Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) Read Free

remember what went down.” He still couldn’t quite
acknowledge what had really happened on that beach. Bear nodded. Silence hung
between them awkwardly. Lupo looked at where the crime scene techs were
clustered, then changed the subject abruptly. “What you got?”
    Bear shook
his head once more in commiseration, but then got on task. “Strange, is what I
got. The vic’s name is Tanya, uh, Rosskov. She’s a blackjack dealer. Pretty
good at it, kept herself in shape and out of trouble. Coming to work, normal
shift, and some asshole killed her with a fucking crossbow.”
    “How’d you
know it’s a crossbow?”
    “I was
military before the cop phase. Rangers. I may have come across a black crossbow
or two in my time. Between you and me.” He chuckled. His guys were hanging
around in a knot. “Hey,” he called out, “keep sweeping the area for anything
out of the ordinary.” He turned to Lupo and DiSanto. “Novices. They don’t go
through hoops like they used to. Once you had to have been a cop before they’d
hire you here, or any Indian casino. Then they got popular and started hiring run
of the mill security guards, no experience necessary.”
    “ Rosskov, huh?” DiSanto said. “Russian?”
    “Yeah, it’s
like Smith over there. She was off the boat, maybe three years.”
    “So… you
figure it’s a Russian mob thing?”
    Charlie Bear
smiled crookedly and tilted his head. “This guy for real?” he said to Lupo.
    Lupo
grinned. “He’s educated by way of TV cop shows.”
    “Very
funny,” DiSanto said. “You watch, I’ll be right. Wanna bet?”
    “Let’s take
a look.” Lupo led the way, and they filed over along the well-traveled route
that would contaminate the scene the least.
    Rosskov was
a looker, at least under the lights. Her hair was a rich blond, maybe enhanced
or maybe not, and it fanned out around her tilted head as if she were taking a
nap. Her face was composed, just a bit stunned, eyes half open. A tiny grimace
on her lips indicated quick, sudden pain and quicker end. Her chest was soaked
where the wound had bled out along the shaft of the thick bolt that protruded
from her chest wall. A perfect heart shot, apparently. The ground beneath her
was a pasty pool of coagulating blood. The longer you looked at her features,
the more you realized she was pale, bloodless.
    “From how
far?” Lupo turned to look at the blocked-off street.
    “Maybe
thirty, thirty-five feet. Maybe less. Twenty-five?”
    “Car?”
    Bear nodded.
“I think so. That’s why I doubt they’ll find anything out there.”
    “Damn good
shot.”
    “Or lucky,”
DiSanto added. “But who walks around with a crossbow? Kinda hard to hide.”
    “They make
smaller ones, ’bout the size of a handgun. This one did a lot of damage, so I’d
say it’s a hunting model with a heavy pull.”
    Lupo straightened
and looked around. “Surveillance cameras?”
    “Yes and
no,” Bear said. “Got’em, but this is a dead area. There’s cameras in the
parking lot, and there’s cameras sweeping the employee entrance –
actually all entrances – but
right here, right here’s a spot not covered by any. And she was unlucky enough
to have been assigned this faraway lot, not one of the closer ones.”
    “Still
should be able to spot a car traveling the route, maybe going from camera to
camera,” DiSanto mused. “Got time code on the recordings, right?”
    “Absolutely.”
Bear nodded. “Yeah, I figure we should be able to piece together something from
when she left her car to when she got hit. I’ve already got my tech guy piecing
it together. Might take him a couple hours. Don’t worry, we’ll share.”
    Lupo raised
an eyebrow. “You want the case?
Usually from my experience you people — um, tribal councils, want to get
as far away from crime as they can.”
    Bear grinned
humorlessly. “They don’t usually have me in charge. See, I take responsibility for everyone in the tribe, including every
employee whether