Free Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) by W.D. Gagliani Page A

might
have been. She chuckled, but she knew she wanted to go inside.
    According to
Nick, the first murder had taken place nearby, and when he'd called her just
after she'd left the shower, he had told her they now had a second victim, also
killed in one of the nearby surface lots.
    Why was she
so interested in the place, suddenly?
    Jessie
couldn't be sure but she figured her fascination was one part stress-related
and one part Nick-related, wanting to lend a hand or moral support. He’d gone
to the main police precinct downtown to supervise some of the plodding
research, then he’d be heading for the casino later in the morning. Sometime
during her drive, she’d decided to do a little investigating on her own and
then meet Nick at the casino. She thought she remembered a couple people on the
staff here, transplants from Up North who had come to the big city to work.
She’d just ask a few questions, look around, and maybe have some more ideas to
offer Nick when he got here.
    He would
have warned her to stay away. To keep away from the crime scene.
    She was
never one to take a warning to heart.
    Once independent, always independent .

 
 
    LUPO

 
    He’d been in
barely an hour when Charlie Bear had called him with grim news.
    “Shit,” Lupo
said with a growl. “Another one? Crossbow again?”
    “Yeah.”
Charlie turned the end of the word into a sigh, then briefly described the
scene. “This isn’t good. No fucking good at all.”
    “Uh, no,”
Lupo said. “Means the bastard likes it, needs it, wants to exact some sort of
revenge only his twisted mind understands.”
    “You got a
degree in psychology?”
    “Don’t need
one. You do this job long enough, you can see into every black soul you come
into contact with. And I’ve come into contact with some dark fucking souls, let
me tell you.” He stared into his blank computer screen, as if ogling those dark
souls now.
    “I believe
you,” Charlie said. “So now what? I’ve got people on the perimeter. The press
will get here again soon, I’m betting. This is gonna blow up into one of those
twenty-four hour coverage stories. We’ll try keeping them at bay.”
    “Good luck.
I’m at police HQ. We’ve got some searches going here. Seems like nowadays half
of police work is just looking at online stuff, you know, so we’ve been hiring
librarians to help build our searching capabilities. How about you, can you
have your people do some searching for me?”
    “Sure, what
do you need?”
    “I’ll be
heading over soon to look over this new scene, and my partner when I can find
him,   but I’ll request the lab guys
get to you first. In the meantime, uh, we’re operating on the possibility our
guy might be not a casino employee or a former employee, but a would-be employee.”
    “Would-be?”
Charlie stopped to shush somebody in
the background. “Not sure what you mean.”
    “Like if he
interviewed for a job and was rejected…”
    Charlie
digested the news. “Shit, I’m not sure we keep records of that.”
    “Actually
I’d like to see the interviews themselves. Recorded or transcribed. Notes
maybe?”
    “Not likely
we’d have that, either,” Charlie said, his words coming out slow.
    “I bet your
HR department does. Even if they don’t record video, whenever they interview
somebody, they might make a note of it and maybe even scribble something on the
app itself. Still using paper?”
    “Yeah, we’re
still a little old-fashioned. But I know they’re switching over to online
applications and some management software any day now. They’ve been testing
it.”
    “But if
they’re not doing it yet, we might be in business. Check with your HR and see
if they file the applications. And anything on interviews they conducted.”
    “I’ll do
that…” Charlie didn’t sound convinced. But the security head was up to his
knees in a second vic’s blood and Lupo was sure his administration was probably
starting to make noises about containment and