Read Online Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) by Caroline Dries, Steve Dries - Free Book Online

drink.
    Whelan was a little overweight, but not exactly fat.  He looked about fifty-five—old for a cop—but had a full mop of hair.  I wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting at the bar before I got there, but the man seemed like he could hold his liquor and knew what he was doing.  I hoped he did, because my stomach was getting nervous about the prospect of drinking whiskey on top of a pint of beer.  On top of two-day-old Chinese food.
    “So you want to know about Cody Masterson,” he said, and took a long swig of Jameson’s.  “I still think about that case, do you believe that?  Everyone’s got a white whale, I guess, but that one still nags at me.”
    “How come?”
    “Well, let me put it this way.  If you’re looking for more evidence, you’re not gonna find any.  We gave it everything we had, and the jerk still got off.”
    “I was kind of afraid of that,” I said.  “So you’re convinced he did it?”
    He paused, studying the ice cubes melting in his drink.  “I’m convinced he should have been convicted,” he said.  “Whether he actually did it or not, that’s another question.”  He looked at me and smiled.  “How’s that for my impersonation of a lawyer?”
    “Not bad, except for the fact that you don’t have horns.  So what was Cody like in the interrogation room?”
    “Cool.  Never cracked.  Personally I think he’d been very well coached, but one of my guys actually believed him.  Remember, he had Charlie Frank representing him.  The man is a snake, but if the shit ever hit the fan for me, he’d be the first guy I’d call.”
    “That’s about the best compliment a lawyer could ever expect to receive,” I said.  “So why aren’t you completely sure about Masterson?”
    He sighed and waved the bartender over for another round.  I was still nursing mine, but he’d polished his whiskey off like it was sweet tea.  I began wondering what his plan was for getting home, or if cops simply didn’t worry about DUI’s. 
    “I’m set to retire in another year, full pension.  Although if my wife makes it official and divorces me, I’ll be working ‘til I die.  Anyway, the point being I don’t give a shit like I used to.” 
    The bartender poured him another double and I put a hand over my glass to signal I was fine.  “What bothered me about that case was how the ball got rolling in the first place.  You know, we were all set to call it a random street killing, a carjacking, until we got an anonymous tip to search Masterson’s backyard.”
    I nodded.  “Where you found the gun.”
    “Yeah.  We found that thing buried back there, no prints.  It was either wiped down or the killer used gloves.  The point is, either someone knew Cody did it and knew where the weapon was, or someone planted the gun in his yard to frame him.  We went with the first option.”
    “Occam’s Razor,” I said.  “Usually the simplest explanation is the right one,” I said.  I pulled that one out of my ass.
    Whelan’s eyes got big.  “Wow.  Beautiful and smart.”
    I twirled my hair playfully and grinned.  “So no one ever suggested someone was trying to set Cody up, right?”
    “Exactly.  Well, they had to come up with something, but it was pretty vague.  How else do you explain the murder weapon being buried in your yard if you didn’t do it?”
    The beer and whiskey were affecting my brain a little bit, but I was still able to process what Whelan was saying.  I couldn’t help thinking that it was surprisingly similar to what Les Trondheim had told me.  These were the people most intimately familiar with the case, and none of them was as convinced of Cody’s guilt as the man on the street seemed to be.  If these people weren’t certain, it was beginning to make sense that a jury of twelve didn’t find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  On the other hand, lawyers, cops and journalists were trained to be skeptics.  Sometimes the conventional