21 Weeks: Week 2 Page 7

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  You have reached the end of 21 Weeks: Week 2. The story continues in 21 Weeks: Week 3, available now.

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  Teaser for 21 Weeks: Week 3

  Four Kings Casino & Hotel East Tower Stairwell - Tuesday, 2:45 p.m.

  Blood marred the cotton fabric of black boxers, turning their cartooney spreads of playing cards and tumbling dice unsightly reds and browns. Waistband obscured by the man’s slightly protruding belly, his novelty underwear’s boastful proclamation that “Tonight, I’m Gonna Get Lucky” looked pretty ironic from where Beck stood on the landing below.

  “Is this what you meant by ‘a break’?” she asked.

  “No, this really wasn’t what I was thinking,” Williams uttered in return.

  First of their week spent buried back in case files, looking for any insight into the mind of a sadistic killer, Beck had encountered some truly horrendous things that day. An eyeball gazing out of someone’s belly button was never something she needed to see, in old crime scene photos or otherwise. Having made it to the period Bishop dubbed the killer’s “Picasso Phase,” the real-life murder before her, gruesome as it may be, was relatively tame.

  “The things people do.”

  Still, it did have its unfortunate aspects.

  Baxton plucking a green casino chip out of one of the man’s numerous stab wounds, Beck pulled her eyes from the sight to survey the stairwell. What she could see of it, at least, through the dozen people waiting around to be told where to go and what to do next. No blood trail leading to the body, the minimal mess there was remained focused around the dead man, which meant they had a murderer with OCD, an anemic vic, or somebody who had some explaining to do.

  “I know you’re kind of doing something there.” Beck leaned over Baxton’s shoulder, and Baxton looked greener than the chip she’d just removed as she reached for a bag from her assistant and dropped it inside. “But before we lose too much time, can we safely assume this guy didn’t wander down here in his boxer shorts and get neatly murdered in the stairwell?”

  “Yes, that’s a safe assumption,” Baxton responded. “He’s been stabbed at least thirty-five times with a two-inch blade. There’s not nearly enough blood, and no spatter. Plus, he’s been dead twelve to thirteen hours, and no one found him in an unlocked stairwell until an hour ago? He was killed someplace else. Find out where that was, and CSU will have better luck there. They’re not going to find anything here.”

  “Are there chips in all of his wounds?” Williams asked.

  “Looks like it,” Baxton said as she dug her long tweezers in after another.

  “Can I see one of those?”

  Looking to Baxton for the okay, the young assistant Beck had dubbed “Mini Baxton” handed an evidence bag up the stairs to where Bishop stood like a sentry on the landing above them.

  “This is a twenty-five-dollar chip,” he declared as the one Baxton was working to extract came free with a sludgy pop. “Is that one the same?”

  “They all appear to be.” Throat clearing, Baxton shifted her gaze from the blood and tissue clinging to the chip’s edges, inhaling a shaky breath and dropping it into the bag when her assistant made it available for her. “We’ll leave the rest in until we get him back.”

  “Mint?” Williams produced the roll from his pocket.

  “Would if I could.” When Baxton held her gloved hands in the air, Beck took the roll, twisting the wrapper down, and leaned over Baxton’s shoulder to pop one into the M.E.’s mouth when she opened it. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Handing the mints back to Williams, Beck was fairly certain it was in all their best interests for Baxton not to throw up on, or in, their murder victim.

  “Nash and I have been looking through old murders,” Williams said. “We’ve been popping these things like painkillers all morning.”

  Not that they had dulled the pain.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Beck asked.

  “There’s bruising on his cheeks. He was gagged at some point.”

  “No surprise there,” Williams said. “If he was still alive when those chips were shoved in him, it had to have been some kind of pain. I imagine he would have made a racket, given the chance. So, what do you think?”

  “I think somebody put more than eight hundred dollars worth of chips into this guy,” Bishop responded as Williams looked up the stairs.

  “Do you want to check the room first?” Williams turned his attention to Beck.

  “Is that okay with you?” Beck too relayed the question up the stairs, and Bishop’s cheeks sank in irritation, as they had every time Beck had requested his permission over the past day and a half. If Bishop was the man in charge, though, Beck certainly didn’t want to step on any authoritative toes.

  Or, maybe, she just really liked irritating Bishop.

  “I think that’s the most logical place to start,” Bishop agreed.

  “Do you want me to call down and get the room number?”

  “No.” Trying to prevent a serious misstep, Bishop slapped the cell phone out of the hand of the proactive uni on the landing next to him, and Baxton looked up as it bounced down the stairs, coming to a stop two steps from her body. “Do you want to make sure we definitely won’t find where this guy was killed?”

  When the uniformed officer, who was just trying to be as helpful as he could, flushed with the embarrassment of being so publicly chastised, Beck knew someone had to tell the poor, bewildered guy why Bishop was being such a raging jackass. Glancing to Williams, she tipped her head in casual reminder that he was the one who wanted to be a supervisor one day, and heard Williams’ barely audible groan as he looked up the stairs.

  “When someone dies in a hotel room, there’s a forty-eight hour mandatory quarantine,” Williams explained. “That’s two nights the hotel can’t rent out the room, and a lot of bad press, so people who die in hotels have a way of relocating themselves before the police are called. Even if you did call down, the front desk staff has probably been told to give you a dummy room number. All it does is gives them warning. It’s better if we just look ourselves.”

  “So, where do you want to start?” Beck looked to Bishop.

  “Hauling a body down stairs is easier than hauling it up, so I’ll start on this floor, and work my way up. You can come with me.” Bishop gave the uni a chance to redeem himself, and, rushing down the steps to retrieve his phone, the young officer was anxious to accept.

  “Then we’ll start at the top.” Beck preferred that assignment anyway. The rooms in this place weren’t exactly going for top-dollar. Last she checked, a budget-conscious tourist could grab a twenty-five-dollar night in the area - a half-decent room for the low, low price of a single, bloody chip stuffed into their vic. For the staff to have gone to the trouble of relocating the crime scene, it had to have been worth their financial while, and the most valuable rooms were always found on the highest floors.

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