Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"Bet you've done this bit before, babe, and liked it."

He jerked on my handcuffs. I bit my lip to silence a cry. Evidence of fear and pain only encouraged sadists like Haskell. "Maybe you give out from the femoral arteries. That it? You a thigh baby?"

A deep voice tolled like a basso bell in my mind. You have a witness.

Haskell's head jerked up, as if he had heard it too. "Is there someone here?"

I could hear a faint throb of fear. Like all bullies, he feared someone bigger. And, yes, of course! I did have a witness!

"Nightwine," I called to the ceiling, remembering his security fetish. "Do something!" Just because his security cameras were rolling 24/7 didn't mean he was actually watching my particular episode of VPV; Vegas Police Violence at this moment. What could he do? Or Godfrey for that matter? Other than "witness."

The gun barrel left my thighs as Haskell stepped back to point it due north.

"You got an accomplice up there? In the attic? This is only a one-story place. Answer, bitch!"

"Nobody else is here, but this cottage stands on Hector Nightwine's property. He produces all the CSI shows."

He grabbed and pulled my hair again. "You think I care who you service?"

"He's my boss and a very paranoid man. The whole estate is covered with security devices. You're on Candid Camera, Detective Haskell."

"I don't believe you," Haskell said.

But he was nervous now and backed away from me. "Crazy too. Talking to the ceiling. You're making it way too easy. First I got you on impersonating an officer, and now the biggie, Murder One. Bet Cadaver Boy will be real upset about this. Too bad."

He grabbed my handcuffs and used them to pull, push, and half-drag me out of the cottage. How'd he get in here, anyway?

I saw his car parked on the street. He'd scaled the wall, so he must have disabled a section of the alarm wiring. Even better: Nightwine had him filmed violating personal property without a warrant outside as well as in, like the L.A. police getting into OJ. Simpson's Brentwood property after finding his estranged wife dead elsewhere. Johnnie Cochran could make quite a case of this. Too bad he was dead. Then again…

Haskell slammed me into the back seat of his unmarked car, not bothering to push my head down so it didn't bang the doorframe. I managed to duck, having seen enough crime shows on TV and enough live arrests in Wichita to know the drill.

I fell sideways on a seat that smelled of sweat, vomit, and strawberry car freshener. I almost added to the vomit and was half-sorry I didn't, although I wouldn’t want Haskell to know what he'd done to my nervous system.

I managed to work myself upright, despite the bruising handcuffs. I had excellent lower body strength from self-defense workouts. Too bad it hadn't paid to use them.

He drove me down the Strip, a slow, public route that allowed people to gawk at me when the car paused at the interminable stoplights. I'd known cops. I'd worked with them. Most of them were good, dedicated people. But when one went bad, he went very bad indeed.

At the cross street of Paradise, I spotted Quicksilver weaving in and out of the colorful trail of tourists on the sidewalks like a shaggy, ghostly greyhound.

The pantry door would have to be completely replaced by the resident brownies, but I didn't mind. It was good to know he was nearby and keeping it as discreet as an animal his size could.

Good dog.

“Downtown" was more than a figure of speech in Las Vegas. The main police department offices were there, near the Fremont Hotel, but homicide, aka crimes against persons, had long since gotten its own building in the Sin City That Never Sleeps.

Haskell left me handcuffed to a small, scarred table in a miserable cubicle of a room with soundproof tile on the ceiling. (I wasn’t about to yell to that eye-in-the sky ceiling for help, anyway.) In front of me was a table bearing nothing but one empty ashtray stinking of tar and nicotine. I was sitting in a chair so plastic and imbued with sweat, fear, and other less mentionable bodily fluids that it made my skin crawl.

I really needed to go to the bathroom but knew that if I asked anyone he'd make sure I didn't. I'd covered crime stories. I knew how cops made suspects squirm by any means. So I was guilty of…what? Back exposure with intent to seduce? It actually crossed my mind to wonder if Snow would bail me out. It was probably his set-up anyway. His note had implied that I had power of a sort. Too bad nobody had clued me in on exactly what it was.

"Miss…Street?" The woman who poked her head in the door was blonde but hard-edged. Maybe five years older than I was. Carried her shoulders like she worked out and had mojo authority. Was a pretty cool chick, really. Ric's captain friend. Oh, shit. I nodded.

"I'm going to have to testify to your phone call proving prior interest in the Inferno, from witnessing the Sunset Park crime scene."

"Be my guest."

"Being a hard-ass won't help you."

"Funny. I thought telling the truth might."

"Haskell says before this came up you impersonated an officer on that crime scene."

"I implied, he inferred. He was being sexist."

Blondie's poker face didn't move. She faced sexist every day.

"And racist," I added.

A little of the ice broke. She really did like Ric.

"Haskell has issues," she conceded. Malloy started to leave, then hesitated. "You might want to reconsider saying anything."

I nodded. Message received. My truth could be my fall. I felt a shiver of silver moving along my arm to my hand. A white flash settled around my neck on a chain. Won't you wear my ring. No!

Haskell poked his red, hypertensive face into the room. "Guess what. Guess you do have a man upstairs. Your 'lawyer' is here."

All right! My lawyer. Pretty fast service from someone. Hmm.

"I hope you haven't cuffed her," I heard an authoritative voice say in the hall. A boldly black-and-white CinSim rolled into the room, maybe 270 pounds of designer suit. He had a baritone deep enough to take out the Three Tenors. Cool enough to chill dry ice.

"My name is Mason," he said. "Perry Mason."

Not Johnnie Cochran, but not bad.

Nightwine must have caught up with the tape pretty damn quick after we left. Who else would send Perry Mason, for God's sake?

I sat up straight in my scuzzy jailhouse chair. I couldn't wait for my next line. "My name is Street. Delilah Street."

He took the chair across from me like a pope deigning to sit on a toadstool. "What a coincidence. My personal assistant's name is Street. Delia Street. May I call you-?"

"Delilah."

He looked uneasy for the first time "Delilah. I like it. Now, Delilah Street, how do we get you out of this mess?"

"I thought that was your job."

"Here, yes. The convincing explanations later are up to you, young lady."

The Snow groupie had been found dead in a Dumpster at the hotel's rear the morning after my jaunt to the Inferno. She'd been strangled. Her image flashed into my mind's eye, a harmless-looking middle-aged woman, really, except for the fanatic's mania in her eyes and voice.

The hotel security cameras had recorded everything, including shots of this very woman looking green when Snow had come on to me. Cameras had also recorded our fight over the hairpins later and my obvious rebuff. The police theory was she'd come after a lock of my hair later and I'd killed her. Groupies could be annoying, but the police scenario did presume a certain element of self-defense on my part.

Perry had picked up on that immediately, ace attorney that he was in book and on film. When he drove me home in his black fifties Caddy convertible that felt like Dolly's love match, I told him I'd finished my evening at the Inferno breaking and entering the executive offices. He frowned impressively.