Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Forever, Lieutenant. I guess my dazzling pearly whites distract visitors from my footwear.”

His teeth, and Molina’s, were probably the only unwhitened choppers in Las Vegas. Everybody Temple’s age used a whitening toothpaste at least, even Matt.

That thought spurred another one. “What color are the teeth of the ancient astronaut?” she asked.

“Not ancient,” Grizzly said with a grin, “but they are naturally whiter than most. I suppose you girls are champing at the bit to see my hunky mystery man.”

“I’d appreciate you using the honorific, Doctor.” Molina was not smiling.

“Now, are our titles really ‘honorifics,’ Lieutenant? I’m not too sure. More like horrorifics in my field. Anyway, come with me; we keep our alien visitor in a special room, the celebrity suite, if you will.”

Temple was counting on Febreze to cover any scent of decay, but also wished she’d put some Mentholatum near her nostrils. She tried to walk on her soles to mute any high-heel clatter, but Bahr’s boot heels made enough noise for both of them.

Molina strode beside him, leaving Temple trailing two tall people like a child.

Huh! She was the one who might be able to fill in the blanks on their many official forms.

The facility was eerily quiet, apparently running on a skeleton crew. One siren or phone call could stir up staff like a stick energizes an anthill, she was sure.

“Here’s the bunker.” Bahr pushed through an unmarked steel door and hit the inside light switch. The warming fluorescent tubes spotlighted a man wearing only the incision marks around his forehead and skull and the Y-incision on his torso.

You couldn’t help but think of Frankenstein’s monster as depicted in a slew of films. At least Temple couldn’t. She was glad she was here to look at a face, not a fig leaf.

And maybe she didn’t want to look it in the eyes either.

It. Already she’d objectified the victim in her mind, and emotions. If truly alien, maybe it was an “it.” If not, it was a “him.” A him she thought she could recognize. What had she been thinking? The people she knew were animated, and that made recognition a whole different task.

“Five-ten,” Molina said, bringing the tension down to the facts on a driver’s license, which this guy certainly had not been carrying. “Maybe one-eighty or -ninety. Brown/brown. Skin tone natural?”

“Sort of, Lieutenant. The skin is naturally dark, with added self-tanner. What about this individual does Miss Barr think she might recognize?”

“Dr. Bahr!” Temple was taking offense now. “Just the face, of course.”

“Of course,” he said, chuckling.

Temple walked around the top of the stainless steel gurney, unable to avoid seeing the back-of-the-head incision that had exposed the now-missing brain.

The Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz film crooned, If I only had a brain…, in her head. In her brain.

She stepped away from the table. Dr. Bahr’s and Lieutenant Molina’s faces looked serious and seriously scary in the harsh light. Did hers?

She tried to think like a computer image, tilted her head to imagine the man vertical. To see the slicked-back black hair clinging to the skull over the incision. It would fall all the way to his collar-top if he wore a shirt and suit coat.

If he were tilted up a bit at an ancient astronaut angle, he would have the strong brow bone and nose of the carved temple warrior. Those genes had not died out in Central and South America, despite the best efforts of the conquering Spanish explorers many centuries before. Empire had always been about genocide.

Temple walked the length of body, looked back up to the face with its staring dark eyes that reflected fluorescent tubes.

Can you see a face, and not recognize it again? Yes, if you have prosopagnosia. But if you have mental prosopagnosia? She eyed the hands and nails, the hair, the neck; she tilted the whole man upright and clothed him in a great suit to wear for his funeral. Wait. One borrowed from a Fontana brother.

Because that was the vibe her subconscious associated with this man, not some ancient warrior culture. Something primitive, predatory even, but clothed in complete modernity, down to his buffed fingernails and that razor-cut nape-line of his hair. Smooth, slick. Smart, glib.

“He’s from an ancient South American line, all right,” Temple told the doctor and police lieutenant. “This is the world-renowned conceptual architect who came to Las Vegas to dream up special projects around the Strip. He was even a consultant on Silas T. Farnum’s decidedly third-class construction site.”

“You’re saying he was somebody important?” Molina asked.

“ He thought so. He goes by one name, like Cher or Madonna. He’s Santiago.” Temple was as stunned she was right as they were.

Chapter 39

Murder Ménage II: Naked Came the Clue

Temple called a meeting of the Murder Ménage that evening.

Max purposely arrived late for the meeting.

He wanted the lovebirds to have a chance to establish their couplehood before he intruded on it. He wanted to be clearly the “outsider.” Creative consultant, say. This was purely professional.

When Temple opened the condo door to his knock—ringing the doorbell was too akin to the unwanted solicitor—Midnight Louie uttered the first word of welcome as he weaved protectively around Temple’s calves.

Correction: The couple was already a triumvirate. He was the fourth corner of a quadrangle. Temporarily.

“This is starting to feel like a three-person poker game,” Temple said when she’d seated Max across from Matt Devine at the round dining table on one side of the main living room.

“What’s up?” Max asked as he sat. Unwanted snapshots of memory from the time he’d lived here with Temple clashed in his mind, and he could hear majestic strains of Vangelis echoing from the unique barreled ceiling.

He kept his head down and his expression blank. Only Max’s amnesia made it tolerable for them to gather in such a cozy, private way at all.

“I thought you two should know what I and Molina know,” Temple began.

The men exchanged glances, Matt looking edgy and a tad guilty, which was the way Max felt. Guilt? What was that about with Devine? Max would have to figure it out later.

“Look, guys,” Temple said, “I’ve got the most shocking information. It’s like being hit by a … death ray from Jupiter. I’ve ID’d the ‘ancient astronaut’ body from the construction site on Paradise for the police,” she announced, sitting back to receive accolades.

Matt leaned forward with a frown. “Temple, I thought you were distancing yourself from that crackpot developer guy with the invisible building.”

“So the dead guy is a crackpot developer?” Max asked.

“No,” Temple said, sighing. “That’s Silas T. Farnum, who wanted to hire me to PR the project. The ancient alien abductee who fell back to Earth in a flash of UFO fire is…”

“Don’t milk it too long,” Max warned.

“… Santiago.”

She waited for applause, but got silence.

“This is big, guys. Santiago is the South American architect-cum-showman who redid the ‘immersive’ Chunnel of Crime attraction connecting Gangsters and the Crystal Phoenix Hotels.”

“So you provided the police with the right name for the most notorious corpse in Vegas?” Max wondered. “Didn’t this Santiago have links to the bizarre murder victim in formal dress found in the underground safe?”

“Yes, and yes, that is a bizarre scenario,” Temple said. “Cosimo Sparks, that dead man in the safe, was also the head magician who was running the Synth,” she added for Matt’s benefit.