CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The following night, Veronica and Leo stepped out of the Mercury, and found themselves in the lights and noise at the heart of the Strip.
Drunken tourists staggered up and down the street, sipping on foot-tall frozen drinks. To the south she could see the Luxor’s spotlight piercing up through the murky sky; north was the Stratosphere’s glowing protrusion. Every inch in between flashed, sang, glittered, and roared. They made their way toward the corner, maneuvering past a crowd of tourists buying official CSI merchandise at a sidewalk kiosk. Just past the crush they had to wedge through a gauntlet of card-snappers. Veronica didn’t glance right or left, but Leo looked startled as one persistent guy shoved a card right into his hand. Veronica pushed him forward, and as they came out the other side, he looked down at what he’d been given. Blushing red, he fumbled and dropped it.
“What the hell?” he asked, staring back at the crowd behind them.
Veronica bent down to pick up the card. It showed a girl with large fake breasts, her nipples covered with Photoshop stars. CALL MAI, said the print along the top. AT YOUR DOOR IN 20 MINUTES.
“Pretty ballsy,” he said, frowning at the men who were still shoving their cards at everyone who passed them.
“They’re out of your jurisdiction, Detective,” she said. “Besides, we’ve got an appointment. Let’s stay on track.”
He made a face, then shrugged and followed her. She threw away the card in a trash can as she passed.
Desert Bluffs was Vegas’s newest golf course, open just a few months. Tucked behind the Mercury, it was a stretch of green fringed with palms and acacia trees that boasted eighteen holes, a half-dozen water features, and the biggest sand trap in North America. Leo and Veronica arrived at the clubhouse a few minutes before ten. Two people were waiting for them, a man and a woman.
Leo was back in a suit and tie, his beard gone. Today he was back to being Detective Leo D’Amato. As far as the SDPD was concerned, he’d been in the middle of a long weekend in Vegas, using a few hard-earned days of vacation to play the slots and watch Cirque du Soleil when Veronica’s tip came in. Convenient, because he’d be able to assist the Las Vegas police with their investigation, which seemed to be connected to the rape case he’d just been looking into back in San Diego.
“And a good thing too,” he’d told his CO when he’d taken the call. “I already lost my shirt at the craps table. Time to get back to work.”
He shook hands with the woman first. “Detective Garcia. Thanks so much for your help.” She was in her mid-forties, threads of gray weaving through her short dark hair. She was dressed for manual labor in heavy canvas work pants and boots. “This is Veronica Mars, the PI I told you about on the phone.”
“Pleasure to meet you, D’Amato. Mars. This is the property manager, Kevin Cornell.” She gestured to the man, sallow and slender in an English-cut suit. He cast Leo a fretful look.
“How long do you think this’ll take? Our earliest tee off tomorrow is at eight thirty. If we could just get this taken care of before then…”
Garcia laughed. “I keep trying to explain to him that this golf course is now a crime scene, but he doesn’t seem to get it. No one’s teeing off at eight thirty, Kevin.”
“We’ll try to be as efficient as we can,” Leo said. “But Detective Garcia’s right. You’ll probably need to cancel tomorrow’s clients. At least those before noon.”
Cornell gave a feeble little groan, but didn’t argue.
“The dogs definitely reacted out there, but we haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact spot,” Garcia said to Veronica and Leo. “It looks like it could be a long night.”
They all climbed into a golf cart, Cornell at the wheel, and took off into the darkness, headed toward the seventh hole.
The ride was dreamlike, surreal. The cart’s rising and falling movements as it passed over rolling terrain felt like a night flight in a glider. Straight ahead was an even darker horizontal swathe formed by a row of trees. Above them the lights of the Strip pulsed like the aurora borealis.
Even by night it was obvious the course was incredibly lush. Man-made lakes spread out on either side of them, dense with cattails. The grass looked velvet-soft. All in the middle of a desert, Veronica thought. Water crisis be damned.
Floodlights came into view ahead, a few people moving around beneath them. The sand trap, nicknamed “the Little Mojave,” stretched out across twenty-five thousand square feet of the green, just surpassing “Hell’s Half Acre” at New Jersey’s Pine Valley as the new standard-bearer for sand trap grandiosity.
“How exactly did you get this lead again?” Garcia turned to glance at them in the backseat.
Leo glanced at Veronica. Veronica gave a brisk smile.
“Can we call it an anonymous informant and leave it at that?”
Garcia grinned. “I’m a Vegas cop, honey. That’s how most of our work gets done.”
They pulled up just outside a perimeter of police tape, then ducked underneath it. Four people in coveralls were digging, scraping, and sifting. Cornell covered his eyes and moaned.
“Relax, Mr. Cornell.” Veronica smiled brightly. “You’ll be able to put it right. I’m pretty sure this is what hospitality insurance was made for.”
Garcia handed Leo a shovel. Veronica picked up another from a small pile of implements. Silently, they got started.
The work was slow. They didn’t know how deep to dig, so forensics had been loath to bring out a bulldozer. Something that big could accidentally destroy evidence. But the trap was over a half-acre wide, a sprawling area to explore by hand. The dogs had helped to narrow the search, but not by much.
Veronica’s back ached, her hands starting to blister from the shovel. She thought about what she’d learned the night before, after she’d turned off the video at the point when Sweet Pea shed his coat and advanced on Bellamy. Plausible deniability had something to do with her decision not to watch, but mostly she just didn’t want to see what came next. She’d gone down to the bar, back in her wig, and met Sweet Pea an hour and a half later. He’d taken a seat on a stool next to her and ordered a Coke.
“I’d have thought you’d be ready for a drink after all that,” she said, not glancing at him.
“Not me. I’m eight years sober.” He took a sip. Then he turned to face Veronica and told her what she needed to know, his voice soft but distinct: “The Little Mojave.”
She was surprised at how unruffled he looked. His jacket was neat and crisp, and there was no blood or sweat, no smell of iron, no bruises. You would have thought he’d come straight from the office.
“What?”
“The Little Mojave. It’s a sand trap on the Desert Bluffs golf course. It was under construction in December, back when Maddy went missing.”
Veronica had been surprised to feel her heart sink. She’d known since first meeting with Sweet Pea and Isabella that Madelyn Chase—or Molly Christensen, or whoever she really was—was most likely dead. But hearing it stated so matter-of-factly made her shoulders sag.
“And Bellamy…”
“He’s en route to the ER. Iz told the front desk she’d heard screaming from the room. I saw an ambulance pull up about five minutes ago.”
The thought should have chilled her, but it didn’t. She’d made her choice. She’d known exactly what the result would be.
Sometimes, that was the job.
It was just after three a.m. when Garcia let out a shout. The rest of the team hurried toward her. Veronica moved slowly, setting down her shovel. There was no hurry. Not anymore.
A partially mummified foot protruded from the layer of soil below the sand.
They’d finally found Madelyn Chase.