Free Stateline by Dave Stanton Page A

closet door, and although the hole was visible, it wasn’t obvious. It was a damn peephole—but for what purpose?
    I heard voices and footsteps in the hallway. I pressed my ear against the door and listened to the voices pass. It was time to boogie. I opened the door and the hallway was clear. I ripped the three strips of tape from the door, replaced them with new ones, and moved swiftly to the stairwell. A minute later I was walking through the dark parking lot to my car, congratulating myself on a smooth operation but eager to get out of there. Tampering with crime-scene evidence, especially in a murder case, would definitely piss off the locals.
    • • •
    I sat at the bar at the Lakeside and considered the peephole in the closet door. It was a perplexing find. Possibly it had been there for quite some time, but the sawdust seemed fresh; it wasn’t ground into the floor and pressed into the corners. The hole was probably something a guest or a maid would notice before long, then it would be repaired. My suspicion was it had been drilled recently, maybe even the previous night.
    I called the Crown on my cell, identifying myself again as a cop from Douglas County, and asked for the most recent registration records for room 672. The clerk told me Sylvester Bascom had checked in last night at ten-thirty. Brad had said Sylvester and Sven Osterlund left the bachelor party last night to try to get laid, which I assumed meant hookers. Did they bring a hooker to the room at the Crown? Had the Lake Tahoe police talked to Osterlund yet?
    I sipped on my drink and decided to call my old buddy Cody Gibbons, a detective with San Jose PD. It had been a couple weeks since we’d talked, but he’d had the same phone number in San Jose for years. I dialed it from memory, and he answered on the second ring, his voice gruff and loud.
    “What? What? Dirty Double-Crossin’ Dan? Thanks for returning my call.”
    “What call?”
    “I left you a message at your house.”
    “I’ve been in Tahoe since yesterday. You should have called my cell.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Hey, they gave me another paid vacation. Can you believe it?”
    “I hate to say so, but yes. What happened?”
    “What? I was in pursuit of a car-jacking suspect over near King and Story. This asshole’s driving like a complete maniac, he’s blowing through red lights in crowded intersections, he’s driving on the sidewalk and takes out a hotdog cart, it’s amazing he didn’t kill anyone. So he finally loses it around a corner and slams into a curb and breaks both axles and folds the tires under the car. By the time he gets out of the car we’re right on him, but he takes off anyway. My new partner—I call him Fast Eddie, he’s a black dude who used to run the hundred in college—he catches him, but this dude is jacked up on PCP, and it’s like he’s Superman. He knocked out Eddie with his first punch then grabbed his piece.”
    “Sounds like trouble.”
    “Fuckin’ A. I was caught in the middle of the street with no cover. Lucky for me the guy couldn’t shoot straight. He got off two shots before I drew on him. I hit him between the eyes with my first shot. I’m serious, can you believe that? Right between the eyes.”
    “DOA, I imagine.”
    “And then some. It took the top of his head off and splattered his brains all over the street. I’m suspended with pay for the time being, pending the investigation.”
    “What is there to investigate?”
    “They suspect my ammunition might have been non-regulation, but shit, half the force is packing hollow-point cutters.”
    “It never occurs to you to play it by the book, does it, Cody?”
    “Play it by the book? That gets you nowhere except dead, maybe. Come on, Dirt. Anyway, it’s not uncommon to go SWP after a killing. They won’t give me too much heat unless it gets political. He would have bought it no matter what kind of bullet I used. It may have been the greatest shot of my career.”
    “In the