Nightwalker. Part 18

He looked straight out the window. "Trust me. You aren't ruining my life."

She was silent for a moment. "Do you want to stay at my house tonight? Tanner Green might show up."

He tried not to smile too broadly. "Sure. Sounds good to me. Hey, if I wind up getting back into town late tonight and can't-"

"I'll call my friend Sandra to pick me up. She won't mind."

Tanner Green was staring at her through the gla.s.s again.

The minute Jessy had come out onstage, she'd noticed him, his face pressed against the gla.s.s. He still looked so sad-and so afraid.

She offered him a smile, to a.s.sure him that she didn't mind him being there, but he didn't respond.

She had no choice but to turn her attention to the show, but every once in a while she looked toward the window.

And he was always there.

An a.s.sistant met Dillon in reception and took him back to autopsy room number 3 to see Doug Tarleton, who met him at the door wearing green scrubs and a matching green mask that hid everything but his eyes, which were a bright hazel, clear and intelligent, behind flip-up magnifying lenses.

"I've had Tanner Green brought back out," he told Dillon, his words clear despite the mask. "Though my report is so complete that I'm not sure what-if anything-else I'll find. But since Emil Landon is making burial arrangements and doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry-no one has called yet to ask when we're releasing the body-I figure there's time to take one last look."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

"It's no problem. I never mind looking for something hinky. I had an old guy come through this morning who'd died of what looked like a heart attack."

"It wasn't?" Dillon asked.

Tarleton shook his head. "This can be a dangerous city."

"So what did did he die of?" he die of?"

"He hit the jackpot a little over a year ago. He was already one of those nuts who hobble in with a walker and an oxygen tank, but apparently someone-my guess is his son-couldn't wait for natural causes to free up all that money. He had enough morphine in his system to kill a rhino. Thing is, he would have died of cancer soon enough."

"Maybe it was a mercy killing. A morphine OD's a h.e.l.l of a lot easier than a slow death from cancer," Dillon commented.

"That will be for the cops and the courts to sort out. I just report what the body tells me. Now grab some scrubs or else you'll be smelling like chemicals and death all day."

Dillon did as directed, then followed Tarleton into the autopsy room and toward a sheet-draped form lying on a stainless-steel autopsy table.

Tarleton pulled down the sheet. Tanner Green, in his dead and bloated nakedness, was not a pretty picture. The man had been heavily muscled, but he'd also been just plain big. In life, he'd liked food and alcohol, predilections that were very apparent as he lay on the table.

Other than the Y incision made during the initial autopsy, his torso looked unblemished, and his s.e.x lay limp and tiny between the giant slabs of his thighs. Tanner Green, if he could have seen that, would not have been happy at all.

But if Tanner Green was hanging around the morgue, Dillon didn't see him. Maybe he had more sense than that, or maybe he hadn't accepted his own death yet, so he was still hanging around the same places he'd frequented in life.

"Burton!" Tarleton called, and an a.s.sistant, otherwise known as a dernier, materialized in the doorway. "Come over here and lend me a hand, please."

As soon as Burton was by his side, Tarleton resumed talking.

"As you can see, there's no sign of violence or struggle, and when we turn Mr. Tanner over-" he and Burton suited action to words "-there's your wound. One strike, swift, sure and hard. The blade went in all the way to the hilt, which was short and explains why none of the drunken idiots milling around the entrance or the tables noticed that the man plowing past had a knife in his back."

Someone had either been d.a.m.n lucky or they had known exactly what they were doing, Dillon mused silently. The knife had penetrated cleanly into the lung, missing the ribs. Only someone with either combat or medical training would have been capable of that kind of precision. A jilted girlfriend or angry coworker was unlikely to have managed it.

"All right, we can roll him back over now," Tarleton told Burton. They were both good-size men, but Tanner Green had been built like the proverbial brick s.h.i.t house, and moving his dead weight was no easy task.

Burton gave them a nod after Dillon thanked him, then left to resume whatever he'd been doing before Tarleton summoned him.

"So the tests came back positive for LSD?" Dillon said.

"That's what I told you, and that's the way it was. He was tripping his a.s.s off," Tarleton said.

"Do you know how the drug got into his system?"

"Ingested. It usually comes in tablet form."

Dillon shook his head. "I just don't see it. I can't say I knew him well, but...LSD? I just don't see it," he repeated. "h.e.l.l, it's such an old-fashioned drug."

"Doesn't mean it isn't on the streets, right along with the new designer stuff," Tarleton told him.

"I can't see him taking it on purpose. Someone must have slipped it to him."

"He'd had a martini or two," Tarleton said. "Could someone have slipped the LSD into him that way? Sure."

"He must have been with someone he trusted."

"Maybe. Or maybe he was tripping, then stumbled into his killer."

"I don't think so. I think he was drugged, then killed, and that everything was perpetrated by someone who knew exactly what he was doing," Dillon said. "What about food? Where did he have his last meal?"

"Do I look like an entertainment directory? I don't know where, only what. He had steak and mashed potatoes. Not a single vegetable pa.s.sed his palate, not in the last twenty-four hours, at any rate. Steak and potatoes, at least three hours before his death, for whatever help that will give you."

"Thanks." Dillon wasn't sure that the menu helped, but the martinis...they had been mixed somewhere. As far as he knew, though, none of the bartenders in town had contacted the cops to say they had seen Tanner Green in the hours before his death.

Not that that meant anything. This was Vegas. No one had noticed the knife in his back, for G.o.d's sake.

But now that his face had shown up in the newspapers and on television, someone should have remembered seeing the man. Unless he'd been drinking in private somewhere. In someone's room.

In a penthouse, maybe? Emil Landon's penthouse?

"Do you want to see the other man?" Tarleton asked him.

"Rudy Yorba?"

Tarleton nodded.

Inwardly, Dillon winced. He couldn't help feeling responsible for Rudy's death. He nodded back.

"This way. He's in a drawer right now. His ex-wife is having the body shipped back East. She wants a proper funeral. They had a kid."

"Great," Dillon said beneath his breath. They left the autopsy room and walked down a hallway to the room Tarleton referred to as "the coolers."

There, he glanced over the wall of human-content drawers, selected one and opened it.

Rudy Yorba was virtually unrecognizable. His face was mottled, cut and sc.r.a.ped in a dozen places, and appeared to have been squeezed between the hands of a yeti.

The body was in no better shape. He was so bruised and broken that it was difficult to see where the Y incision had been made at autopsy.

A low whistle escaped Dillon's lungs.

Tarleton shook his head regretfully. "The vehicle impact took him in the legs. Speed and force crushed his thighs and threw him backward, against the windshield. His face and upper body took a beating, and his neck was broken-which was the specific cause of death, by the way-all in a few seconds, I'd guess. That action created an equal re reaction, and the body was thrown over the embankment, where it bounced and rolled, hitting boulders, sand and the usual roadside c.r.a.p before coming to a stop. Thank G.o.d the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d was already dead at that point. That's the only plus I can see here. No drugs in his system, not even a whiff of alcohol. His heart was sound, organs were normal-well, had been normal, before the ripping and tearing. No way he could have survived, even if his neck hadn't been broken. His spleen, pancreas and liver were all ripped to shreds, and he would have bled to death internally in minutes. His last meal was spaghetti, barely digested, probably consumed at the employee cafeteria. He had a heart like a lion. Probably had fifty good years left. He'd been a junkie at one point, but he'd cleaned himself up. He was lily white the night he died."

Dillon stared at the corpse. He had seldom seen the human body turned into such a ruin.

Sorry, buddy, he said silently. he said silently. I am so d.a.m.n sorry. I am so d.a.m.n sorry.

"I can't believe I talked to him not long before it happened," he said to Tarleton. "I can't help but feel responsible."

"Prove they were related, then. Prove this conspiracy theory of yours. I'd love to see someone locked up for life for this one," Tarleton said. "Actually, I'd love to see the killer tarred and feathered and then disemboweled, but unfortunately that's against the law. Anyway, I'd just like to see you bring someone to justice on this."

"I'll do my best," Dillon told him. "I swear."

"Keep in touch," Tarleton said. "And if I can help, just say the word."

"All right, and thanks." Dillon paused as Tarleton closed the drawer. "You might want to suggest to the ex that she request a closed-coffin service."

"I was going to suggest cremation, actually. But I'm trying to hold on to both bodies a little while longer. Just in case, you know?"

Dillon nodded and left, depositing his scrubs in a laundry bin on the way out. When he stepped from the building, he looked around, wondering if Tanner or Rudy might have shown up. But the only ghost he saw was Ringo, who was sitting on a bench at a nearby bus stop, one leg crossed over the other, his hat pulled down low over his eyes to shade them from the Vegas sun. He looked up at Dillon.

"I guess you got it right," Ringo said, "Tanner Green was watching your girl, and Miss Sparhawk saw him. Confusing? I spent some time up in the penthouse first, watching Emil Landon."

"And?"

"I watched him stare at a stack of papers. I watched Hugo Blythe sit outside his office, reading magazines. Then I decided your girl needed my maybe-not-so-helpful presence more and left. That's when I saw her and Tanner Green watching each other. No sign of Rudy Yorba. And Miss Sparhawk looked like she was managing just fine. Does that mean you can introduce us now?"

"You're sure?" Dillon asked, ignoring Ringo's question. "She saw him and she wasn't freaked out?"

"She was fine," Ringo said with a.s.surance. "She's got a backbone. She just had to get over the it's-really-a-ghost thing."

"How can you be so certain?"

Ringo gave him a dry stare, then sighed. "I've been watching people for over a hundred years now. How's that for a reason?"

"Yeah, okay. You probably know what you're talking about."

Ringo sniffed. "So when do we let her know about me? The time will come when I might be able to help on this thing, you know."

"Soon, okay?"

"All right. So how was the...." Ringo paused and shuddered. "The morgue? h.e.l.l, when I died, they just threw me into a hole in the ground."

"In Indigo?" Dillon said.

"h.e.l.l, yes, in Indigo," Ringo agreed.

"Well, it's time. Let's go," Dillon told him, and Ringo rose and followed him to the car, along with the ever-present jingling of his spurs.

Tanner Green didn't stay for the entire show, and Jessy actually forgot about the ghost for a while because there were so many children and parents who lingered that day. She signed autographs and posed for a seemingly endless succession of pictures.

After saying goodbye to a pretty, young woman who had accompanied two five-year-olds, she looked up and realized she was the only one left on set.

She got up and headed backstage, and was just approaching the curtain that separated the set from the dressing rooms when she heard a sudden whooshing sound. She turned just in time to see one of the giant sails, rigged to fall apart when a fake cannon boomed, swinging toward her. She let out a yelp and fell flat on the floor, rolling away more quickly than she would have thought possible.

She heard the mast crash as it fell, which it did during every performance, but all the players were safely on the deck of the ship when it happened.

She scrambled to her feet and shouted up into the rigging, "Hey! Idiot! I'm still here! Quit messing with the set until I'm in the clear."

There was no answer, though she thought she heard a scrambling in the rigging, and her heart started to pound. Had she heard human footsteps...?

Or a ghost?

She walked back to the women's dressing room to find April just slipping into her dress.

"What took you so long?" the other woman asked. "Good show today, huh?"

"Yeah-until the sail just almost fell on me," Jessy said.

"You're kidding!" April said. "Better tell the stage manager."

"I will, thanks."

"Okay, I'm outta here, then. Hey, where's tall, dark and to-die-for today?"

"He had to work," Jessy said.

April grinned. "b.u.mmer. Well, you take care, sweetie. See you tomorrow."

Before changing, Jessy found the stage manager, Ron Pearl, and told him what had happened. He was perplexed and concerned, though she had a feeling he was more worried about the legal repercussions of someone getting hurt than how she herself was actually feeling. But he swore he would find out what had happened, so she left him to it and headed back to the dressing room.

She was alone there as she cleaned her face and changed into her street clothes, and though she felt edgy, her senses heightened, as far as she could tell there were no ghosts in sight.