"If we talked, we could work it out," Andrea insisted. "Goddamn it, all you can do is shut me out I'm telling you not to go. I need you to stay here."
In his mind, he could hear Maggie warning him years ago. "I know. But you don't love me. You never did."
"That's a lie!"
"Don't pretend," he told her. "I'm done with pretending."
Andrea was defiant. "I'm asking you to stay here and work this out."
He heard the implicit message: You're my husband. Do this for me. He wanted to make her happy, but he had been trying and failing for years.
"I'm sorry. This is something I have to do."
Andrea gasped, putting a hand over her mouth. "You want a divorce, don't you?"
He closed his eyes. "Don't you?"
"No!" she insisted. "No, I don't want that I would never want that!"
"But you're not happy," Stride said. "I'm not happy. There's only one answer here."
"We can fix this if you'll just stay and work with me, but all you can talk about is going away."
He took her hands in his and shook his head. "We can't fix this, Andrea. It's going to be better for both of us if we make new lives. And I think you feel that way, too."
She whirled away from him in anger, her blonde hair falling across her face. She squeezed her hands against her head, her eyes wild. From her dresser, she grabbed a bottle of perfume and threw it against the wall, where it shattered, filling the room with a sickly sweet scent. Andrea stared at the glass sprinkling the floor. It seemed to transport her. She seemed to be somewhere else entirely.
Stride put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugged it off.
"Just go," she told him.
"I'm sorry."
Her eyes were fierce. "No, you're not. You've already decided what's important to you. If it matters so much to you, then just get the hell out, and go. I hope you get what you want And when you find it, I hope you ask yourself why you wanted it so damn bad."
47
Stride was on the highway by the edge of the wilderness. It was the chase dream again, where he was running after a girl he couldn't find, but this time, after pursuing her along the trail and hearing her laughter luring him on, he did find her. He found Rachel in the middle of a clearing, dead in a ruby pool of her own blood. Surrounding her, looking down at the body, were Cindy, Andrea, and Serena. All of their hands were stained in red.
"Who did this?" he shouted.
Each of the women, in turn, raised a finger and pointed at him.
He started awake.
Serena was next to him, reading the airline magazine. She looked at him. "Bad dream?"
"Sort of. How did you know?"
"You called out Rachel's name."
Stride laughed. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair, trying to escape the fuzzy feeling of waking up. "Did I really?"
"No. I'm teasing. You just looked like you were somewhere you didn't want to be."
He leaned over and kissed her. "I'm exactly where I want to be."
Stride could feel the plane descending. He craned his neck to look out the window, but their seats didn't allow a view of the city. He saw only a bright glow suggesting an enormous source of light somewhere nearby. As they touched down, he could see little in the darkness but the guiding lights of the taxiways. When the plane turned toward the terminal, however, he caught a glimpse of a shimmering gold tower, angled toward him like a boomerang.
"That's Mandalay Bay," Serena said. "Amazing, huh?"
As they exited the plane and made their way inside the gate, Stride stopped, assaulted by the flood of color and neon that flashed everywhere. He couldn't help but smile, thinking of Serena in the quiet Duluth airport, comparing the terminal to the spectacle here in Vegas. It was another world.
In the baggage claim area, he noticed a man detach from the crowd and approach them. Serena gave the man a quick hug.
"Jonathan Stride, this is Cordy Angel, my partner."
Stride shook his hand. "That was a terrific break, making the connection between the body and the boyfriend."
"I am an extraordinary detective," Cordy said, winking.
"A lucky bastard is more like it," Serena said.
Cordy turned to Serena. "We've got trailer-man staked out. He left earlier this afternoon and drove to the liquor store. Got himself stocked with more gin. Then he went home, hasn't moved since."
Serena scowled. "Shit, that means he'll probably be incoherent tomorrow. I wanted him to have at least one foot in the real world."
"I don't think he spends a lot of time there."
"Well, we can always sober him up at the station," Serena said. "How about the warrant? You got that?"
Cordy nodded. "We can go in and tear the place apart. But I've been there. It ain't going to be me going through that pit of a trailer."
Stride interrupted them. "Did you find out any more about this guy's background with Rachel? Or Christi, I guess I should say."
Cordy smoothed down his slick black hair. "Nada. His so-called shop is unlicensed. Lavender only saw him once and said Christi never talked about him. He's one of those Vegas drifters, came from nowhere, going nowhere."
"Well, he had to come from somewhere to land a girl like Christi," Serena said. "We'll head out with a team first thing in the morning. Can you drop us off at my place?"
Cordy raised an eyebrow. "Whatever you want"
Stride deliberately didn't meet Cordy's stare, which was probably an admission of guilt as far as the other cop was concerned.
"You ever been to Vegas?" Cordy asked.
Stride shook his head. "First time."
"A Vegas virgin," Cordy said, chuckling.
Stride sat in the back seat of Cordy's PT Cruiser, staring out the window agog at the parade of mammoth casinos on either side of Las Vegas Boulevard. Cordy didn't want to take the Strip, but Serena insisted, to give Stride a view of the city. They were stalled in bumper-to-bumper Saturday night traffic, crawling between Tropicana and Flamingo. On his left, Serena pointed out, was the Monte Carlo. On the right was the Aladdin. Up ahead was Paris, then the Bellagio, then Bally's. The size of each property overwhelmed him.
He couldn't believe the heat When they stepped out of the airport, it hit him in the face like a fire, sucking oxygen from his lungs. It was night, but the temperature still hovered near ninety. He could taste desert grit in his mouth with each breath. Fortunately, Cordy had the air conditioner at full power, and it was now cold enough inside the car to make him shiver.
"Greatest city in the world," Cordy said proudly. "Who'd want to live anywhere else? This is the tops, man."
"People live here?" Stride asked, only half seriously.
"Now, now, Jonny," Serena murmured. She glanced back over the front seat and winked at him.
"You know what makes this town tick?" Cordy asked, as he pounded the horn at a limousine cutting in front of him.
"Oh, shit, not the breast thing," Serena said.
As if he hadn't heard her, Cordy explained, "Las Vegas is all about breasts, man."
Stride laughed. "What?"
"Breasts! It's true. You see more breasts in this city than anywhere else on earth, okay? That's what makes it special. That's what gives Vegas its character. It's not gambling, it's not drinking, it's not eighty million hotel rooms. It's walking down the street and having all these breasts quivering like Jell-O in front of you. All shapes. All sizes. Spilling out of everything they wear. Cotton, Lycra, nylon, bikini, tankini, halter, I don't care what, you know? Just so long as it's tight or see-through or shows lots of skin or lets you see their nipples, they'll wear it. Women come here so they can show off their breasts, and all the men walk around so horny they can't see straight."