Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (12 page)

All the cars were gone now, and the girl remained. Sprawled within an invisible chalk outline. (Police departments seldom outlined body positions nowadays; recording methods, especially video, were far too sophis
ticated to require the romance of old-time techniques.)
The blood from the neck wound was a discreet rivulet mostly hidden by shadow. A lurid pool of pink puddled
near one hand that still touched a crushed ice cream cone.
Walking to the mall with a strawberry cone in her hand. "Where'd that come from?”

Dunhill eyed the sickly pink splotch vaguely shaped like Australia. "Parking lot mobile vendor. My partner
did the interview. She bought the cone at seven fifty."

“So she could have been headed for the Teen Queen auditions at eight o'clock."

“With a fistful of calories?" He sounded doubtful.

“Hot night. Slim girl. I'll have the reality show people
check if any candidates didn't show up. I assume there
was ID.”

He nodded, flipped back a couple of pages. "Tiffany
Cummings." He shook his head. "Sixteen. Wasn't sexu
ally molested, from the state of her clothes. That's a
blessing.”

Molina eyed the clothes in question—the teenage uniform that drove a mother like Molina nuts for a couple of reasons: tight low-rise jeans, skimpy thin top. Too revealing, too predictable.

Dunhill shook his head again. Obviously he hadn't
been called out on many homicides. "First response
couldn't do anything for her. Except get the names and addresses of all the owners who'd parked in the vicinity.”

“Any hot prospects?"

“Mostly women or women with children. All shocked to death themselves."

“That many women? Alone? Shopping this late, in the dark?" Molina asked.

Dunhill shrugged. "Multitasking. The wife complains all the time that there aren't enough hours in the day. All we've got here as onsite evidence is a short rubber burn
and an air-conditioning puddle over there. Looks like a
car stopped fast and stayed long enough to leave traces."

“Or to startle and then kill our vic." Molina glanced up at the brilliant lighting. This poor girl had been "shined”

like a deer in the headlights by the very technology meant
to protect her.

“They held the Teen Queen auditions here today," she observed. "This could be another message."

“That's right! I heard about the mutilated Barbie doll images. You think this is related?"

“I think this is going to be pretty hard to explain to the press, much less the parents. I'll ask the captain in the morning for more personnel to put on the so-called Teen QueenCastle that reality TV show is using for the next two weeks. Can you imagine a more captive population for a killer like this?"

“
For this nut? Likes offbeat weapons. Nervy enough to
attack in a major public place. No, Lieutenant, I can't. Hey!" Dunhill was looking beyond her. "Get outa here! Scat!”

By the time she whipped around, all she spotted was a lean dark shape vanishing under a Nissan Sentra.

“Damn cat." Dunhill was not happy. "Sniffing at the evidence. That pinkish gunk."

“
Probably licking at it. Lots of scavenger cats and
birds around a shopping mall. Forensics will have already
bagged a sample; don't worry, officer."

“This is my first murder call. Then to have it be a kid like this—"

“
Kids 'like this' you never get used to, thank God.
What did you say her name was?"

“Tiffany—" He again checked his notebook. "Cummings."

“That contest inside. Find out if she was a contender."

“She sure isn't now." He slapped his notebook shut.

Mariah was still safe at home in her messy bedroom, thank goodness, Molina thought, but tomorrow night she wouldn't be. Her kid had made the final cut. Tomorrow she'd be in the Teen QueenCastle, hopefully safe behinda moat of cameras and the foolishness that passed for network TV these days.

Molina returned to her Toyota, parked far enough from the
crime scene to preserve evidence. Something about the crime scene bothered her but she couldn't say just what.

Someone caught up with her.

“What's going on?" A voice behind her.

She turned. "Larry. What're you doing here?"

“Heard the buzz. Now that I'm off undercover, I can't
sleep nights. Did too much action then. So I listen to
what's going down on the police channels. Looks like a tragedy." He nodded back toward the fallen girl.

“Sixteen? Yeah, a tragedy.”

He scanned the mall's hulking profile, haloed by the city's constant aurora of artificial light. "The most innocent public places are where the dirtiest deals go down. Malls. Hotel parking lots. No safe place anymore."

“Not news."

“You've got a kid. Is she too young for malls by herself?"

“Young," she conceded, recalling the recent madcap shopping expedition with the trace of a smile. "And not `young' enough for my taste."

“That's why you care. That's why you came out personally.”

Molina shook her head, leaned against her car's front fender. "No. That wouldn't keep me up nights. It's a case, that's all."

“Are you sure it isn't personal?"

“Anyone killed on my watch is personal."

“That's a lot of responsibility, Lieutenant."

“Goes with the job title.”

He leaned against the car beside her. He'd be sorry.

She recalled that it was dusty. Who had time to visit a car
wash? Multitasking.

“
I, ah, lost that sense of being personally responsible," he said. "I miss it. I was responsible for living up to my false identity. Period. It took all my energy and all my cunning."

“Cunning. I think of that as a criminal attribute.”

“Right. I needed criminal attributes."

“
Must be hard to drop."

“
The hours are. Let me follow you home, make sure
you get there."

“
Are you kidding? I can't drive this town at night
alone, why have a firearm or a shield?"

“I'm trying to be a regular guy here."

“Why?"

“
Maybe because I think you might have a regular girl
in there somewhere."

“Regular equals helpless?"

“Regular equals liking company."

“
Not now. I'm not a babysitter for insomniac narcs.
I've got my own baby to sit.”

He backed off, literally. "Sorry. You're right. I shouldn't
have come out. I'm just not used to being out of the loop, that's all. Guess I just wanted to bullshit about the crime scene, whatever. Talk the talk. See a ... friendly face.”

She could've sworn he was about to have said "pretty.”

Unbelievable!
But maybe she was doing him an injustice.

Sensing her irritation, he shifted topics. "That guy you tried to con me out of. You know, the address the other night. I'm betting that
he's
personal."

“
If he is, then it's really none of your business.”

He ignored her warning. "Ex-cop. L.A. I see that's
where you came here from."

“I see that you've been digging deeper into personnel records."

“You did it first. Karlinski in Records mentioned it to me.”

Molina felt her face heat up, whether from annoyance or being caught, she couldn't tell.

“
Listen." He came closer and lowered his voice. "Undercover cops know better than most that the lines between professional and personal can get blurred in police
work. You wanted to take something from me without my
knowing it. Think what a lot more you could get if you were up front about it. That Nadir guy is trouble, I can
smell it, and he worries you. Accidents isn't putting me to
work 24/7, the way I used to work. I got a lotta free hours.
I could help."

“
You're volunteering? For what?"

“
Whatever you need.”

“
Why?"

“
I'm bored."

“Not what I need."

“And I think you could use more of a social life.”

She pushed off her car. "What would give you that
idea? That's the last thing I want, need, have time for.”

“Case closed."

“
I don't even like you."

“
Not a problem." He grinned. "I'm still losing my
street persona. I'll get cuddlier."

“Give it up. You are not my type."

“
Oh, you think you have a 'type.' That's progress. Let me guess: tall, lean, and mean. Early Clint Eastwood, right?”

Molina felt herself flush for real. "You're pursuing this,
not me."

“That's the way it's supposed to be, have you forgotten?"

“Maybe. And I like it that way." She opened her car
door, paused, considered, and said "Good-night."
He backed away to let her drive out of the parking slot,
hands in the pockets of his nylon shell jacket, watching her with head lowered, a bit boyishly.

She headed into the maze of access roads that circled the mall.

Not her type.

But better than Rafi Nadir.

Although, who wasn't?

At home, sweet home Dolores napped on the couch while
early-morning TV blared. Molina hated to awaken her,
but she knew Dolores would want to be home with her own kids and husband. So she saw her out and watched her cross the street to her own door and safely enter.

In the distance, low-riders grumbled like very disgruntled thunder. That was a negative of living in a Latino neighborhood, but in Anglo neighborhoods it would be costly car stereo systems cranked up loud enough to keep
the canals on Mars awake. One way or another, the young
bucks in the neighborhood have to make their presence known.

Mariah was sleeping hard in her room, face buried in a tangle of covers.

Molina went to her bedroom and deposited her
weapons in the closet gun safe. She could never open the large metal cabinet without brushing against Carmen's
array of vintage velvet gowns. Velvet and steel. It
sounded like the title of a supermarket romance novel.

Carmen hadn't come out to sing and play at the Blue Dahlia lately. Maybe the on-premises body a few months back had accomplished that. Maybe Molina had just been too busy.

She started taking off her clothes . . . shoes kicked off
first. She slipped out of her jacket and blouse, slacks, then sat on the bed to pull off the dark socks she wore with her
working "uniform.”

Something slid into her back as her weight created a sinkhole for whatever was on the bed.

What
was
on the bed? Shouldn't be anything. She kept a military-neat room, unlike her darling daughter, the mistress of mess. . . .

A box lay there on her grandmother's patchwork quilt.
A gaudy gilt-paper box. Had Mariah performed one of
her random acts of preteen sweetness?

Molina opened it, not surprised by the array of fancy chocolates but by the unfamiliar handwriting on the tiny envelope inside.

She pulled the flap loose to withdraw the stiff note
card. The same handwriting that had written "For you"
on the envelope had written "Sweets to the sour" on the card inside.

She stood there staring at the black-ink block lettering in the dim light of the overhead ceiling fixture.

Was this some clumsy attempt at humor, or a threat?