Reed strolled aimlessly around the baggage claim area of McCarran Airport, waiting for Ellery’s plane to arrive. Airports and casinos had a similar buzzy, dizzy atmosphere—swirling with activity and yet totally isolated from the outside world, filled with people who had no idea what time zone they were in. Reed had awoken at the cold inky dawn on the other side of the country and now found himself just steps away from the desert sunshine where, by the peculiarities of east–west travel, it was still morning outside. McCarran wasn’t crowded, so Reed had plenty of space to amble and reconsider his potentially foolish undertaking. Already it seemed like Vegas was mocking him. The omnipresent slot machines flashed twinkling lights and beeped out cheery songs, while overhead large electronic billboards advertised illusion shows that promised to astonish and mystify. Vegas, Reed knew, was all about keeping your attention at the front door while the truth slipped out the back. He’d come seeking the kind of answers that the city might not care to give.
Las Vegas didn’t care what you were before—here you could be bigger, brighter, new again. Immense casinos were imploded in a matter of seconds. Old glitzy signs, once grand, were dismantled and hauled off in pieces to the Neon Boneyard. Vegas history lived only in faded black-and-white pictures, in the dust of the desert. His mother, too, had gone that way. He’d glimpsed her only in scant pictures, and her body had been cremated years ago, the ashes spread he knew not where.
Reed’s cell phone rang, and he fished it out, thinking the call might be from Ellery, but the ID said it was his sister Kimberly. He hesitated, the phone buzzing in his hand. He had been avoiding his family ever since he found out the truth about his genetic origins. Kimberly, Suzanne, and Lynette had clearly done nothing wrong, and he didn’t want to punish them with the bad news about their father—not until he knew the whole story. His sisters, however, were starting to suspect that something was amiss. “Hi, Kimmy,” he said cautiously as he clicked on the phone.
“Finally!” she said on the other end. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for three days. Are you and Tula coming to Max’s party next Saturday or not?”
“Uh, I’m not sure,” Reed replied hazily as he glanced around. Ellery’s flight had landed and passengers were starting to pour into the baggage claim area. He didn’t want to disappoint his ten-year-old nephew on his birthday, but he also couldn’t imagine standing around with his family faking a jocularity he did not feel. “Are Mama and Daddy going to be there?”
“Depending on Daddy’s schedule. They said they’d try to make it, but you know how it goes.”
Their father’s constituents always came first. Senator Markham had visited local public schools almost monthly while his children were growing up, and yet he had managed to miss most of their recitals, concerts, and athletic games. He loved his kids but had to fit them into the margins of his demanding public schedule. Sundays, Reed had learned early on, were a good bet for Daddy’s attention—those few golden hours between the end of church and the start of the football game. His father would throw a ball around in the yard with Reed or listen to the latest piece Reed was practicing on the piano. Angus was an active music listener, closing his eyes, swaying with the notes like he was taking the melody right into his heart. He’d always been Reed’s favorite audience. In return, Reed had played the dutiful son, standing on the campaign stage next to his lily-white sisters, pretending he never heard the mutterings from the crowd. That one’s adopted.
Reed felt the steam rise up in him at the memory. His father had certainly heard the comments, too, and he’d never said a thing. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it,” he said to Kimmy. “I’m busy working on a case out of town.”
“Oh, that’s a shame! Max will be so sad that Tula isn’t there. What case are you working? Not a bad one, I hope.”
“They’re all bad,” Reed said shortly. He saw Ellery appear across the room, but she hadn’t spotted him yet.
“I know, I know. It’s just … the ones with the little kids seem worse, that’s all I’m saying. I hope it isn’t kids this time.”
Reed gripped the phone tighter. “It’s a baby,” he told his sister, his tone harder than he’d intended. “A baby whose mother was murdered while he slept in his crib in the next room.” Joey Flores, a name Reed knew had once been his but which felt completely alien. All these years, it had been easier to pretend the horror belonged to someone else—some baby barely out of his mama’s womb who didn’t get the chance to know everything he’d lost that day.
Kimmy’s breathing deepened on the other end. “Oh my God, that’s horrible…” Reed had never discussed the specifics of Camilla’s death with any of his sisters, and they’d never asked. Now he found himself wondering just how much they’d really known.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. Across the room, Ellery stopped short as her gaze locked on to his. At one point, she’d had to shed her old identity like a snakeskin, becoming someone entirely new, a trick Reed would have to pull off if he was to find the truth. He counted on her to show him the way. As a start, he hung up on Kimmy without saying goodbye.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Ellery said as she came to stand in front of him.
Reed smiled faintly. “Only about forty years.”
He’d rented a black SUV, something suitable for his secret ops mission, and Ellery fit the tableau just fine. She wore her usual black leather jacket, boots, and no-nonsense expression. In the car, she rolled down the passenger-side window and let the breeze ruffle her hair as she watched the passing scenery. “You think of Vegas as glitzy neon lights,” she said. “But from up in the air, it looked mostly dirt brown.”
“Wait until the sun goes down.”
Ellery turned her head to look at him. “So what’s your first move?” she asked.
“We’re meeting the sheriff down at LV Metro headquarters,” he replied, and Ellery’s expression reflected surprise.
“The sheriff,” she repeated, settling back into her seat. “Boy, they sure roll out the red carpet for the FBI, don’t they? I’d have thought the sheriff would be too busy to take a meeting on a forty-year-old cold case.”
This thought had occurred to Reed as well. “I assume it’s a professional courtesy as well as a personal one. He’s got to know by now that I’m the baby from the crime scene.” No doubt he also knew Reed’s father was running for governor in Virginia.
Ellery was quiet a moment. “If they know your personal connection,” she said, “it’s kind of a surprise they let you take the case.”
“Who else wants it? It’s dead as far as they’re concerned.”
Reed had worked with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in the past, so he found their headquarters with no trouble. It was a large, modern complex of sandy-colored buildings four stories high. The pale brown bricks blended in with the surrounding desert, while the large windows reflected a big blue sky. The impressive structure hadn’t existed at the time Reed’s mother was murdered; in fact, the LVMPD was an infant barely older than Reed at the time. It came into being when the Las Vegas Police Department merged with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in 1973, forming one of the largest police agencies in the United States. Since then, the Flores murder had passed from one cop to another, sitting idle on the shelf, until the sheriff had finally ordered it closed.
A group of tall waving palm trees beckoned at the entrance, and Reed turned into the large parking lot. After a quick check-in at the front desk, Reed and Ellery received a uniformed escort up to Sheriff Brad Ramsey’s office. Ramsey stood up and came around from behind his desk to greet them. “Come in, come in,” he urged as he shook their hands in turn. “Please have a seat.” Trim and compact, he had a head of silver hair but a surprisingly unlined face for a man in his sixties, especially one who had spent his adult years presiding over the city’s yellow underbelly. He moved with quick efficiency, no wasted effort as he pulled out a chair for each of them. Reed noted the panoramic view from the corner office included more palm trees and sprawling city streets. In the distance, the casinos on The Strip formed their own kind of mountain range, shimmering in the sun.
“Thanks for seeing us,” Reed said, and Sheriff Ramsey spread his hands in a magnanimous gesture.
“Of course. I wanted to take the opportunity to express my personal condolences to you for the loss of your mother and to offer my sincere regret for our inability to solve her case. If we had unlimited resources, I’d leave the case open indefinitely—no one wants to see a killer go free—but you know how the numbers are. The taxpayers have their current concerns, and sometimes we have to make hard decisions.”
“I understand,” Reed replied. The sheriff reminded him somewhat of his father, with his relaxed but authoritative tone and the direct eye contact and open body posture. I’m in charge, but I want you to like me anyway, his demeanor said, and Reed remembered that sheriff was an elected position in Las Vegas.
“We’ll cooperate in any way we can, of course. It’s just that I can’t devote any more man-hours to the case.”
“What if we found a new lead?” Ellery wanted to know, and the sheriff’s gaze fell on her.
“If you found new evidence that substantially changes the picture of this case then we’d certainly revisit our position, Ms.… I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”
“Ellery Hathaway.”
Reed watched as the sheriff leaned back in his seat and tried to place the name. The murders last summer had blown up Coben’s story again, this time with Ellery’s real identity attached. He jumped in before the sheriff could make the connection. “She’s helping me with the investigation,” he said smoothly, hoping no one would ask to see Ellery’s official credentials. It was a closed case anyway, so what did it matter who took a look at it?
“Well, you’re welcome to look over whatever we have. I had Sergeant Don Price bring it all up to room three for your perusal. The murder book and its contents are yours to keep if you’d like them. As for the rest, you’re welcome to take photos, but the physical evidence has to remain on the property. I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” Reed replied.
“Do you mind my asking what exactly you’re looking for? I appreciate your personal investment, but I’m surprised the FBI would take on a case this old.”
“As it happens,” Reed said, reaching down to withdraw a folder of his own, “your office requested our help with the case back in 1988—a Sergeant Lewis McGinley wrote the letter.” Reed handed the typewritten document across the desk so the sheriff could take a look. “So, you could say I’m only following up.”
The sheriff gave a little frown as he read it over, and then forced a smile as he returned the letter to Reed. “You FBI guys sure keep long records.” He gestured toward the door. “Shall we go take a look?”
Reed and Ellery followed the sheriff down the hall to where he knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for an acknowledgment. “Don? You have a minute? Our guests have arrived.”
Don Price turned out to be a large man in a cotton uniform that strained his shoulders and whose reddened ears suggested he’d recently spent too much time in the sun. “Sure thing,” he said, digging out a set of keys. “I’ve got everything locked up in room three right down yonder.”
They followed him to the locked room where Reed rolled his neck and braced himself for what was on the other side of the door. He could feel Ellery’s eyes on him but did not turn to meet her gaze. “Ah, here we go,” Price said as the door came free. He stood to the side and let Reed pass through first.
The first thing Reed noticed was the smell—old and warped cardboard boxes covered in a faint film of dust. There were three of them lined up on the table, next to two fat black binders marked with Camilla Flores’s name and several aging manila envelopes that were faded and threatening to tear. The others hung back as Reed slowly approached the table, hesitant as he was to begin the historical autopsy. He had been through this process enough times with other cases to know what he was likely to find in the boxes—bloodied clothes, the knife, and other physical items from the scene. He instead concentrated first on the murder book, flipping it open to the first page. The abbreviated reports he’d received earlier had not included any statement from the first responding officer. Reed wanted the story right from the beginning, especially since the rookie at the scene was likely to still be alive today. He passed through the first few pages and did not see what he was looking for, so he sped up his search until he reached the back of the first book. When that proved fruitless, he started on the second one.
Ramsey stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Are you looking for something in particular? Maybe I can help.”
“There’s no statement from the first officer at the scene,” Reed said, and Ellery came to look, too.
“No?” Ramsey scratched the back of his neck and shook his head. “I guess with forty years piled up, sometimes things go astray. But I can assure you he’s got nothing of value to add. He was a beat cop who just happened to be closest to the scene when the call came in.”
“I’d still like to talk to him, if possible,” Reed said.
Ramsey spread his hands and smiled. “Ask away,” he replied. “First murder I ever saw, and it still stands as one of the worst ones all these years later.”
“You?” Ellery asked with surprise. “You got the call?”
“It was my regular patrol. I was three blocks away when dispatch got the call just shy of seventeen hundred hours. By the time I rolled up, neighbors had already started to gather on the street. They got to watch me lose my lunch about two minutes later once I got a look inside. The apartment door was open, but I could see that the lock had not been obviously tampered with. The victim was as she’s described in the reports—lying on her back near the kitchen area, with a knife sticking out of her ribs. Someone had beaten her about the head and face as well. I checked for vitals, but there were none, and then I went outside to call it in.” He shrugged. “I stayed at the scene long enough for the big boys to arrive, and then I got out of their way.”
Reed pulled out his own notes and consulted them briefly. “Her friend and neighbor Angela Rivera called it in. Did you talk to her at all?”
“Angie,” the sheriff replied, as if the name was strange on his tongue after all these years. “Yeah, I saw her. She made the call from her apartment next door. She’d been out shopping and came home to find Camilla’s door standing partway open, just like I found it. She heard the baby crying, so she pushed the door all the way open, and that’s when she found Cammie. According to her statement, she, uh, she grabbed the baby and ran to her own apartment to phone it in. We have the recording if you’d like to hear it.”
Reed felt his skin grow tight as Ramsey described Angie removing the baby from the crime scene. Him. He was the baby. So much blood in the apartment that day, and somehow he’d escaped clean. “Yes, sure,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. “Let’s hear it.” He told himself it was just a bunch of words, spoken more than forty years ago. He’d heard at least a hundred distress calls in his career, and this would be just one more. The sheriff nodded at Don Price, who produced a tape recorder and slipped in the cassette.
They stood around the table as it began to play. First there was a loud crackle and then a sharp click, followed by a calm, male voice. “This is Emergency. How can we assist you?”
“Help; she’s dead! Come quick; I need help!” A young female voice, trembling and steeped in fear, filled the narrow room. “Please, she’s not breathing and there is blood all over…”
“Ma’am, where are you? Who’s been hurt?”
Reed heard a long moan, followed by a baby’s cry. The noise made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Cammie. My neighbor. She’s dead, she’s dead. He killed her! There’s blood everywhere. Please, please come.”
The dispatcher eventually got Angie to reveal the address. “We have help on the way, ma’am. Are you someplace safe?”
Angie’s hiccupping cries echoed back through the ages. “She’s stabbed with a knife in her. I told her … I told her he’d come. Shh, niño, shh…” She said something in Spanish that Reed could not translate. He wondered if his baby self had known the words.
“Who would come? Ma’am, do you know who did this?”
There was static on the line, like Angie was juggling the phone. Reed heard himself again, wailing now along with Angie. She muttered something incomprehensible. He caught the word “mama” and it chilled him to the bone. The baby kept screaming inconsolably. Reed wondered about the killer. Did I see him? Did he even know I was there?
Sirens came through on the line. “They’re here.” Angie snuffled close to the receiver, her harsh breathing overwhelming the small room, and then the call went dead.
Reed stood stock-still as the tape player continued to hiss. He gripped the back of the chair as the sound of Angela’s sobs and his own infant terror continued to wash over him. I was there, he thought, his ears buzzing. I heard her die. He had seen enough of the crime scene photos to know his mother had not gone quietly. He could imagine her screams and the sounds of the death blows, metal against bone.
“Reed?” Ellery touched his arm and he jumped. He whirled to face her, but his eyes couldn’t make her come into focus.
Dimly, he saw her waving toward the door. “You guys want to give us a second here, please?” she said to the others.
Sheriff Ramsey and Sergeant Price cleared out of the room, and the sound of the door clicking shut jolted Reed from his nightmare memories. Ellery was looking up at him, filled with concern. “Reed, are you okay? You want to sit down?”
He forced himself to take a slow, deep breath. “No, I’m fine.”
Ellery looked him over, assessing. “That 911 call was intense.”
He paced away from her, but she followed after him. He could see the cardboard boxes in his peripheral vision and turned to look at Ellery instead. He cleared his throat. “On the phone, Angie said ‘he’ did it. It sounds like she believes she knew the killer.”
“Reed. You don’t have to be the one to do this. You don’t have to be the one to work this case.”
“I do have to do it. There’s no one else.”
“No, I absolutely get it. You, you’re a fixer.” She paused to give him a coaxing smile. “Believe me, I should know. I’m your biggest reclamation project. You fly all over the world trying to make it a better place, and I’ll admit it’s one of your more amazing qualities.” He checked to make sure she wasn’t rolling her eyes as she said it, but she seemed sincere. “But you don’t have to fix this,” she continued softly. “Not—not if it’s going to hurt this much. You were just a baby when it happened, and it wasn’t your fault. I’m betting if your mother were alive and standing here, she would tell you the same thing.”
If your mother were alive and standing here … Reed sagged against the chair at the thought of his mother, the only one he’d known. Marianne Markham wouldn’t be pleased to see him paging through Camilla’s murder book, not at all. She kept a tidy house and a tidy life to go with it. He didn’t doubt she loved him. She just wouldn’t understand. Neither, of course, would his sisters. On occasion, Reed had heard one or the other relative make a comment—We love Reed just as much as if he were our own—and the words always set a quiver in his belly because he himself had no comparison. The Markhams were all he’d ever had, all he’d ever known. “I need to find out the truth,” he told Ellery quietly. “No matter what it is.”
She searched his face for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. “Okay. You know I’ll back your play no matter what. I just felt like someone ought to give you an out.”
He smiled a little and nudged her. “Thanks for being that someone,” he said, and she ducked her head and looked at the floor. Reed crossed to reopen the door and admit the sheriff and Sergeant Price, who had been milling in the hall.
“Everything okay?” Sheriff Ramsey asked.
Reed ignored the question and nodded in the direction of the tape player. “On the call, Angela Rivera certainly acted like she knew the killer’s identity. I presume your office followed up.”
“Yeah, because of what she said, the investigating officers initially thought this one would be easy to wrap up. Angie named Billy Thorndike as the killer, but under questioning it became apparent she had no direct knowledge of the case. She was speculating based on prior threats Thorndike had made against Camilla Flores.”
Reed had read the summary of her statement. “Camilla turned him in for running drugs.”
“That’s right. Broke up his whole operation for a while. But the inciting incident actually didn’t even involve drugs. Thorndike had a violent disagreement with one of his runners—the guy ripped him off for six hundred bucks, I think it was—and so Thorndike pistol-whipped the guy in an alleyway. Cammie just happened to be walking by that night after work and saw the assault.”
“Pretty brazen to be disciplining your people out in the open like that,” Ellery remarked.
“Yeah, well, brazen was Thorndike’s style. He kept people in line with violence, and it worked. Of course, we all knew he was bad news, but we could never convince anyone to testify against him. The whole neighborhood was spooked. Camilla, though, she’d had enough. She said she didn’t want to be raising her baby in that kind of neighborhood.”
The whole room fell silent as they all realized they were standing in the presence of that baby. Reed felt his cheeks go hot.
Sheriff Ramsey coughed before continuing. “Cammie was a little bit of a thing and Thorndike was built like a boxer, so all of us were surprised that she wanted to take him on. But I remember, she said something like: ‘There’s more of us out there than there are of him. So he doesn’t get to make the rules for everyone.’” He smiled as he said it, remembering. “That wasn’t my case, either, of course—I didn’t do any investigating back then—but I admired her guts.”
“What happened with the case against Thorndike? The one for the beating?” Reed asked.
“It got dropped after her death,” Ramsey answered with obvious disgust. “The SOB walked. The victim had always refused to testify, so without Cammie around to provide context to his injuries, Thorndike could’ve easily argued the guy slipped on a banana peel and smashed his face in. The D.A. wouldn’t go forward with charges.”
“You think he did it,” Reed said, eyeing the sheriff. “You think he killed her.”
“I don’t know how it works at the FBI, but around here, when a guy says he’s going to kill someone and then that someone ends up dead, odds are good that he’s the one that done it.”
Ellery had started leafing through one of the binders. “It says here that the cops served a search warrant on Thorndike’s house. What were they looking for?”
“Billy had a recent cut on his right hand, just about here.” The sheriff indicated the flap of skin connecting the thumb and forefinger. “Detectives figured he got it when he was stabbing her.” Reed agreed with their logic. It was common for assailants to sustain cuts during a knife attack because the hilt often became slippery with blood. “The search warrant was looking for anything that would tie Thorndike to the knife, any sort of property he might have stolen from the apartment, and anything that would disprove his story that he got the injury working on a motorcycle at his house.”
“And?” Ellery asked with interest. “Did they find anything?”
The sheriff shook his head, dismayed. “Naw. No property linking him to the crime, and all knives from the house appeared to be accounted for. The only item of interest was a rag with blood on it found in the trash in Thorndike’s garage. He said the location of the rag backed up his story, but we always wondered if maybe we could test it somehow and find out if some of that blood belonged to Cammie Flores. We finally got that chance about ten years ago when the state agreed to pay for DNA testing, but it came back empty—no sign of anyone else’s blood on that rag but Thorndike’s. Of course, that doesn’t prove he didn’t do it, but it was our last bite of the apple, so to speak. We’d run out of leads to follow.”
“Do you know where Billy Thorndike is now?” Reed asked.
“Eventually, his luck ran out, thanks in part to the advent of security cameras, and we busted him. He was in and out of prison during the eighties and nineties on a combination of assault, drug, and weapons convictions. He was paroled for good around 2002, I believe. Last I heard he was working up in Summerlin at a gas station, but I have no idea whether he’s even still alive.”
Reed gave a thin smile. “You can be sure I will find out. What about the other suspect? David Owens.”
Sheriff Ramsey lifted his eyebrows. “Owens? He wasn’t a suspect. He was a cop—a straight shooter from the sound of things. They ruled him out right away.”
“Nonetheless, I’d like to talk to him if I could,” Reed replied mildly.
“That’ll be easy to do. He lives right in town over on Faulkner Avenue with his wife, Amy. He’s been helping her run her catering business ever since he retired about five years ago. I imagine he’d welcome the chance to help you in any way he could. Camilla’s death tore him up good, and I think he always felt like he should’ve been there, you know? Like he could’ve stopped it. He knew same as we did that Thorndike was scum, and he knew that Cammie was afraid of him. I guess he just figured Thorndike would never dare go after her—not when David had his unit parked in front of her apartment every other night.”
The sheriff had painted a picture of a distraught boyfriend who’d mistakenly believed his badge could keep his girlfriend safe, but what Reed heard was that David Owens knew Thorndike had threatened Camilla. “Thanks,” he said aloud. “We’ll definitely want to talk to him.”
“Well, sure,” the sheriff replied with sympathy. “He knew your mom. Maybe better than anyone.” He hesitated a beat and then made an officious noise as he drew himself up to full height. “Look, I’m sorry to run out on you like this, but I’ve got to get to another meeting. Don will help you with anything you need. I sure hope you find the answers you’re looking for.”
He shook Reed’s hand again before he left, and then Reed felt the others’ eyes on him as they awaited his next move. He would usually want to see the crime scene, ideally as close as possible to the way it was when the murder occurred, but he knew Camilla’s apartment had been torn down years ago. Reed had looked it up, and there was now in the same place a mini-mart and a nail salon, probably one that employed young women around the age Camilla had been when she died. People walked by every day and had no idea a woman had been murdered right where they stood. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or so the saying went, but to Reed, it seemed like the city had no memory. Camilla had disappeared into the history books, and he was determined to find his way back to her.
He looked across the table at the artifacts of his mother’s murder. Plenty of other detectives had looked at these same files, the same boxes of evidence, and come up empty. As much as Reed wanted to catalog the story for himself, he suspected he wouldn’t find any easy answers by covering the same trodden path. “Is it okay to leave this for now and then come back?” he asked Sergeant Price.
Price’s expression was a mixture of surprise and irritation, as though he’d performed this large an excavation for nothing. “Well, sure, I guess so. I’ll keep it under lock and key for you ’til we close up at six. Thought you’d want more than a quick look-see.”
“Thank you,” Reed replied, ignoring the sergeant and heading for the door. Ellery fell into step beside him.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they hit the hallway.
“I want to talk to David Owens.”
Ellery seemed to ponder this as they walked back out into the warm sunshine. Once inside the car she shifted to look at him. “You’re not buying Billy Thorndike as the prime suspect, are you?”
Reed reached into his briefcase and withdrew a sheaf of crime scene photographs, the ones he’d shown her before. “What kind of murder does that look like to you?”
Ellery flipped through the black-and-white pictures one by one. “Messy,” she said finally. “The struggle obviously went on for quite some time.”
“Exactly. Thorndike was a big man, over six feet according to his vitals, and apparently quite practiced with dispensing violence to keep people in line. Camilla Flores stood five foot four and weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. She should’ve been no match for him. It’s possible she put up much more of a fight than he anticipated, but it’s much more likely her killer was an amateur—maybe someone who snapped just this once, who went insane inside that small apartment and then slipped out the door and back into regular life, where he’s been hiding in plain sight ever since.”
Ellery turned over the pictures in her lap so they were facedown. “Someone like her boyfriend you mean.”
“Yes.” Reed started the car and put on his sunglasses, hiding his eyes from her gaze. “Or someone like my father.”