Moon Music

“Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

This time, Rukmani remained quiet.

Poe thought: Maybe this is why she’s so standoffish. She doesn’t like my house. Or my hours. Still, she keeps the same hours. He steered the conversation back toward business. “Why do you think she was sedated while he was … you know … flaying her?”

“The evenness of some of the gouge marks. Almost ruler-perfect parallel lines. If she had been awake, she would have been thrashing about, and the lines would have been squiggly.”

“What about if he bound her?”

“Even so, she could have squirmed unless he had her head in a vise. Even with millimeters’ worth of motion, there would have been waves or chinks in the lines. Some of the rakes were almost … surgical in their precision.”

“Someone from the medical profession?”

“Possibly. Or someone who’s very exacting.”

Poe made a sour face. “So she was either sedated or dead when he … attacked her.”

“There was evidence of fresh bleeding into the depressions. I’d say she was sedated. Very heavily sedated. Alive but unconscious. She probably never felt a thing.” She gave him a weak smile. “Small comfort.”

He thought about her words. “That could say something about the killer.”

“Like what?”

“He’s a control freak. Wants her completely defenseless so he can do his thing. Doesn’t want to leave anything up to chance.”

“Or maybe he has sensitive ears and doesn’t like screaming.”

Poe nodded. “You may have something there.”

“Sensitive ears?”

“He doesn’t like to hear screaming because he doesn’t do torture for torture’s sake.”

“Just enjoys raking human flesh?” Rukmani shook her head. “I suppose a boy needs a hobby.”

Poe was talking as much to himself as to Rukmani. “He likes killing. He likes … dressing his victim in a certain fashion. But like a hunter with his prey. Hunters don’t get their kicks out of torturing animals. They like clean, kill shots. One big bam and the animal keels over. The thrill is the hunt.”

“And the head on the wall afterward,” Rukmani stated. “Something they can brag about. Maybe that’s what she was. A trophy kill.”

“She wasn’t dressed or displayed like a trophy kill.” Poe paused. “Of course, I got to her after she’d been in a windstorm. Who knows what she looked like before?”

Rukmani said, “I should be getting back.”

Poe said, “Do you have a fix as to what kind of instrument made the gouges?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve found flakes of metal lodged where it touched bone … consistent with a rake or some kind of tool. But I’ve also found bits of tooth enamel.”

“Consistent with biting.”

“No bite marks, Rom. More like … methodical tearing at the victim with the teeth.” She looked away. “There was something very animalistic about this death. Like he was … eating her—”

“Oh Christ!”

“—or more like grazing.”

“This is truly nauseating.”

Rukmani scratched at her hair tucked under a scrub cap. “This has not been an easy autopsy. It’s going to take a while before I come to anything definitive.” She stood. “I’ve really got to go.”

Poe got up as well. “I can’t entice you with a quick lunch at my place?”

“Lunch?”

“Well, lunch and munch.”

Rukmani laughed, hit his shoulder. “I’d love to, but I’ve got this corpse—”

“Aha! Okay for you to refuse me, but—”

“Rom, you leave a body exposed for more than a short period of time, it screws up every—”

“When it’s your ox that’s being gored—” Poe stopped talking. “Why did I say that?”

Rukmani smiled with fatigue. “My place, tomorrow night?”

“It’s a deal.”

“We are really too busy. We never see each other.”

“Guess that makes us a true ideal American couple.”

“If we’re going to lapse into mindless treadmilling and burnout, we might as well get married.”

“Name a date.”

She waved him off, kissed his cheek. “Mind if I don’t walk you out? Brittany Newel is calling my name.”

Poe snapped his fingers. “You actually think of her as Brittany Newel?”

“You bet I do. She had a name in life. I’ll be damned if I’ll take it away in death.”

Day, night, it didn’t matter, the bars in Vegas looked the same—dimly lit, smoky atmosphere, lots of tabletop slots and poker machines. The saloon at Casablanca sat in the center of the casino, a giant disk with tables and chairs rotating a full circle every hour. Usually lounges-in-the-round were reserved for places with a view. But the only vistas here were the gaming pits and rows of slots. Patricia knew that was the point. To entice the drinkers to leave and gamble.

It had been one hell of an afternoon. Productive, though. She had been the first to find evidence—a spike-heeled shoe. More important, she had found the purse—an ecru macramé thing about fifty yards from where Brittany had been dropped. Blended in perfectly with the sandy layer of Las Vegas desert. It contained her driver’s license, two maxed-out credit cards, three hundred bucks, and several plastic cellophane packets of rock crystal cocaine.