Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“There should be, in Las Vegas,” she says.

“Yes, people win, and most people lose, and lose and lose. I believe,” I decree, “I would file him under ‘Anonymous.’”

That is how we locate the one unlabeled room. We sit upon an empty autopsy table—excellent construction, sturdy stainless steel with the look of those modern recto-linear sinks all the best home redos feature these days, almost an old Roman grandeur to them. I feel quite importantly supported by a pedestal, always a flattering position for my breed, from Bast on down.

Together, we leap, and push open a door that takes the force of a human palm in ordinary circumstances.

We are in! And, more important, the door has sprung wide and is not creeping closed again, as in all the best summer slasher movies.

We loft up in tandem to view the sole corpse occupying this unlabeled room. Talk about anonymous.

“He looks perfectly human, almost alive,” Louise comments reverently.

“They did a good job. The broken limbs are straightened to fit the table, the Y-incision in the torso is neatly sewed up, and the cranial sawing looks almost like a hippie headband.”

“A sign of respect and excellent workmanship.”

“He might become a museum exhibit ultimately.”

“Not so good,” Louise says, wrinkling her nose.

“They can freeze-dry him. No odor.”

“It is not that. Observe the faint white lines to the sides of his bronzed torso and legs.”

“Almost like the scars of a wire whip.”

“Or … these.” Louise lifts the spread four shivs of her right mitt.

“Our slashes tend to be a bit ragged.”

“These wounds are healed,” she points out (quite literally, running her fanned ninja knives through the air just above the rib scars). “I would like to see the back.”

“Not possible without human cooperation. This dude must weigh one-eighty. Could this man have contracted the Cat Pack slashes here in Las Vegas and still be from outer space?”

“Possibly. What do you think of him?” she asks.

“He does have an exotic look.”

“More of a human model, say a romance novel cover hero.”

“His hair is oddly slicked down close to his skull for that,” I say. “I have heard my Miss Temple quote Mr. Grizzly Bahr, our esteemed coroner, that faces relax in death so that the features may seem entirely alien.”

Louise pats his cold dead face with one velvet-soft mitt. “Poor mystery man. I have the oddest feeling that I have seen him somewhere, but that is not likely.”

In Las Vegas, the unlikely is always possible.

Chapter 36

Stunt Double

Temple sat in her condo in a funk as she grazed through the morning paper, viewing what Silas T. Farnum hath wrought.

She was probably the last person at the Circle Ritz who subscribed to the local paper. Staring at that day’s “second front” with its slightly out-of-register color photos of the parking lot crowd wasn’t the kind of promotion she’d want to get even a not-quite client. It was a sea of Spock ears and tinfoil hats.

She was even in one pic, caught in the act of turning Rens over to his happy owner. Temple wondered if Penny could recognize photos of herself. Or see herself in the mirror even. Just then, Louie skittered through the living area from the second bathroom litter box, his tail fluffed to radiator-brush size. He dashed across the glass cocktail table, claws razoring right through the opinion pages and classifieds section, a bizarre marriage in modern journalism, and raced on into the bedroom.

“Louie! Slow down, Mr. Black the Ripper.” Cats did that, suddenly tore through the house as if they’d gotten a moth in their ears or laid a major stinky in the litter box.

Temple bent to retrieve the scattered papers, thinking she should save the savaged second section, half-client or no half-client, and then stared at the paper’s yet-unread front page.

DEAD “ALIEN ASTRONAUT” HAS CLASSIC JUNGLE TEMPLE FEATURES, read the headline on the story below the fold. A sketch purported to be “obtained” by a freelancer was obviously based on smartphone shots caught on the run when the body first fell. Next to it was a photo of a purported “alien astronaut” from a Mayan temple. Temple squinted at the image—it did look like “air hoses” were coming from his head, and the figure was tilted at the angle of astronauts leaving Earth’s gravity.

This whole mess made “good print” and YouTube these days. She turned to the story’s “jump” to make sure no one had mentioned her name, and there was Farnum in a photo, beaming like he’d just ballooned into Oz.

Temple’s mind was on a mad, mad, mad merry-go-round.

She had no idea how she’d answered one phone call and was now involved with a notorious site of double murder, or at least of double body-dumping.

Not to mention a “ghost” hotel-casino building that was expected to attract hordes of customers by being invisible.

Or how Las Vegas’s mythical “mob” and “Area 51 alien” presence had met on one scruffy lot owned by one dapper oddball.

She ran the last few days past her mental movie screen. Standing on that hard-packed sand and watching Silas T.’s revolving spaceship restaurant appear and disappear ten stories up.

Standing on that same spot with the sand now burning in broad daylight and trying to explain herself and Farnum and his high-tech magic act to Molina.

The awful moment when the actual plastic and canvas that hid the real construction came billowing down in slow-motion, carrying one bronzed, naked male human body and a black feline figure that was twisting down like a furry screwdriver to disappear near a ground-level swell and strut out like a stunt cat when next seen again.

Cats could walk away from falls from extraordinary heights.

Dead men couldn’t.

Temple pictured the corpse on Molina’s cell phone. One hesitated to stare at naked dead men, or women. Well, one would if one was not a person professionally charged with dealing with such bare facts of life and death.

But those faint pale lines, the so-called alien scars could have been made by wire. She was sure Grizzly Bahr, no relation, had considered that possibility. Bundled in a sheet and wire for transport and then left naked at the top of the building. Why not? Great place to stash a body, in a hidden edifice.

Yet, had it been so precariously placed that a misstep by a house cat had given the game away, not any nearby perpetrator?

Somebody had “dropped” bodies there for some reason, which would mean somebody wanted Farnum’s project to be the hot public potato it now was.

So was Farnum the instigator or the victim, the perp or the target, of the dead men?

Temple turned to the sensational front page. You’d think the Review-Journal had morphed into the Crackpot Gazette.

She studied the stone figure. Then looked at the sketch. She attired Las Vegas Man in Maya Man’s headdress and gear. A definite resemblance, but in the features and the profile, not the context.

Omigod! Penny and Rens. Facial features not registering, blurring out, needing … context. Clues. She sent newspaper sections flying as she frantically patted down her cocktail table top for the slim outline of a smartphone.

Search and … seized!

She ignored contact groups labeled “Friends” and “Family” and went to one named “Iffy.” She checked her faithful wristwatch with the second hand. Please, please, please be in.