There was some small comfort in the knowing.
Chapter 11
I WALKED right by them, mostly because I expected them to meet me in the terminal at McCarran International, not on the concourse.
“Are you Jones?”
Pivoting, I faced… I wasn’t sure. I would have guessed surfer, maybe some sort of instructor—paddle board, scuba diver, hard to tell—but between the tan and the wavy sun-streaked dirty-blond hair that fell to his shoulders, the guy talking to me was not on the job.
“Yes?”
He took a step toward me, hand outstretched, a sardonic smile twisting his lips invitingly. “I’m Bodhi Callahan from the Vegas office, and this is my partner, Josiah Redeker.”
Callahan didn’t look like any marshal I’d ever met. I didn’t know cargo shorts and deck shoes were appropriate attire, or the T-shirt under a drug rug hoodie like I hadn’t seen since college. His partner looked like maybe he ran a bar. His straight dark hair fell around his face, and I noted the mustache and heavy stubble on his chin that could have been called a beard if it was filled in along the line of his jaw. As it was, he appeared artfully unkempt, with his beat-up jump boots, faded jeans, and long-sleeved gray Henley. The two of them together did not inspire fear. But maybe they didn’t need to in Las Vegas. Maybe it was low-key, though with all the drugs that moved through the state, I doubted it.
“Jed’s good,” Redeker told me, returning my focus to him, his hand out, ready for me to take the second I was done with Callahan. “Only my mother calls me Josiah.”
They made an odd pair. Callahan’s accent said California all the way, which helped the laid-back surf-rat vibe, and Redeker had a deep, rich cowboy thing happening in his voice. I wondered how they meshed together.
“How long have you been marshals?” I asked after I released Redeker’s hand.
“Five years for me,” he replied, “two for the kid.”
“Kid?” I asked Callahan.
“I’m twenty-seven,” he told me. “But apparently being eleven years older is a whole big amount of time that puts him out of reach.”
His wording was odd—out of reach—and made me wonder about them right off. Why was that important to Callahan? Did he mean just as a partner, or was there more to their story?
“Were you briefed on the witness that you’re picking up?” Redeker asked, taking my duffel without being asked, leaving me with my laptop bag.
I had been, so I knew that Josue Hess had run when he was supposed to stay put and enter WITSEC, thus moving him from the nice list to the naughty one. Lots of people did it, bolted instead of going into witness protection, but once the marshal service was involved, private citizens no longer got a say in the matter. The guy I was there to transfer to Chicago had left New Orleans for Vegas, but instead of disappearing as everyone had assumed he would, he simply changed locales and kept living his high-profile life.
“I read up on him on the plane.” I yawned, walking between them, feeling the tension now, smack dab in the middle of whatever their deal was. “He’s been working the club scene here, I understand. I watched some of his YouTube videos. He really can sing.”
“Yep,” Redeker agreed. “Our best guess is that he actually thinks he’s not in any danger anymore since he left NOLA. He never told anyone he wouldn’t testify, just said he couldn’t do protective custody because of his career and what he felt he owed the rest of the band.”
“So they all came out here together?”
“They did.”
“Well, I hope he’s not married to the idea of being a superstar.” Callahan rubbed the back of his neck as we walked and then pulled his badge out and let it fall on top of the zipper on his hoodie as we passed by a guard on our way from the secured area. “Because he’s got no choice. He’s going into WITSEC and that’s gonna kill any other kind of career for him.”
Hess, front man of the rock band Decoder Ring, had witnessed a murder. He wouldn’t need protection if it was simply one thug killing another, but it turned out it was Dorian Alessi killing his longtime rival in the opiate trade, Romeo Sinclair. They were both scary mean with dozens of felonies between them, and the Orleans Parish district attorney was happy to have Sinclair rotting in the morgue and Alessi in custody, remanded without bail, until his trial. Hess’s appearance in court was set for February.
Hess agreed to testify and initially said no to witness protection. He moved to Las Vegas from New Orleans, certain that between changing cities and using his mother’s maiden name, he’d be safe. But even though Hess was careful, the rest of his bandmates were not. They were all on Twitter and Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, and he was the one they all took pictures of and shared, because he was the main draw… he ended up right back on Alessi’s radar.