Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (24 page)

Dodge is not sure if Chuck did this, or Jaime.

But it’s telling either way - all of these events are not coincidence - they are the result of dark
desires and dangerous impulses.

E
veryone’s dirty little secrets clawing their way toward the daylight.

“He’s been on Craig
s
list,” Jaime announces.  “Looking for women to meet.”

“The woman the police found,” Dodge blurts out.

“Jesus
Christ,” Jaime gasps.  “
Chuck killed her.”

Dodge nods.  “Maybe those women in Amsterdam weren’t an overdose after all.”

“Oh my God,” Jaime snaps, looking over her should up at him.  “Do you think he’s a serial killer?”

“If there’s more,” he agrees.  “We’ve got to find him before h
e spends any more of my money on
his sick
,
twisted murder spree.”

“I think I found him,” Jaime announces, pointing at the credit card bill on the monitor.

Las Vegas.

*****

Las Vegas shouldn’t exist.  It’s America’s
not so dark secret, sprawling
across
the desert
floor
,
glowing like some day-glo Shangri La.  

Vices like this are usually
hidden from sight.  Like when you get to know a neighbor and you have a couple of good times together, and one day he asks you if you want to know what he really does to have a good time. 

And then he opens a door you never noticed before and you suddenly see the dirty secret that was alway
s lingering beneath the surface - the leering, perverse, uninhibited nature of man.

Funny that we
let this city of vice
grow
in the same deserts where we blow up nuclear bombs and dissect aliens.

Chuck feels like he should feel right at home in Las Vegas, America’s seedy underbelly, but the truth is, this is no
t a city of
hidden shame - this is a full-on visual assault
of glamour and glitz and excess.  H
e feels
like a bug under a microscope.

An alien on the dissection table.

As
he wanders the strip,
it’s the Cosmopolitan that pulls
him in, following the throngs of gorgeous women
flowing into it
.
  Not that i
t’s only women flowing in there.  I
t’s that he only notices the women. 

What he realizes, though, is that he’s a long way from Checkpoint Chili’s, or even Amsterdam, for that matter.  These women are out of hi
s league, so far that he can’t even approach them. 

A
nd no matter how emboldened he feels by pretending t
o be Dodge, stealing his money, he really has no idea how he’s ever going to make a move.

Being here, he realizes h
e’s not ready for the big stage.

So he
checks into the Cosmopolitan and settle
s in
to
the lo
bby bar, putting
Dodge’
s
credit card to work
with the one thing he does know how to do
- get drunk - and hopes something will unfold of its own accord.

*****

Dodge
and Jaime land in Vegas mere hours after learning that’s where Chuck is headed.  He doesn’t have that much of a head start on them.  There are
charges from the Cosmopolitan already, so they know where to start looking, at least.

Hopefully they can catch a break – finding someone randomly in Vegas is a pipedream.
  It’s only a matter of how quickly Chuck goes from the glitz to the guts
of the city
that he eludes them.

They are
monitor
ing
his spending, so they don’t cancel the credit card or report it stolen.

It would only
b
low Dodge’s alibi for Amsterdam
anyway.
 

“
Oh my god, I’m so excited to stay here,” Jaime proclaims.

“Why, what is it
?  I’ve never even heard of it,” he tells her.

“It’s a new hotel,” she explains.  “You’ve seen the commercials on TV.  With the bunny rabbits in the hallway, and the old women in the fetish boots?  The Right Kind of Wrong.”

“Jesus, where are you taking me?”
Dodge laughs, but it’s dec
ided already, of course.

They go where Chuck goes, and it’s probably only going to get weirder from here.

There is a moment at the front desk, where Dodge doesn’t know whether to get one room or two, and he freezes when the desk clerk asks him what he needs.  He tries not to glance at Jaime, unsure what she’s thinking, but he can’t help himself, of course. 

Now that they’re here, away from the drama - and police scrutiny – he feels suddenly liberated.

And wants more than anything to liberate Jaime.

From her clothes.

Screw finding Chuck.

He really just wants to find himself screwing Jaime.

She doesn’t favor him with a look back, though, and Dodge assumes she’s enjoying his dilemma too muc
h to tell him to just go for
it, just get the honeymoon chambers.

Make an anniversary of it.

The clerk makes it a little easier, seeing his hesitation.  “I can upgrade you
to
a suite, with a living room and an adjacent room with a king bed.  The couch folds out into a bed.
 
Hot tub
.”

Dodge breathes an inaudible sigh of relief.  “That’
s
fine, thank you.”

When Jaime steps up to hand over the credi
t card, she flashes him her wicked smile, and he finds himself almost giggling in anticipation.

Vegas is their own nuclear test ground all of a sudden.

T
here will be explosions.

They’re turning tow
ard the elevators, both grinning
at the
momentary
awkwardness now that it’s behind them, and in anticipation of
what it means.  T
hey’ve been wait
ing for this for a long time. 

Dodge lets his arm drop around her waist as they walk away from the lobby, caressing her hip as she smiles up at him. 

He’s never going to take his hands off of her again.

And everything else is
forgotten for a moment.

Finally.

Until
Dodge sees Chuck sitting right at the lobby bar. 

The honeymoon is over before it begins.

He drags Jaime into the elevator well, trying not to make a scene that would attract any attention, but trying also to get out of Chuck’s possible eyesight as quickly as possible.

“He’s here,” he
whisper
s
in her ear as he pulls
her into the elevator behin
d him.

“Where?” she asks.

“Right in the bar there
,” he says.

“What do we do now?” she wonders, looking more afraid than he’s ever seen her.

He’s been so busy letting her take care of him, he forgets
how young she is, how uncertain she must be, thrown in the center of this maelstrom.

An idea is starting to form.  But he’s not ready to say it out loud.

If Chuck catches
a glimpse of them at all, Dodge wants to be gone before Chuck can make it o
ver there to confirm what he sees.

H needs to get Jaime
to the room.

But not for
the same reason he wanted
to get Jaime to the room a minute ago.

He needs
get
back down to the lobby before Chuck
bolts
.

Dodge wonders what he’s supposed to do then. 

Just get the credit card back? 

Confront Chuck somehow? 

And do what? 

He can’t arrest him.  He can’t tell the police -
at this point, Dodge’s credit card is the only thing that really links Chuck to anything - and Dodge and Jaime are the only ones who even know that.  So he’d have to give up that secr
et to get the police involved.

B
ut giving up that secret gives up his alibi for the night of Siobhan’s murder. 

Too risky.

If Chuck is really killing women, though,
there’s the danger too that his credit card will b
e linked to a murder here.