CHAPTER ONE

Fifteen Years Later…

 

 

August 6th, 2015

5:30 P.M.

Las Vegas

 

RETIRED DETECTIVE BAYARD LOTT sat at his wooden kitchen table working at a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He loved the legs and always ordered extra legs when he picked up a bucket of KFC for dinner before the weekly poker game he held in his basement poker room. The open bucket now sat in the middle of his table smelling wonderful.

For Lott, there was nothing like fresh KFC. It made the daily exercise he did to keep his sixty-three-year-old body in shape worthwhile to be able to eat KFC like this regularly.

He would have the chicken for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, and maybe a snack or two over the next few days before buying another bucket. His fridge was never without KFC for long.

Across the table from him was his former partner, retired Detective Andor Williams. Beside Andor was retired Reno Detective Julia Rogers. Both Andor and Julia were working at the bucket of chicken as well, making sure Lott didn’t have that many days of snacks from this particular bucket.

Tonight, Julia had on a white blouse with a running bra under it and light tan slacks and tennis shoes. Her long brown hair was pulled back and tied off her face and her green eyes seemed to light up with every bite off a chicken wing.

Lott had on a short-sleeved golf shirt and jeans and tennis shoes. Andor wore what he always did, a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tan slacks and brown dress shoes.

They each had a paper plate, a stack of napkins, and both Andor and Julia had grease on their faces at the moment. Lott had no doubt he did as well.

Julia looked wonderful, even with grease on her face. She exercised as much as he did, if not more, just so she could eat what she wanted as well.

The newly remodeled kitchen echoed the sounds of the three of them working at the dripping, Original-Recipe KFC. The rest of the groceries and snacks for the Cold Poker Gang poker game tonight in the basement were forgotten for the moment on the new granite counter.

Chicken had to come first, especially if it was fresh KFC. That was the rule in his house.

Lott loved the Thursday night games when five or six retired detectives got together to play cards in his downstairs poker room. While playing, they also worked on and talked about cold cases for the Las Vegas police department.

Even though they were all retired, a few years back the chief of police had given the Cold Poker Gang special unit status. That was because the Cold Poker Gang had solved some of the city’s most puzzling cold cases.

All of the gang could still carry their guns and badges, but they didn’t get paid and weren’t officially on the force.

But that was enough for all of them to feel valued. And after closing so many major cold cases, everyone on the force, including the chief of police, gave them all a lot of respect, which Lott liked more than he wanted to admit.

Sometimes in retirement, all you had to live on was respect. Past or present.

He would take either.

And they all knew they were lucky. Even after retirement, they got to continue a job they all loved and had lived their lives to do. But they didn’t have to do all the paperwork or report at certain hours. They worked at their own pace and on their own time and money.

Julia called it “Retirement with benefits.”

Lott’s daughter Annie, also a former Las Vegas Detective, had found that extremely funny, but the humor had just gone right past Lott. Julia had promised she would explain at some point, which made Annie laugh all the harder.

As far as Lott was concerned, this was a perfect job, even though he didn’t get paid for it. The job had value, made him feel valued, something that didn’t come easy in retirement.

He had been forced to retire early, at fifty-nine, before he had wanted. He had decided to be with Carol, his wife, during her last year of sickness. She had now been gone for four years, and Lott was finally moving on with his life, thanks to the Cold Poker Gang, his daughter, Annie, and Julia beside him.

Julia had been forced to retire from the Reno police department at the age of fifty-five when a bullet shattered her leg. She barely had a limp, but the injury had been too much to allow her to continue working, so she had moved to Las Vegas to be close to her daughter, Jane, and play some poker.

It was during a poker tournament out on the Strip that Julia had met Annie and learned about the Cold Poker Gang. Julia was the only woman in the gang at the moment.

But Lott knew that two of the best women detectives still active on the force were thinking of retiring soon, and both wanted to join the gang. It would be great to have them in the game.

And to help with the cases.

Julia and Lott had hit it off almost at once after she joined the game just over a year ago. They were slowly building a solid relationship. He now often spent the night at her condo and loved waking up beside her in the mornings.

She and Andor made it a habit to come over early on game nights and help him eat KFC and set up the downstairs poker room.

It was during the game that Andor presented cold cases he had gotten from the chief of police for the gang to work on. They only got a new case when they had solved an earlier one, or had given up on one.

Actually, they never gave up on a case, they just put the file “on the bar” near the poker table downstairs to be reviewed every week. They were all very proud of the fact that in over two years of doing this, only five files were “on the bar.”

They had closed a lot of very cold cases.

“So what’s the new case tonight?” Julia asked Andor, giving him a smile that could melt most anyone. She blinked her large green eyes at Andor who just shook his head.

“Nice try, Rogers,” Andor said, then took a bite on another piece of chicken.

Lott laughed. Andor always kept the cases secret until after an hour into the game. Then he would present them like presenting a gift to a royal court. She asked him ahead every time there was a new case, and he never told her. It was a little dance they both seemed to enjoy.

Andor was a bulldog of a human being. He never walked anywhere. He stormed. He had a heart of gold, but a bull exterior. Julia was thin and not much taller than Andor. She moved around him like a butterfly around a stump. Sometimes that drove Andor crazy, but Lott knew Andor really liked and admired Julia.

Andor had also had been forced to retire early to take care of his wife, who had died just six months after Carol had died. Lott and Andor had spent a lot of those months after Andor’s wife died sitting in bars drinking.

It did neither of them any good, but it was the only thing they could think to do at the time.

The Cold Poker Gang had gotten both of them back to work, and they loved it.

“All I will tell you about the new case,” Andor said, licking off his fingers and dropping the bones of the chicken on his plate, “is that today is the fifteenth anniversary of the day Lott and I originally caught the case.”

Andor glanced at Lott and shrugged, almost an apology before going back to work on yet another piece of chicken.

Lott stared at his former partner.

Fifteen years would make the year of the case 2000. Early August. What cases had they done at that time that went cold? They hadn’t had that many cases go cold over the years. Maybe ten major ones was all and they have already solved a couple of those with the gang.

Then Lott suddenly realized which case Andor was talking about. And why he had given him that apologetic look.

“You are kidding, right?” Lott asked.

Andor shook his head. “About damn time we give those eleven women some justice, don’t you think?”

Lott dropped the drumstick on his plate, wiped off his hands and sat back. He hated this idea.

He hated it more than he wanted to think about.

He had hated that case more than any other case they had caught over the years. It had given him nightmares for years, and there hadn’t been a clue that seemed to lead them anywhere to who had killed the women.

He had woken up Carol on more than one night by screaming in a nightmare when that case was active.

It was the coldest of the cold cases they had.

Julia glanced at him, clearly seeing he was upset.

“That bad?” she asked.

Both Andor and Lott nodded.

“A case of nightmares,” Lott said.

“In more ways than one,” Andor said.

“Damn, I hate this idea,” Lott said.

“Yeah, me too,” Andor said. “But we need to do it.”