Sin City Homicide Read Online Free Page B

packed with the weekend crowds when Stanton stepped off the plane and into the terminal. He walked down to the baggage claim and gathered his two gym bags. Being without his firearm felt odd, but he had already put in a request to Orson for a .45 Desert Eagle.
    Outside the terminal , a man in a button-down shirt and sports coat held a sign that said,Stanton.
    “I’m Jon Stanton.”
    “How’s it goin’? Marty Scheffield. I’m with the police. Sheriff Hall’s havin’ me pick you up.”
    Marty took his bags and loaded them in to the trunk of a Cadillac CTS parked on the curb. He climbed into the driver’s side as Stanton sat in the passenger seat and secured his seat belt.
    “I love the car,” Stanton said . “Yours?”
    “I wish. This is your car while you’re here.”
    Stanton noticed the slight delay in Scheffield’s speech, which was indicative of damage to his Broca’s area, the portion of the brain that was just in front of the motor cortex and controlled speech. He wanted to ask about it but knew it would be rude.
    Scheffield drove out of the airport and onto the congested freeway. Stanton hadn’t been there in a long time, and he was struck by the number of billboards. They were spaced hardly more than fifty feet apart, and the majority advertised personal-injury or criminal-defense lawyers.
    “So how long you been with LVPD, Marty?”
    “Two years now.”
    “What’d you do before?”
    “I was a student over at UNLV.”
    “What’d you study?”
    “Criminal Justice. I heard you was a professor before being a cop?”
    “Yeah, psychology.”
    “Do you really have a PhD?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So, why are you still a cop? If I had a PhD, I wouldn’t be a cop.”
    “It’s hard to do too much good grading papers.” Stanton began searching restaurants on his phone. “Where do you think the best pizza is, Marty?”
    “Um, pizza? Probably the Pie at Caesar’s Palace.”
    “Can we stop there really quick?”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    The strip was clogged with cars, cabs, trucks carrying billboards for strippers and escorts, and the occasional city bus. Stanton watched the shows playing on the large screens set up near the roadside by the casinos . Then Marty pulled the car to a stop out front of Caesar’s Palace.
    “I’ll be right back,” Stanton said.
    He ran and took two wrong turns before he asked one of the employees in a clothing store where he could find the Pie. She pointed him toward the fountains. He ordered three pizzas and pasta then waited near the fountains while his order was prepared. The water was far louder than he’d expected it to be, and the people sitting outside the restaurant couldn’t hear each other over the noise unless they yelled.
    He looked around at the statues, which imitated the original marble statues in Italy, remnants of Rome and the Renaissance. They portrayed an ideal of physical and intellectual perfection that he felt had been lost through the centuries. While his culture emphasized the physical, they had demonized the intellectual. He had heard one of his professors say that modern humanity lived as half-men.
    The hostess signaled to him that his order was ready , and he walked back, paid, and left the mall, to find Marty sitting on the hood of the car, smoking.
    “Ready?” he asked.
    “Yeah.”
    They climbed in, and Marty pulled away from the curb.
    “What are the pizzas for?”
    “Just a welcoming gift.”
    Because of the traffic, the trip to the precinct on Martin Luther King Boulevard took nearly half an hour. The precinct office building was a modern design, made of steel and glass. Where the Northern Precinct in San Diego was neglected and forgotten, the Las Vegas Metro Police headquarters looked as though it were being constantly cleaned and renovated, as did the surrounding property.
    Marty parked up front in a reserved spot , and Stanton got out then waited for Marty to tuck in his shirt, which had come out in the back. The pizzas were cold now,