We bowled three games that evening, and I managed to break a hundred in the last one. God, I was rusty. I used to have a one-forty average back in college.
Lori did all right, with a 165 in the second game, which she said was one of her best ever. It was Heather who surprised all of us, though. She rolled two 200-plus games and a 182, which she actually complained about. Turns out she had bowled competitively through school, and had intended to maybe go pro someday, but wanted to get a college education first. Since they don't give bowling scholarships, she was working at the Sidewinder to pay her way through a business major at UNLV. Her family actually lived in Los Angeles, home of dozens of good universities, so it had been quite a shock to them when she'd announced her plans to move so far away to attend college. Of course, it wasn't just UNLV she wanted to go to, it was the SW Casino as well. The chance to possibly live out at least some of her private fantasies was too much to pass up.
Lori, on the other hand, handed us some lame story about being an orphan and growing up as a ward of the state here in Las Vegas. She'd supposedly drifted through several jobs, trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. She was twenty-three, or so she said, so she'd been at this drifting business for five years.
I didn't believe a word of it. After almost ten years either as a policewoman or with the FBI, I'm pretty good at seeing through amateurish lies. I knew Lori was simply reciting a weak story she'd made up for our benefit. Well, I knew better than to push for more information, but I resolved to find out what Lori was really all about when I had the chance.
Of course, I told my own lies to both of them. Though I liked them a lot and was already starting to think of them as friends, I couldn't trust them with my secret. Even if I thought they could keep it to themselves, a single casual word at the wrong time could blow my cover, and that would be the end of this operation. So I told them I'd moved to Vegas with my ex-boyfriend Mark, who I'd then caught in bed with a showgirl from that new Star Wars Coruscant casino. I'd moved out and found a low-class apartment, but all the bank accounts and money were his, and I couldn't afford to move back to LA. Besides which, I told them, I'd left against the wishes of my parents, and they'd washed their hands of me.
Lori perked up at this and asked me why I didn't call them anyway. After all, wouldn't my parents be willing to forgive me anything, if they really loved me? I put on my best sad face and told them it wasn't that simple, and please not to ask about it any more. They left me alone after that, but I thought I recognized more than just sympathy in Lori's eyes. She might well be a runaway herself, I thought.
Hmm. If I wanted to check on that, I needed a good picture of her, and something with her fingerprints on it. After staring at her face for several seconds to make sure the eyecam got a good look (and hoping Mark was still recording this late in the day), I took note of which bowling ball she was using and made sure to come back for it later. In my purse I had a quick print lifter that I could use when no one was looking.
We talked for quite a while after the third game was over, moving to one of the casino's enclosed bars where things weren't quite so noisy. I won't bore you with all the intimate details of our conversation, but we didn't break up until well after ten, and by then I was feeling like I had two good, solid friends in these two girls. Not only were they both new employees like I was, but both were alone in the city, without any family or friends other than each other.
As I left, I felt bad about having to lie to them about who I was, but it was necessary. Besides which, these were exactly the sort of girls I was here to save. The others who'd disappeared met the same profile: young, good-looking, and with no family or friends in the Vegas area. I needed to stay close to these two, and anyone else like them I could find.
On my way back to the apartment I stopped at Mark's hotel. I didn't really relish the idea of talking to him, but I needed to drop off the fingerprint lift and see if I could find out who Lori was. I was about to knock, but the door opened just as I approached. "Come on in," Mark said, grinning.
I was going to ask how he knew I was there, but then I noticed the view on his computer monitor. It was of the inside of his apartment as seen from right where I was standing. He still had the eyecam on, obviously. "I thought you were supposed to turn that off once I left the casino," I said, mildly annoyed. We'd already agreed that I was entitled to my privacy as soon as I left work.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I was running Lori's face through the archives and forgot to turn off the feed." He reached over and did so now, causing the screen to go dark.
"So you picked up on that," I said, my point having been made: I did not want to have this happen again. I'd used the eye- and earcams before while on a case, and hadn't had any reason to question his veracity before. "What'd you find out?"
"Nothing much," he told me. "Her face is probably too much older than when she ran away, assuming anyone even filed a report with the police. Let me have the fingerprints."
I handed over the strip of tape from my purse, and waited while he loaded it into the scanner. The sophisticated software quickly lifted all the prints and picked out the reference points. In a matter of seconds, the computer popped up a dossier: Michelle Phillips, listed as having disappeared from her San Diego high school back in '15. Searches had turned up nothing, and she was officially listed as a runaway, and a robbery suspect as well, since some of her parents' jewelry had been found missing. These turned up later at a Los Angeles pawn shop, but the trail had run cold after that.
Obviously, Michelle had used the money she'd earned from the stolen goods to finance a trip to Vegas, and probably some plastic surgery too, as the picture I was looking at showed a young girl with a much more prominent nose. Well, regardless of whether she'd done it to hide her identity or improve her looks, the nose job had cured both those ills. If I hadn't had the prints, the face recognition software would never have identified her.
Now, of course, I had to decide what to do about what I'd learned. If I'd been a cop, I would have had no recourse but to contact her parents and notify my superiors that they could close her file. However, I was an FBI agent on a continuing mission. If I reported her presence, I'd jeopardize my cover identity.
I could always put in an anonymous tip, but then I wouldn't be able to control when she got picked up. If it happened at work, she might cause a scene, and I didn't want the staff of the casino looking any more deeply into her background any more than I did mine. Besides which, I liked Lori. I didn't want to force her to do anything she didn't want to do, and I figured if she'd wanted to be reunited with her parents, she would have already done it.
I explained this to Mark, and he agreed, at least for now. When my assignment was up, though, we both agreed further action should be taken. Exactly what that action was, we'd decide when the time came.
After we were done with that, I took my leave of Mark and went home to finish the evening relaxing in front of the TV. It wasn't until I was halfway home that I realized I'd forgotten all about our little scene at the casino earlier in the day. I'd meant to yell at him again for that.
Oh well, I thought, I could always take care of it tomorrow.