Stripped Read Free

inside pocket of his navy blazer. He wore the coat over a bone white, button-collar dress shirt and crisp new black jeans. Serena had insisted that he start the new job with new jeans, and he had finally relented, although he hated to abandon the fraying pair that had fitted his body like an old friend for the last ten years in Minnesota. The starched denim felt stiff, like cardboard, which was how he felt here in Las Vegas. A fish out of water. It was another universe compared to the midwestern world where he had spent his whole life.
    “The victim, did you see where he came from?”
    “The Oasis,” Elonda said.
    Stride eyed the casino and its slim, phallic tower. The hotel was hosting a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and a slinky lingerie model thirty stories tall stared imperiously back from a huge vertical banner that stretched nearly to the Oasis roof. She had white wings, as if she might fly away and terrorize the city. King Kong with a D cup.
    “Was he alone?” Stride asked.
    Elonda nodded. “Yeah. Headed my way like a fucking laser beam.”
    “He say anything to you about himself? Tell you who he was?”
    “Oh, sure, baby, we had a fine conversation. People meet me, they want to talk.” Elonda snorted. Then she added, “He said he was from Iowa.”
    Stride shook his head. “He wasn’t. His ID says Vancouver.”
    “Fucker lied to me? Well, God’ll get you for lying.” She grinned at Stride.
    “Was there anybody else on the street?” he asked.
    “Nobody.”
    Stride glanced at the area surrounding the magic shop. The street was open and wide—you could see for blocks. He didn’t think the killer appeared out of nowhere like one of the magic tricks in the window.
    “You told me you heard the killer walk up to you. Where did he come from?”
    “I don’t know, man. There wasn’t a soul.” She chewed a fingernail and idly scratched an itch between her legs. “Wait, wait, hang on. There was somebody at the bus stop down there.”
    Stride tapped his pen against his front teeth and squinted as he studied the bus stop, which was near the base of the Oasis driveway about thirty yards away. No shelter, just a street sign and a notch in the pavement for the bus to pull off the street.
    “What did he look like?” Stride asked.
    Elonda shrugged. “As long as he wasn’t a cop, I didn’t care.”
    “Tall? Short?”
    “Fuck, I don’t know.”
    Stride ran a hand back through his unkempt salt-and-pepper hair. It was wavy, with a mind of its own, and more salt and less pepper every day. He bit his lip, imagining the street empty, not a riot of police activity, just Elonda and the horny Canadian.
    And a man waiting for a bus.
    “Did you hear a bus?” he asked. “You would have noticed if one went by right behind you.”
    Elonda thought back. “No. No bus.”
    “How long were you in the doorway before the murder?”
    “ ’Bout forty-five seconds,” Elonda said.
    “You sound pretty sure.”
    “I count,” she said, and gave him a broad wink.
    Stride got the picture. No bus, and less than a minute before the shooting. He waved at one of the uniformed officers on the scene, a burly kid with a blond buzz cut and a stubble goatee.
    “Go down to that bus stop,” Stride told him. “Then time yourself walking back here. Don’t hurry. You’re just a pedestrian on the street, okay?”
    The cop nodded. It didn’t take him long. When he arrived back in front of the magic shop, he clicked his sports watch and announced, “Thirty-two seconds.”
    Stride squatted down in front of Elonda again. “I’m going to need you to think real hard about that man at the bus stop.”
    “That was the guy, huh?” Elonda said. “Shit. I’m telling you, I don’t remember him.”
    “Let’s try something,” Stride began.
    He stopped when he heard a car horn blare sharply behind him, then heard the expensive purr of a sports car pulling up nearby, just outside the crime scene tape. A door opened, and Stride saw