December 4th, 2016
Las Vegas, Nevada
Sarge finished his bread pudding. The stuff was so good, so sweet, it was too dangerous to go for seconds. He had a hunch he could just keep going back for more and more if he let himself.
He pushed the empty plate away before he made a fool of himself by licking it clean.
“So one thing is bothering me,” Sarge said after letting Pickett and Robin finish their desserts as well. “Why was she naked?”
“She wasn’t sexually molested in any way that was obvious,” Robin said. “But the mummification might have cleared anything not obvious out.”
“Possible,” Pickett said. “But that photo didn’t have the feel of a sexual crime scene.
Sarge and Robin both nodded. They had all three seen their share of those over the years. And Sarge had no desire to ever see another.
But he had to tell them what he was thinking. “Am I being crazy, but the first thing I thought about when I saw that photo was that she was napping.”
Pickett nodded and Robin opened the folder again to look at the photos of the scene.
“To me,” Sarge said, “she looks like she took off her clothes to take a nap and just never woke up.”
“If the Landmark had already been shuttered when she went into that room,” Pickett said, “there would have been no power or air conditioning, so that room in late August would have been an oven.”
“The water was turned off as well,” Robin said, glancing up from the report.
“So they couldn’t find anything that killed her because she died from excessive heat,” Sarge said. “But why would she stay in a room that hot?”
That question bothered him more than he wanted to admit because he could only come up with a couple reasons, none of which he liked.
“Maybe the door just got stuck and she couldn’t get out,” Pickett said.
Sarge nodded. That was one thing he had thought about.
“She was locked in there,” Robin said, softly. “I bet she was locked in there by someone. It says in the report that the workers had to pry open the door. No key worked.”
Sarge nodded. That had been his biggest worry. If that was the case, this had gone from an unexplained death to a murder case.
“Photos of the door?” Sarge asked.
“In the master file,” Robin said. “Andor only brought the cold case file with the basics. I can access the master file online. I’ll get the photos and send them to you when I get home.”
“So we have a major hotel with hundreds and hundreds of rooms sitting empty,” Pickett said.
“And the entire mess caught up in court proceedings, so who knew how long it was going to sit there,” Robin said.
“And someone knew that and got in there and locked that girl in that room for some reason,” Sarge said.
He didn’t much like the idea, but it was a theory, which was more than they had on this case so far.
“Another pattern to look for in a computer search,” Pickett said. “Evidence of use of shuttered hotels.”
Sarge sat back, feeling a little shocked. There were always hotels and motels shuttered around this town. No one paid them any attention at all, it was so common. Sometimes the hotel or motel sat boarded up for years and years.
“So we go talk with the surviving guy who found the body first, then we find who was in charge of shuttering the place,” Pickett said. “We have a plan.”
“And I’ll get all these searches going,” Robin said. “Amazing how the three of us can scratch a hole into a completely rock-solid cold case.”
“Assuming any of these ideas pan out,” Sarge said, standing and putting a tip on the table.
“Buzz killer,” Robin said, smiling.
“Well, that poor young thing had to get in there somehow,” Pickett said, putting away her notebook and standing as well. “And someone, somewhere has to be wondering what happened to her.”
“So let’s see if we can give her and her family some closure,” Robin said, nodding.
Sarge completely agreed with that.
The three of them headed for the exit and at the bottom of the escalator, Robin turned toward the parking garage and Sarge and Pickett headed through the casino toward Fremont Street to walk home and get a car.
Sarge had a gut sense this case was going to be a lot more than what it seemed.
He just didn’t know what that would be.