Cat In A Neon Nightmare Part 5

Temple had deliberately omitted from her list of admirable attributes the one that had thrilled her the most: beautiful. Really? He thought she was beautiful? Strange how something so shallow could resonate so deep.

Of course she immediately felt guilty for feeling that way.

Max was the one she'd fallen madly, manically, magically in love with, the one she had followed from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, the one she'd lived with at the Circle Ritz. When he had vanished without a word after finishing his magician's gig at the Goliath Hotel, her world stopped. Then Molina had shown up, pushing Temple for information she didn't have on Max's whereabouts, accusing him of a murder discovered at the Goliath the same night he vanished. Temple feared Max was dead too. Molina was sure Max was alive and well somewhere, and a murderer.

Max had come back months later as suddenly as he'd disappeared. It was no one's fault that Matt had come to live at the Ritz in the meantime. That Temple had begun to learn the secrets of Matt's past, begun to be a part of his present. . . .

Max was back, and his reason for vanishing was . . . her safety. Sheer gallantry. He did indeed know about the Goliath's dead man and was afraid the killers had been after him. He had fled to keep Temple safe. Turns out even Max had secrets in his past.

Max was back. He had been her only live-in lover, her only partner on the tracks of true love leading to Matrimony Junction. You didn't throw away a mutually monogamous commitment in the Age of AIDS. You hung with the one who brung you. Who stuck with you. Who didn't deserve to be cut out while he wasn't looking, only because he cared enough about you to leave you for your own good.

Still, it seemed she had been wrong somehow in becoming Matt's friend as he was trying to return to a secular, freshly s.e.xual world from the Catholic priesthood. She had somehow been unfaithful to Max and unfair to Matt, without meaning to, without knowing it.

She clutched the one truth in the whole sordid mess that touched her to the quick. Matt had hoped she could be his salvation. Maybe she hadn't been in a position to help him disarm Miss Kitty before the fact-and she understood that they could never have been intimate without betraying who they were and the very reasons they were tempted to be intimate-but she could sure kick stalker a.s.s now that all had been said and done.

Chapter 6.

Body Bag People who don't work in a medical examiner's facility wonder how the staff can do it. How can they take fingerprints from the fire-eaten tips of charred hands? How can they stare headless bodies in the missing face?

Molina inhaled shallowly in the cool corridor, absorbing the sickly scent of decay with its inescapable overlay of orange, the counter-scent deemed most effective. She was reminded not of orange blossoms, the beginning, but the bitter, curled rind. The end.

As a visiting police officer, she had quickly discovered the paradox that perfectly intact bodies are far harder to cope with than the ones bloated or burned beyond recognition.

Va.s.sar's was one of those disturbingly intact bodies. She lay naked on the stainless steel examining table in the autopsy room. As if she could wait for anything anymore.

Despite the trauma of her fatal fall, her skin was simply bruised, as if she'd been in a minor automobile accident. The color was not as pallid as Shangri-La's white stage makeup, but almost normal. She was as fresh as they ever came here. Worse, stripped of her high-fashion clothing and jewelry, she resembled an old-fashioned department-store mannequin underneath. Motionless, naked, as angular as an anvil to which exaggerated female secondary characteristics had been added: full lips ab.u.t.ting a cadaverous cheekbone; full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a ripple of ribs.

She looked as if she could rise and leave any minute, as if her vacant, haughty model's features would animate in an instant. She would yawn or smile. Sit up. Leave. Get on with her life.

Not, Molina thought, once Grizzly Bahr had finished eviscerating her like an Egyptian mummy in the name of forensics.

"This the downed bird?" the ME's voice boomed from Molina's rear. As burly as his nickname, he couldn't avoid brushing against her as he barreled by. He stopped, arrested. "Say, there's almost an expression on her face. Makes you wonder what her last thoughts were."

Molina had noticed it too: a not-quite-expression of surprise and even perhaps a hint of distress. Only extreme trauma left post-mortem expressions on the dead, a death resisted. She'd seen that once, in a victim who had choked on a latex glove, an autistic adult. They'd never determined whether the death was accident ... or suicide.

"You in for the duration?" Grizzly asked, his virtuoso eyebrows arched to their highest. Either he couldn't believe she really wanted to do this, or he was relishing another opportunity to gross out the civilians, which in his opinion included police officers.

"She's a real mystery," Molina said as she accepted the mouth mask and clear safety goggles he extended. "I want to be the first to know."

"Hmmm, may not know much even afterward." He stepped to the corpse's side as if about to ask her to join him in a macabre dance. "Pretty woman. Too skinny for my taste, but at my age I'm not the target audience any more. The bruises all look impact-induced. Nothing-in the thigh and genital area. She wasn't raped."

"She was a call girl."

"They can be raped."

"Not a veteran. Not often."

"This one irritate a client, you think?"

"I have no idea. Maybe a client irritated her."

"And it was such a shock she dove to her death?"

"You know what the multiple choice is: accident, sui cide, or homicide."

"Which one would you like it to be?" Bahr's eyes were slightly blurred through the goggles, but Molina found his expression especially avid.

Grizzly Bahr could smell when a cop really burned to make a case.

"In this instance . . . accident would be nice."

Her choice startled him. Homicide lieutenants seldom rooted for an innocent death. Then he shrugged. He was a scientist. Only the evidence would count and that needed to be exhumed from the body before him.

Molina was having an unwished-for epiphany. She had stood through more than a few autopsies, and was used to the ME's droning voice as he or she confided the long, Latinate medical terminology to the confessional of a tape recorder. She was aware of Bahr's spare but invasive motions ... the long Y incision of the trunk, the grueling revelation of the brain by sawing a literal skullcap off the top of the head.

These actions, this sequence, this ritual and its accompanying inventory of comment were familiar.

Except that now, today, for the first time it reminded her of another ceremony over another table. Altar. The ma.s.s. This is my body. This is my blood.

In a way this body and blood were communal property now, and literally community property. Their sacrifice upon the altar of science would free them from the eternal d.a.m.nation of a known resting place reached by an unknown cause.

Unless of course, the autopsy was completely inconclusive.

Instruments clanged into stainless steel trays. Molina finally heard the inimitable squeaky, sucking sound of latex gloves being stretched and drawn off like alien skin.

Va.s.sar now lay disa.s.sembled like the department store mannequin she had evoked earlier.

"No bruises or other marks consistent with the application of force from an outside source," Grizzly Bahr summed up for her ears only, the tape recorder already turned off. "The presence of s.e.m.e.n, but no indication of force. A contraceptive implant was the only anomaly in the body. Nothing remarkable."

"s.e.m.e.n?" Molina was startled. "Hookers don't hook without condoms nowadays." Her second thought was chilling. That might be evidence to hang Matt Devine. Was he dumb enough to forego a condom? And even if he was, which she doubted, Va.s.sar certainly wasn't. "How are you going to rule it?"

"Death by misadventure?" He pulled off his mask and grinned, widely. "No, that's only in the murder mysteries, isn't it? Guess your people will have to work on the definition, Lieutenant."

"Guess we will." She didn't have to add that n.o.body usually cared much about a call girl but her cell phone service.

Wait a minute! Where was her cell phone?

"Her things are upstairs?" she asked.

"Bagged and tagged. Just like the remains will soon be."

Molina glanced in pa.s.sing at the table and its contents as she removed her mask and goggles. Not even a discarded mannequin anymore. Just remains.

"Any next of kin?" Grizzly had paperwork as well as bodies to process.

"Not that we know of. Yet. Maybe the clothes will be more talkative than her body parts."

"In this case, then, clothes would 'make' the woman."

Molina quirked a weary smile at his joke. She didn't expect the expensive labels from any of a dozen casino shopping malls to reveal much more than the extent of Va.s.sar's clothing habit. But a cell phone might be a lot more "talkative."

7.

Beasts of Eden There was no cell phone.

"Now this doesn't make sense," Molina commented aloud.

The technician in charge was a multi-earringed twenty-something whose eyes were still glued with envy on the slinky, shiny clothes Va.s.sar had worn.

"This stuff is to die for."

Molina avoided the obvious comeback. Most coroner facility mid-level techs were high school grads so ecstatic about the rewarding pay scale that they overcame any nicety about peeling fingerprints off the dead and other unpleasant tasks.

And they lived in a world where black humor was the best defense against depression.

"If any relatives step forward to arrange a funeral," Molina said, "they'll have to find something else to bury her in, that's for sure."

"Oh, these are too cool to bury." The gloved technician pushed the soft silken folds back into their paper bags. Paper was more preservative than plastic when it came to fabrics.

Molina frowned at the iridescent snakeskin purse as it disappeared. One of those glitzy toy purses that cost a bundle but were only big enough to hold credit cards, tight curls of cash, and a decorative lipstick case.

No cell phone.

Va.s.sar had to have carried a cell phone, or a pager. Where was it?

Max Kinsella stared at his own words on the computer screen with a sense of disappointment.

Temple made writing, and talking, look so easy. With her it was a flow, a part of her personality. He could sling a bit of patter himself. A professional magician had to be a silver-tongued devil to some extent. But when it came to setting word after word down on a computer screen, he found something lacking.

It wasn't as if he hadn't had a head start. Gandolph the Great's memoirs were packed with fascinating stories about debunking phony mediums. Max had taken them up after Gandolph's death last Halloween to finish what his mentor had started.

He was living in the man's house, after all, and one bedroom was crammed with the machines of his stage illusions. The ghost of Orson Welles, former owner of the manse, an amateur magician of note and a film genius, hovered over the place as well.

Why couldn't Max make something of what Gandolph had started?

Maybe he wasn't a writer.

He was probably too tired to worry about this project now, but he was also too wired to sleep. His face and body ached, not a lot, but enough that three ibuprofens didn't totally kill the pain.

Last night had been taxing, to say the least. After weeks of undercover work on both their parts, he and Molina had missed out on capturing the Stripper Killer. While they'd been duking it out mano-a-mana in a strip-club parking lot, Temple had been fighting for her life with the killer in another strip-club parking lot.

He'd finally allowed Molina to capture him, knowing no handcuffs would hold him, but the fact left an ugly taste at the back of his throat, like bile.

He'd never gotten into this kind of a macho contest with a woman before and his mid-thirties' mind was old enough that a touch of chivalry cramped his style with the combative lieutenant.

Then to know that she'd made him too late to save Temple anyway, that it had been her hated ex-lover, Rafi Nadir, who had been there to do it . . . the only consolation to Max's ego was that the pepper spray he'd given Temple had helped her hold off the killer until Nadir could come along and deck him.

He was an ex-cop, Nadir, and must still relish a bust, even if his shady present didn't permit him to hang around to get the credit.

Max grinned at the annoying words on the screen. His words, that wouldn't obey and look gracious. Molina would split her spleen to know that her loathed ex had chivalrously come to Temple's rescue.

The Iron Lieutenant had looked pretty spleen-split when he'd left her handcuffed to her own steering wheel. Max chuckled. Never mess with a magician.

Then he frowned. Someone had messed with Gandolph the Great. No one had been charged with his mid-seance murder at the Halloween haunted house attraction. Garry Randolph had been Max's mentor in magic and the counterterrorism life, his only family for years. Max had done nothing to avenge or solve his death except try to finish his book, and to do a mediocre job at that. Temple could help him fix the book, and she might even help him clear up Garry's death.

Max tapped his fingers on the keyboard so lightly that no letters appeared on the screen.

Several psychics and mediums had been present for Garry's death. He had been there in disguise to expose the frauds among them. Garry would say all of them. Someone more open minded, or imaginative, like Temple, would say most of them. She had been impressed by a couple of the psychics.

But Garry, he hadn't performed for years. His mission the last years of his life had been revealing the tricks behind the illusions. Unlike the Cloaked Conjuror, he hadn't built a mega-million Las Vegas headlining act out of it. Now the Cloaked Conjuror was facing death threats, and Max had to wonder if Garry's death had been the first act of a plot to kill renegade magicians who gave away trade secrets.

Which brought up the mysterious Synth, supposedly a band of magicians who punished magicians who told. Even Garry's former a.s.sistant, Gloria Fuentes, had been found dead a couple months ago in a church parking lot, one of a series of strangled women whose deaths might, or might not, be related.

And now CC had partnered with the strange female magician Shangri-La.

Max ran last night through his head again, but it didn't come out any less cluttered. First there was the realization that Temple was a target for the Stripper Killer, then his own compelling need to reach and protect her. Yes, he was protective of Temple, call it what you would. He was bigger, sadder, wiser. She was the last, best hope the limited life his work as a counterterrorism agent had allowed since his late teens. While he had roamed the world working onstage illusions, he had foiled offstage attempts to kill innocent civilians. It was a career choice he hadn't chosen and no one retired from.

Max was trying to be the first. Gandolph had preceded him in that attempt and Gandolph was dead.

Max wasn't dead yet. He grinned again at the screen. And he sure wasn't a writer. Where there's imperfection, there's hope.

Back to last night. He had tried not to damage Molina to the point where she could press charges, which meant he'd had to take a few blows, yet appear subdued. That was the hardest part. Max had built a life on refusing to be subdued.

When the news of the attack at Baby Doll's had come over Molina's radio, he had raced there to collect Temple after the crime scene officers let her go and whisk her home to the Circle Ritz and the frantic comfort of a man with nothing good in his life but her. Then, restless in the wee hours, he had stolen away from a sleeping Temple to seek out his own kind, the caged Big Cats, trained to perform, who had been saved from fates worse than death to join the Cloaked Conjuror's menagerie. It was the best situation for them, but they were as trapped, in a way, as he was, by what they were and what they could do. Dangerous beasts.

And then she had appeared: the most dangerous game of all. Shangri-La, whose likeness and act were a combination of j.a.panese Kabuki theater and Kung Fu. He could still see her flying though the air above the stage at the Opium Den like an ax, sharp and lethal, all tattered robes and tongues of sable hair, crimson nails as long as a switch blade, face hidden by dead-white makeup with a scarlet mask defining the cheekbones and eyes. And lips.

She had confronted him on his visit to the big cats, broadcasting contempt and threat. A small woman with major mojo.

He didn't know who she was or where she came from, but he recognized personal threat when he felt it.

The Synth. She had to be an agent, or perhaps a director, of this mysterious alliance of magicians that had its roots as deeply in the past as the arcane ceremonies of the Masons.

He must find and infiltrate the Synth.

It would be the most dangerous a.s.signment of his career, if he had already been targeted by the shadowy organization. If it existed.