William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

“Got your purse?”

“Sure.” She bent down and picked it up. “Well, thanks again.”

“Of course.” He started to go, then stopped. “One other thing.”

“Yes?”

“That dress you’re wearing? I don’t like it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at yourself in the mirror. Your breasts are on display, as if you were a southern plantation slave girl.”

“I-I didn’t realize-”

“Your teats are for nursing children, my dear. Not for attracting men.” His voice seemed to slow, to acquire a more pronounced drawl. “Not for producing unholy thoughts. Luring men to their doom. Throwing your sex at them like some kind of harlot.”

She turned toward her car. “I-I think I should go.”

“Too late for that, petunia.” One hand on the back of her head, he jabbed a syringe into her neck. Her legs wobbled.

He scooped her up into his arms and carried her to his pickup. “I am sorry about the pain, my dear. But you won’t feel it for long.”

Annabel was dazed, limp. “What… what are you going to do…?”

“I’m going to help you. Help you be something better than you are. Something wonderful.”

Chin up, Susan, chest out, I told myself as I made a beeline toward the yellow crime scene tape. Walk like you know exactly what you’re doing and you’re in a hurry to get there. That’s how I’ve managed to bluster my way past guards, thugs, reluctant witnesses, and on one occasion, Secret Service agents.

I nodded at the patrolman posted by the entrance to the ballroom-and kept on walking. I could read his confusion, his uncertainty. No doubt he’d heard that I’d been relieved of duty and didn’t know what I was doing here. But he didn’t stop me. There was also a hotel security guard standing by the door, a little guy with a tangled mess of black hair and a big bad gun. He was watching me carefully, too. But I kept on walking.

This ballroom was something else. I had been out to this hotel before, not for work but for pleasure. I liked the joint. It appealed to my sense of the macabre. Of all the themed casinos that had sprung up over the last couple of decades, this was my favorite. It was built back in the early Nineties, when Steve Wynn and some of the other high rollers were doing their Vegas Is for Families initiative. Disneyland of the Desert, that’s what they wanted. That’s when the new improved Strip got Treasure Island (pirates) and the Excalibur (Camelot) and the Luxor (fantasy Egypt). Then we got the geographical reconstructions-the New York, complete with a fake Statue of Liberty, and the Paris, complete with a fake Eiffel Tower (like the original, only better-lit). By the end of the decade, the pendulum had swung back again and Vegas was refocusing on its old reliable: vice. This has always been a city of addictions-booze, drugs, sex, money, risk-and now they were back in fashion. Most of the new resorts focused on providing premier shopping or replicating high-dollar vacation spots. Truth was, most of the chumps who came to Vegas had never been to Europe and would be bored stiff at the real Bellagio. But they loved the chance to pretend to be cosmopolitan sophisticates-with girlie shows and free drinks, of course.

The Transylvania had come in about the same time as Treasure Island and the Excalibur. With a choice spot just up the Strip from Circus Circus (now there was an interesting concept-Gambling for the Whole Family!), it had done a brisk business, specializing in those with a taste for the outré. Most of the joint was more tongue-in-cheek than terrifying. Scary more in the sense of, say, Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion than, say, a Jason movie. That showed in the galleries, too. That was another hot Vegas trend-everyone wanted a exhibition. The Bellagio had originally sported Steve Wynn’s art collection. The Venetian had a Guggenheim museum. Mandalay Bay had art treasures collected from around the world. And the Transylvania had a series of ballroom galleries exhibiting re-creations of various fright classics such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This gallery was dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. I didn’t know enough about his work to identify most of the references. But there was a spooky Victorian house, crumbling and decayed, with a façade that looked like a human face-windows for eyes, et cetera. There were cobwebs and skeletons and, of course, the requisite graveyard, which was where I found Chief O’Bannon, crouched on the floor examining something in a tiny evidence baggie. He was surrounded by a swirl of activity, at least a dozen forensic technicians carefully combing the site with dusters and infrared lights. Chemical swabs. Tweezers. I wondered if they knew about me. For a brief moment, I thought about turning tail and running before I was spotted. But that’s not my style. That would be too sensible.

One of the techs approached O’Bannon. Tony Crenshaw. His specialty was dactylograms-that’s fingerprints to the rest of the world-but he was so good O’Bannon let him mess around in hair and fiber and pretty much anything else he wanted to do. I decided to keep my mouth shut for a moment-a novel idea, for me-and just listen.

“We’ve gone over the box pretty carefully, sir. Lots of good trace evidence.”

“From the victim?” O’Bannon asked in his usual gruff manner. “Or the killer?”

“Certainly from the victim,” Crenshaw said, wincing slightly. “But we’re hoping we’ll get something from the perp.”

“What have you found on the girl?”

“Hair. A few latent prints. Blood.”

“How much?”

“Not a lot. She does not appear to have been wounded in any significant way.”

“Anything else?”

Crenshaw hesitated a moment. “Sir… have you looked inside the box?”

“Briefly.”

“The inner side of the lid?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Claw marks.”

O’Bannon squinted. “Like a wild animal?”

“Like she was desperate to get out. The marks match the victim’s fingers, which you may have noticed were raw and bloody.”

His eyes narrowed. “You mean-she was still alive when-”

Crenshaw nodded grimly. They both looked as if they were about to be sick. I crept forward to get a look at the box they were talking about.

Just below O’Bannon, sticking out of the mock graveyard adjoining the haunted house, was an open coffin. With a very scratched inner lid.

“Christ,” O’Bannon said, wiping his brow. “What have we got now?”

Crenshaw shook his head and went back to work. O’Bannon did the same, but I could tell he was shaken.

A moment later, O’Bannon spotted me out of the corner of his eye. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I moved closer, hoping to avoid a scene. “Looking for you.”

“You should’ve been stopped on the other side of the tape.”

“C’mon. You know no one can stop me.”

He grunted unhappily.

“I wanted a few words with you, Chief. About my job.”

“Here’s your few words: you don’t have a job anymore.”

“Chief, I know I kind of screwed up.”

“That’s like saying Rush Limbaugh is kind of conservative.”

“Let me make it up to you. Reinstate me.”

“No can do.”

“Please.”

He started to speak, then stopped, glancing at all the people surrounding us. He grabbed my elbow and dragged me off to where we would be less conspicuous, then looked me straight in the eyes, glowering. “Do you have any idea what I’ve had to deal with this past week, while you were off taking your rest cure?”

“It was hardly-”

“I’ve been dealing with a family-a very rich and influential family-that doesn’t understand why one of Las Vegas ’s finest beat their oldest son to a pulp. It’s amazing how unreasonable people can be about things like that.”