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.