Heads up, p.8
Heads Up, page 8
Those lights added to Bonnie and Cavanaugh’s, and the basement room seemed almost light in all the swirling dust.
Bonnie showed Fawn the floor plans they had gotten from Jacob while the two techs worked over the door area, making sure all prints were taken and cataloged.
Finally they stepped back and Fawn held up a key.
“Golden Nugget manager claims this is a master key to every door in the place,” she said. “But if it doesn’t work, we have his permission to break down any door in here we need to.”
With that she went over and inserted the key into the lock on the door under the stairs. It turned with a loud click that echoed in the basement.
“Go to hell,” Fawn said as she turned the handle and opened the door.
She stepped back so that they all could see that beyond the door was nothing more than a storage area, empty.
The techs stepped inside and did a quick dusting for prints and anything else, then came back out.
Cavanaugh had a hunch that if this was an entrance into that other room, it also was hidden. Clearly Detective Fawn had the same idea.
She went into the closet and to the back wall, shining her light along all corners.
“Cavanaugh, State, some more light in here, please?”
Cavanaugh let Bonnie step all the way inside the small storage area, then he stayed in the door, shining his light on the back wall where Fawn was working.
After a moment she said, “Here it is.”
She pushed and with a click the back wall swung away silently.
There was a faint light on the other side.
Fawn looked back at both of them, a frown on her face. She indicated they should be silent and then drew her gun.
She pointed to Bonnie to follow her and go left. She pointed to Cavanaugh to follow and go right.
He nodded and drew his gun. Second day on the task force and he already had his gun out. This was not something he had ever expected to do.
Fawn counted down with her fingers.
Three, two, one.
Then she went in with a shout, “Police!
Bonnie followed and ducked left, Cavanaugh went right.
What greeted them on the other side was just about as far from any horror show Cavanaugh might have imagined.
An apartment.
A fairly nicely furnished one at that with one light shining over the kitchen counter like a nightlight.
No one home.
Fawn made sure by checking the bathroom, then put her gun away and clicked on a switch by the bathroom door.
Lights came up, fairly bright and warm.
And no dust besides the little bit that they had brought in.
Cavanaugh just shook his head. This old building wasn’t supposed to have power running to it. Clearly that was wrong.
There were two beds, neatly made against one wall. Beside each bed was an open closet with nothing but empty hangers. A washer/dryer stacked combo sat beside one closet.
The kitchen looked fairly modern and had a nice granite island with a couple bar stools tucked up to it. A large wooden kitchen table filled one corner with eight chairs around it. A number of couches formed a living room area with a large-screen television hung on one wall.
The place looked more out of a modern house beautiful than a hidden room in the basement of a shuttered hotel.
Cavanaugh walked over to one side where a metal ladder went up the wall and into the ceiling and shined his light up into the hole. Looked like it went up to the third floor, from best he could tell.
Detective Fawn moved over to the kitchen counter and pointed to some bleach and Lysol cleaning solution and a neatly washed stack of rags. “Looks like this place has been scrubbed down of any trace of anything.”
Cavanaugh nodded. “I was expecting us to find a horror show in here.”
“Not sure if we didn’t,” Bonnie said.
Detective Fawn only nodded at that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
January 19th, 2019
Shuttered Hotel Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Bonnie didn’t know what to think about the modern apartment they found under the old hotel. Clearly the apartment was linked to the missing women in some way or another. And finding an apartment was a thousand times better than finding bodies, which was what she had expected to find.
But this was far, far stranger.
Detective Fawn now had the techs working the room, but it was clear that the room had been sanitized completely. Why? Again Bonnie had no idea at all.
Fawn and Cavanaugh and Bonnie were standing in the middle of the room and Alistair had gone back out to the alley.
“How was anyone getting in here?” Cavanaugh asked, looking around slowly. “The hotel above is locked up as tight as I have ever seen a shuttered building in this city and the Golden Nugget security patrol it.”
“So there is another way in,” Fawn said. “That way is toward the Golden Nugget.”
She pointed over the kitchen.
“Nothing coming in from that direction,” Bonnie said. “And that way is the parking garage of the Golden Nugget. But maybe something out to the alley?”
“That way is Main Street and that other basement room,” Cavanaugh said, pointing at the wall with the dining room table. “So nothing in that direction.”
“So what is left is that way, toward the Bridger Hotel or along the alley in that direction.
“You two search the wall along the alley,” Fawn said. “I’ll take this television wall.”
The techs had already finished with the wall above the beds and the closets, leaving a fine white dust where they had been. Bonnie took out her flashlight and studied the cracks along the closets near one bed, then how the bed itself was situated, looking for anything.
Then she saw it, but wasn’t sure at first if she wanted to. Under the bed, on the concrete floor, was a throw rug. Similar rugs were scattered in different places around the room to make the room feel warmer, instead of just bare concrete.
Using two gloved fingers, Bonnie carefully lifted the corner of the rug. Under it was a wooden floor.
“Damn it all to hell,” Bonnie said. “You two need to take a look at this.”
She held the rug up until both Cavanaugh and Fawn could see, then dropped it.
Fawn turned to the techs. “This bed been checked completely?”
One of the techs nodded.
Bonnie stood and she and Cavanaugh quickly picked up the bed and moved it to one side.
“Going to need you to check this carpet and what is under it,” Fawn said to the techs.
Bonnie watched as the two forensics techs went over the rug and area under the bed quickly, clearly finding nothing.
Under the rug was a wooden trap door that looked heavy and solid and Bonnie was worried that they were going to have to get in some help to open it. But it turned out they didn’t because as Detective Fawn moved the latch, the entire heavy wooden floor swung sideways and into a recessed opening without her even touching it.
“Shit,” Fawn said, jumping back as the door moved into place.
Clearly the door was on some sort of electric motor that ran silently and allowed the door to open with the bed still sitting over it.
The smell of dampness and cold came up out of the now open dark hole.
Fawn and Cavanaugh both clicked on their lights at the same time and aimed them downward.
Bonnie had no real desire to see what they would find down in that hole. Again her worst nightmares of far too many women’s bodies came right to the front.
In the hole a fairly steep and narrow staircase went down and toward the alley. It looked long, longer than a normal staircase.
“Ever get the feeling we’ve found the staircase to hell?” Cavanaugh whispered.
“Or worse,” Bonnie said, almost too silently for anyone to hear.
Fawn glanced at Bonnie, then at Cavanaugh. “I go first,” Fawn whispered as she drew her gun. “Bonnie stay behind me and to my right, Cavanaugh behind Bonnie and to the left.”
Bonnie nodded and for the second time she had her gun in her hand.
All three of them still had on gloves and Fawn put her mask back over her mouth as she started down.
Bonnie and Cavanaugh did the same.
As Detective Fawn neared the bottom of the stairs, a light clicked on, showing a narrow, but lit tunnel that headed off toward Bridger Street and beyond.
Bonnie had no doubt that they had found the entrance to the secret room. It was a tunnel under the right side of the alley.
The tunnel was lined on all four sides with blocks and smelled like damp mold. It was only as wide as one person, but tall enough that they didn’t have to duck for anything.
It looked like it also had been kept clean. Not even cobwebs gathered in the upper corners.
“We have to be thirty feet or more underground,” Cavanaugh whispered. “Under the old utilities and everything.”
Fawn nodded, putting away her weapon as Bonnie and Cavanaugh did the same. “Stay here.”
Fawn quickly went back up the staircase and told the two forensic technicians where they planned on going. “Go back to the alley and wait for us. Tell the uniformed officers there that I want them posted every fifty steps along the alley for a block on the other side of Bridger.”
Then Fawn came back down the stairs.
Bonnie was impressed at how Detective Fawn was handling this entire situation. They didn’t have one ounce of evidence of any crime, yet she was handling this as a dangerous situation, which it clearly might be.
A hidden room and tunnel under an old hotel clearly was suspicious, not counting the women’s clothing they had found.
The tunnel did not go any farther toward the Golden Nugget than the staircase, so with Detective Fawn leading, they turned toward Bridger Street.
Every thirty steps a light hung from the ceiling, giving them enough light that they didn’t need their flashlights, something Bonnie was very grateful for. She couldn’t remember being this tense in a long time and she couldn’t imagine going along this tunnel with flashlights.
After about forty steps, Cavanaugh said, “We’re under the street now.”
“You two are going to owe me for this,” Fawn said, shaking her head. “I hate tunnels and caves.”
“That makes two of us,” Bonnie said.
“Make that a solid three,” Cavanaugh said.
They kept moving, Fawn and Bonnie watching ahead down the tunnel while Cavanaugh continued checking behind them.
All Bonnie kept thinking was that she hoped this nightmare would end soon.
This was not at all what she had expected to be doing when she joined the Cold Poker Gang. Not even close.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
January 19th, 2019
Under Downtown Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Cavanaugh flat hated contained and closed-in spaces like the cement-block-lined tunnel they were moving through. And he hated even more knowing he was at least thirty feet underground.
The tunnel had clearly been built a long time ago, which didn’t give him a lot of confidence about how safe it was, even though it looked solid and clearly had been cleaned regularly.
And it really didn’t help that Bonnie and Detective Fawn hated this place as well. The tension among them was so thick, it might flood the tunnel all by itself.
He just wanted this done and over with, but at the same time he was impressed at how methodical and careful Fawn was being.
“My guess is that we’ve just passed the alley side of the Bridger Hotel,” Cavanaugh said.
“Tunnel seems to be going directly down the alley,” Bonnie said.
“I think you’re both right,” Fawn said.
He had been keeping track of how far they were going and he had a good sense of the distance above ground between things. He just never expected to be using it underground in a secret tunnel.
“Almost to the end,” Fawn said, again drawing her gun.
Cavanaugh could see what she was talking about. Ahead of them the tunnel ended in another staircase that went to the right and up steeply.
“This is going to end up in the Little Hotel Boarding House,” Cavanaugh whispered.
For the longest time the Little Hotel had been a problem because of squatters and the homeless, but it was on a registry of historic places, since it was one of the oldest hotels in town, so no one seemed to know what to do with it.
“That place has been shuttered almost as long as the Hotel Nevada,” Bonnie whispered.
Detective Fawn got to the bottom of the stairs and looked up, seeming to hesitate.
Cavanaugh knew why she was hesitating. They had permission to be in the Hotel Nevada. They had no permission to go into the Little Hotel.
“I may be wrong about this going into the Little Hotel,” Cavanaugh whispered to Fawn. “I was just estimating how far we had come and guessing how far the Little Hotel was down the alley.”
Fawn nodded and smiled at Cavanaugh. “We have a need to see where this ends, right?”
“Those women’s clothes,” Bonnie said. “No telling what we might find.”
Fawn nodded and started up the staircase. She clearly felt she had enough to make entering the Little Hotel viable in a court case, if this ever came to that. So far they had no crimes at all.
This staircase was a lot longer and clearly went all the way up instead of coming out as the other end did in a basement.
Cavanaugh stayed at the bottom, gun drawn, watching back down the tunnel. This was their basic training and right now he wished he was in Fawn’s position, but she was the active on this case and she needed to go first.
Bonnie followed Fawn, giving her room, yet backing her as she went up in the narrow staircase.
At the top, a light was on, putting Bonnie and Fawn in shadows.
Cavanaugh watched as Fawn felt around the edges of the door at the top, then glanced back at Bonnie and nodded.
She pushed a button and a sliding door opened with a scraping sound.
With one last look down the tunnel, Cavanaugh headed up the stairs two-at-a-time, getting to the top as Bonnie went through the open door behind Fawn and went left.
Cavanaugh went right.
They were in one of the worst-smelling rooms Cavanaugh could ever remember.
Rot and pee and decay. All combined.
And the room was empty, except for the pee stains and the signs of an old homeless camp against one wall.
It was pitch dark and Bonnie and Fawn had their flashlights on.
Fawn went over and tugged on the door that led into the hotel.
“Locked and bolted from the other side,” she said.
“So there has to be another way in and out of here,” Cavanaugh said.
They had come up in a corner of the room that looked like nothing was there until the wall had slid back showing the staircase and the light beyond.
“This wall is the alley side,” Cavanaugh said, indicating a wall beside where they had come up.
All three of them shone their lights along the wall until finally it was Bonnie who found it.
The door out was tucked right against the square that covered the staircase. She clicked a lock and pushed and a narrow section of the wall just opened outward.
Bonnie stepped through and into the paved alley, followed by Fawn.
Cavanaugh wasn’t far behind feeling completely relieved to be back out in the overcast light of the cold Vegas day.
Near them a surprised uniformed officer stood, hand on his gun.
“Don’t let anyone get near or go in that door besides the forensic techs until I tell you otherwise,” she said to the officer.
Then she turned back toward the crowd on the other side of Bridger Street.
Cavanaugh fell in beside her on the right, Bonnie on the left.
“I got no crime and three days of paperwork,” Fawn said.
Cavanaugh understood that completely.
Bonnie nodded as well.
“And I expect that before I get done with that paperwork, you two will tell me just why the hell that room and tunnel exist.”
Cavanaugh was glad that Fawn wasn’t making it all an active case and thus getting them out of the way.
“Maybe we can also figure out what the hell happened to all those women,” Bonnie said.
“Yeah,” Fawn said. “That would be damned nice. You owe me at least that much for all this crap.”
PART THREE
The Boyfriend
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
January 19th, 2019
Dinner at the Wynn
Las Vegas, Nevada
Bonnie had never enjoyed a shower more than the one she had taken after getting back from the Hotel Nevada. It was three in the afternoon and she was hungry, tired, and so dirty, she couldn’t even believe it.
Waves of dirt just washed off her and she had ended up washing her hair twice just to feel clean. She had a hunch it might take a few days before the feeling of being covered in dust would pass, no matter how many showers she took.
Plus she couldn’t quite process what they had found. First the clothes, then the secret tunnels and apartment. And yet with all of that, not one ounce of evidence of a crime.
Nothing.
It was going to be a headache for the Golden Nugget to close off that tunnel, and for the owners of the Little Hotel to deal with it on their end. And no telling what the city would do with the part that ran under the alley and street.
What annoyed her most was that she didn’t even have any idea what it all had been used for. Her mind went to the worst case, especially with the connection of missing women and the clothes. But if someone was killing women, why leave their clothes?
And no sign of any kind of foul play anywhere.
No sign of anything, actually.
None of it made any sense at all.
She and Cavanaugh had decided that they would go out for an early dinner to talk and have Jacob join them. Cavanaugh had said he would buy, since he wanted to go to someplace upscale and away from that old hotel.
