistencies. Details missing. A lot redacted. When I’d finished sorting through it all I realised there was a massive hole in the centre of the puzzle. Like someone had been deliberately wiped from the records.’
‘A sheriff that no longer exists?’
‘It took some digging. His name is Keith Ray. He exists, but his career is one giant question mark, which is crazy considering he used to be the Clark County Sheriff. That’s a top dog. I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, obviously I worked in black ops my whole life, but when we redact something, it’s untraceable. This was a messy cover-up. The furthest thing from clean. There’s a whole lot of unprofessionalism. It blows my mind how brazen it was.’
‘Why did he need it expunged?’ Slater said.
‘I’d be guessing,’ Violetta said. ‘But if you put a gun to my head, I’d wager he’s in an unsavoury business now. He can use his connections from his career, but he doesn’t want fresh faces finding out he used to be high up in law enforcement.’
Slater turned to King. ‘Seen any unsavoury businesses lately?’
‘There’s one that comes to mind.’
King thought of Melanie, dolled up and cloudy-eyed, drugged and boozed into blissful obliviousness.
He said, ‘And the DA?’
Violetta went back to the laptop and zoned in for less than a minute. Then she looked up and said, ‘The Clark County District Attorney is a woman named Gloria Kerr. It has to be her. Christ. This is bigger than I thought.’
‘Can you tackle that tomorrow?’ King said. ‘We’ll be preoccupied with Gates.’
Violetta nodded. ‘I think I know what to do.’
‘Care to share?’
‘I’m still brainstorming. But I think I’ll go straight for the jugular.’
‘Will it be risky?’
‘Of course.’
‘What isn’t?’ King said.
They shared
