by Ninie Hammon
"Some mental patient's here?" T.J. was incredulous. "Her ward at the hospital's takin' a field trip?"
"I don't know why a crazy woman would be here. I just know she is! We have to find her."
She started to rise but Brice put a restraining hand gently on her arm.
"Find her and — what?"
"Warn her, tell her she's going to be …" Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was suggesting. Then she shook off the doubt. "Warn her she's going to be murdered." She held up a restraining hand at the protests from all the men at the table, voiced with the perfect unison of a Greek chorus. "I know that sounds crazy. But we have to do something. Right this minute, there's a girl playing a slot machine out there," she pointed to the archway that led from the restaurant out to the banks of machines in the encircling casino, "who is going to be strangled."
Dobbs was still stuck on the mental patient part. "How did a patient—?"
"She may be nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, paranoid schizophrenic or whatever. But she didn't imagine her own murder. She's going to be strangled, beaten …"
She lost her breath for a moment as some of the images washed over her again. The broken wrist. How bad it hurt.
"Think it though, Bailey," Brice said. "If you find her—"
"I'll find her."
"You know how many slot machines there is—?" T.J. began.
"She's playing a particular kind of slot machine. I saw them when we came in. There's a single row of them right outside the door of the restaurant. They're old-fashioned, vintage, designed to look like historic machines. How many freckled girls the right age and blonde could there be in a row of — what? Twenty-five? Fifty slot machines? I know I can find her."
"So you find her," Brice said. "What are you going to say to her?"
"I'm going to … tell her she's in danger and …" She remembered the look on Macy Cosgrove's mother's face when she stood on the porch of the woman's house and told her the dam was going to explode. "And yeah, I'm going to sound like a raving lunatic. You got any better ideas?"
The men looked at each other. No one spoke.
"I didn't think so."
"Bailey, what good will it do to warn her?" Brice said. "What would you do if a total stranger came up to you in a crowded place and told you that you were going to be murdered?"
"Even if she did b'lieve you — and ain't no possible reason why she would — what's she s'posed to do about it? What would you do to keep from bein' murdered?"
"I don't know." Then she brightened.
"The man … the Beast … he had that skull tattoo on his wrist. And the pinky ring."
She looked at Brice.
"Aren't most murder victims killed by somebody they know? Is that real or cop-show fiction?"
"It's real."
"I s'pect she knows him. Least he knows her. What he done to that girl … that was personal."
"Then a warning would matter. If she knows the guy who's going to kill her, she could … oh, I don't know what … do something to avoid it."
"If she's mentally stable enough to process what you tell her." Ever-reasonable Dobbs reached out and covered her small hand with his big one. "From what you've told us about her, that sounds unlikely. But let's say she is. Let's say she believed you and she knows the guy with the tattoo. A warning might—"
She rose from the table before he finished. The girl had been at the slot machines playing, but how long would she remain there? And if Bailey didn't find her there, in a crowd of people this big, she would never locate her.
The three men started to rise.
"No, you can't come with me. I'm going to sound crazy enough. We can't descend on her like a swarm of bees. I need to go alone."
Chapter Eighteen
Bailey managed to hold her emotions in check enough not to bowl over the waiter, who was returning to the table to deliver the next in she knew not how many courses of the meal. She didn't recognize it, hadn't recognized the two courses before it and knew she wouldn't be tasting anything else she ate tonight.
Hurrying across the dining room, negotiating a zigzagging path around tables and chairs and servers, she got to the archway that led into the casino. Along the wall on both sides of the archway was a double row of the vintage slot machines she had noticed when they'd passed through the casino on their way to the dining room — Crazy Diamonds. She turned to her right and walked between the rows. Many of the machines were occupied, but not all. The first few machines against the wall were not in use. The ones to her left were, though, with a gaggle of young women — half a dozen or so who were obviously together and in various stages of inebriation. They talked and laughed too loud, squealing in delight every time they got a match, even if it wasn't a win. Beyond them on that side were two men, on the wall side was a woman, older and overweight, and three men. Bailey passed slowly between the rows of machines, scrutinizing every player. Another woman, but she was black, on the wall side. Three women occupied the next two machines, older ladies, two playing, one just watching.
When Bailey got to the end of the rows of machines at the archway on the far side of the casino where they had entered, she heard a clanging bell and an explosion of squealing from the group of young women she had passed earlier. Standing beneath the casino's entrance archway was Brice. He merely nodded at her, letting her know he was there if she needed him.
She crossed the wide aisle in front of him and plunged down between the double rows of machines on the other side of the arch. Almost every one was occupied. Men and women, old and young, staring at the spinning rows of cherries, lemons, watermelons, grapes, numbers and diamonds, feeding the ravenous machines tokens, pulling on the one-armed-bandit's shiny lever topped by a red ball.
And then she spotted a young woman. Blonde.
Time slowed down.
There was a man standing behind her. He was tall and slender, definitely not the man who'd killed the girl in her vision. He appeared to be accompanying this young woman, her date maybe, but he was engaged in an animated phone conversation and paying no attention to her. The machine on the other side of the woman was empty and Bailey sat down there.
“Eleanor Rigby” floated out above the banging and clanging, voices and laughter.
A scent as sweet as a garden of flowers filled her nostrils.
Bailey's heart had slowed with the elongation of time, the stretched-out seconds, but now it became a jackhammer trying to dig a hole in the wall of her chest.
This was her.
She was wearing a flowing white dress of some gossamer fabric that shimmered in the sparkling lights. Achingly lovely, her features were small and delicate, as perfect as if her eyes, nose and mouth had been painted on a china doll. Even though the hair of the girl in the painting had been clotted with blood, it was clearly honey blonde. Just like this girl's. Honey blonde hair and freckles.
The man grabs her by the hair as she lies on the floor and yanks hard, pulls out a huge handful and drops it on the floor in front of her.
"Stand up or I'll drag you."
Bailey lost her breath and felt suddenly dizzy, sick to her stomach. The girl sitting next to her — breathing, heart beating, so very much alive — was going to die. Soon. Her only hope of survival lay in Bailey's ability to convince her she was in danger.
The man glanced over his shoulder at the girl as he spoke, and with that one look established possession. She was with him. No, more than that: she was his. And he would hear anything Bailey said to her. But she had to say something, do something. This moment would pass. The girl would tire of the machine or the man would finish his phone conversation and the opportunity would be lost.
What could she—?
Bailey opened the purse and scratched around inside it for something to write on. She found it in the zipper pocket — the receipt for the new birthday dress, insurance against a flaming case of buyer's remorse.
Her hands were trembling, but she willed them to steady. She took a pen f
rom the purse, flattened the small piece of paper on the slanted area on the slot machine below the rows of not-spinning fruit. Smoothing the paper, she wrote a few lines on the back of the receipt. She had no time to plan out what to say.
This is not a joke. You are in danger. A man who has a skull tattoo on his wrist is planning to kill you — but I can help! Meet me in the ladies’ room by the blackjack tables and I will explain.
Then she folded the receipt over, then over again, making it small enough to fit into the palm of her hand unnoticed.
The man on the phone was clearly angry at the person on the other end of the line. He turned his back to the girl.
"… paid for that order to be delivered tomorrow. I don't care if you have to rent a truck …"
Bailey reached out and touched the girl's arm. The instant she did she felt something like … like a current. The hum of a transformer but not as a noise, as a feeling. She saw reactions play across the girl's face, could tell she felt it, too, was sure she did. She turned to Bailey, stared at her, pinned her to the spot with the sapphire blue of her eyes. The girl wasn't just beautiful. She was stunning. Bailey took her hand and pressed the note into her palm. The girl looked questioningly at Bailey, opened her mouth to speak, but Bailey put her finger to her lips and shook her head violently.
The girl's face tensed and froze. She looked down at the piece of paper, then looked around frantically, a rabbit that's just caught the scent of the hounds. Her eyes widened when she looked toward the corner of the room and Bailey followed her gaze to the amber plastic bubble on the ceiling that concealed a security camera. Fear pulsed off the girl like the heat from a furnace and she shoved the piece of paper down the front of her dress.
"Fine!" the man grunted into the phone. "It had better be right this time!" And he ended the call.
Bailey quickly turned away from the girl and toward the machine in front of her. She had never operated a slot machine and even if she had she had no tokens to use in it. So she sat facing it, with the girl in her peripheral vision.
The man touched the girl's shoulder and ran his hand down her upper arm. It should have been an affectionate gesture, but somehow came off menacing. At least Bailey saw it as menacing. The girl looked up at him and flashed him a brilliant smile.
The smile looked like she had learned how to do it from a manual.
"Let's go get a drink," he said. The girl rose instantly. She never cast so much as a glance in Bailey's direction, just took the man's arm and walked away with him.
Chapter Nineteen
Bailey watched the man and girl leave the room, saw them pass by Brice, who was standing in the center aisle, and after a beat or two, he turned and sauntered off in the same direction. Bailey got up and hurried to the ladies’ room by the blackjack tables to wait for the girl, trying to compose in her head what she could say to the girl when she showed up.
And what could she say?
After all, she was not only dealing with a total stranger, but with someone who was mentally unstable. Someone who believed in monsters that ripped open your chest and devoured your internal organs. Still, she was functioning just fine, seemed normal on the outside. Somehow she was managing to live in the real world and keep her own psychotic delusions in check. If she could do that, she'd be able to understand what Bailey was saying.
And that would be …?
She had just blurted out the truth about the soon-to-explode dam to Hattie Cosgrove and she'd thought Bailey was crazy. That part had only lasted seconds, though, before it was replaced by suspicion … then fear … then anger. If it hadn't been for her connection to Macy, she would never have been able to convince the family to run. Well, that and grabbing their baby son and running away with him. But Macy had come, too, willingly, because she'd felt something, some of the connection Bailey had felt for her.
Bailey had used the connection to the poor little girl whose portrait she'd painted two months ago to save her own life and T.J.'s.
But Macy had been a trusting child, intrigued by the wonder of knowing someone, yet not knowing them. This girl had none of Macy's childlike trust. And none of her ordered mental faculties. She'd want to know how Bailey knew she was in danger. What was Bailey to say then? I painted a picture of you being murdered. I was murdered with you, too, by the way, felt it when the man broke your wrist and … Yeah, that'd work. That'd convince her.
No, when the girl came to see what Bailey'd meant by the note, Bailey would have to do better than that. She'd touch the girl's arm, establish that … whatever it was, the hmmmmm thing. She'd ask her if the girl knew anybody with a skull tattoo on his wrist and a pinky ring with a single stone. This girl had been running in such terror because she knew the person chasing her, knew he meant to kill her. Even if she was mentally unstable — which she clearly was! — the girl had felt a connection to Bailey or she wouldn't have taken the note and hidden it to read later.
Bailey looked at her wrist, expecting to see the watch she'd left at home because it didn't match her new slinky green dress. She had no idea how much time had passed. There were no clocks in casinos. She remembered reading that somewhere and now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen one anywhere around. In a casino, they wanted patrons to lose all sense of time.
And so Bailey waited. Other women came and went from the ladies' room. Every time she heard someone approaching, she tensed. Women entered and left. None of them had pale honey blonde hair and sapphire eyes.
Slowly, the reality that the girl wasn't coming began to seep into her consciousness. And as soon as she allowed in a few drips of doubt, the faucet turned on and filled her up. The girl hadn't read the note yet? That was hardly possible. Even without a watch, Bailey knew enough time had passed for her to read the note.
So she had read the note … and couldn't find a way to slip off to the bathroom? Absurd. A woman going to the ladies' room — that wouldn't be hard to pull off, even with the most possessive date.
Bottom line: if she had wanted to meet with Bailey, she would have. And she didn't.
Finally, Bailey got up and went back to the table where T.J. and Dobbs were seated, looking at plates of cold, uneaten food, and told them what had happened.
Then the three sat in glum silence, the fun and excitement of the evening long drained away. In a few minutes, Brice came back to the table, picked up his napkin and sat down, putting his napkin in his lap.
"I was going to follow them out to their car, get the registration, but they're staying here at the hotel. I got the room number, 387, and went to the desk clerk, flashed my badge and he gave me the check-in information the man had provided.
"He checked in as a single occupancy," Brice said, as if that explained something. When Bailey didn't get it, he continued. "I'd bet T.J.'s pension the girl won't be spending the night."
Then Bailey understood.
"She's … a prostitute, isn't she?"
"Looks that way to me."
"The world's oldest profession," T.J. said. "And likely even more hazardous than coal mining."
They sat together in silence for a beat before T.J. continued. "Anybody want to take a stab at explainin' how the mental patient we been lookin' for turned into a beautiful prostitute at a casino?"
Bailey shook her head. "We jumped to conclusions. I was too eager to find—"
"Wasn't your fault. She b'lieves monsters gonna eat her blue eyes. If that ain't psychotic, I—"
"Her dress." Bailey said. "Tonight, her white dress …"
Dobbs fit the puzzle pieces together, arranged them to form an entirely different picture.
"We thought hospital gown, not formal gown. We thought hospital because she was running down a hallway past closed doors. But it was a hotel."
"This hotel," Bailey said.
"Or any other hotel in the tri-state area," T.J. said. "Girls like her—"
"She's wearing the white gown right now. Tomorrow is Halloween!" Bailey was heartsick. "She looked so scared. But not
of the guy she was with. She was afraid somebody had seen her take the note."
"Her pimp, most likely," Brice said. "They usually keep close tabs on their girls."
"It's him, isn't it? The pimp. He's the guy with the skull tattoo and the pinky ring. He's—"
Brice stopped her. "We've wasted a lot of time running down the wrong rabbit holes already. I'm going to go park in the hotel lobby with a view of the elevators, see if I can catch the girl when she leaves and have a conversation with her."
Bailey started to rise to go with him but he shook his head.
"You'd just get in the way," he told her, all business, a lawman in a business suit. "I'd bet T.J.'s pension—"
"You done bet that," T.J. said.
"Odds are you're right — the murderer is her pimp. Or her pimp's muscle. And I have no authority to force her to tell me anything." He paused. "But she probably doesn't know that."
Brice left Bailey and the others sitting with the cold food at the table. She watched him walk out of the room until he was out of sight.
For the next hour and a half, Bailey, T.J. and Dobbs put as good a face on it as they could, made a show of eating food they could barely swallow, then left the dining room and wandered around the casino. They watched blackjack dealers rake money in for the house, stood with expectant crowds as the roulette wheel spun around and around. The place was full of laughter, but the fun had a frenetic, insectile quality to it — everybody in overdrive, determined to suck from their time here every bit of juice. Because it was likely to be a long, unhappy drive home.
Brice caught up with them watching a steely-eyed poker player who was actually beating the house, and she could read from his body language that it hadn't gone well.
"The guy came out of the elevator and went back into the casino. The girl never came back down."
