Dark Eye (12 page)

Bugsy Siegel always gets the credit for founding Vegas-especially after they made that movie with the far-too-handsome Warren Beatty-but he was only one of several people who established Vegas as a fantasy pleasure destination. He was a gangster, for God’s sake, not a visionary. There were already a couple of hotels out here when he made the scene. If he’d been that insightful, he’d have bought all the land in the area, not just one lot, right? Meyer Lansky and a host of investors-one of whom probably had Siegel offed-were also major players. But everyone remembers Bugsy. There’s even a memorial garden shrine to him, out at the modern-day Flamingo. Lisa and I went there once, just for laughs. It was a hoot. Of course, I was snockered at the time.

After I parked my car, I stumbled down a sharp paved declivity to the recessed tarmac where the body had been found. The crime scene was in the midst of dozens of disabled aircraft. Apparently this was where the big birds came to die. One of the patrolmen on duty filled me in. The body had been stashed inside one of the retired jets. Judging from appearances, this young naked woman had already been dead before she was brought here. Why would the killer stash the corpse in an abandoned airplane? How was this connected to the woman who had been buried alive?

I wasn’t surprised to see Granger lurking about. Wasn’t surprised, but wasn’t happy, either. His face expressed his feelings about me pretty clearly, too.

“Took you long enough,” he grunted.

“You’re in a jocund mood this morning. Someone put castor oil in your coffee?”

“Just for the record,” he said, “your involvement in this case-or any other case, for that matter-is against my strong objection.”

“I assumed any smart idea wouldn’t come from you,” I replied, walking past him without stopping.

I found O’Bannon inside the plane, running down a checklist with Crenshaw. When he saw me, he glanced at his watch. “Twenty-nine minutes,” he said. “And you look like hell.”

“Top of the morning to you, too,” I answered, smiling.

He walked up to me and widened my eyes with his fingers, like I was a damn cow he was thinking of buying. “Your eyes are bloodshot.”

“I had trouble sleeping. You know how it is. First night in a new place.”

He frowned, then sniffed.

“Anything on my breath?”

“About half a tin of Altoids, unless I’m mistaken.” He gave me a long look, and believe me, I didn’t need hyper-empathy to know what he was thinking.

“Who’s the victim?” I asked, hoping to redirect his scrutiny from me to, well, anything. I stepped closer to the body, which the coroner’s assistants were in the process of transporting. She was young, probably sixteen or seventeen. Something odd about the way her face was set, but she had been a pretty thing, that was obvious, and she still had her hair, unlike the last one. Fingernails, too. Her skin was an icy white, so drained of color her lips were almost invisible. There were no apparent wounds or injuries.

“Don’t know. She was found with no identification. We’ll run her picture in the paper and with luck someone will recognize her.”

“What makes you think this is the same killer?” I asked, although I was certain it was. “Seems like an entirely different MO.”

“He left another note.”

O’Bannon handed me the evidence, already encased in a transparent sheath. It was similar to the one I’d spotted last night-letters and symbols and general nonsense on a sheet of lined notebook paper. “Any idea what this is?”

“No. I’ve got some of our biggest eggheads working on the first one, trying to see if it’s some kind of code. So far, no luck. It may just be psychotic rambling.”

“Can I get a copy? I know someone who might be able to help.” I surveyed the crime scene. “Who was the first responder?”

“Harrelson. Lucky choice, really. He did a solid, clean job.”

The first responder has the job of securing the crime scene. This is critical, not only to obtaining pure and useful information, but to being able to use that information later at trial. He or she must protect the evidence, then initiate safety procedures-in this case, make sure the killer wasn’t still around-and then contact the proper criminalists and finalize the relevant documentation, which with a homicide, was enormous. Once the crime scene experts and homicide investigators arrived, supervisory authority passed to them.

Contrary to what everyone thinks from watching
C.S.I.,
the Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has no department called a C.S.I. Level III. Or for that matter, a Level II or Level I or Level 427.5. Those TV creations are a blanket fiction that allows characters to do the work of a wide range of criminalists: forensic lab techs, photo techs, latent print examiners, firearms experts, medical examiners, document experts, hair and fiber teams, and evidence custodians, just to name a few. The only thing the TV show doesn’t exaggerate is the importance of this work. Most cases are solved-and proven in court-thanks to the work of these technicians.

“How was she killed?” I asked O’Bannon.

“Naturally, Dr. Patterson won’t offer an opinion this soon. But judging from her skin tone, she bled to death.”

I was puzzled. “You mean, she had internal bleeding?”

“No.”

I glanced again at the body. “I don’t see any injuries.”

“Right. That’s the mystery.”

I stared down at the corpse, hoping to get some kind of fix on who she was or what she had been doing. What happened to you? I wondered. Who did this? And why?

I scrutinized the whole picture, the neck, the chest, the legs. Not only were there no signs of a wound, there were no signs of any kind of struggle. No signs of restraint, except perhaps some faint redness across her upper arms. Were you too scared to fight? I wondered. She looked healthy enough. Why didn’t she claw his eyes out?

I put the coroner techs on hold and, against their heated protest, took a closer look at the body. I found signs of a body piercing on her navel. But the stud was gone. Ripped out.

A pattern was forming in my mind. Far from a complete picture-a hint at best. But something. Taking two tongue depressors from one of the coroner’s boys, I pried open her mouth. And gasped.

Now I knew why there was something odd about the set of her jaw. Her teeth had been removed. Every single one. The tearing of her mouth, her gums, was enormous; the extraction had not been executed by a trained professional. This was how she had bled to death. Not from any bodily wound. From the mouth.

Thank God I’d had no time for breakfast. Throwing up would not only be unprofessional, it would convince O’Bannon I’d been drinking. I’d seen some seriously twisted, weird, ugly stuff in my time, and it took a great deal to get a gasp out of me, even on a day like this when I was well off my game. But I was sickened by the thought of the pain she must have endured, both mental and physical. This was not the work of any ordinary killer. Not even an ordinary psychopath. This was something-someone-altogether different.

“I’ll want to see the coroner’s preliminary report,” I said, letting her mouth relax. “As soon as it comes in.”

“Natch.”

“I’ll want the files on the first victim, too. Everything you’ve got.”

“I’ve already had them sent to your office.” O’Bannon coughed. “Your temporary office. Downtown.”

“Criminalists got anything useful yet?”

O’Bannon shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard.”

“What about blood splatters?”

“Do you see any?”

“No.”

“Neither do we. Even after we went over the area with leucocrystal violet.”

Which confirmed my feeling that the young lady was killed somewhere else. And cleaned up afterward. “Firearms?”

“No indication.”

“Forensic entomology? Botany? Zoology?”

“Possible they’ll turn up something. But so far, no.”

“Hair and fiber evidence?”

“Nope.”

“How could the guy bring a corpse all the way out here without leaving something behind?”

“By being very careful.”

And that in itself was telling.

I searched for, spotted, then approached Crenshaw. He was crouched on the ground, going over the metal floor of the plane with a small brush. Beside him was his fingerprint examiner’s field kit, a five-level tool chest filled with everything he might possibly need-powders, lifting tape, ink, flashlights, petri dishes, baggies, tweezers, distilled water, and a lot of other stuff I couldn’t identify. “How’s it hanging, Tony? Seen any exciting friction ridges lately?”

He smiled a little. “Are you working this case?”

“Strange but true. Got any identifiable prints?”

“Not yet, but I’m still working. I’ll have to take some of this stuff back to the lab before I can be sure.”

“I would’ve thought the killer would get his paws all over the place, dragging a heavy corpse into the plane.”

“I would, too, but he didn’t. We found nothing inside the plane-except for one little smudge. On the body.” He pointed down at the corpse with which I was now altogether too familiar. “Probably touched her before he transported her. Possibly even before he killed her. Maybe when he undressed her.”

“Could the print belong to someone other than the killer?”

“Anything’s possible, but I got it off her back, so it isn’t her own. If she’s been captive for a while, it almost has to be the killer’s.”

“What is it? Index finger?”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be a finger at all. I can get a print off any section of volar skin-fingers, soles, lips, ears. This is a palm. It could be worse-some courts won’t admit non-hand or -foot prints. But it could be better, too. Although palms are just as unique in pattern as fingerprints, no one is databasing them.”

“So even if your print pays out, we won’t be able to run it through VICAP.”

“Right. We might use it to verify a suspect-once you have one. But that’s it.”

I nodded. “Keep looking.”

“Will do.”

I wandered around a bit longer till I found the impression examiner, a woman about my age named Amelia Escavez. She’d joined the force maybe six months before.

“Whattaya got?” I asked, crouching at her side. God, this felt good. Back in the swing of things. Doing what I did well.

“Tire print.” She tended to be succinct when she spoke to me. Perhaps if I’d ever asked her out to dinner, made a friend of her, she’d be more forthcoming. But of course I hadn’t.

“The killer?”

“Possible. He must’ve used some kind of vehicle to get the body to that plane. Since he couldn’t get through the locked gate, he presumably needed something sturdy enough to make it down that steep off-road slope. And the airport officials tell us none of their personnel has had any reason to be out here recently. So…”

She reached into her field kit, took out a fixative, and began stabilizing the impression. She’d use dental-stone casting or some similar material to transfer the print. I noted that her kit was even bigger than Fielder’s. She seemed ready for anything we might throw at her-evidence vacuum, envelopes, bottles, boxes, cutting implements, disposable filters, glass slides, measuring tools, bindle paper, lifters, acetate covers, lifting tape, even an infrared spectrophotometer. Left the electron microscope in the car, I supposed. Looked cool, though, I had to admit. Maybe I should get a kit. What would I put in mine? Rorschach ink blots, multiphasic personality tests, a copy of
The Silence of the Lambs…

“It’s a small print,” she explained. “There was a spot of oil, still somewhat damp, on the pavement. That’s what caught it.”

“Just the one?”

“ ’Fraid so. I looked for a matching opposite-side impression but didn’t get one. This concrete isn’t a very good surface for that sort of thing, absent the oil.”

“Can you identify the tread?”

“I don’t have enough to do it by sight, but once I get it into my computer, I may be able to give you a brand or even make. The FBI has a huge tire tread database.”

“I need anything you can give me now. Can you at least put me in the neighborhood?”

She hesitated. I could see she was reluctant to make an unverified guess that might come back to haunt her if it turned out to be wrong, especially since she didn’t have any reason to trust me. But she did it anyway. Good woman. “Looks like a pickup to me.”

I nodded. Yes, that seemed right. Would make it easier to transport the body, and you could get it down that sharp slope.

“Any footprints?”

“I wish. Sorry, no.”

“You’ll get me a copy of that print?”

“Sure.”

“Lifting material?”

“Thought I’d use overlapping tape affixed to white card stock. Soon as it dries a little more.”

“Sounds like a winner. Thanks.”

I stayed another hour or so, chatting up the techs, the ones who would talk to me, and trying to learn whatever I could. For the most part, I just absorbed. The place, the victim, the whole scenario. Tried to get inside the killer’s head. What was he playing at? What made him do the things he did? I don’t like to admit it, but I was more than a little creeped out. Maybe it was just the effect of being hung over on a body that was already in poor condition, but I couldn’t shake this ominous feeling. I mean, I’ve worked some horrible crimes in my time, but that business with the teeth-who would be capable of that?

At the edge of the crime scene, I saw O’Bannon motioning to me.

“I’m on my way back to HQ,” he explained. “Will I see you there when you finish up here?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like it if you could drop by my house tonight. Maybe around nine-thirty.”

My eyes narrowed a bit. “May I ask why?”

“Well, I’m not coming on to you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Bring a chaperone, if you like.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“I want to review the case. Get your preliminary thoughts. You know the press is going to be all over this case. I want to be ready to tell them something.”