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Dela grabbed her ringing cell phone as the tribal coroner handed Detective Dick his observations. Glancing at the name she sighed. Her mom.
“Hi Mom. Not a good time to talk,” she answered.
“Sorry. I was worried because you didn’t come home last night.” The reproach in her mother’s voice made Dela’s eyes roll. This was why she was looking for a place to move into. On the reservation, but far enough from her mom that she didn’t know her every move.
“We had an emergency. I don’t know when I’ll be home. Don’t worry about me.”
“You can’t keep putting in these long hours,” her mother said.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Dela hung up on her mom and spied Kara, Kenny, and Detective Dick all watching her.
“That’s not good to hang up on your mom like that,” Kenny said.
She glanced at Kara, hoping for a little help.
“He’s right,” Kara said. “You should respect your elders.”
Dela wanted to say, I’m not Native like you two and I do respect her, but she doesn’t respect I’m thirty-seven and can take care of myself. But she didn’t say a word. Not with Detective Dick giving her a smug smile as if he thought her mother calling her at work was funny. After dismissing Kara, she asked Dick, “Where’s the body going?”
“Waiting for the wagon to pick it up and take it to Clackamas. The State Medical Examiner.”
She nodded. That would be the best facility to check it out. She wondered at the lack of blood in the room. When the body had been unfolded it was apparent Tristan had been stabbed in the neck. Blood covered his neck and right shoulder. The carotid artery had been severed, given the amount of blood on everything. Yet, there was no sign of blood anywhere in the room. It was as if the body had been folded and shoved in the chute then the wound inflicted. No mess, no fuss, just getting the job done. Which didn’t make any sense at all. How would you fold a man in half without him fighting you?
Footsteps in the hallway drew all of their gazes toward the door.
FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce stepped into the already full room. He stood by the door studying the body before he raised his gaze and locked on her. “What happened?”
Detective Dick held out his hand. “Special Agent Pierce, you must have got the call.”
Quinn shook hands with the tribal detective but his gaze remained on her.
“One of the casino employees was stabbed and shoved in the laundry chute,” she said, ignoring the glare Dick shot her way.
“Which area did he work in?” Quinn asked.
“Accounting. Tristan Pomroy.” She glanced at the body. She didn’t know him well. He had a wife and child, she thought.
Quinn pulled out a notepad and wrote. He shifted his attention on the detective. “Was the coroner able to give a time of death?”
“The best he could say given the shape of the body, sometime after midnight.”
Dela’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the number. Marty. She walked by the body and the two men out into the hall. “What did you find?”
“Someone turned off the camera from midnight until two.”
“Double frickin’ shit!” she swore under her breath. “Why didn’t someone see that?”
“I’ll check into who was watching that camera and get back to you.” The line went silent.
She muttered the same words again.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked, stepping out of the room.
“Someone turned off the camera in this area from midnight to two this morning.” She didn’t like the idea they had another criminal working for the casino. With eight hundred employees there was always a good chance someone who worked here could be approached to do something illegal for monetary gain. But she didn’t like the thought. She knew most of the employees. It came with being head of security.
“That means it was most likely someone who works in the surveillance department.” He stared into her eyes. “You ready to take on something like this so soon after the last problem?”
“I have to be, if I want to keep my job.” She shook off her dread and gave him her best business face. “Did you learn anything of value from Detective D-Jones.”
Quinn chuckled. “You really need to use his real name in your head before he realizes what you think of him.”
“Oh, he knows.” She flashed a smug smile.
“Take me down to accounting. I want to talk to the people our victim worked with.”
She glanced at the supply room. “One second.” She walked back in and nodded for Kenny to come to her.
When he stood close, she whispered, “Once the detective leaves, start interviewing all the guests on this floor. But don’t leave until the body is gone and the detective leaves.”
Kenny nodded and went back over to stand guard over the body.
Dela joined Quinn out in the hallway. “Are you going to interview the guests?”
“I figure you have that handled. Less rumors if your staff does that.”
“Thank you. The less hotel guests know about this the better.” She walked over to the employee elevator and punched the down button.
“How you holding up?” Quinn asked.
Her gaze shot to his face. He looked like he really wanted to know. She didn’t want to like the man. He’d let a rapist go free in Iraq. One that was her prisoner. A man who had spit on her when she’d arrested him for raping a young Iraqi woman. She’d harbored a dislike of, then Lieutenant Quinn Pierce, for many years. When he ended up the Special Agent in charge of the FBI Field Station in Pendleton, Oregon, she’d thought the gods were against her. Now, staring into his eyes, she realized he might be on her side. He’d proven it a month ago when Mimi Shumack’s son, an Oregon State Trooper, had shoved himself into an investigation to find Sherry Dale a missing Umatilla woman. Quinn had followed Trooper Hawke’s leads and together, the three of them, had found Sherry and brought down a human trafficking ring.
The elevator doors opened. Dela stepped in. Quinn followed. She punched the button for the bottom floor.
“Why did you stay?”
He faced her. “You mean in Pendleton?”
“Yeah. After bringing down that trafficking ring, I’m sure you could have had your choice of assignments. Why here?”
He shrugged. “I like the laid-back environment and helping the Umatilla people.” His gaze drifted from her face down her body and back up. “And I like working with you.”
Her chest hitched for a second. She knew better then to let his words influence her feelings about him. He had worked intelligence. You couldn’t believe a word intelligence officers said.
The elevator hit the end of the cable, sprung up a little, and settled. The doors opened and she hurried out. Crossing through the breakroom, she fielded questions about the laundry chute and moved as quickly as she could without limping into the hall near the accounting office.
She opened the door and asked the secretary to call the compliance officer and whoever worked with Tristan Pomroy to the front. Dela and Quinn stood inside the door as two people walked into the front office.
Her phone rang. Molly. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Quinn and the others, before stepping out into the hallway.
“Hi. How’s the dog?” she asked, wanting to get the conversation over quickly to get back to work.
“Hello to you. Grandfather Thunder called and said he found the owner, but they don’t want anything to do with the dog. They can’t afford to pay his bills or feed him. What do you want me to do?”
“Can you save the leg?” she asked as Quinn poked his head out.
His eyes widened.
“Just a minute,” she told Molly. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes. Can you wait to ask questions until I get back in there?”
He nodded and disappeared.
“No. The leg was smashed. I can amputate this morning. He’ll need to stay here about a week to keep him sedated so he doesn’t move around too much, but then you’ll have to take him off my hands.”
She sighed. “I’m still at work from last night, and I don’t see getting over to your clinic until tomorrow. Is that soon enough to settle up and find out what I need for his recovery?”
“That’s fine. See you tomorrow.” Molly ended the call.
She wanted to sit down and figure out how she could bring a dog her mother thought was too large into her home and help it with rehab when she had a job that required so much of her attention. Especially now, after finding a body in the laundry chute.
Dela reentered the office.
The compliance officer was the first to speak. “Does this have to do with Tristan not showing up for work today?” She was an older Umatilla member. Brenda started when the casino first opened. She had moved from the gift shop to this position.
Dela took the lead knowing the casino employees would look more favorably on her asking questions than the outsider FBI agent.
“Yes. Can you tell me when you each saw him last?” Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Quinn pull out a notepad.
Brenda started. “He left here his usual time last night. Shortly after six.”
The secretary nodded.
“Did he say anything about where he was going?” Dela asked.
“He left his usual time. I figured he was going home. What happened?” Brenda let her gaze pass over to Quinn and back to Dela.
“Someone killed him last night and dumped his body on the tenth floor.” Dela watched each person. While they looked shocked, they didn’t appear overly disturbed by the announcement. “Anyone know why he would have been back here last night?”
The two women shook their heads. The only male, Luis Page, looked thoughtful. He was in his early thirties, the last hire in this department.
Dela zeroed in on him. “Did Tristan tell you about coming back here last night?”
He shook his head. “No, he didn’t say anything about coming back to the casino. But he’d been antsy all week. When I asked him about it, he said he was coming into some money.” He shrugged. “Maybe he came back to gamble and get rich?”
The women twittered then stopped when she and Quinn stared at them.
“What would be funny about Tristan getting rich from gambling?” Dela asked.
Nicole, the secretary and the only non-Indian in the room besides Dela and Quinn, glanced at the other accounting employees and said, “When one of us talked about spending time on the floor gambling, Tristan would tell us it was bad for the casino to see the people in charge of the funds gambling. It could make others think we were using the casino money to gamble.”
Dela studied each one. “He accused you of using the money you counted to gamble?” She knew the surveillance team would have notified her if any of these employees were shoving money into the machines or playing at the gaming tables. They had attended concerts and social gatherings, but they weren’t habitual gamblers. They kept track of that in security and surveillance.
“Not so much as accusing as just a warning to not do it,” Nicole said.
The others bobbed their heads.
“Okay. Then,” she studied Luis. “What more can you tell me about his being ‘antsy’ all week?”
The man shrugged. “He seemed to be having trouble focusing on his ledgers. I caught him tabbing out of something on the internet when I walked by to get some coffee.”
Dela pounced on that. “Show me his computer.”
The women parted. She and Quinn followed Luis into the rooms behind the secretary’s desk. He opened a door to a room with two computers.
“That one is Tristan’s.” He pointed to the one closest to the door.
Quinn slid in the chair behind the desk and started tapping keys. “It’s locked.” He glanced over at Luis. “Do you know his login?”
“No. We don’t know each other’s logins. Better security that way.” Luis shrugged, again.
“What did he talk about other than work?” Dela asked.
“He was always watching True Crime shows. He’d come in all excited about something he saw on the TV. Tell me how some woman killed her husband slowly with a poison and then would have gotten off if she hadn’t done something dumb.” He shrugged. “I didn’t listen all that much to what he said. I prefer video games and movies over True Crime.”
Quinn started unplugging the computer. “I’ll take this back to the field office and see if I can get a tech to get into it.”
“Ummm. No.” Dela stepped over and took control of the computer. “That has numbers and clients on it that doesn’t go outside of this casino. I’ll take it to Wallace in I.T. to give it a try.”
“I’m only doing my job.” Quinn crossed his arms, looking so much like the lieutenant who released a rapist that she scowled.
“I’m doing my job. Protecting the casino’s interests. We’ll take care of this in house. I’ll give you copies of the websites he searched that didn’t relate to his work.” She wasn’t about to give up the computer as easily as she had the prisoner. Then she was outranked. Here they were equal. The F.B.I. might be higher ranking than her status as head of security, but he couldn’t take the computer unless he got a subpoena.
“If you think of anything else, you know where to find me,” she said to Luis as she packed the computer out of the office.
Quinn was on her heels, opening the doors. When they stepped out of the office area, he held out his hands.
“Let me carry that for you.”
She peered into his eyes. “I want it to go to security, not out to your vehicle.”
“Yes, ma’am. This is your turf. I won’t do anything to undermine your job.” He grasped the computer.
She didn’t want to give it up, but at the same time, her stub burned and ached from being shoved in the prosthesis for more hours than normal. Relinquishing the modem, she said, “This doesn’t mean I believe you won’t undermine me if it benefits you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He grinned at her, walking alongside of her over to the door that led to the I.T. offices.
He stopped one step back from the door and blocked her opening it. “What was that call about saving a leg?” His gaze dropped to her feet. “I thought you were limping but I didn’t know it was that bad.”
She wasn’t about to tell him she wasn’t a whole woman. He might think she couldn’t do her job, like so many others. “I found a dog that had been hit by a car yesterday. I took it to the vet. She can’t save it’s leg.”
“Oh. That makes more sense. Glad to hear you aren’t having problems.” He moved away from the door and she opened it.
The way her leg felt right now she was going to have a hard time not limping in front of him. She didn’t want him to know she hadn’t come out of the army unscathed.