“I’m sorry. We need a real last name. Like legal.”
She hadn’t asked for Temple’s real last name.
“Carlson,” Temple said, appropriating her mother’s maiden name, and her aunt’s, which Molina had somehow come up with. She added the name to the X with a flourish.
“Carlson. Isn’t that a cavern somewhere?”
“In the brain:’ Temple said soberly. “You’re right. A cavern in the brain. We all have a Carlson cavern in the brain.”
“I knew I learned something in science class.” Beaming, the young woman bore away all the rights to Temple’s brand-new persona.
Shoot.
Chapter 12
Turnabout Foul Play
“Stabbed through the neck,” Officer Dunhill said. He was young and looked a trifle green. “The entry point is ragged. Really vicious.”
Molina stood there in the lukewarm early morning dark of another 24/7 Las Vegas eternity. She’d asked to be called on any teen deaths.
The girl lay in the middle of one row, halfway between the fat painted line that delineated parking places on either side. Probably attacked just as she was leaving, or about to return to a car.
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 sophisticated 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 puddlednear 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 sexually 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 airconditioning 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.”