“I have a report for you.”
“I’m kind of in a hurry, Jen. Can you give me the highlights?”
She spoke quietly, almost timidly. “Despite Patterson’s protestations, we ran the tests you requested, the progressive tox screen.”
“And?”
“A lot of time had passed on both corpses, but we found distinct traces of tetraodontoxin.”
“And that is?”
“A neurotoxin, basically. It causes paralysis, speech difficulty, shallow breathing, and slowed pulse till it gradually wears off, usually permitting brain functions and speech before it allows movement of the rest of the body.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Given in large doses, it can be fatal.” She paused, fidgeting with her fingers. “Do you like sushi?”
“I’m more a cheeseburger and fries girl. Why?”
“Heard of fugu?”
“The blowfish that’s a Japanese delicacy, but if it’s not prepared right it can kill you?”
“That’s the one. The toxin is found in the ovaries of the blowfish, and it isn’t destroyed by cooking. Prepared properly, just enough remains to give diners a pleasantly flushed and tingly feeling. Prepared improperly, it’s fatal.”
“I think I’ll stick with Quarter Pounders. Any idea where the killer might’ve gotten this stuff? I assume it’s restricted.”
“Theft from a lab or clinic or drugstore or hospital is always a possibility. Or he might’ve gone to Haiti.”
“Haiti?”
She nodded. “I understand you can buy it on the street there. It’s used in voodoo religious rituals. That’s how they zombify plantation workers.”
“And that’s how our man keeps his victims under control. Wow. Thanks.” I grabbed my coat.
“Lieutenant?” Jennifer hadn’t budged. “We never would’ve found that if you hadn’t asked for the additional tests. How did you know?”
I smiled. “Years of experience. And training. Proper training is so important.” I grabbed the report and headed out the door. Darcy, you little genius. I’m keeping you in this investigation. Whether Granger likes it or not.
I’ve lived in this city all my life, so there was no excuse for it. If you live by only one rule in Vegas, it should be this: avoid the Spaghetti Bowl at all costs. But it would be the quickest way to get to the Colliers’ place if traffic was down…
But traffic was never down, not in the loop formed by I-35 and U.S. 93-95 around downtown Vegas, joining just to the north and west of the Old Strip. The long strands of highway gave it its culinary name, and all the locals knew traffic there could be more congested than L.A. Fortunately, I had Darcy in the car, and he entertained me by reciting the crime statistics for every violent homicide in Vegas for the last fifty years.
I left Darcy outside while I went in to meet the first victim’s mother. Mrs. Collier was remarkably informative, all things considered. It had to be unbearable, losing a daughter. I still stung from being separated from Rachel; imagine how it must feel to know your little girl was gone forever, and worse, that the psychopathic killer who snatched her did it while you were off on a holiday. The guilt would be enormous.
“She was the sweetest girl,” Mrs. Collier kept saying. She had not wanted to talk to me. She had already been quizzed extensively by Granger’s investigators. “Sweet, sweet, sweet. All my friends told me that girls were the worst. That once they were teenagers they became monsters. But not my Helen. She was always so sweet.”
“I’m sure she was,” I said, wishing the woman would come up with a more useful adjective.
“She never went in for those naughty activities some of the other girls did. She didn’t chase after boys. She didn’t stay out late. She didn’t like to party. She preferred to tap-dance.”
“Did you say tap-dance?”
“That was her grand passion. Her idol was Shirley Temple, ever since she was a baby. She could’ve been great, given her chance.”
“Was she taking lessons?”
“Yes. She and her best friend, Amber, went to Miss Claire’s School of Dance on South Fremont. Almost every Friday, they went to the dance recitals held in the basement at Trinity Episcopal.”
“Any nights other than Friday?” I asked, remembering that she was last seen on a Thursday.
“No.”
“Never?”
“Absolutely not. I had a strict policy on bedtime by ten o’clock on all the other nights of the week, but on Fridays I let her stay up till midnight. I checked to make sure she was in bed, safe, every night. And I locked the doors.”
“Could I see her room?”
After a moment of hesitation, she escorted me upstairs.
If I hadn’t known the girl was sixteen, I certainly wouldn’t have gotten it from her living quarters. It was all decked out in pink frillies and lace and flowery dust ruffles and stuff I don’t even know the names for. My parents never went in for this junk. Even at an early age it was clear I wasn’t a Barbie girl. But evidently Helen was.
Or someone thought she was.
“Had this furniture some time?” I asked the mother, who was hovering awkwardly by the door. I figured she’d probably bought it when the girl was five and couldn’t afford to replace it later.
I was wrong. “Actually, we picked this set up last year. They were having a sale at Conway Brothers.”
Hmmm. “You know, I’m probably going to be a while. I like to soak up the atmosphere, get a feel for who your daughter was. You don’t have to wait for me. I’m sure you have many other things to do.”
Couldn’t be any less subtle than that. “Very well.” She was still reluctant, but she retreated. “I’ll be in the kitchen. If you need anything.”
Thank heaven. Behaviorists don’t work well with an audience. I couldn’t get inside Helen’s head with her mother monitoring and censoring me the whole time. Helen’s desk, her closet, and for that matter her entire room, were uncommonly clean. I realize I was not the prototypical teenager, but my room had never looked like this. Had her mother cleaned up before the cops arrived? Or did Mom always keep the joint like this? Was she one of those hausfraus who scurried around telling people to take off their shoes and not touch anything, making it more like a museum than a living environment? How would young Helen react to being raised by a single parent who had that obsessive-compulsive approach to life?
I combed through Helen’s closet, finding nothing of interest. She had a lot of clothes and tons of shoes, but I supposed that wasn’t unusual for girly-girls of her age. All her outfits appeared to be of the sort her mother would approve. Tasteful knee-length tea dresses that kept the body well covered. Pep club uniform. One-piece swimsuits. No Britney Spearsish midriff-revealing outfits. No hip-hugging blue jeans. No cleavage-boosting brassieres or clinging sweaters. No Victoria’s Secret lingerie.
Maybe her idol really was Shirley Temple.
Nah.
I checked the bathroom, too, but I felt certain that if there had ever been anything of interest, Mom would’ve removed it. I not only found nothing useful, I found nothing that suggested this girl had ever hit puberty, unless you counted the box of tampons shoved to the back of the cabinet beneath the sink. No pills, no diaphragm. Not even Clearasil.
I was hoping for a diary, but no such luck. In the bottom desk drawer, however, I found a stack of collage books. Helen was a scrapbooker. But this was not your garden-variety scrapbook. There were no pictures of actors or pop stars, no Eminem or Brad Pitt. Most of the pictures came out of magazines, and all were of people in authority, people in helping professions. Police officers, doctors in white coats, firemen. Wholesome role models.
Was this girl really the Pollyanna her mom thought she was?
Possible. But I still didn’t think so.
On the back page of one of the scrapbooks, I found a Web URL. I jotted it down in my notepad. I was putting them away when something spilled out of one of them, something that had been wedged between the pages.
A torn bus ticket. Now that was interesting. She wouldn’t need to ride the bus to get to Trinity Episcopal.
I didn’t expect to find anything useful under the bed. Wasn’t that the first place parents always looked? That was where I’d kept my pot when I was her age. And God knows I’d gotten caught often enough.
But under Helen’s bed, hidden in a small box wedged between the bottom of the mattress and the wooden slats, I found an outfit of clothes. It was all black. A sheer, tight lacy bodice. An equally tight, short leather skirt. Matching bra and shoes. Fishnet hose. A pair of black Ray-Bans with purple lenses. Something that looked like a white shoe polish brush but which I knew (thanks to Rachel) was actually used to put a temporary streak of color in your hair that washed right out once you were home from your revels. All told, a very exotic, erotic, interesting little outfit.
Granger’s investigators would’ve seen this, too, of course, but they wouldn’t grasp the significance. They’d laugh embarrassedly, or maybe make some off-color joke about the little girl getting some action. Then they’d close the box and put it away and proceed to look for bloodstains or something else they could understand. But to me, this box spoke volumes.
Helen was a closet Goth girl.
Downstairs, I found that one of Helen’s friends had arrived. I knew from a picture wedged into the side of the mirror above Helen’s dresser that this was Amber. She was more distraught than the mother, her cheeks still red, her eyes watery. When I asked if I could have a few words with her, I thought she might faint. But she agreed. That only left the more difficult chore of getting rid of Mom.
“I don’t see what you could possibly have to ask that I couldn’t hear. This is about my daughter, after all.”
“That’s just it,” I tried to explain. “Your presence could… inhibit the discussion.”
“This is still my home, and if you’re going to talk to my daughter’s best friend, whom I’ve known since she was six, you’re going to have-”
“If you won’t cooperate with me, ma’am, I’ll be forced to call some uniforms and take her downtown. Is that what you want?”
She stared at me stonily, lips tightly pursed.
“They’ll come with the siren blazing. They’ll put cuffs on her. She’ll ride in the back of the cop car and be processed and printed and strip-searched before being interrogated.” All of which was total bullshit, but I figured this lady wouldn’t know.
She relented. “Very well. But Amber, dear, listen to me.” She took the girl’s hand, and I got the immediate impression the girl wished she wouldn’t. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to tell this woman anything. If at any time you want the questioning to stop, you just call for me. Understand?”
“Yes, Mrs. Collier.”
The woman disappeared herself, leaving us alone. Amber was taller and beefier than Helen had been, with lighter hair and a way of talking that seemed both lazy and smart.
“Kind of controlling, isn’t she?” I said, hoping to break the ice.
Amber shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
“I guess you must be, if you’ve known her since you were six. Were you over here a lot?”
“Most times we hung at my house. It’s closer to school, and my dad keeps the pantry well stocked. Over here I was always worried that I might drop a cookie crumb on the carpet and give Mrs. Collier a heart attack.”
I grinned. Mordant Humor R Us. “But you and Helen were tight?”
“Yeah. Best buds.”
“And when the two of you took off on Friday nights, you weren’t going to a church and you weren’t going to any Shirley Temple show either, right?”
Now she became wary. Which I could understand. Why should she trust me? “What makes you think that?”
“My psychic powers. Am I right?”
She didn’t answer.
“I found one of Helen’s bus tickets.”
Still nothing.
“Found Helen’s party suit, too, and I feel certain she wasn’t wearing that getup to any church.”
Amber smiled a little.
“Where’s the Goth scene these days, Amber? Was there a bar you two liked? Maybe something on campus?”
“Nothing like that,” she said quietly.
“Did you go down to the Strip? Pretend to be hookers just to amuse yourselves?”
I was getting warm, but I hadn’t arrived. “We did go to the Strip sometimes.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever. Just hang. Went to shows sometimes.”
“And not tap dancing.”
“Helen was more into heavy metal.”
“But there wasn’t always a concert.”
“Sometimes we’d just walk. Go to the mall at Caesar’s or the Aladdin. See what was happening at the hotels.”
Of course. “The Transylvania. She liked the Transylvania, didn’t she? Where else would a Goth girl go?”
Amber nodded. “She got off on all that creepy stuff. Haunted houses. Horror movies.”
Sure she did. Anything that was the antithesis of her mother. That was her quiet rebellion. “Anyplace else?”
“There was this club near the Transylvania. An Army grunt hangout. Helen was kinda sweet on military types.”
“Do you know where she went the night she disappeared?”
“No. I had to go to Los Angeles with my parents. So I guess she went out without me.”
“Maybe with another friend?”
“Maybe. But I don’t know who it would be.” Her eyes lowered. “I bet she went alone.”
I bet she did, too, damn it. That’s why she’d been so easy to snatch. “Do you have any idea what happened to her?” I asked, but I knew Amber didn’t and I was right.
I left the house excited. I still had a long way to go, but I was definitely making progress. And the bizarre thing was, I wasn’t anxious to get back to HQ and wow O’Bannon. I wasn’t aching to spill the beans to Lisa.
I couldn’t wait to tell Darcy.
I found him more or less where I’d left him, out in front of the house. He was crouched down in the rather bosky garden that lined the north side of the house.