CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

May 13, 2015

4:30 a.m.

Las Vegas International Airport

 

Julia stood with her jacket pulled tight around her, shivering slightly in the cold predawn air. Even though the day would be warm, at 4:30 a.m. out on an open runway, it could get pretty darned cold in early May. She had brought the jacket for the Idaho mountains, but was very glad she had it at the moment.

Behind her was Doc Hill’s private jet hanger, now standing open and empty since the large private jet sat on the taxi-way about fifty paces in front of her. It looked like the two pilots were going through a pre-flight-check in the cockpit.

Lott had picked Julia up at her house a half hour ago. Annie had met them inside the hanger and Lott was now briefing her on what some of the plans were and where they were headed exactly in Idaho. While he was doing that, Julia had gone out to get their bags from Lott’s Cadillac.

She couldn’t believe Lott had jumped in so fast to help with her friend Trish. His willingness to help was one of the many things she loved about him.

And she had to admit, she was falling in love with him.

He seemed to be falling for her as well. They didn’t talk about it, but it seemed they both knew and were just going slow. She liked that.

During the game last night, on Lott’s prompting, she had told the other three players about her friend Trish going missing.

The moment she had said Trish had long blonde hair and lived outside of McCall, Idaho, the other three had instantly jumped to the same conclusion Lott had come to. But they all agreed that chances are they were overeating.

They said that chances are Trish was fine.

And their initial reaction scared Julia more than she wanted to admit. She did not want to lose her old friend Trish.

Andor, Lott’s former partner, was the oldest of the Cold Poker Gang at seventy. But he was very spry and walked like a bull, always seeming to storm forward when he moved. Lott towered over him, since Andor barely made five-five. But with his brown sports jacket and pants that never matched and his shining bald head, he seemed far more intimidating.

Julia had really come to like Andor, even though they seldom said much to each other.

Sarge was ex-military from Nam and never talked about it. He was mid-sixties and had some scars on his face from different fights. Lott had full gray hair he kept cut short. Sarge had thinning hair with a large bald spot in the center of his head that always looked sunburned.

Julia had never been able to get a real sense of him, even though he came to the games every week since his wife had died. He seemed very closed up.

Benson was the fifth member of the Cold Poker Gang that had showed up for the game. Besides Julia, he was the youngest of the bunch, but looked older than Lott with a large gut and a limp. He had taken early retirement to work on real estate investing and gotten bored enough to want to do more detective work at times. He was married with two grown kids and only made about half the games since his wife liked to travel.

Julia liked Benson because he had a mind that could fit unrelated details into patterns. They had solved a few cases because of Benson’s skill at that.

They cut the game short and all five of them pored over the files Andor had brought from the department. Lott said he never thought the Cold Poker Gang would ever think of tackling Willis Williams. But now they had a connection and couldn’t not go after him.

Julia was glad they were all so willing to help.

She just really, really hoped they would get to Trish’s home up in the mountains and they would find her there, well. But her gut told her that was not going to be the outcome.

After they had finished going over the files on the various disappearances linked to Willis Williams, they divided the nine Las Vegas cases up among the three staying behind in Vegas.

While Julia and Lott were in Idaho, the other three were to go over the cases again, trying to find anything at all someone might have missed, some sort of similarity they could tie together.

And Andor had suggested that he work with a detective from both Boise and Seattle and get their files. “Call it an “old person’s task force.”

“Think they would go for that?” Julia had asked.

“I’ll get the Captain to call them. The least they can do is send files.”

“My gut sense,” Lott said, “with Willis Williams, they’ll do more than send files.”

She had headed home at ten right after the game instead of going out to dinner with Lott as was their habit over the last few months. Since he was picking her up so early, she wanted to at least try to get a little sleep and pack.

She had managed the packing, but the sleep had mostly eluded her.

Now the cold wind was waking her up and she was ready to go.

She really needed to find out what had happened to Trish.