My delicate vibrissae reach out again . . . to confirm the near proximity of Mr. Matt Devine, who has rushed to my Miss Temple’s rescue with my own admirable speed and dedication.
In fact, he has covered her body with his to protect her from flying bullets.
This I too would do, save he is much bigger and better suited to the task.
All is well, so I retreat into the dark that disguises my watchful presence.
I am sure that they do not need me.
In fact, I am urgently needed elsewhere: at the scene of the crime.
Somewhere out there. In the dark Las Vegas night. Under the bright desert stars intermittently lit by the bright Las Vegas neon.
Assured of my Miss Temple’s safety, I am free to be fully feline and embrace the dark night; to track down the perpetrators of this uncalled-for assault on Miss Louise’s and my midnight snacking buffet.
You might call it a snack attack, as far as I am concerned.
And that is motive enough for swift and merciless pursuit.
Dark Victory
The utter darkness that ended the shooting spree seemed to end the world also.
Stunning silence stalked the shattered mock rooms inside May-lords. Nothing moved. Now no one spoke, whimpered, even seemed to breathe.
A spiderweb brushed Temple’s cheek, followed by a felt penpoint, cold and wet. She must be hallucinating sensations in the absence of her prime sense, sight.
She was not alone in the dark. At all. Temple started to struggle free of the living, breathing weight atop her.
It lifted, somewhat, but again something tangled in her hair. Then an ice-cold palm cradled her cheek.
“Temple?” Matt whispered in the dark.
“I think so. How did you—?”
“What were you doing moving around in this madness?”
“You too!”
Matt’s rapid breathing echoed her own startled-rabbit pulses. Maybe it was her imagination—it was pitch-dark—but it seemed the whole universe had held its breath and everybody else was pretty damn quiet too.
She tuned in the reviving sound of shifting bodies and furniture, of muffled curses and sobs. An elbow dug into the carpet a bit too close to her ribs and then the weight lifted away and she was able to breathe all on her own, alone. Too bad.
“God, what were you thinking of?” he asked.
“I remembered where the light panel was.”
“So did somebody else, somebody probably a lot closer. Are you hurt?”
“I can’t tell yet.”
His hands helped her struggle to sit up from what she could only regard as a compromising position.
Her breath still came like hiccoughs, in ragged jerks. Action, moving had made her feel better, more alive. Sitting here in the dark absorbing the terror of the attack made her into a puddle.
Matt put an arm around her shoulders, which obligingly shuddered. She hated that! His hand, warmer now, slid along her cheek to her neck.
He was taking her damn pulse! As if his wasn’t in overdrive too. She shook herself loose. “I’m okay. Did you hear the punching of eight million cell phone buttons?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose anything I might do here is redundant.”
“Nothing you could do would be redundant.” His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, an obvious accident in the dark or . . . omigod, maybe he was going to kiss her, and, well, everything would change forever faster than a shot in the dark . . .
“Okay, people!” Danny Dove’s voice, mellow and commanding, could make eighty chorines twitch their ostrich feathers in perfect sync. It could also command mass hysteria to shut up and take a debutante bow.
Temple laughed softly, relieved to hear it, and leaned into Matt, who gave her shoulders a comradely squeeze.
So dissipates the fragile aphrodisiac of mutual danger.
“We are in control of the darkness and the light,” Danny’s voice announced, carrying as only a theatrical history could make it. “We are in control of the vertical and the horizontal,” he went on, paraphrasing the old ’60s science-fiction TV show, The Outer Limits. “Actually, we’re all pretty horizontal, which is the best place to be, folks, until the police arrive.
“Now behave, you all. I don’t want a population explosion going on here, folks. I can’t stand bastardized furniture.”
Nervous chuckles replaced the pervasive sound of heavy breathing. Sobs turned into shaky laughter.
Temple turned her head into Matt’s shoulder, a darker dark. His hand covered the exposed side of her face.
“Just wait quietly,” Danny said more softly, “until the pros come to tell us it’s safe to awake and sing. Keep the rhythm slow and just shuffle, folks. It’s not up to us to do anything but mark time.”
A distant whine yodeled closer. Lots of them.
Temple didn’t move anymore. Nor did Matt.
They sat clutching each other like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, waiting for the Wicked Witch.
But Beth Blanchard was nowhere to be seen. Even after several squad cars roared into the Maylords lot and grew silent, nothing much happened inside.
A bullhorn soon admonished them much more roughly than Danny had: Stay down.
“Guess we didn’t do that,” Matt said in her ear.
It made Temple wish that they had. No! This was very bad thinking. Intense situations made for intensely regretted impulses.
“Everyone inside,” came the magnified male voice. “We’ve secured the perimeter. Don’t move. Stay right where you are. We’re coming in. Any movement will be regarded with suspicion. Stay absolutely still, please, no matter your condition. If there are any perpetrators still among you we need to isolate them. Ambulances are coming for the injured. We’ll get you all out as soon as we can.”
The lights didn’t come on again.
Instead, flashlights came lancing out of the darkness, held by shadowy figures bristling with Kevlar vests and belts full of sinister equipment.
It reminded Temple of the opening scene from ET, when security forces were hunting an alien lost on earth.
The lights played over her and Matt’s faces, knowing more about them than they knew about themselves at the moment.
Temple resented her instinct to blink her eyes shut.
The dark, spacewalkerlike figures moved on, men and women insulated with the weapons and defenses of their jobs.
Finally, about twenty minutes later, the general lights came on, except for those that had been shot out.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Stay where you are until we get you sorted out.”
Temple shifted; her left leg had gone to sleep under her.
Matt was sitting in the knees-akimbo, ankles-crossed position of Eastern meditation. Temple wished she’d thought of that; it prevented the pins and needles of too much pressure on one limb.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Once my circulation system gets moving again.” She stretched out the numb leg and made a face.
“Shake your legs out. When they say we can stand I’ll help you up.”
Promises, promises.
But the chaos visible all around banished the glamour of the dark.
Everyone Temple could see had the dazed look of deer in the headlights. The contested buffet table, only thirty feet away, resembled a picnic attended by ants bearing Uzis.
“What a mess.” Temple shook her head instead of her legs. “This is going to be such bad press.”
Matt sprang upright, disgustingly tingle free, and extended a hand to pull her up. Temple used his support to take off first one, then the other of the Louie shoes.
“No footwear until the feeling is back in my feet.” She looked around. “Better head to the reception area.”
“I need to check on Janice,” Matt said. “I left her in the framing area.”
They nodded before parting ways, Temple hotfooting off to the entrance where a baker’s dozen of cops huddled. They wore vests ma
rked LVMPD, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and SWAT.
This was the SWAT team. Whew. It felt good to still be standing in a situation that had brought out the heavy troops.
Temple joined Kenny Maylord, Mark Ainsworth, a cluster of staff surrounding Amelia Wong, Danny Dove, and Simon Foster inside a larger ring of police personnel.
“Anyone caught or arrested, officer?” Kenny Maylord asked.
“Not yet. Shooters tend to hit and run.”
A heavyset man in civilian clothes took charge. “Okay. We need to get the inside scenario down. You folks are key players in the party tonight. Who turned off the lights?”
“I hollered that they should be out,” Danny Dove said.
A beige-uniformed cop with a notebook muttered something in the head guy’s ear. Point taken. “Okay, Mr. Dove, you had the theatrical experience. Good thinking to douse the lights. Who actually did it?”
Temple, who had been earnestly sprinting toward the rear area, said nothing, because she hadn’t made it. Intention didn’t count for much in an emergency.
“I did.”
Temple almost gasped when Rafi Nadir shouldered into the inner circle, looking like the world’s biggest chip was even more firmly implanted on his shoulder.
In that instant she glimpsed a replay of the attitude that had ended his law enforcement career in L.A.
“And you are?” the big guy asked with the same suspicious drawl John Wayne might have used.
“One of the security hirees for the evening,” Temple said. “May-lords put on extra crew.”
Danged if she hadn’t saved Nadir from his evil attitude by calling attention to herself. What was wrong with her? Just because he’d maybe saved her life once . . .
“Who are you?”
“Temple Barr. I do freelance PR and am handling this event for Maylords. I heard Danny suggest we kill the lights and was trying to get to the control panel when they went out.”
Several police eyes focused on her bare feet and the glittering Midnight Louie shoes dangling from the first and second fingers of her right hand.
So she looked like a vagabond shoe tree. So sue her.
Another cop with a notebook stepped up and whispered sweet nothings from his notebook.
The big guy looked them all over again. “Okay. You, you, and you. And the, uh . . . communal . . . you. The Wong group. Stay here. We’re in the process of counting noses and taking testimony. Looks like there are no fatalities, but we have some injuries caused by flying glass. Paramedics are fanning out through the store. Once we have the bystanders recorded and sent to the emergency room or home, we’ll get down to the interviews. Sorry, folks, but make yourself comfortable on whatever pieces of cushy furniture around here that aren’t coated in glass. We have a long night ahead of us. We’ll try to get you out of here as soon as possible, but this is one big crime scene. Remain calm, cooperate, and you’ll be on your way sooner.”
Reluctant people dispersed into the nearest vignettes, stringing themselves out on various sofas, chairs, and ottomans like birds on a wire. Ottomans were apparently big again, Temple thought, settling on an orange suede one herself.
Feeling like a limp cafeteria entree under the artificial glare of the warming lights, looking out at the pockmarked night through the shattered glass store windows, Temple examined the dreamy, numb apathy of the victim that gripped her.
Nothing about the attack seemed personal. Its very remoteness was freaky. She watched attendees straggle out. Their particulars taken, they let police officers escort them to the parking lot.
This was a major news story in these terrorism-haunted days, the retired newshound in Temple noted dully. That daily headline dog wouldn’t hunt for her tonight. She was as dazed and glazed as any other innocent bystander.
Everything seemed a dream, including . . . or especially . . . the strangely charged interlude with Matt on the floor. In the dark. Scared to death. Of bullets. Or of something else. Getting horizontal with someone of the opposite sex always made those ol’ devil hormones act up. And Matt wasn’t just “someone.”
It still haunted her. The strange lonely interlude in her life when her only serious significant other ever, Max Kinsella, was utterly gone—vanished. Just then Matt had turned up at the Circle Ritz . . . equally mysterious, and sincere, vulnerable . . . needing something. Maybe her. Now Max was out of reach again, and it unnerved her. Maybe she needed people who needed people. But who needed her the most? Who did she most need? Whom. If she could debate grammar she was still in one piece.
Danny and Simon came to share her huge ottoman.
“How’re you doing, munchkin?” Danny asked.
“Not a yellow brick road in sight.”
“Overrated,” he said. “I prefer pothole-free asphalt. Gad, I wonder when they’ll let us go.”
“I was glad to hear your voice. I hadn’t thought of the lights.”
“Stagecraft Rule Number One. When in doubt, dowse the lights, people! What they can’t see, they can’t criticize.” Danny laughed heartily.
“How’d you and Simon manage to find each other?”
“My gently modulated taskmaster voice, how else? I haven’t drilled fifteen million clumsy feet into oblivion without being able to give marching orders.”
“I was heading for you, too,” Temple said. “You were the only one sensible enough to keep us all grounded.”
“Danny isn’t sensible,” Simon put in. “He was making a damn-fool target of himself.”
“So I’ve been told by an associate myself,” Temple said. “It’s hard to just crouch there and do nothing.”
Danny nodded at Nadir, standing off by himself, watching the police action with a glower.
“He’s the guy who got to the switch. Funny. I’d peg him for the shooter. Talk about a bad actor.”
Temple sighed as she contemplated Nadir’s sullen face. She had a hunch all his buttons were being pushed in tandem tonight.
Something moved in the fringe of her vision. She saw Matt escort Janice to a police officer, who checked his notebook, then nodded them out. It was odd to see Matt as part of a couple.
Temple shook her left leg, which still tingled. “How long can they keep us here?”
“We’re already cleared,” Simon said. “Danny wanted to stay and make sure you got home all right.”
“Hey,” Temple said in her best West Side Story gang-member voice. “I’m okay. Officer Krupke will see me safe to my wheels. You guys peel outta here. I’ll be fine.”
Danny’s forehead crinkled with doubt under his tight blond curls. He looked like an obsessive-compulsive Cupid.
She punched him on the arm. “It’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. I just have to stay and make sure all my little chickens are okay. Head on home while there are still some macho men left to escort you to the parking lot.”
Simon rolled his eyes, but Danny grinned. “Aren’t they the Village People all over again? I adore retro. ‘Bye, darlin’.”
He air kissed her cheek and headed out with Simon.
The lights were bright and the night looked bleak. Temple felt wrung out.
She eyed the two uniforms who were taking many notes from the Wong commune. Somewhere in the center of all those tall people was a little woman who was a major cultural force and who was worth millions. Martha Stewart for the transcendental set.
Death threats.
It was so obvious, it must be so even to the local authorities who had probably never heard of Amelia Wong before.
Hot Saucy
Hours passed.
Finally, after almost everyone else had been released, including the Wong party, a female officer approached Temple on booted, big-cat feet.
The fog still inhabited Temple’s head. She tried to gather her thoughts as she walked out of the now-deserted furnishings store, past the shattered display windows that lay in puzzle pieces on the ground outside and dusted the elegant furniture inside.
Morning wa
s warming. What Temple could see of the horizon—some low rooftops and trees—was rosy, but the parking lot lamps still glimmered eerily against the pale sky. Temple wove a little on her reinstalled high heels as Officer Paris walked her to her car.
Hardly any vehicles hunkered in the lot now.
“It’s been a long night,” the woman said. “Sure you can make it home?”
A man was leaning against Temple’s new Miata, his silhouette melding with the base of the security lamp she had parked it under. Temple inhaled fast enough to be heard.
Officer Paris’s hand went to her hip.
“It’s okay,” Temple said, not entirely sure that it was. “I know him.”
“He was attending the opening?”
“Yeah. We didn’t know we’d both be here tonight. Neighbor.”
“I’ll drive you home.” Matt had stepped into the half-light and Officer Paris shifted to attention with something quite different from wariness . . . interest.
“I can drive,” Temple said. Crossly. “And . . . what about your car?”
“You can drop me off to pick it up tomorrow.”
“Let him drive, honey.”
“Officer Paris, that’s kinda sexist. Also the pet name.”
“Sometimes sexist is just right.” She put a hand on Temple’s arm, not custodial, just friendly.
Temple sensed the latent tremor in herself the moment somebody touched her.
“Thanks, sir.” Officer Paris adjusted the umpteen pounds of weaponry on her utility belt. “Good, um, night. Or morning.”
“I’d never be a patrol officer,” Temple commented as they watched the woman walk away. “The uniform makes you look way too hippy.”
Temple turned to face Matt over the embarrassingly shrimpy profile of her new sporty car that she apparently was too shook up to drive.
“How’d you get out of here so early?” she asked.
“I pled the necessity of my live midnight radio show.”
“So they let you walk?”
“They interviewed Janice and myself right away. Some of the cops are actually among my ‘Midnight Hour’ listeners.”
“And that’s all it takes to get a Go Home Early card at a mass shooting scene?”
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