Cat In A Neon Nightmare Part 29

The ring glided over her knuckle (third finger left hand) as though made for it. It settled into the groove between her middle and little fingers like a baby into a cradle.

"How much?" she asked.

"Ummm. Thirty-eight ninety-five."

Gee, $38.95 to reclaim a dream, a memory, a moment. Not a bad bargain. But it wasn't really like her ring. Her memory must have already decayed a little. She knew she couldn't be sure. Still . . .

"Thirty-two. It's the last day of the expo."

Thirty-two! Well. Temple stared at the ring on her finger. It seemed to belong there. Her other hand dug in her tote bag for her wallet. At thirty-two cash would be okay, and the exhibitor probably would be spared a percentage to the credit card company.

"It's lovely," the woman said, sealing the bargain. "Made for you."

The real ring, the original, had been lovely, and the way it had been presented had been even lovelier, that Temple remembered exactly. Poor Max. His best intentions of six months ago had turned into hash again, like all best intentions. Not his fault. Not hers. Just . . . life and all its accidents.

Temple stuffed her change, five bucks plus some coins once tax had been added, into her tote bag and turned away.

"Wait!" the saleswoman urged. Her beautifully manicured hand reached out to push a small hot-pink moire box into Temple's tote bag. "The box is free; might as well take it."

"Thanks!" That's what Temple loved about girly events; they were br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with bonuses and free gifts and little touches you didn't expect.

She glanced again at her hand, fanned her fingers, enjoyed the ring resting there like it belonged, like it had always been there.

She didn't dare tell/show Max. He would recognize it for the cheap imitation it was. He would remember the ring he had given her in every detail. She just remembered it in her emotions, and that seemed close enough. Better than nothing. It was her secret, this ring. Her secret and her souvenir.

The next morning was Monday. Temple awoke with Midnight Louie sprawling across her stomach. He felt like a very bad hangover.

"Louie!"

One lazy green eye slitted open. He deigned to regard her, then shut the eye again.

"Louie! You are an avalanche and I am an innocent Swiss village. Move! Off!"

He responded as all cats do to vocal commands. He didn't even bat an eyelash. And he had them. A lush line of jet-black a Supermodel would give her cheekbones for.

Not even a wink.

"Louie! I had a very big weekend. I don't have to go to work today, it's true, but I have a lot to catch up on."

Louie yawned and allowed himself to roll over. In so doing, he rolled right off the minor hump Temple's body made in the covers and onto unoccupied comforter.

She polished his head with her palm. "Sony, boy. I overslept. I need to be up and doing!"

He yawned his response to that declaration and shut his eyes again.

Temple twisted herself into a pretzel trying to exit the bed without disturbing a hair on Louie's Olympic-broadjump-length body.

"Ow!" Temple complained when she had kinked her feet onto the floor in a position preparatory to rising and shining.

She really didn't want to get up any more than Louie did, but ... she had people to rouse and perpetrators to pursue.

The ring winked at the morning, catching her eye. She'd have to be careful to wear it for herself alone. In the daylight it looked so ... tawdry. Maybe dreams deferred were tawdry.

Her tote bag sagged against the wall by the bedroom door. She remembered the cute little box the saleswoman had given her for the ring. Time to put the things of a child away. She'd inter the ring in the box and bury it at the back of a dresser drawer, where all tarnished memories dwell.

Temple dredged her tote bag and all its ill-gotten gains from the floor and probed its chaos with her right hand. Her fingers finally curled around a tubular object. Either a freebie lipstick or the box in question.

Tiffany it wasn't. Temple stuck in her thumb and pulled out a plum-blossom special, a lurid taffeta-wrapped box looking super-tawdry in broad daylight.

She opened it to reveal a cheap foam pillow pierced by a horizontal slit.

Only this hole-in-one was already occupied. By a ring. An ersatz gold ring, very large and very plain, of a snake ... or a worm, or an eel, or something else icky ... biting its own tail.

Was there a message there? Hmmph. Free box and free ring. Bingo. Goodie.

The new ring was way too big to fit even Temple's thumb-she tried-and it didn't sport the slightest dusting of rhinestones to give it star quality.

For a moment she wondered if the saleswoman had lost a valuable item. Naw. Like the ring Temple had bought on a whim and a prayer, this ring was also, utterly ... worthless.

She set both rings away in the bottom dresser drawer, under the scarves she had bought and been given over the years-and had kept because it seemed rude and even cruel not to-and had never used.

Because she never had, and never would, learn to tie a knot worth letting anyone actually see.

Chapter 40.

Dead Certain "You've never been in an autopsy room before?"

Matt stared at Molina. "You mean when I was a priest? No. Nothing happened in my parish that called for that."

"Yeah, visiting the morgue is pretty uncalled for, isn't it?"

She flashed him a wry smile, as if they were in this together.

And they were, in a sense.

"Now," Molina said, holding the steel-and-gla.s.s entry door open for him, like a good hostess. "It looks pretty regular up front. Reception desk, chairs, etcetera etcetera. Just brace yourself. Every step farther in gets more like a new TV show hybrid: ER blended with The Twilight Zone, if you remember that golden oldie."

"Reruns," Matt pointed out. "Who could forget Rod Serling and his spooky series?"

"This place isn't exactly 'spooky,' " Molina paused to tell him. "It's way too clinical. That's what'll get to you. The utter ordinariness of dead and dismembered bodies.

Not like a crime scene, which is a sort of origami nightmare you have to figure out. Here, it's all clear. Dead and about to be buried. Think you can handle it?"

"I've done funerals in my time, Lieutenant."

She regarded him with a gaze as icy as a vodka gimlet. "You identified your stepfather's body here. I remember that. No gentle remote viewing booth for this one. You'll see her on cold stainless steel and she won't be prettied up."

"Why? Why did Effinger get the opening-night curtain presentation and why does Kathleen O'Connor get none of the frills?"

"Body's too fresh. No time. Besides, we know there are no relatives to find. When I asked, not even your friend Bucek could come up with anything on her through the FBI. Don't let Grizzly Bahr ghoul you out. He's just a sawbones. Literally."

Matt then followed her to the reception window, where a perky young thing with highlighted hair shaven to look as if crop circles had set up permanent residence on her scalp handed them clip-on VISITORS tags.

Matt pinched a bit of cotton knit with the alligator clip, also stainless steel. He hated to tell Molina, but he was ready to see Kitty O'Connor, mistress of the edged razor blade, laid out on another metal surface.

Mercy?

He only had to think of Va.s.sar, and he felt none. He was as cold as dry ice.

They went through doors and down hallways. They pa.s.sed people in lab coats with matching tags, only these bore names.

"I nicknamed him 'Grizzly,' " Molina said abruptly, "because it fit his last name and his att.i.tude. All MEs are weird. Death is their daily bread. Maybe they're reincarnated hyenas, but they laugh about it a lot. Don't be put off. Bahr knows his stiffs."

"Why are you worrying about me?"

She stopped. Fixed him with a Blue Dahlia gaze only she could level. "Sometimes you wish someone dead. Usually you have reason. Sometimes you get your wish. Don't freak on me."

"I never wished Kitty O'Connor dead."

She resumed walking through the bland, confusing halls.

He could pick it up now, the faint ... unpleasant . smell. Death with an orange twist. Vaguely kitchen, vaguely crematorium.

"I didn't," Matt said, his stride lengthening to keep up with the tall lieutenant. "I wanted to talk to her more than anyone, I think."

Molina turned, vertical forefinger pressed warningly against her lips. "The Iceman cometh."

Matt stopped to look around.

A pair of double doors burst apart to birth a form as forceful and burly as John Madden commenting on a football game. The vaunted "Grizzly" he presumed.

Grizzled was right. Bristling gray eyebrows, piercing gray eyes driving a physique once powerful and now larded with midlife excess.

The old lion. Still clawed. Not sleeping tonight, not an instant.

"Who's Dr. Kildare, the intern?" he growled at Molina. "He may be able to identify the body."

"Will he pa.s.s out?"

"I don't know," she said. "Shall we find out?"

"Let's." He lifted a clipboard and ran his restless gaze down it. "This is the easy rider organ donor, right? Unusual it's a woman. Motorcycles! Might as well take a.r.s.enic as an appetizer. If I had a thousand dollars for every dead Marlon Brandowannabe that came through here, I'd be retired in Tahiti."

"Brando made it there," Matt put in.

Bahr stopped, turned on him, quieted like a rearing black bear in a Grizzly Adams movie.

"I don't want to be where Brando is. It's a saturated-fat paradise. Me, I'm all muscle. Come along, son, and see the bifurcated lady. She's a sight. Must have been onewhile alive, but now she's autopsy Annie. Follow me."

He blasted through another pair of double doors, and by now Matt couldn't escape the pervasive odor of the working environment: decay.

He tried not to breathe too deeply, but even shallow breaths brought the heavy bouquet of rotting flesh.

The room was like a lab: big, inhabited by stainless steel tables, sinks, and equipment. People seemed superfluous in here. Matt accepted the clear safety goggles and latex gloves Molina also donned like a seasoned astronaut used to looking like a parody of a person.

Matt ran a prayer through his overactive mind. For the dead. For Kathleen O'Connor, who had been somebody's precious baby once.

She lay on a stainless steel bier, naked.

Matt realized that he had never seen a naked woman before.

But she wasn't a woman now. Death made her unreal, a department-store mannequin glimpsed in an unfinished window-dressing set.

He kept his eyes on what he was here to see: her face. Was this truly her? Was she truly dead? And gone.

She looked tiny, fragile on that large steel bed.

Odd that she had hurt him with a small steel blade.

Now the blades had been at her. Her torso was seamed like a Raggedy Ann's body. Her stuffing seemed to have been removed, and returned, like Scarecrow's after the Flying Monkeys had dispersed him.

Her face, though, was whole, such as it was. He couldn't say the same for her head, and avoided looking above her eyebrows. Raven eyebrows. Her eyelids were shut and her cheekbones and chin bruised and sc.r.a.ped. Somebody's child had taken a great fall.

"Motorcycles," Bahr snorted. "Hate 'em. Make hash out of my bodies. She wore leathers, so the limbs are pretty solid, what's not broken. But the face ... restructuring by Gravel, Inc."

Matt sighed, then was sorry he'd exhaled. He'd have to inhale sooner, and ingest the air of decay.

"Is it her?" Molina asked.

He'd forgotten about her in the presence of Milady Death.

Was it?

Kitty had been vital and certain, threatening and powerful. This ... corpse was none of that. It wore a skullcap where the surgeon's saw had sliced through her cranium. She was like an Egyptian prince, her vital organs removed and weighed and stored elsewhere.

Still, beneath the matted raven-black hair, behind the abraded facial skin, Matt saw flesh as white as snow, lips as red as blood, eyes as liquid as Caribbean waters .

"Her eyes," he said aloud.

Molina held up a plastic baggie. It contained, not the furtive glimmer of Temple's opal-and-diamond ring from Max Kinsella this time, but two pale, flat gemstones, aquamarines when he bent closer to look.

"Colored contact lenses," Molina said. "She wore them. Like her archenemy, the Mystifying Max, Miss Kitty altered her eyes. Their natural shade was gray-green, if you believe romantic coroners like Grizzly here."