She looked into J. T.'s concerned eyes, gave him a pat on the shoulder and a fleeting smile. "I don't think so. God, he looked pathetic."
"He's dangerous, Jess," warned J. T. again.
"Perhaps… perhaps not. Right now, all I see is a poor, shattered man."
"Just remember that I was right about the cabdriver from the airport."
Jessica pulled herself from the wall, took a deep breath, shrugged, and said, "So, we'll remain cautious of Mr. Frank Lorentian."
"You don't want to be blindsided by him."
Jessica gave J. T. a wan smile. "Let's go see the secretary."
"Virginia, yes, for tea and crumpets," he said. "And a list of Chris's friends and associates."
After gaining Sharon Pierson's address, they found a cab and located yet another area of the sprawling metropolis in the desert valley. The older, run-down section sported broken-down cars and battered, discarded, and neglected trash cans, empty beer bottles, wide-eyed children in dirty T-shirts running shoeless across hard-scrabble lawns, as well as half-demolished buildings long since condemned by the city.
It hardly looked the place for a spoiled child to run to.
At the door of a three-story walk-up, Sharon Pierson met them as she was coming out, her purse slung over one shoulder, both hands clutching a single suitcase stuffed wide, bulging like the sides of a rhinoceros. On seeing them at her doorstep, Sharon's eyes blinked a Morse code of dread, which Jessica quickly deciphered despite the red-rimmed eyes that had been given over to a morning's worth of tears.
Jessica flashed her badge, identified herself as an M.E. for the FBI, and announced who J. T. was, while J. T. offered to give the lady a hand with her luggage. They then waltzed her back inside, J. T. placing the bag in the unlit, cavelike foyer, while Sharon Pierson bolted several latches on her well-sealed door. "Guess I know you two are safe. Read about you in the papers, Dr. Coran."
"Really?"
"Guess you're something of a big shot, huh?"
When finally Sharon Pierson turned on a light, Jessica saw that the place was small, seedy, and unkempt, papers and discarded food trays sitting about, awaiting the roaches. The sink was filled with dirty dishes, and atop the counters lay the remains of half-finished dishes, a casserole here, half a sandwich there, pizza boxes stacked to one side.
Sharon Pierson appeared drawn, haggard, her skin like leather. Certainly much older than Chris Lorentian had been, she wore what amounted to a perpetual half snarl, as if readying for attack at any moment, her hair dead and stiff-looking from too many colorings and bleachings since her teens. A cigarette in her hand represented a sixth finger, its smoke helping to punctuate her words.
"I loved that kid like she was my own kid sister. I would've done anything for her," she told them now. "Anything…" Tears flowed freely.
"Like turn her in to her old man?" Jessica'd had enough with the pious act. "For some trade-off, something about a debt you owed?"
The green eyes glared at Jessica, sizing her up now. "Everybody in Vegas owes a debt." Sharon's dark red hair-soggy red noodles, Jessica thought-had fallen across one eye, but rather than wisp the hair back, the woman defiantly let it lay. She'd been drinking, and from the scattered bottles and knocked-over ashtray, she'd been doing so heavily. Jessica instinctively sensed an animal fear in her.
"Tell us what you can about the last moments you saw Chris alive," Jessica said firmly.
Pierson collapsed into a collection of dirty clothes left on her sofa. ''My heart feels like… like a pair of frozen hands have hold of it," she confided, dropping her head into her hands. "If we hadn't fought, she'd've stayed, you know? She'd've just got on that bus this morning." The cigarette was still, lifeless in her hand save for the smoke now, and now she punctuated each line with sobbing. "She'd… she'd've left this hellhole, and she'd be alive now, having a good time, you know?"
"Got on what bus?" asked J. T.
"She was planning a trip." Sharon's head remained buried.
"Part of her getaway?" he asked.
She looked hard up at J. T. and Jessica. "Sure, why not?
Get away from Frank, from Vegas, all the crap. I told her it was a wonderful idea, and it was. Hell, she wanted me to go with her, and for a while, you know, I thought about it, thought about taking her handouts. Not like I ain't done it before, but this… this would've been a lot of money, and it'd mean I'd have to go against Frank's wishes, and…"
She abruptly stopped herself, realizing that she'd strayed into deep waters. Jessica finished her thought for her, saying, "And maybe he'd forgive his little girl someday, but not likely he's going to forgive you, right?"
She bared her teeth at Jessica. "I told Chris I couldn't leave my job and go traipsing off with her. We argued, she left. It's as simple as that."
"Where was she planning on going after she left you?"
"See the sights. She loved nature, you know. She wanted to be by… with nature. Poor young thing… When I think of what that bastard did to her…"
"Her father?" asked J. T.
"No, the fire psycho!" She lifted a newspaper and tossed it toward them. It landed on the floor with the bold headline reading: pyromaniac burns local gambling czar's daughter to death. A subtitle read, fbi on trail of phantom torch killer.
She stared across at them, saying, "It's all my fault she was killed."
"No, Sharon," disagreed Jessica. "It's not your fault. We're dealing with a psychotic sociopath here, someone who is deadly and uncaring."
''Someone who is as predictable as… as an earthquake or a tornado," added J. T.
"I should've made her stay. I could've! I shoulda sat on her."
"And you're afraid that Frank's going to come around to the same conclusion," suggested Jessica.
New tears welled up from the redhead. "If he ain't already, you know, and when he does… I–I-I can't be here. I gotta get outta this town." Her eyes fell on her suitcase.
"Did Chris buy you a ticket out?"
"No, I wouldn't take it. Wish I had now…"
"Listen to me, Sharon," insisted Jessica, lifting Sharon's head and directing her eyes to her own. "No one, not even Frank Lorentian, can sensibly blame you for what's happened to his daughter. Fact of the matter is, he blames me."
"Yeah, sure… and isn't that crazy?"
"Believe me, he's not blaming you," Jessica insisted.
"How do you know what's in Frank's head? Nobody does. Besides, since when has Frank ever been sensible where his little girl's concerned? He likely blames everybody, the whole fucking world.."
"He knows it's the work of a violent killer who… who very likely simply took advantage of an opportunity; in a sense a.. a random act of violence." Jessica knew she was not entirely certain of the killer's motives, his method of abduction, or his mind, but she meant to say anything possible to get the Pierson woman to focus off herself and onto the night of Chris's disappearance.
The frightened woman merely shook her head and said, "If you can put 'Frank Lorentian' and 'sensible' in the same sentence, Doctor, then you don't know Frank Lorentian, and when he reads the papers, he's going to be upset, not just with me, but with you."
This made Jessica look down at the Vegas Morning Star. J. T. lifted it from the rug and examined it more closely. "Damn it, Jess, they've got the whole bloody story here.
"What?" she asked.
''How the bastard contacted you… how you heard the murder in progress over the wire, all of it."
"Damn that Osborne."
"Lester wasn't the only one who heard the story."
"Repasi?"
"And what about the firemen, the photographer? The crime scene was full when you told Repasi. And it was all around the convention floor. Could've come from any number of sources, including Frank Lorentian."
''No way. How could Frank Lorentian have known the details of the death before we told him?"