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-glass 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 Vassar, and he felt none. He was as cold as dry ice.
They went through doors and down hallways. They passed 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 attitude. 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 pass 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 arsenic as an appetizer. If I had a thousand dollars for every dead Marlon Brando-wannabe 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 one while 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 scraped. 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.”
Bahr hawked out a laugh as another man might expel phlegm.
“The eyes have it,” Molina went on. “Contact lenses. Vivid blue-green. Looks like the lady couldn’t make up her mind. Was she blue, or was she green?”
“Green,” Matt said. “She worked for the IRA.”
“Or maybe Ralph Nader,” Bahr put in. “You do know her, then?”
Matt wasn’t sure that his relationship with Kitty O’Connor could be described as “knowing.”
He tried for the objective eye. Saw long, narrow neck. Pale skin paler now in death. Small determined chin. Slightly up-turned nose. A pretty girl without the hatred that made every feature sharp and feral. She should be handing out appointment cards in an office somewhere, a dentist’s or a chiropractor’s.
All the anger that had propelled her, made her vivid, living, had left her.
She’s gone. She left.
“Is it Kitty O’Connor?” Molina asked, unconsciously shifting into the neutral reference that remains demanded. It. The remains.
He glanced over the entire figure again, this time seeing something like a spider on one of her prominent hipbones. Even as he thought somebody should brush away the trespassing insect, he caught his breath as he realized the black blot was a tattoo. Of a serpent swallowing its own tale, just as Kitty’s lifelong flirtation with death had finally been consummated. The worm Ouroboros celebrated in the unwanted ring she had given him, and taken away.
Only she would bear such a mark.
“Yes,” Matt said.
“You’re sure?”
“I was sure when I walked in. But I needed to make double-sure. It just seems…impossible.”
“She was mean, but she was mortal.”
He nodded. That terse epitaph fit his stepfather too. But Cliff Effinger plainly had been murdered.
Kitty had not died so obviously. Could mere accident have claimed her when bitter opposition could make no dents on her stainless steel soul? Anything was possible.
Including the fact that his worst enemy was dead, that he was free.
Free to live out the legacy she had left him: a lot of atypical acts, enough guilt to ensure Purgatory for eternity, eternal regret for another life lost.
He heard Molina and Bahr conferring, as if Kathleen O’Connor’s dead body were just another conference table to gather around.
“A couple of odd abrasions on the nape of the neck, almost cuts,” Bahr was saying.
“Hmmm. Know what I’m thinking?” Molina asked. “Women can get those from abrasive labels at the back of the neck. I’ll check out her clothing.”
“—the only anomaly, and it’s a minor one for a spinout into a dry wash like this,” Bahr’s voice was grumbling.
A spinout in a dry wash. It sounded like an epitaph for a frustrated and wasted life, Matt thought.
A hand closed on his arm.
Molina’s.
“We can leave now,” she said.
Matt wasn’t so sure you ever left Grizzly Bahr’s realm, not once you had seen it.
“Good job,” the man himself said, grinning. “You didn’t upchuck once. Disappoint an old man, will you? Out of here, then. You’ve graduated Ghoul School with honors.”
Chapter 41
Sweat Shop
“What’s the story on the man with the golden arm?” Molina asked Alfonso later that morning. He stood before her desk with a manila folder in his hand and a Cheshire-cat smile on his well-used face.
“How’d you guess?”
“I assigned my detectives to sweat a possible witness who’s clammed up. First you’d do a thorough background, which I assume is what fattens that manila folder in your hand. Next, I told you to let me know when you had him ready for the ropes. And here you are bright and early Monday morning.”
“Awesome, Lieutenant. You’re wasted behind that desk.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Yup. You got it. Guy’s name is Herb Wolverton. Energetic, strong for his size. Was in the merchant marine years ago. Can lift hefty luggage as easily as he can pocket hundred-dollar bills. ‘Retired’ to Vegas from Biloxi, where he had accumulated quite a rap sheet, all petty stuff but as long as an octopus’s arm. Drunken brawling, gambling…and it used to be illegal there unless you were on a licensed riverboat. Nothing felonious, just cantankerous. Had a chip on his shoulder, old Herb did, and it turned into a brick when he drank.
“Anyway, vice was no stranger and when he hit Vegas eight years ago he settled down to work his way up as a bellman. Since he’d been used to greasing his palms in Creole town, he fit right in. Real accommodating to anyone with green palms.”
“What have we got on him that we can use?” Molina rose and headed into the corridor for the interrogation rooms.
Alfonso’s grimace exaggerated his hangdog features as he caught up with her, huffing slightly. “Not much. He’s threatening to call a lawyer, but we keep telling him we’re just interested in his testimony as a witness. I have a feeling this guy is real scared, but I can’t tell of who.”
Molina quashed an urge to correct him. Whom, it was whom. She’d told Mariah that at least a couple hundred times.
“Alch and Su in?” she asked instead.
“Yeah, but Barrett and…”—maybe he had read her mind—“and I brought him in.”
“Still, I’d like you and Su to do the interrogation. Alch and Barrett and I can watch.”
“Me and Su? We’re not partners. We don’t know each other’s moves.”
“Exactly. I want to shake this clam up until he burps up a pearl or two. An edgier interrogation just might do it. And we’re investigating the death of a woman. Su might make him feel guilty, subconsciously at least.”
“Psychology, Lieutenant? Guys like this only know fists or rolls of cash.”
“Humor me,” she advised, not remotely sounding like anyone who knew a thing about humor.
Alfonso got the idea and shut up.
Barrett was holding up the wall outside one of the cramped interrogation rooms when they arrived. Molina sent him to round up Alch and Su while she and Alfonso slipped into the adjoining room with the two-way glass every suspect knew was there. It still came in handy. Observers could spot things interrogators might miss in the heat of the Q & A, and the sense of unseen hovering watchers unnerved all but the most hardened criminals.
When the three detectives arrived, Molina had to explain her thinking again. What she didn’t tell them was that detective teams could get like old married couples, if there was any such thing nowadays: so used to each other’s ways life was a sleepwalk. Complacent. Much as they all grumbled about the unusual pairing, Molina noticed Alfonso and Su sizing each other up as they went next door to meet Herbie Wolverton, boy bellman.
They made a Mutt and Jeff combo, no doubt, with gender and racial differences accenting the unlikely pairing. Wolverton would be distracted by the odd couple. A distracted witness was an unintentionally frank witness.
“You don’t make this guy for a killer?” Alch asked, turning a chair around and straddling it, his chin balanced on the plastic-shell back.
She understood his paternally protective attitude toward Su (much resented by Su but good for sharpening her edge). Differences, not similarities, made a detective team cook, Molina had discovered. And maybe marriages. You can’t learn anything from a clone of yourself.
She settled into her own uncomfortable chair, intrigued by the show she had set in motion. She realized that Herb could reveal facts that would lead to Matt Devine and ultimately to her. So be it. She wondered what would persuade a bellman to shut up so completely
when all he had to do was describe the usual comings and goings on an ordinary bought-and-paid-for night shift in Las Vegas.
It was all up to Alfonso and Su, unlikely partners: unearth information, and maybe bury their lieutenant.
Herb Wolverton was already unhappy, an excellent sign.
He fidgeted on his own plastic hot seat, sitting at the plain table with the tape recorder its only accouterment.
Molina could have studied the rap sheet in the manila folder Barrett had given her, but she preferred to write her own scenario, then do a reality check.
He was around thirty-five, a well-used thirty-five. Over-muscled the way some short men will get, but still a boyish and jaunty carriage. Aye, aye, sir. Yes, ma’am. His freckled face was surfer tanned. Although not stupid, he had allowed youthful potential to decay into mere canniness.
His blue eyes darted doglike to Alfonso and Su, Su and Alfonso. The big sloppy man unnerved him. That kind of St. Bernard confidence had always escaped him. He’d had to be wiry and shipshape to get some respect. Su…oh, he’d seen a foreign port or two and he liked those delicate Asian ladies. Just his size. He could be a courtly fellow if he wasn’t feeling threatened.
“Ma’am,” was his first word, with a nod to Su. He almost rose from his chair, but Alfonso gestured him down. Down, boy.
The tension was already riveting. Herb ached to charm and disarm Su, the appealing toy Pekinese. He knew Alfonso could crush him if he wanted to, hardly knowing it. He didn’t know Su could too. But she would know it.
Fox terrier, yes. Aggressive but eager to please. Already conflicted and now…scared.
Molina could smell his fear through the two-way glass.
Alch leaned forward. “Someone’s got to him good.”
“But who? This guy is combative, a scrapper.”
“Small potatoes,” Alch noted.
“Right,” Molina agreed. “He’s not used to a town like Las Vegas, running on major juice. You think a former client of Vassar’s, some big mojo guy, resented her profession? Tried to claim her?”
“Anything’s possible,” Alch said, “when you’re dealing with Sex in the City, especially this city. Mr. Big, is what you’re suggesting. Vassar was a prime piece of real estate. Wonder if Rothenberg has dealt with that before, having girls so classy the clients get possessive?”
Cat in a Neon Nightmare Page 24