Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  “If you don’t mind spendin’ a bit extra, this Bowie’s quality can’t be beat.” Rayburn reached inside and set a knife on top of the case. “Guy who made it’s a pal of mine from out near Dayton. Go ahead ’n’ check out the feel.”

  He gripped the knife and lifted it off the case. The handle was a dark, stained wood, its pins and pommel heavy brass. “It’s solid… nicely balanced,” he said, turning his wrist to examine it. “Very well constructed.”

  “Ain’t no wall hanger, for sure,” Rayburn said. “The blade’s hand-forged—with a hammer ’n’ anvil, you know? Ten inches of virgin steel.”

  He looked at Rayburn. “Is that true?”

  “Guaranteed,” the trading post owner said. “I don’t like to give the hard sell. But even decent commercial knives nowadays use cheap, recycled steel. My friend has his shipped from Japan. Can’t get purer. They say it’s so strong a bullet shot from a gun won’t chip it. Called tamaha-somethin’-or-other.”

  “Tamahagane. Jewel steel. I’ve heard of it.”

  Rayburn looked impressed. “Well,” he said. “Guess I can just keep my mouth shut, then.”

  He turned it in his fist once more, eyes on the blade. “Yes,” he said under his breath. “It should be pure.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Looking up at the shopkeeper, he carefully passed the knife back over the counter to him.

  “I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Hey, Arch, ready for some great news?” Greg asked, swerving into his lab.

  Archie pushed out his lips and expelled a breath to make the noise you got by flapping them. He was thinking Greg’s line was a perfect setup for dumping a fresh ton of work on his lap. “I’m a sponge,” he said. “Spill it out, I’ll soak it up.”

  “Ray really should hear this, too.” Greg glanced around as if he might be camouflaged against the cubicle walls. “You see him anywhere?”

  Archie shrugged. “He told me he’d be taking a nap in the morgue.”

  Greg looked at him questioningly.

  “In that morgue closet he used for an office once upon a time,” Archie clarified. “At least, I think it’s where he meant. He still keeps a cot in there.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Greg said. “I’d hate to see him shoved into cold storage by mistake.”

  Archie waited in silence. A few moments earlier, he’d logged off the LVPD, Department of Transportation, and Las Vegas government video databases, having downloaded dozens of compressed files from traffic-monitoring and red-light cameras that had been operative in the downtown area ten years ago—specifically on the date Nick had requested. If Greg’s appearance didn’t put a crimp in things, and he was afraid it might, he planned on leaving the office for a coffee fix before he started the complicated task of putting together a mosaic for Nick’s desired time span.

  “All right, check it out,” Greg said. “I spoke to the custodian of records at Flash Ink, got the internal codes for accessing the log-in and browser histories of its members.”

  Archie looked at him. “That is good news,” he said.

  “The word I used was great,” Greg said. “Why the reined enthusiasm?”

  “Because the site has ten thousand registered users,” Archie said. “And because we have to keep our fingers crossed that our Internet stalker prowled his victims’ galleries often enough for him to stick out in the crowd.”

  Greg gave him a look. “Ever go browsing in a specialty shop, Arch?”

  “Sure. What’s the specialty?”

  “Dunno. High-end designer computer geekware. Props from classic Hollywood space operas. You tell me,” Greg said. “This isn’t impulse shopping. The merch is too rare. It’s stuff you really, really want that’s also really, really hard to find—and even harder to get your hands on. If you could plunk down a wad of cash, back a truck up to the place, and empty it out, you would. But there’s no way that’s possible…”

  “So you have to choose between things,” Archie said, nodding. “Seriously look at them.”

  “More than once. Maybe look at them a bunch of times before making your decision.”

  Archie had kept nodding his head. “I see what you mean,” he said. “All right, listen. Far as your great news… if you give me those codes, I can take a little break from what I’ve been doing for Nick. Try to—” He suddenly broke off, his eyes flicking past Greg to the entryway behind him.

  Greg turned just as Nick plunged through the door from the hall, grinding to an abrupt halt in the bare nick of time to avoid a collision, then stepping in front of him with nary a word of acknowledgment. “Archie. What’s happening? How’s it coming with those traffic videos?”

  Archie was thinking it was high time he grew an extra pair of arms. Or should he just skip ahead to cloning himself? Maybe he could find the requisite innovative biotech at that specialty shop Greg had mentioned. “I’ve got everything available from the day you wanted,” he said. “It’ll take some time to—”

  Nick shook his head to interrupt him. “C’mon, man,” he said. “Let’s get it done now.”

  * * *

  “Cath, you’re back,” Nick said. “Where’ve you been?”

  Catherine entered Archie’s lab, a Styrofoam coffee cup in her hand. “Home,” she said. “I make an appearance every so often to see if Lindsey’ll recognize me.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “I showed up,” she said with a prickly look. “That started us off on the right foot. And incidentally, I don’t recall noticing your presence at the press conference.”

  Nick cleared his throat. “I meant to call, got sidetracked like you wouldn’t believe.” He motioned toward Archie and his console. “You’re going to have to see what we did here.”

  Catherine peeled the tab back from the coffee’s lid. The computer monitor showed a black-and-white photomap with color directional symbols above a zoom bar on the upper left. A digital time stamp at the upper right-hand corner of the screen read, “4/19 2:55 P.M.” She peered at the image. “Looks like a traffic cam shot from downtown,” she said. “Not a recent one, judging from those oil guzzlers on the road.”

  “It’s ten years old,” Nick said. “Main and Fremont Streets. Right outside the covered mall at the intersection where Fremont divides the north and south sides of Main Street.”

  “And its significance is… ?”

  “April nineteenth is the day a nine-year-old boy named Kyle Dumas was abducted from the Desert Game video arcade,” he said. “It isn’t in the picture because the cameras were positioned to monitor two-way traffic along Main, and the arcade’s at the end of Fremont. Under the canopy—”

  “Where there’s obviously no traffic,” Catherine said.

  Archie was nodding. “We tried to get security-camera images from hotels and casinos inside the mall but came up blank. It was too long ago, and those places have all cleaned house,” he said. “Then I had the idea of checking police and government databases for their traffic and stoplight camera archives… and got lucky.”

  She frowned with interest. “Good thing they never get around to cleaning house.”

  “A real good thing. Less than a week later, on Easter Sunday, some hikers find Kyle’s body in Red Rock Canyon. COD is a broken neck.”

  Catherine’s lip ticced slightly. “Was he molested?”

  “No,” Nick said. “The day Kyle’s kidnapped, his dad takes him along while he runs some errands. Frank Dumas is a single parent. His wife died in an accident when Kyle was still an infant. He’s an artist for a graphic-design outfit at his day job but also sells his prints, paintings, and sculptures in galleries. Has a decent following for his work, too.”

  “Does the work include tattoos?”

  “Not that we know—but give me a minute,” Nick said. “Frank’s on a heavy-duty shopping run. Art supplies, Easter decorations, groceries for their holiday dinner… he’s trying to cram it all into his day off. He promises the kid he’ll take him to the arcade as a reward for
dragging him everywhere in town, brings him there when he’s done, spends maybe an hour there with him. Then figures it’s time to get home and heads out to get his car out of the indoor parking garage one block over and across the street. On the east side of Carson and South Main.”

  “That’s next door to the Starglow Hotel.”

  “Check.”

  “Where Stacy Ebstein worked, isn’t it?”

  “Check again,” Nick said. “We’ll get to her in a while. But for now, I want to stick to Frank Dumas and his son.”

  Catherine nodded. “So Kyle’s left unattended?” she said sharply.

  “Yeah, Cath. A mistake. But he still has some tokens for those games, and he’s pleading with Dad to let him finish. I know you’ve been there.”

  She pouched her cheeks, expelled a breath. “Suppose I have,” she said. “Kids can lay it on thick.”

  “Plus the two of them are loaded down with packages from all this shopping they’ve done.”

  Catherine looked thoughtful as she considered that. “One thing… if I’m not mistaken, Desert Game runs the whole length of the block from Fremont to Carson Street.”

  “Right, you can see that on our map.” Nick pointed it out. “There’s a front entrance under the canopy, a rear entrance facing Carson.”

  “Doesn’t the Carson Street entrance lead right to an outdoor parking area? On the same side of the street as the arcade?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wonder why Frank didn’t leave his car there instead of across Main Street. It’s closer, more convenient…”

  “I’m guessing the lot was filled up. It’s where all your mall visitors and employees leave their vehicles and where trucks pull in for pickups and deliveries. Those service areas use up big heaps of space.”

  Catherine was nodding. “Sounds logical. This is just before Bunny Day. Busy, busy.”

  “Right,” Nick said. “Anyway, right up on three o’clock, when the image you’re seeing was taken, Frank tells his son to finish up whatever game he’s playing and keep an eye on their bags. He figures it’ll only take a couple of minutes to hustle across the street for the car, pull into the service area right out back of the arcade, and hurry in to pick up Kyle. Warns him not to leave the place in the meantime.”

  “And of course, Kyle pays no attention to him.”

  “He actually does, Cath—until something happens to make him stop,” Nick said. “Archie, center and zoom in on the crosswalk outside the mall.”

  He nodded, clicked his mouse to drag the map, then clicked again to move in for a close-up.

  “Tighter, Arch, on the guy with the beard,” Nick said. “That’s it. Now, circle him.”

  Catherine grunted. The bearded man in the crosswalk heading toward the opposite side of Main appeared to be of average height and weight and had on a denim jacket and jeans. “Frank Dumas?”

  “You got it,” Nick said. “Remember, this is at a couple of minutes to three. Now, let’s move ahead to three-oh-one. The garage’s exit.”

  Archie clicked and dragged. And then Catherine was looking at an image of a two-car smashup in front of the exit ramp on Carson Street, the traffic on Main visibly clotted around the vehicles. “Frank got stuck in the garage,” she said.

  “Couldn’t get out because of the accident,” Nick said. “He was in a row of cars on the ramp for more than twenty minutes till the tow trucks came.”

  “And meanwhile, back at the arcade, Kyle’s getting worried.”

  “He’s used up his tokens, can’t figure out where his dad went,” Nick said, nodding. “Then, sometime after three o’clock and before three-fifteen, he goes outside the rear entrance for a look.”

  “The rear because that’s where his dad went out…”

  “Being closest to Carson, right,” Nick said.

  The creases on Catherine’s forehead deepened as she stared at the screen. “It’s another blind spot. Your map doesn’t show either entrance to the arcade.”

  “True,” Nick said. “But it shows enough of what was going on around it to help us. See, Archie and I started out looking for one thing and found it… and then found something else besides. So if I can just get back to Kyle Dumas.…”

  He steps out Desert Game’s rear entrance, wondering why his father hasn’t returned yet, his young face cinched with the anxious concern of a young boy who isn’t quite as mature and independent as he’d fancied. He’s somehow managed to bring along all the bags he’d been entrusted to watch, hanging the ones with handles over his arms and wrists, half carrying, half pulling the rest across the floor of the arcade onto the pavement.

  Kyle becomes aware of the commotion the moment he hits the street. He looks to his right, toward South Main Street and the garage entrance, where horns are honking in the growing logjam caused by the accident. There are rubberneckers peering out the windows of their vehicles, pedestrian gawkers, and then suddenly the wail of police sirens. Soon those patrol cars come screaming up with their roof bars flashing, and the tow trucks that had been monitoring their emergency radio calls are converging on the scene like bees, spinning off more glaring dashes of light. And still Kyle’s father is nowhere to be found.

  Standing outside the arcade, his anxiousness swells to greater trepidation and eventually to full-blown fear. His father told him he would be back in a couple of minutes, and now he’s been gone much longer. It is uncertain whether the boy is even aware how much time has passed—in his increasing panic, the ten or fifteen minutes since then might feel like half an hour or more. He’s likely lost track. What’s beyond doubt, however, is that his father’s absence has stretched on well beyond his expectations and that there are squad cars and tow trucks right in front of the garage where his father parked and that he’s been left here to wait, left alone, and is feeling small, confused, and helpless.

  It is precisely at this vulnerable moment, amid all the confusion on the street, that the stranger approaches Kyle from his white van.

  “Hold it, Nick, what van?” Catherine asked with a slight shake of her head.

  Nick looked at her. “That’s just it,” he said. “A white van owned by an outfit called Lester Industrial Equipment is pulled up to the arcade in one of those loading and delivery areas near the back entrance. We know it’s been there at least an hour because witnesses see it and Lester Industrial has records. The driver’s a guy name of Ronald Clarkson, and he’s been working on Desert Game’s air circulation system—”

  Perhaps the driver of the van says something to turn Kyle’s attention momentarily from the scene of the car accident, voicing a comment that lures him or a question that distracts him. Or possibly he steals up on him without a sound. He might approach from behind, from one side, from in front of him. No one remembers him lingering near the boy. No one sees him make the snatch.

  What is undeniable is that it happens quickly—almost in the blink of an eye. The driver seizes the boy, forces him into the rear of the van, and locks him in as he screams out for help.

  The witnesses—and the problem is that there are very few, just a handful of shoppers getting in and out of their cars and a gift-shop employee returning from a break—are in accord remembering the boy’s cries, the slam of a vehicle’s door or hatch suddenly aborting them, and then looking around to see the white Lester Industrial van career out of the parking lot, its engine revving as it peels right onto Main Street, bearing north, slowing just long enough to squeeze through the worsening bottleneck caused by the accident—which is thickest on the far side of the street, where the collision occurred—and then head on past it.…

  “Bring us to three-seventeen, Arch. Corner of Fremont and Main,” Nick said.

  Archie glided his mouse over its pad. The Lester Industrial Equipment van could clearly be seen in the intersection as it bore toward North Main with the Starglow to the left and the pedestrian mall to the right.

  “Okay, great. Now, pan so we can get a look at that woman at the curb. The one about to cros
s the street outside the mall.”

  Archie clicked and dragged.

  “That’s her right there,” Nick said. “Zoom in on her a little more… a little more… let’s keep it right there. We’re losing some definition.”

  “It’s Stacy Ebstein,” Catherine observed. She’d moved closer to the screen for a good look at the pretty brunette with a shopping bag in her hand. “The van went speeding past her.”

  “Cut right in front of her, Cath,” Nick said. “Notice the driver’s blowing through a red light.”

  “Did she give some sort of witness statement?”

  Nick shook his head no.

  “Then—” Catherine blinked. “Wait, those photos of Stacy’s tattooed face. The clock…”

  “Its hands point to three-fifteen,” Nick said. “I figured that meant something from the beginning but at first didn’t know what. Then I found a photo and some articles about the abduction in Mike Noble’s archives, saw that it took place across from the Starglow Hotel, and decided we’d better find out exactly when it happened—and where Stacy was at that date and time.”

  “So you went to get hold of Stacy’s records at the Starglow…”

  “And they told us she was busy setting up a corporate dinner,” Nick said. “That afternoon, she ran out of the hotel on an errand—it was to pick up some last-minute frills for the banquet—and was hurrying back when the van crossed her path.”

  “Did you get that from Mitchell Noble’s files?”

  Nick shook his head again.

  “Then how’d you know? If she never mentioned it to the police or detectives and didn’t tell you and Sidle anything about it… ?”

  “There’s a fourth Tattoo Man victim,” Nick said. “Miss Annabelle, a Gypsy psychic. My tongue’s too dog-tired to pronounce her last name without tripping over itself right now. She never reported her kidnapping to the police.”