Chapter one
Three times I've fired my weapon. Three times. Twice
because I had to. The third time was optional. But I never
plugged anyone for making a pass at me, no matter how
tempting it might be. It was a rule. Until that night in
early October. When the whole damn mess began.
I really don't know how it happened. For starters, I
looked like hell and I knew it, despite what the guy was
saying. It was all bullshit.
"Has anyone ever mentioned that you have a gorgeous pair
of eyes?"
"Only my ophthalmologist," I told the kid in the Polo.
"No, seriously, you do. My mom says I've always been an
eye man." He leaned closer. I could smell the whiskey on
his breath. "Are they different?"
"Different from . . . your mom's?"
"From each other. It's like . . . your right eye is darker
than the left."
I nodded. "Cat scratch. When I was five."
"Well, it works for you. Gives you an exotic aura."
"If you like that, wait till you see my athlete's foot."
He smiled, which wasn't his best look. "You know what?
You're funny."
"Not another reference to my appearance, I hope."
He scooted his chair closer to mine. "Look," he said, his
voice suddenly low and tremulous. "I think it's obvious
what's happening here. Why don't we cut through the
baloney, go back to my place, and give each other what we
both know we want?"
"At the moment, there's only two things I want."
"And they would be?"
"Another bourbon. Neat."
"I can arrange that. What else do you want?"
"You to leave."
The bar, Gordy's, was a hellhole I'd discovered when I was
working on a case. Mind you, Vegas has somebeautiful
neighborhoods. This just wasn't one of them. Cops get
called to some of the seediest parts of the city—actually,
I think I've been to all of them. My specialty is the
psychological profiling of deviant personalities. They
call me a detective, but what I really do is provide
detailed descriptions of creeps they haven't been able to
catch, which can be plenty challenging. I love it. Anyway,
I tracked some low-life child molester here. Hated him but
loved his bar. I bonded with it; I don't know why. It
wasn't at all a Cheers thing. Barely anyone there knew my
name, and I liked it that way.
The décor was deadly. Tacky like the worst small-town
plywood watering hole, except this was buried in Vegas's
old downtown. Noise thundered relentlessly, assaulting
your eardrums, not just music but an endless stream of
chatter—sports, politics, and lame come-on lines. The
place stank, maybe because drunks kept leaving the men's
room door open, maybe because a wino on one of the bar
stools kept vomiting on himself. Even the tables reeked,
moldering wood soaked in way too much spilled hooch. There
was a staleness to the air that made your head throb the
second you stepped inside, that made cigarette smoke seem
like a welcome alternative. And Gordy's teemed with men of
the worst sort—not the bikers, pimps, prostitutes,
mobsters, gamblers, and bookies that gave Vegas its
colorful reputation, although they were there in force,
but preppy types from UNLV in starched golf shirts who
knew they could treat anything with breasts like dirt and
still get laid because they were so damned hot and hunky.
Be it ever so humble.
I wasn't even thinking about work, so it came as a
surprise when I saw Hikuru Mikimoto enter this two-bit
saloon. He was a big-time drug dealer. And I hate drug
dealers. I'd been consulting with some of the boys in
Narc, trying to draft a profile that might help them find
him. I really wanted to help, to prove that I could still
do the job, but we'd been looking for more than three
weeks without results. And then I just look up and there
he is.
I wasn't entirely sure I was up to an arrest, but I
couldn't let a godsend like this slip through my fingers.
I pushed to my feet, bumping the table over, and fumbled
for my badge.
"LVPD. Freeze, Mikimoto!"
He was a middle-aged Asian man, his paunch masked by a
black T-shirt and what looked to be an Armani sport coat.
As soon as I spoke, he took a decisive step backward. And
two men behind him surged forward.
Personal goons. This was going to be more complicated than
I had realized.
They came on strong and quick. My only chance was to take
them out before they could gang up on me. I pulled my gun
and fired, but the shot went wide. It hit the mirror
behind the bar and shattered it. The lounge lizards
sitting at the bar scrambled. A second later, one of the
goons knocked the gun out of my hand. I did a quick spin
behind the table and a swing kick with my left leg,
catching him full in the face. He dropped like a sandbag
and didn't get up. The other one lunged from behind and
grabbed me around the throat. I bit down on his arm, and
when he released his grip, I gave him an elbow to the
solar plexus. He doubled over. I grabbed him by the ears
and propelled him into the hardwood bar.
Stupid fool didn't know when to quit. He pulled himself
together and came at me again. I whirled around at the
last moment and used a move they'd taught me at the
academy, a little Judo 101, to flip him over my shoulder.
He flew forward and crashed into that splintered mirror.
Big chunks of glass sprayed the room. All the patrons
ducked for cover.
Mikimoto tried to run away. Not likely. I dove for him,
brought him down hard. By this time, the rest of the
customers were racing for the doors, desperately trying to
get out of my way. None of them offered to help.
I straddled Mikimoto, pinning him facedown against the
filthy glass-strewn floor. He was raging, babbling
incoherently in some language I didn't understand.
"You're under arrest," I said, wishing to God I had a pair
of cuffs. "You have the right to remain silent. If you
choose to waive that right—"
Mikimoto swung around with a speed that caught me by
surprise. He had a small switchblade in his hand.
Now that pissed me off.
I twisted his arm at the socket, breaking it. The knife
clattered to the floor. I wrenched his hand back, pinching
it in the soft fleshy part between the thumb and
forefinger. He screamed. With his slicked-back hair in my
fist, I pounded his head against the floor.
"Goddamn drug dealer," I muttered. "Preying on kids.
Pulling a knife on me." I shoved his face down again,
hard, and then repeated it, again and again and again.
I felt someone pulling on my shoulders, trying to
interfere. Another accomplice?
No. It was Harry, the old guy who worked behind the bar.
"Susan!" He'd been shouting, but for some reason it hadn't
registered until now. "Stop it! Stop it!"
"Keep cool," I said as I let Mikimoto's limp head flop to
the floor. "This creep's the worst scum in Vegas. Pushes
hard drugs to schoolchildren."
"Who the hell are you trying to kid?"
I didn't understand him, didn't get it at all. But as I
stared at Mikimoto's face, it seemed to, I don't know,
sort of shimmer. Like a shape-shifter in a science fiction
movie.
"This is police work, Harry," I growled, still staring at
the face on the floor. "I'm doing my job."
"You're drunk off your ass is what you are. Did you bloody
that kid up just 'cause he was trying to make time with
you?"
I kept watching as the face changed, the whole body
changed, and instead of a slick black T there was a pink
Polo. How had the drug scum pulled this off? I wondered.
Disguising himself as some preppy creep!
I pushed up to my feet. All at once, I realized how wobbly
I was. The room began to spin, so I sat down again. The
problem with that was, my eyes went back to the face, that
kid's face, and I saw all the splattered blood and swollen
flesh surrounding it. That finely chiseled face was like a
pound of ground round.
Strong hands rummaged under my coat, taking my flask, and
I didn't resist. "I told you to lay off the sauce an hour
ago," Harry said. "Didn't know you had a private stash,
damn you. How the hell am I going to explain this?"
The room was still spinning, even though I was sitting. I
felt like I might rip my stomach out with a dull knife if
I could. Then I noticed that I was bleeding, too, that I
was sitting in a pool of glass, and that there was an
especially large shard right in front of me, and I re-
call thinking someone should do something about that
because it could hurt someone, and then I grabbed it and
jabbed it into my left wrist. Blood spewed everywhere.
I fell over onto the floor, head first, and the rest of
the world went away. After that, I don't remember
anything. I assumed I was dead.
"Am I dead?" the young girl asked.
He stared down at her, stretched out on the table before
him, a luminescent tableau so full of innocence and
youthful curiosity. Her lengthy stay in the basement, so
far from the bright lights of the city, had caused her
skin to etiolate, but rather than detracting from her
natural splendor, it seemed to enhance it. The primordial
was strong with her, he sensed. He had chosen well.
"Of course you're not dead, my darling. You can see, can't
you? Hear, smell, taste, and touch?"
"I can't move. Not at all. Nothing below my neck."
"I know."
"I think I've wet myself, but I'm not sure."
"You have."
"Even talking is hard."
He brushed a hand gently across her forehead,
straightening her bangs. "I'm so sorry."
"And I'm scared. Really scared. You're not going to hurt
me, are you, mister?"
He was short of stature, but he liked to think he had a
certain presence just the same. Did his accent thicken as
he spoke to the offering? He suspected that it did. The
genteel Southern gentleman rose to the surface.
He turned and gazed out the window, just above ground
level. The sky was clear as glass; the air was pungently
sweet. And oh, the stars—! The stars seemed to go on
forever, traveling from his private aerie all the way to
Dream-Land. Heaven was real here, far removed from the
decay of the city, the fiberglass façades and organic
stench. He did not look down but across, outward, into the
desert, the vast untouched expanse, the low-lying Spring
Mountains, feeling the arid warmth as it bathed and
reassured him.