Dark Sundays

by Donn Cortez

  “Could be,” said Sara. She looked up. “People trying to escape bears sometimes climb trees—maybe the guard went up instead of out?”

  “Exit hatch is closed,” said Greg. “Could be he used it, then put the cover back in place.”

  Tanner nodded. “There should be a stepladder in the supply closet. I’ll be right back.”

  One mile past the Vegas city limits, a man and a woman shamble out of the desert. The moon above them is a giant eye, staring at them with cold, unblinking hostility.

  The woman’s throat has been cut, but the wound has long since stopped bleeding. It hasn’t healed; it’s run dry. Her eyes are empty and lifeless, her skin as white as hospital linen under the lunar glare.

  The man is lean and muscular, his hair a black military bristle over a skull etched with scars. His right hand is bound in a kind of sling, the wrist lashed to the forearm with strips of torn cloth. The arm bears only a cursory resemblance to a human limb; it is covered with thick, overlapping scales of a deep orange, and it ends in a hand tipped with long, curving black claws. The hand twitches grotesquely as the man walks, flopping against his chest and waggling its long fingers like a spider on its back.

  The many-hued lights of the city rise before them: flame-flickering reds, lurid alien greens, blues and whites arcing like lightning.

  “Tired, Bannister,” the woman says. Her voice is a harsh croak. “So tired.”

  “Soon, Theria,” he promises. “We’re almost there. You’ll be able to rest then.”

  “Rest. Yes. Rest forever . . .”

  They continue on, their footsteps slow but resolute. They don’t pause when they reach the sign at the outskirts; they already know exactly where they are and where they’re going.

  They’re in hell.

  2

  SARA PUSHED OPEN the hatch in the elevator’s roof cautiously, then poked her head inside. She shone a flashlight around.

  “No guard,” she called down. “But I think I’ve got some transfer on the edge of the hatch.”

  Greg handed her up a pair of tweezers and an evidence bag. She collected the sample carefully and handed it back down.

  Greg studied the sample. “I think there’s some blood on it, too.”

  “There’s more blood on the edge. I think our guard must have been here.”

  “But he’s not now? Maybe he climbed up to the next floor.”

  “I doubt it,” said Tanner. “We were right outside that door a few minutes ago. I didn’t see any blood or signs that it had been forced open from the other side.”

  Greg put the evidence bag aside. “Maybe he climbed up to another floor?”

  Tanner shook his head. “He’d have a long way to go. This is the owner’s private elevator, and it only stops at three places: here, the main floor, and the penthouse suite. Ain’t nothing in between but a twenty-story concrete tunnel running straight up and down.”

  Sara clambered all the way through the hatch and stood up on the roof of the car. Her flashlight’s beam found the steel rungs of a ladder set into one wall and a crimson smear of blood on two of them. “I’ve got blood on the ladder.” She shone her light straight up. “Can’t see anything above me—if he’s stuck somewhere up there, he must be near the top. . . Hello! Is there anyone up there?”

  Her voice boomed and echoed up the shaft, but there was no reply.

  “I’m not climbing twenty stories without safety gear,” said Sara. “Let’s use the regular elevators and try this from the top.”

  Sara grabbed a more powerful searchlight from her vehicle, then ran into Nick as she headed for the lobby. “We’re going to the roof,” she said. Greg was waiting at the elevator and gave Nick a quick rundown of what they’d found.

  “Two missing bodies, huh?” said Nick as they rode up together. “No idea what happened to yours, but I’ve got an idea about mine.”

  “Does it involve a really, really hungry bear?” asked Greg.

  “Nope. But I need to talk to someone who saw the dirigible before it went down.”

  The elevator let them out one floor below the penthouse, and they all followed Tanner to the fire stairs. “There was a big party going on here until all the excitement started,” Tanner said. “Once the alarms went off and the elevators locked down, everyone had to use the stairs. Of course, we tried to keep everyone out of the casino—last thing we wanted was more people on the floor while the bears were roaming around.”

  They went up the stairs and Tanner unlocked the door at the penthouse level. “Party’s over now, but some staff are still here.”

  The fire door led to a small foyer that also held the private elevator. A gigantic display of tropical flowers in a cut-glass vase adorned the opposite wall, beside a wide, arched doorway.

  A broad-shouldered, short-haired security guard in a black tuxedo stood in front of the doorway, his arms crossed, a transparent cord coiling from one ear into his collar.

  “This is Ian Stackwell,” said Tanner.

  Stackwell nodded. Greg went straight to the elevator door and began to examine it. “Have you heard any strange noises from behind here?” he asked. “Banging, scratching, maybe moaning?”

  Stackwell frowned. “No, sir. But it was pretty noisy in here until a little while ago. I could have missed something like that.”

  Sara nodded. “I think we should go all the way up—the elevator machine room should be right above this.”

  “You two go ahead,” said Nick. “I’m going to stay here and talk to a few people.”

  They returned to the stairwell and went up another flight. Tanner punched in the code that opened the door, and they stepped out onto the roof. The elevator machine room was a blocky structure only a few feet away.

  Their footsteps crunched on the tar and gravel roof. The beam of Greg’s flashlight fell on the door to the machine room—it was ajar. “This door looks like it was forced open,” said Greg. “Hello? Anybody up here?”

  No answer. They pushed the door to the machine room open. Inside, the motor that moved the elevator stood silently, thick cables leading from twin spools down through an opening in the floor. A hatch that led into the shaft itself stood open beside it.

  Sara switched the spotlight on and shone it into the shaft. “Hello? Is there anyone there?”

  Still no reply. “Greg, I’m not seeing anything. The shaft is empty, all the way to the bottom. If our guard was here, he’s not anymore.”

  “Oh, he was here. Look.” Greg shone his flashlight at one corner of the room. A pile of bloody clothes lay in an untidy heap.

  Greg knelt and studied them. “Pants and shirt. So now we have a missing, unidentified, injured guard in his underwear. This case keeps getting better and better.” He glanced over at Tanner. “Uh, and by better, I mean weirder.” He took out an evidence bag and stuffed the clothes into it.

  Sara stood and walked back to the door. “Greg, take a look at this. See these scratch marks on the frame? This door was broken into from the outside.”

  “So. . . the guard, bleeding profusely, manages to climb twenty stories, then gets naked while someone else breaks in?”

  “Blood loss can affect critical thinking—he might have been delusional. Or maybe he didn’t undress himself—whoever broke in could have.”

  Greg nodded. “Maybe someone from the party was out here. They hear someone in distress, bust down the door, get him out of his clothes to see how badly he’s injured.”

  “And then what?” said Tanner. “Nobody at the party reported any kind of medical emergency.”

  “Maybe he didn’t survive,” said Sara. “The guest panicked, went back to the party, and didn’t say anything.”

  “In which case,” said Greg, “there’s only two places he can be. Up here . . .”

  Sara walked over to the roof’s edge. “. . . or down there,” she said.

  Nick started with Stackwell, the doorman. “What time did the party start?” Nick asked.

  “Ten o’clock.”


  “You have a guest list?”

  “Yes, sir.” Stackwell pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket. “All these people were preapproved by Mr. Dell. I was told that they were also allowed to bring dates or friends.”

  Nick took the notebook and studied it. “High rollers, huh? I recognize a bunch of these names.”

  “Mr. Dell’s parties are always popular.”

  “I’ll bet. I don’t suppose you saw the flaming zeppelin?”

  “No, sir. I stayed at my post all night. I did hear other people talking about it, though.”

  “How about other staff? Bartenders, servers?”

  “One of the servers, Linda, brought me out a club soda afterward. She says she saw the whole thing.”

  “She still here?”

  “She’s inside, cleaning up.”

  Nick thanked him and went inside. The penthouse suite was large and sprawling, the pool clearly visible through a wall made of glass. Comfortable couches of teal and caramel were arranged artfully throughout the space, and empty wine glasses and plates of half-eaten food were clustered on low-slung tables of polished teak. A woman in her twenties dressed in a short black skirt and blue silk blouse was busy filling a plastic bus pan with glasses but stopped when Nick walked in.

  “Hi,” said Nick. “Are you Linda?”

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Nick Stokes, Las Vegas Crime Lab.” He showed her his ID. “I understand you saw the whole flaming-dirigible incident?”

  She leaned the bus pan against one hip. “The blimp that caught on fire? Yeah, I saw it. Second-craziest thing I’ve ever seen in Vegas—I mean, the thing was being driven by a guy in a clown suit.”

  “So I hear. Can you show me where you were when it happened?”

  “Sure.” She put the bus pan down on the table, then led him to the other side of the room. A large sliding glass door led to a deck area with seating and patio tables.

  Outside, Linda stopped next to the waist-high railing that led around the deck. “I was right about here, I guess. Didn’t see him at first—I don’t know where he came from. He was suddenly just there, pedaling away like crazy, about twenty feet from the edge.”

  “Uh-huh. Did he wave at anyone?”

  “Ummm. . . not that I saw.”

  “How about look at anyone? Did he turn his head at all?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t think so. He seemed really focused, you know? I think he just stared straight ahead the whole time.”

  “And how did he react when the craft caught on fire?”

  “That was the weirdest thing of all. He didn’t. I mean, he just kept pedaling away, like nothing was wrong. And that creepy circus music kept playing, all the way down . . .” She shuddered.

  Nick nodded. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I’m pretty sure he didn’t suffer.”

  Greg stepped back from the roof’s edge and lowered his radio. “If our guy did a half-gainer off the roof, either he never reached the bottom or he got up and walked away. Uniforms did a sweep of the perimeter and didn’t find a thing.”

  “Well, I don’t think he dropped in on the party.” Sara was over by the ten-foot-high wall that separated the elevator machine room and ventilator ducts from the rest of the roof, presumably so people relaxing poolside wouldn’t have to stare at industrial fixtures. “Topped with razor wire, no less,” she noted. “Guess Mr. Dell is serious about his privacy.”

  “And if you did get over it,” said Greg, “there’s a security camera.” He pointed. “Even if someone scaled it, they’d be spotted—either by the camera or by someone at the party.”

  “Unless everyone was busy watching a burning blimp,” said Sara.

  Tanner shook his head. “I was on duty. There was a lot of commotion right around then, but nobody came over that wall. You can check the footage yourself.”

  “We will,” said Sara. “Nick said he was going to do interviews with the partygoers. I’ll get him to ask about any possible wall vaulters, too.”

  They spread out, looking for anything else on the roof out of the ordinary.

  Greg knelt beside a pipe and said, “I’ve got something odd here.”

  Sara joined him. “It’s bent.”

  “Yeah, and there are fresh tool marks on it, too. Pretty deep scratches.” Greg snapped a few quick photos. “Whatever did this must have exerted a lot of force.”

  “Like the kind of force exerted by a tethered dirigible?”

  Greg considered that. “You think our flying clown and bleeding guard are connected?”

  “I don’t know. That guard had to have gotten off the roof somehow.”

  “Yeah, but the dirigible crashed before the guard was attacked. That puts him up here while the Hindenburger barbecues down in the parking lot.”

  “Which leaves the other side of this wall,” said Sara. “Guess we should see how Nick’s doing.”

  * * *

  Andolph Dell was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a spreading paunch he hid with expensive, hand-tailored suits. His hair was short, brown, and well groomed, his face just a little pudgy. He stalked out of one of the penthouse’s back bedrooms with a glower on his face, plainly upset by the evening’s events.

  “You!” he barked at Nick. “Can you tell me what the hell’s going on?”

  Nick gave him a professional smile—he’d dealt with rich people before.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I’m Nick Stokes, Las Vegas Crime Lab. You’re Mr. Dell, correct?”

  “That’s right. Are we under attack by time-traveling Nazis or something?” His tone was more incredulous than angry. “I mean, a blimp? I didn’t think those things even could catch on fire anymore.”

  “Mr. Dell, do you have any idea what this might be all about?”

  “How the hell should I know? Bears running wild in my casino and flaming clowns on zeppelins—I mean, what the hell?”

  “Well, you were having a party.”

  Dell frowned, then smiled. “Oh. I see. Okay, I may throw some pretty memorable shindigs, but this was not part of the entertainment. Any idea who that poor guard was yet?”

  “We’re working on it.” Nick glanced over and noticed Sara and Greg walking through the door. “In fact, I have to confer with two of my colleagues right now. Excuse me.”

  Nick joined his fellow CSIs as they headed toward the pool. “What have you got?”

  Greg crossed his arms. “A bloody guard’s uniform, a machine-room door that was broken into from the outside, and a stressed-out pipe with some heavy-duty tool marks.”

  “No guard?”

  Sara shook her head. “No guard. Nothing at the base of the building, either. We think he must have come this way.”

  “Blood trail?”

  Greg and Sara glanced at each other. “No,” said Greg.

  “I’ve got something similar,” said Nick. “The clown piloting the dirigible never took his hands off the handlebars, never turned his head, never spoke. Want to guess what I found in the wreckage?”

  “A small electric motor?” said Greg.

  “Bingo. The clown was a dummy—paper suit and rubber mask over an inflatable body is my guess. The motor drives the pedals and makes it look as if the clown is riding the thing.”

  “So who was really in control?” asked Sara.

  “My money’s on someone at the party,” said Nick. “Someone with a clear view and a remote control.”

  “Not to mention a burning hatred of clowns,” said Greg.

  Bannister and Theria stand outside the building and watch zombie tourists in loud shirts stumble in and out of the entrance, maggots squirming in sockets behind designer sunglasses. The corpses grip skulls with their rotting hands, sucking fluid through straws jutting from the eye sockets. “Hard Risk Café” is painted on the white bone. Rock music blares from loudspeakers shaped like coffins, dead pop stars singing about loneliness and heartache.

  They enter.

  Inside, t
he theme of the place becomes clear. Buddy Holly screams as he burns in the wreckage of a plane; the wings have been turned into roulette tables. There’s a fountain in the middle of the room built around a white bathtub—in it, a bloated Jim Morrison sinks beneath the surface while a giant hypodermic needle sprays neon red into the air.

  No one takes any notice of Bannister or Theria as they stagger through the crowds. They are only two more victims, after all, in a torrent of suffering.

  Skeletons bounce dice made of bone off craps tables covered in human skin, the croupier raking in piles of pills and syringes from the losing bets.

  Theria stops, leaning against a column upholstered in rotting blue suede. “Leave me here, Bannister.”

  He looks around. “Here? Why?”

  “It’s as good a place as any.”

  “Does this place mean something to you? Does it remind you of something, of a happier time—”

  “No. Music is for the living. I hear nothing but noise.”

  “Then how can you rest?”

  She has no reply to that, but after a moment, she repeats her demand: “Go on without me.”

  “I won’t do that. Not to you.”

  “Bannister.” Her voice is weary and completely devoid of hope. “I’m not even real, Bannister. Don’t you know that?”

  “You’re real to me, Theria. And you deserve better than this.”

  She neither agrees nor denies this. After a moment, she pushes herself away from the column, and they continue on their way.

  3

  RAY LANGSTON HAD BEEN many things in his life: a university professor, an MD, an author, and now a crime-scene investigator. But regardless of his current title, he always defined himself by one simple aim: he was trying to leave the world a little better than he found it. He had done that through medicine, through teaching and writing, and now through the pursuit of justice.

  But no matter what his current title, he never forgot his previous incarnations or their responsibilities. A part of him would always be an academic, trying to find the best way to communicate what he had learned; part of him would always be a doctor, looking for the best way to fulfill the Hippocratic Oath.