“I doubt it.”
“You will.” He let my hand fall and left.
Way to go, Susan, I told myself bitterly. Chased him right out of the bar. Came on too damn strong, just like always, and bulldozed him right out of the ballpark.
I needed a drink, and I wasn’t talking about club-fucking-soda, either. I made my way to the little girls’ room again and raised the flask. It burned good, going down. After a swallow of that, I felt much better about myself. What the hell-I knew I was going to drink it all eventually. I pressed the bottle to my lips-almost as tasty as Patrick was-and emptied the flask.
I left the restroom feeling stronger, complimenting myself on handling it and not losing the knack and walking and talking as if I really were only drinking club soda. I had about decided to give up on the place and go home when I saw a man’s leg blocking my path.
“Can I buy you a drink now, Susan?”
It was that same guy, Jake or whatever, the shaved head. “I don’t drink anymore.”
“Fine. You figure out what you want yet?”
“I…” I looked at him through blurred eyes. “I want to feel something different. Alive.”
“I can handle that.”
He threw some bills on the bar, took me by the hand.
“We can’t go to my place,” I said. “Is your place near?”
“Not near enough.” He led me down an alleyway behind the bar. It was dark, but not so dark I couldn’t see it was filthy. Nothing but dirt and slime and upended trash cans. “This’ll do.”
He whipped me around and grabbed my hands. “You ready to feel somethin’ different?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. He ripped my jacket open, sending the empty flask smashing onto the pavement. With unrestrained brutality, he pulled down my pants and panties, then sat me down on one of the trash cans.
“I’m thinkin’ a little back door action might do the trick,” he said while he unzipped. “That work for you?”
I didn’t say anything.
With one powerful move, he pushed me to my knees, then swung me around until I was spread stomach down across the trash can. No talk, no warning, no foreplay.
“Ahhh-!”
It was my first time and the pain was searing. I wondered if he had done this before, used the same lines, gotten what he wanted the same way. I wondered where he came from, what he really liked, what he saw when he looked into my eyes. I didn’t think he was heartless or even particularly selfish. He just had needs, like we all did. When it was over and he woke up the next day, he might feel a little guilty about it.
But I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t care if he did. I needed to feel something. Pain. Humiliation. Rage. It was all the same. I just wanted to feel alive again.
15
The next morning, I hurt like hell. My head throbbed, sure, always, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I could barely walk. Somehow I managed to stumble out of bed and make it to the front door before the bell had rung more than, oh, fifty times or so.
“Susan. My God, what happened to you? We were supposed to have breakfast, remember?”
Lisa. “I, uh, slept in. I had kind of a rough night.”
She rushed in, putting her arms around me. “You look like someone beat the hell out of you.”
“No, no, just trouble sleeping.”
She stiffened slightly. “Susan, I’m sorry. I know I’m not your mother, but the counselors told me that the best way to be your friend was to try to help you keep your promises. Have you been drinking?”
“What? Are you kidding? No.”
“Really?”
“ ’Course. You called last night.” Thank God I could remember that much. “I was home, remember?”
“But-”
“Wanna smell my breath?” What a bluffer I am.
“Frankly, no.” She guided us both to the sofa in the living room. It was green and faded and showed traces of all the cop butts that had been on it the night before. “I got enough of that last night.”
“The new guy?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Memorable?”
“Human Dental Pik. Tongued every incisor in my mouth. Thought he was attempting a root canal. Do you still want to see Rachel?”
“Right. Damn.” I brushed my straggly, stinky hair out of my eyes. “I forgot.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”
“Well, uh…”
“When I talked to her last night, she said you hadn’t been in for several days.”
“Well, she should know.”
“Susan, this is exactly the kind of behavior that caused you to lose her in the first place.”
“Look, Lisa, I had a horrible night. That killer, the Poe guy, he called me. Here.”
Her eyes ballooned. “He called you? Why?”
“Hard to say. I think he was threatening me. Or trying to help me. Or none of the above.”
“Oh, my God.” She cradled my stinky head in her hands. “No wonder you’re a wreck.”
So here I was, using a serial killer to excuse my erratic behavior. I felt pathetic.
“That explains why you were so weird when I called. What did he say?”
“Well, I think he may have given us some clues.”
“My God, Susan. Should you be working on this case? He knows who you are.”
“True.”
“I don’t think this is good for you at all. Especially not now. You need out.”
“I need work.”
“I’m talking to your doctor.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Susan, it’s for your own good. I’m just trying to help.”
My blood burned. “I don’t need help!”
“You do.” Despite my nastiness, she hugged me all the tighter. “I love you, Susan. I’m not going to let you kill yourself. I’m not.”
“May I come in?”
We had left the front door ajar, and Darcy was standing just outside, peeking through. Lisa still had her arms around me, and I could see he was confused. “Is that one your girlfriend?” Darcy asked.
I cleared my throat. “Well, yes…”
“Did you know that four percent of all women prefer other women to do sex with?”
“Darcy…”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, do you? But my dad says it’s bad.”
“Darcy…”
“But the weird thing is he loves his videos where women are with other women and-”
“Darcy!” He fell silent. I had to remind myself-he doesn’t see faces; he can’t read facial expressions. He’s not going to get any nonverbal cues. You want him to be quiet, you gotta say so. “What are you doing here?”
He looked nervously at Lisa, fidgeted with his hands, then started again. “I think maybe Mr. Granger figured out what that ‘neon’ remark meant. He called my dad. The killer wanted us to go to this place where they store old neon signs.”
“Why would he want us to go there?” But I was certain of the answer before I had finished asking the question. “Let’s go.”
The usual rant against Vegas is that it isn’t really a city, just an oversized vacation destination. After all, there’s no urban blight, like cooler-than-cool New York. There are no high-rises, other than the hotels. How can that be a city? What some of these geniuses don’t get-Hunter S. Thompson, for one-is that this is a Western city. It’s out in the fertile desert plains. It’s meant to be flat. The houses were designed to go out, not up, in the traditional hacienda style. It was built for the automobile, not the pedestrian. No one wants to walk in Vegas. It’s too hot. You don’t walk home from work. You don’t walk to the store for a loaf of bread. That doesn’t make it any less of a city.
I got to see a lot of that flat landscape on my way to the Vegas Neon Graveyard. We parked and walked down a lovely pine-bordered alameda till we arrived at the main lot. A lot of memories were stored there, especially for someone like me who’d lived in Vegas all my life. Remember Sassy Sally’
s, on Fremont? That huge neon marquee was here, in all its glory. Or the gigantic guy in the leisure suit who used to shoot pool on the marquee for Binion’s? Also here. Some of this stuff went back to the very earliest days of postwar Vegas. Remember the crown that used to sit atop the Royal Nevada? Well, neither did I. I’m not that old, for God’s sake. But one of the lab techs pointed it out to me.
Apparently the guy who owned this place was a collector who just couldn’t bear to see these Vegas icons destroyed. So whenever one of the casinos or hotels replaced their signage, he bought it, usually dirt cheap. He’d had to move his collection three times, on each occasion to a larger tract of land. He was outside the city now-probably too far from the Strip to attract much tourism, not that the average Vegas visitor was all that interested in historical memorabilia. He sold new signs, too, but I got the impression that was mostly a front to finance the acquisition and upkeep of this gaudy but sentimental collection.
It must’ve seemed like a unique and harmless specialty field. Until the headless corpse turned up.
The other half, the head, was hanging separately.
“Half off,” I muttered, wishing to God I had something to drink. “I guess that’s a joke.”
Darcy looked at me, puzzled. “Is it funny?”
“No, but-” How was I going to explain this? His father had warned me that most humor passed Darcy by, and given all the language oddities associated with autism, he was less likely to get wordplay than anything. “Never mind.”
Darcy turned away, staring at what looked like the old frontispiece from the Horseshoe. Poor kid. I remembered what a gentle spirit he had-how he wouldn’t even hurt a spider. And here I was dragging him around to see decapitated corpses. Well, technically, he’d dragged me, but still. Maybe Granger was right.
Speaking of whom: “Glad you could make it, Lieutenant Pulaski. Hope you don’t mind us taking your clue and running with it.”
Just had to rub it in, didn’t he? “Not at all. Give my congratulations to your team. How’d you figure out what it meant?”
Granger gave me the sort of smile that makes you desperate to erase it with the flat of your hand. “That’s why we’re called detectives.”
“Of course.”
“What were you doing last night after we left your place?”
Was there something about my face? Clothes? Smell? Had that brute from the bar gone to the press? “I was a little shaken up, actually. After that phone call.”
I brushed him off and scouted around for Darcy. He’d been here a good two minutes. More than enough time for the Boy Wonder to start making his bizarre and brilliant deductions.
“So what Poe story are we in now?” I asked. Darcy was staring at the ground. “I’ve read several that involved decapitations.”
“ ‘The Black Cat,’ ” he said flatly.
“I kind of remember that one. Similar to ‘The Tell-tale Heart,’ right? Guy tries to kill a cat, and when this woman rushes in to saveit, he kills the woman instead. What makes you think that’s the one?”
I could tell this poor gentle soul didn’t want to talk about it. But he did. For me. “He used an axe.”
Eww. “Did you get that from the coroner?”
He shook his head.
“Then how?”
“I looked.”
Double eww. ’Course, I looked, too, but apparently I lacked Darcy’s eye for detail. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t read Carston’s twelve-volume History of Criminology cover to cover and memorized each page. “Did you have a chance to look at the note?”
He nodded, then recited it for me-without looking. “ ‘From the one Particle, as a center, let us suppose to be irradiated spherically-in all directions-to immeasurable but still definite distances in the previously vacant space-a certain inexpressibly great yet limited number of unimaginably yet not infinitely minute atoms.’ ”
“That’s kind of different. Is that Poe? I don’t recognize it.” Not that my brain came equipped with photographic memory. “Do you?”
Darcy shook his head. It bothered him. I could see that.
“Maybe our killer has begun composing original works? In the style of the master?”
Again he didn’t answer and I didn’t blame him. Even as I suggested it, it didn’t sound right. The psycho was still using Poe for his blueprint. There was no indication that he had broken free of that particular part of his psychosis. So where did this bizarre and cryptic message come from? Evidently I needed to know more about Poe than was contained in his complete works. I resolved to stop by the city library on my way home from work and see what I could learn about the man himself.
I saw Tony Crenshaw near the spot where the torso still dangled. His body was stiff, almost rigid. Only his mouth moved. He reminded me of one of those talking statues at Caesar’s Palace.
“Got anything for me, Tony? More of those rug fibers?”
“Not a one.”
“Anything at all?”
“Not much. No prints, that’s for damn sure. Nothing we can get DNA from. A few almost microscopic traces of clothing.”
“Can you tell what it is?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I’d like to get it under a microscope before I make any definite pronouncements. But it looks as if it might be lace. Red lace.”
“Lace.” I turned to Darcy. “You remember any references to lace in the Poe stories?” He didn’t. “Well, he couldn’t have carried her here in anything made of lace. Wonder why he didn’t use the rug?”
“He may have destroyed it after the last time,” Tony suggested.
“That one is small,” Darcy said, edging forward. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the victim.
“Yeah, it’s a shame.”
Lines crossed his forehead. Obviously, I hadn’t taken his meaning. “She’s light. Especially in… two pieces.”
“Are you saying… he didn’t need the rug?” And as soon as I said it, I realized Darcy was right. That Asian girl couldn’t’ve weighed a hundred pounds-even before she was subdivided.
“We found a robe covered with blood,” Tony explained. “We figure he used it like butcher paper-put it under her when he killed her to soak up the blood. But it’s possible…”
I followed his meaning. Wrapped her in her own robe and tossed her into the back of the truck. The robe was already wrapped in plastic for protection, but I gave it a good once-over. It was silken, if not actually silk, and rather exotic. Long, sinuous Chinese dragons were stitched all over it. Victim was very involved with her Asian heritage? No, that wasn’t it…
“Hey, I’ve got something.”
It was Jodie Nida, a tech from the coroner’s office. Given Patterson’s normal reticence to say anything in advance of the official report, this was nothing short of amazing. I hurried to her side. Darcy followed close behind.
Wouldn’t you know it-she was examining the disembodied head. I felt my gorge rising, and this time it wasn’t due to Granger’s belligerence or drinking my dinner last night.
“Let me guess-she died of lack of oxygen to the brain.”
Nida didn’t smile. “Technically, that’s correct. It appears to have taken two blows to sever her head. Not the easiest task, even with a sharp blade. And there are other body wounds, probably slipups. One is about two centimeters long between the fifth and fourth intercostal spaces at the medial border of the right breast. Another wound at the anteromedial right deltoid.”
“Administered before he cut off her head? Or after?”
“I can’t be sure. But that isn’t why I called you over here. You see it?”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“The teeth,” she said helpfully.
I leaned in closer, even though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. She used a dentist’s tool to pull back the edge of the mouth.
“See?” There was a small but discernible red dot on one of the victim’s incisors.
“Blood?”
<
br /> “Looks that way. We’ll confirm it in the lab.”
“Could this mean… she tried to defend herself?” I hoped for a yes. It would be nice to think she hurt this bastard before he chopped her in two.
“Either that or he treated her to a T-bone steak, rare. But I’m seeing no signs of a recent meal, and I’ve found skin flakes on the lining of her mouth. I think she got him.”
“Good for her.” I wondered what had allowed her to get in even that tiny blow of resistance that none of the others had managed. “Looks like she was in good shape.”
“Agreed,” Nida said. “Excellent muscle tone, even after rigor. I’m guessing she was an athlete.”
“Dancer,” Darcy said quietly, looking away, hands flipping.
We both turned and stared at him.
“How can you possibly-”
“Did you see the calluses on her feet?” he asked.
“Darcy, anything could’ve caused that. She might have a job that required her to stand on her feet for long periods. Waitressing, or-”
“Dancer,” Darcy gently insisted. “Did you know that dancers get special calluses in special places? Look at the calluses on her feet.”
I did. I saw how they formed a semicircular arc at the base of her heel. A firm ridge down the sides and across the center.
Nida and I stared at each other, utterly wordless.
“Maria Tallchief had the same calluses, according to this biography my dad brought home from the library once. Did you know that she was the first truly great prima ballerina in America? She was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma, and-”
“No, I didn’t,” I said, not informing him that I didn’t even know who Maria Tallchief was. My mind had already wandered to another place. Red lace. Exotic wraps. Dancing. I punched my cell phone. “Madeline? Check the missing-persons reports for the last few days. See if anyone is missing an exotic dancer. Showgirl. Anything like that.” If I could figure out where the victim came from-sooner, this time around-I might finally figure out this creep’s pattern and anticipate the next one. “I wish I understood how he chooses his victims,” I said, not really realizing I was speaking aloud. “Or how he chooses where to leave his victims.”
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