At two fifty, after driving through miles and miles of subdivisions and strip malls, I turn into what does, in fact, look like a suburban office park. The complex isn’t even a stand-alone cop shop. The Las Vegas P.D. shares its headquarters with Happy Feet Podiatry, the Bahama Tanning Salon, Nauticale Pool Services. Finally, I spot a clutch of white vans marked CRIME SCENE, and a set of doors identified as CRIMINALISTICS, and I figure I’m in the right area. A man wielding a leaf blower turns it off to speak to me, but shrugs when I ask him where to find Homicide. A colleague, mulching a shrub, points over his shoulder. “Por aquí.”
In the reception area, two women tap away on computers. The wall behind them displays a large super-realistic photo of woodlands, a country-style wreath with fake birds and eggs, and some children’s drawings. One woman asks my business, then buzzes Goldstein and tells me to wait, gesturing toward a tiny alcove just big enough to hold two chairs. I sit, facing a framed engraving of a wooded path. The gilded inscription reads: YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE.
Goldstein is a tall, handsome man in his early fifties, with silver hair and jet black eyebrows. We shake hands, and he delivers what amounts to a testimonial to Ray Shoffler. “Ray’s ears must be burning,” Goldstein concludes, “but I kid you not, the guy is really something. Old school. We get all hung up now in technology and it’s great, okay? Our case files are ten times as thick as they were even ten years ago – we get that much data. And it can help, especially in court. But to solve a crime? Nah. Sometimes you get lost in all that crap; it works against you. Take 9/11. The information was there, but it got lost in the data stream. Ray cracked a case for me one time strictly on a hunch.”
“I’m here on one of his hunches.”
“There you go,” he says, with a dip of the head. “Hey, Cindy,” he calls out. “Open Sesame.”
I follow him through a metal gate that swings open with an electronic growl. We make our way through a warren of tiny offices, edging past a crew working with a huge camera and boom mike. They seem to be in the process of photographing a piece of paper. “Cold case,” Goldstein says, with a nod toward the cameraman. “They’re assembling documents. You can’t afford to slap these things in a scanner. You gotta preserve the original – so they have to be photographed. The deal is we just elected a new sheriff. One of his campaign promises was to go after the cold cases.”
“Like the Gablers?”
He shrugs. “All of them, supposedly. But with the Gablers, I don’t know. Thing is, they’re kind of an orphan case.”
“What do you mean?”
We arrive at a conference room. Goldstein gestures toward one of the dozen chairs arrayed around a wooden table. “Let me explain how we work here. First of all, we got a huge area to police. Clark County and the city of Las Vegas – it’s more territory than the state of Massachusetts. Eight thousand square miles.” He nods toward the huge satellite photo of Las Vegas and environs that occupies one wall. “And growing. Fastest growing city in the U.S. The workload can be a bitch. We’re supposed to work these cold cases in our down periods – which is a joke around here.”
“You have a lot of murders?”
“Less than you’d think. We average maybe a hundred fifty homicides a year. And hardly any of our work comes from the Strip. The big casinos have a huge stake in safety – and there’s lots of surveillance. Tourists don’t get popped – that’s quite rare. And they don’t come to Vegas to pop each other, either. Most of our business is the same as anywhere else. Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. Meth labs, drug deals gone sour.”
“So the Gablers… what do you mean they’re orphans?”
He slaps his hands down, one at a time, on the two binders on the table in front of him. “Clara and Carla. Carla and Clara. They’re orphans two times over – or would that be four? For openers, they’re actually orphans – their folks got killed in a car crash down around Searchlight. The girls were seventeen.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Cars kill way more people than guns. It’s not even close! I mean, forty thou a year get killed in cars, just here, in the U.S. That’s like a coupla jumbo jets crashing every single week. Anyway, the Gabler girls – not only are they orphans, but their case is orphaned, too. See, the way it works is every detective owns his cases. The investigating detective – once it’s his case, it’s always his case. The guy who ran the Gabler investigation was Jerry Olmstead. He had the desk next to mine, which is why I know as much about the case as I do. Anyway, Jerry had his thirty-five in, high blood pressure, the wife was antsy. So he retired, moved to Lake Havasu. A month later, to the day – his ticker goes off.”
“Jeez.”
“So that’s how the Gablers became orphans the second time around. And it’s not good when a victim loses his or her investigating detective. You get attached, you know what I’m saying? Right from the get-go. It’s your case; it’s your baby.” He leans toward me, his face earnest. “It sounds like bullshit, but we really feel – I mean we detectives – we really feel like we’re working for the victims. Soooo-” He shrugs. “With Jerry gone, the Gabler case has no built-in advocate. It’s a pretty high-profile deal, so maybe the guy who inherited the case will take it on, now that the sheriff’s got a hard-on for cold cases. But I doubt it, I really do.”
I don’t say anything. I’m thinking about Shoffler’s move to the task force.
“So why didn’t you inherit the Gabler case?”
“Didn’t want it. Tough case. And I was slammed, anyway. On account of the Mongols.”
“The what?”
“The Mongols. Motorcycle gang. Them and the Angels had a war down in Laughlin. Lotta people killed. Lotta witnesses to interview. I was in court for months.
“But look,” he says, shifting gears. “I checked to see who has the case, and it’s Moreno’s. Pablo Moreno. He’s a pretty good guy. He’s in court this week, but you can give him a call on his cell.” He tells me the number, and I log it in my notebook.
“So this Moreno – he’s working the Gabler case?”
Goldstein shakes his head. “No. Like I said, maybe he’ll pick it up now that there’s this push, but I wouldn’t put money on it. Like all of us, he’s got dozens of cold cases to choose from. And the Gabler case has a strike against it.”
“What’s that?”
“No one’s beating the drums. Sometimes you have a murder and ten years later, Mom or Dad is still making it their business to call and follow up with us. And I mean every single day. But the Gabler girls? Uh-uh. No one making noise at all. Sort of the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“The murder was so… grotesque, you know? And these girls, they worked on the Strip. Well, two blocks off, but close enough, y’know? And the Strip – that’s our bread and butter. Horrific unsolved crimes are not the publicity you want. Not exactly.” Goldstein frowns. “My way of thinking – the sensational aspect of the murders actually works against the case being pursued. It’s bad for business. Too… visceral, you know what I’m saying?”
“I guess.”
“Let me put it this way. Here in Vegas, we got guys with man-eating tigers, we got disappearing cars and people, we got roller coasters will scare the living shit out of you. We got showgirls up the kazoo. Heck, every two-bit casino – even some restaurants – has beautiful waitresses with their asses and tits hanging out all over the place. But it’s all… packaged, you know. The death-defying magic shows, the rides and all – it’s thrills and no spills. And as for the showgirls, that’s sanitized, too. Sex without fluids, as someone put it. Not that we don’t have call girls and prostitutes – Jesus, it’s frickin legal here. You’ve seen the booty boxes?”