Bad Memory Page 15

  “You cops?” she asked.

  “Yep, detectives,” Medina said.

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Well, we’re not here to chase an unpaid parking ticket.”

  “What are you here for?”

  “To enjoy a beer.”

  “Okay.”

  “And to speak to someone who used to work here,” Medina said. “Maybe she still does.”

  The bartender narrowed her eyes. “Who?”

  “Marie.”

  “Marie who?”

  “Just Marie. Does she still work here?”

  “No, I’ve never even met anyone called Marie.”

  Medina shrugged. “I guess it was a long shot. This would’ve been back in ’97.”

  Pryce wondered if the woman had some coke hidden in her purse, or really did have an unpaid parking ticket, something to explain the hostility he’d picked up from her the moment they’d walked through the door. Then again, maybe she just didn’t like cops.

  The bartender asked, “Is she in trouble, this Marie woman?”

  Medina shook his head. “She’s not in any trouble. We just want to speak to her. She might be able to help with an old case we’re working on.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  Pryce said, “Anyone who can help? Someone older? Someone who’s worked here longer?”

  She stared at him for a long moment. Finally said, “My boss will be in later.”

  “How much later?”

  “Maybe an hour or so.”

  Medina said, “Great, in that case, we’ll have two more beers, please.”

  A little under an hour later, Medina was on his third Bud, and Pryce had switched to club soda because he was driving.

  They were nursing their drinks when a shaft of early-evening light spilled momentarily across the dim room as the door opened. They turned to see a woman in her fifties glance at them briefly before heading for a door off to the side of the bar, which Pryce assumed was some kind of staff area or break room. The bartender followed the older woman through the door, leaving the bar unattended.

  A minute or so later, the door opened, and they both reappeared. The bartender with the blue hair began cleaning glasses and tried to look like she wasn’t eavesdropping, while the woman in her fifties made her way toward Pryce and Medina.

  She was small and wiry and capable. Short dark hair and alert blue eyes. Dressed plainly in blue jeans, a tee, and black ankle boots. She had the air of someone who didn’t take any shit from anyone. A trait no doubt honed over years working in places like this one, whether dealing with drunk customers or cops asking questions. She glanced over her shoulder at the two guys shooting pool, then motioned Pryce and Medina farther along the bar, away from the pool table.

  “Cathy,” she said, by way of introduction. “I’m the bar manager. What can I do for you, Detectives?”

  Blue-hair had clearly given Cathy the heads-up, but they showed their badges and introduced themselves anyway.

  “We’re trying to track down a woman who worked as a bartender here around 1997,” Medina said. “We were hoping you might be able to help us find her. Her name is Marie.”

  “Uh-huh? And does this Marie have a last name?”

  “I’m sure she does, but we don’t know what it is.”

  “Do you have a photo of her?”

  “No.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Cathy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have shit to go on, do you?”

  Medina smiled. “No, we don’t.”

  “Why do you want to speak to her? Has she done something wrong?”

  “Not that we know of. We’re looking into an old case, and we believe Marie may be able to help us. That’s all.”

  “This case you’re working on? What is it exactly?”

  Medina said, “A police officer was shot and killed.”

  “What’s it got to do with Marie?”

  “We believe Marie knew the police officer and may have spent time with him in the days before his death. She might be able to tell us something important. His killer has never been found.”

  Cathy’s eyes narrowed. “And this took place in ’97?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you looking into it now?”

  “The officer who was killed was my partner,” Pryce said. “I just want to know what happened to him. And I don’t care how long it takes to find out.”

  Cathy’s face softened. “Charlie Holten was your partner?”

  Medina and Pryce looked at each other.

  “Yes, he was.” Pryce said. “You knew Charlie?”

  Cathy smiled sadly. “Sure, I knew Charlie. He used to come in here a lot. Pretty quiet, seemed to have a lot of sadness about him, like he might find the answers to all his problems if he stared hard enough into his bourbon glass. I guess you could say the same about a lot of the customers who drink in here. Seemed like a nice guy, though. None of us even knew he’d died until it was in the newspaper.”

  Pryce said, “Look, Cathy, I know Charlie had some sort of . . . relationship going on with a woman called Marie who worked here. Do you know who I mean? Did you work with Marie?”

  Cathy shot another look over her shoulder at the pool guys and lowered her voice.

  “Yes, Marie worked here. But it was a long time ago. I really don’t think she’d appreciate the past being dragged up again now.”

  “Please, Cathy,” Pryce said. “It might be important.”

  The pool guys had stopped their game and were now watching the exchange between Pryce, Medina, and Cathy.

  “I don’t know where Marie is. I’m sorry; I can’t help you.”

  “You must know something,” Pryce pressed. “A last name. The name of the street where she lived. Something. Anything.”

  “I think you’d better leave now.”

  Her voice was louder, and the hardness was back; all the softness of earlier, when she’d spoken about Holten, was gone.

  Pryce saw the pool guys lay their cues on the table and slowly walk toward them. They were in their twenties, both wearing wifebeaters, both muscular and mean looking.

  “Hey, Marie,” one of them called. “Are these guys bothering you?”

  Pryce stared at the woman.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or be pissed at himself for being too dumb to realize what—or who—had literally been staring him in the face this whole time.

  “Marie?” he asked.

  “Shit,” Marie said.

  23

  JESSICA

  A while back, a missing persons case had taken Jessica to Vegas, to the parts of town where most tourists didn’t venture.

  She’d been hired by the family of a young woman who had left behind her small town in Idaho for the bright lights of Hollywood. When Polly Perez stopped calling and writing her parents, and they found out she had left the apartment she’d shared with other wannabe actresses after failing to make the rent, they had gotten worried, asked Jessica to track the girl down.

  Turned out, when Polly had failed to make it anywhere near the silver screen in Tinseltown, she’d tried her luck with the big shows in Vegas. When that roll of the dice didn’t work out either, she’d wound up working in a strip bar in the older part of town. The kind of grubby establishment that offers five-dollar pitchers during happy hour and ten-dollar table dances until dawn. Situated next to the pawnshops, and title loan places, and twenty-five-bucks-a-night motels. A five-minute drive, and a million miles away, from the Strip and its casino megaresorts and huge gambling floors and dancing fountains.

  Polly hadn’t come to any harm, wasn’t in any real trouble; she’d just been too ashamed to tell her folks what she was doing to pay the bills. Too ashamed to admit her dreams had crashed and burned in the Nevada desert.

  It was on this same stretch of road, at the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard, where Jessica found Tom Lucchese, following a database sea
rch of properties registered in his name.

  He owned an old-fashioned casino and slot machine parlor called Lucky’s, a detached one-story where you could eat prime rib for under six dollars and play Keno and video poker until you ran out of cash.

  As she walked through the front door, Jessica swapped gentle dusk for a dimly lit room with garish carpeting and plastic potted plants. Her senses were immediately assaulted by the flashing lights and beeps and chimes and incessantly repetitive jangles of the machines. There was a whiff of hope and desperation in the air, along with the prime rib.

  Thankfully, there was also a fully stocked bar in the rear of the room, and Jessica headed straight for it and settled on a stool. The bartender was a petite blonde with a ready smile. Not beautiful but pretty enough to guarantee decent tips from those with pockets weighted down with slot machine winnings. Her name was Shawna, and she was the bar manager, information Jessica had already garnered from the staff page of Lucky’s website, which also included a photo and short bio about the owner, Tom Lucchese.

  He was in his early fifties, tan, with brown wavy hair worn a little too long, and a smile clearly enhanced by expensive cosmetic dentistry. A self-proclaimed successful businessman who was happily married to Jeanne and who had two adorable kids. He’d bought the casino in late ’97, funded a major refurbishment, changed the name to “Lucky’s,” and thrown open the doors to the public in early ’98. It might not occupy a prime spot on the Strip, but the place was busy on a weeknight and, Jessica guessed, turned over a pretty profit for Lucchese.

  Following in his father’s footsteps, she thought, right down to the name of the casino.

  She ordered a Scotch on the rocks and watched Shawna pour the liquor and drop some ice in the tumbler.

  “Are you here on vacation?” she asked.

  “Business.”

  Shawna frowned ever so slightly, as though wondering what kind of business might take a young woman to the industrial part of Vegas on a Monday night, but she didn’t ask any more questions, just slid the drink across the counter, the frown replaced by a smile.

  “Here you go. Just holler if you want a refill.”

  Jessica handed over some bills and took a sip of whiskey. It was house stuff but passable. “I was hoping for a quick word with your boss, if he’s around?”

  “Mr. Lucchese?” Shawna said. “Sure, I think he’s still in his office. Haven’t seen him leave for the evening. Do you have an appointment? What’s your name?”

  “I don’t have an appointment, and he won’t know my name.”

  The frown returned. “Oh, in that case, I don’t think I should disturb him.”

  “I think he’ll want to speak to me,” Jessica said. “We know some of the same folks from the time he lived in Hundred Acres.”

  “Okay, let me give him a try.”

  Shawna walked over to a wall phone behind the bar, picked up the receiver, and hit a button. Waited a few seconds, then whispered something, nodded even though the person on the other end of the line couldn’t see her, hung up, and approached Jessica.

  “Sorry, Mr. Lucchese says he’s busy right now. I guess you’ll have to catch up some other time.”

  Jessica smiled. “Give Mr. Lucchese another call and tell him I’d like to discuss the events of Fourth of July 1987. I think he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  Shawna hesitated, then sighed and wandered over to the phone again. Went through the same motions as a few moments earlier. Lifted the receiver, hit the button, waited, whispered something, nodded. This time, when she hung up, she motioned Jessica to follow her to a door next to the bar marked “Staff.” She swiped a key card hooked to her belt across a sensor and pushed open the door to reveal a small, narrow corridor.

  “Mr. Lucchese’s office is right at the end of the hallway,” she said. “He says you can have five minutes.”

  Jessica passed a brightly lit break room that stank of stale microwaved food and coffee on one side of the hallway, and male and female restrooms that stank of stale urine on the other. She rapped her knuckles on the last door she came to.

  “Come on in.”

  Jessica opened the door to reveal a cluttered, cramped office space mostly taken up by a desk, a couple chairs, and shelves stuffed full of magazine files. Behind the desk sat the real-life version of Tom Lucchese, which was rougher around the edges than the airbrushed one on the website. He didn’t bother standing up, just gestured for Jessica to take a seat facing him, and gave her a wary look.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I didn’t give my name. It’s Jessica Shaw. Thanks for agreeing to see me. I know you’re a very busy man.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then grinned, exposing teeth that were also less impressive than in the website photo.

  “This place sure does keep me busy,” he agreed. “Shawna mentioned we have some friends in common? I’m intrigued. I haven’t been to Hundred Acres for years. Decades, in fact.”

  “More of a mutual acquaintance than a friend,” Jessica said. “At least, as far as I’m concerned. Her name is Rue Hunter.”

  A shadow passed across Lucchese’s face, followed by a nonchalant expression.

  “I know who she is, of course, but I never met her. We certainly weren’t friends.”

  “But friendly enough to offer her a lift to Devil’s Drop the night of the murders?”

  Lucchese’s face paled under his tan, and he blinked a few times before regaining his composure.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about or why you’re interested in something that happened thirty years ago, but you’ve clearly mistaken me for someone else.” He began to rise from his seat. “As you said, I’m a very busy man, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Actually, I do mind,” she said. “I’m a private investigator who has been hired to look into the Devil’s Drop murders. I have an eyewitness who saw you pick up Rue Hunter outside Cooper’s shortly before the murders took place.”

  “Whoever this ‘eyewitness’ is, he’s lying.”

  Jessica placed her cell phone on the desk in front of Lucchese and swiped the screen to show each of the crime scene photos of the tire treads.

  “I also have an expert who has verified these tire treads, photographed at Devil’s Drop on the night of the murders, are a match for the Toyota Supra Turbo you were driving that summer. That is, there’s a match with the wheels on the left side that still had the original manufacturer’s tires. You installed a spare on the right side shortly before these photographs were taken.”

  Jessica figured referring to Jerry from Acres Tire & Wheel Mart as an expert was stretching things, but the store assistant had confirmed the tread patterns matched Toyota tires from the late eighties when she’d returned to the store after her conversation with Lockerman.

  Lucchese was fully out of his seat now.

  “Okay, you need to leave.”

  Jessica scooped up her cell phone and dropped it in her bag.

  “Maybe I should’ve just gone straight to the Hundred Acres Sheriff’s Department with what I’ve found instead of coming here first.”

  “You trying to blackmail me? Is that what this is all about? Well, too bad, because the cops already know. They’ve known all along.”

  “I’m not trying to blackmail you,” Jessica said calmly. “I have no interest in your money. I’m simply trying to establish what happened that night and your role in it all.”

  Lucchese settled back into the chair. Ran his fingers through his too-long hair.

  “I tell you what I know, and then you leave, okay? I don’t have any more surprise visits from cops at my place of work. Agreed?”

  “I’m a private investigator, not a cop. But, sure, feel free to off-load.”

  He said, “I didn’t know Rue Hunter, had never met her before that night, and that’s the truth. I was passing Cooper’s and saw her outside. She seemed in a bad way. I stopped and asked if she was okay. You know
, like a Good Samaritan. She was upset, said she had to meet her friends at Devil’s Drop and didn’t have a ride. Asked if I’d take her. I felt sorry for her, so I said yes. Worst decision I ever made. So I dropped her off at Devil’s Drop, like she asked. The place was deserted. No other cars, no sign of those kids who wound up dead. Then I left. A couple of days later, I heard the bitch had confessed to butchering her friends. I knew it looked bad for me, so I told my dad what happened, and he sorted it out.”

  “Sorted it out how?”

  “We paid a visit to the sheriff’s department. Explained what happened, how it would be beneficial for everyone involved if the Lucchese name was kept out of the investigation. The girl had already confessed to the murders by then. It made perfect sense. For the good of the town and all.”

  “So Holten and McDonagh both agreed to cover up a key witness, an important part of the investigation? For the sake of the town? What about Rue Hunter? What about what was best for Lucas and Megan?”

  Lucchese shrugged. “What can I say? My father was a very persuasive man. What Bruce Lucchese wanted, Bruce Lucchese got.”

  24

  HOLTEN

  1987

  Holten was reading over Rue Hunter’s confession again when the phone on his desk buzzed. It was his receptionist, Sandy.

  “I have Bruce Lucchese and his son at the front desk,” she said. “He says they both need to speak to you immediately.”

  “Can you check the planner and ask him to make an appointment, please, Sandy? I’m up to my ears in paperwork right now.”

  “I already did. He says it’s important.”

  “I’m sure he’s aware we’re in the middle of a big case. Tell him it’ll have to wait.”

  “He says it’s about the case.”

  Holten sighed and rubbed his eyes. He’d endured another sleepless night following the Hunter girl’s confession. A meeting with an asshole businessman and his arrogant son was the last thing he needed.

  “Okay, show them through to the interview room. I’ll be there shortly.”

  He hung up the phone and saw McDonagh give him a quizzical look from across the office.