The spinning red lights of three ambulances and two fire trucks, along with the carousel of red, white, and blue flashing lights from two cop-car headache bars made an insane wonderland of the street outside Violet’s house.
Temple had somehow been taken outside, a shivering, bloody, drowned rat. She wasn’t too out of it to spot the coroner’s van among the confusion of vehicles.
Emergency technicians had her sitting on the back edge of one ambulance while they sprayed her with stinging antiseptic and applied gauze pads to all her visible joints.
“Oh, my God. Temple. I couldn’t come over to you sooner. They had me in custody.”
Matt was suddenly beside her, all reaching concern that couldn’t touch any part of her. Only his eyes, which were as burned-out as Rowdy’s last-glimpsed figure.
“Who?” she asked. “Where?”
Then appeared the looming figure of Molina, no Barbie doll she, with news.
“Violet is alive, smoke-inhalation-free, and en route to a hospital. The man in the pale clothes is also alive.”
“Jayden? Or Rowdy?”
“I don’t have a cast-of-characters list, Miss Barr. That will have to wait until tomorrow. The one you were found clutching by the ankles is en route to the hospital. The stab wound in his back missed the heart and vital arteries. The firemen were too late for the other man. Grizzly Bahr has a new Crispy Critter.”
Temple winced. She knew what medical examiners and staff called dead burn victims. It helped them disassociate from the inhumanity of seared muscle and skin.
“She’s hurting.” Matt’s voice challenged Molina. “And she’s the hero of this scene. Get off your high horse and act a little human.”
Temple could have hugged him, except it would hurt too much. Instead, she pushed her lips into a grin and was amazed to find them obeying. Man, she needed moisturizer!
“After all,” Temple told Molina, “I did help ID D. L. and C. B. as possible BD planters at your … um, place of residence.”
“ID? D. L.? C. B.? BD? Are you babbling or just mad?”
Temple realized Molina must have dismissed all thought of that joint attempt to come up with a Barbie Doll Killer suspect now that the actual killer had convicted and executed himself, even that Dirty Larry and Crawford Buchanan had been hot candidates then for planting the Barbie doll in Mariah’s bedroom.
And Molina had much more to worry about now, too.
“That guy … what’s left of the guy in the burned-up room—” Temple choked up from smoke and trauma. “He’s the Barbie Doll Killer.… It’s a long and … winding story, but Dirty Larry … wanted you to smoke the BDK out, and here … I … finally did … accidentally, and—”
The more Temple talked, the more she coughed. She had so much more to say, but tears ran down her face and anything she tried to say was foiled by hiccups.
“So … Violet still alive? And Jayden?” Temple needed to be sure.
Molina gave an impatient nod. “What did Dirty Larry do? To who?”
“Enough,” Matt told Molina. “You can get her statement in the morning.
“If you say so,” Molina answered.
She suddenly crouched down, eye to eye with Temple. “You were ahead of me on all aspects of this case. I don’t know who’s who or what’s what. When you feel better tomorrow, I’d much appreciate being brought up to date.”
Molina stood and glared at Matt. “That okay?”
The glare kind of ruined it, but Temple just blinked, glad to hear the ambulances had so many customers. Her?
She eyed the woman who was efficiently tending her wounds.
“No burns, just scrapes.” The EMT smiled to make such a mild diagnosis in this one case, on this terrible scene. “You can take her home and keep up the OTC treatments?” she asked Matt.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“OTC, is that serious?” Temple asked. She still felt a little … muzzy.
“Over the counter,” he translated. “Drugstore preparations for you, baby, that’s all.”
Temple sighed. She hurt way too much for Walgreens, but she just wanted to go home to the Circle Ritz and rest and sleep and … oh!
“Where’s Midnight Louie?”
“Nowhere on the scene to be found, for once,” Molina declared from on high, now that she was standing again and looming over them.
Temple frowned. “And all the cats inside?”
“Also missing, every damn one. Highly suspicious,” Molina said, “but that just clears up the crime scene.”
“Wait? Violet’s will?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Molina grinned evilly, like Cruella De Vil. Or maybe Temple was hallucinating.
“The elderly home owner—” Molina said, “apparently this Violet—was raving about ‘Father Hell’ when she was wheeled away. She couldn’t have been referring to your fiancé. One hopes. You have a lot to nail down after you get your beauty rest and become coherent. Let me know. It might be interesting. Meanwhile, if you’re well enough, the pair of you can join my little private postmortem at the flood-control channel up the street.”
She left.
“Thanks for bailing me out of an interrogation right now,” she told Matt. She sipped the water the EMT had handed her. “There’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye,” Temple whispered to Matt in a dramatic rasp. “Don’t let them shuffle me off to Buffalo.”
“You’re pretty beat up, way more than I can live with.”
“You have not seen ‘beat up’ until I’m left out of learning the real story.”
“I don’t have wheels. Molina hijacked me in the backseat of a squad car. No exit.”
“Really? That was drastic of her.”
“She somehow knew that things were going to turn bad at Violet’s place.”
“I gotta get to the end of the block and find out what’s really happening.”
“I doubt one of these emergency vehicles is going to give us a lift.”
“Oh, no! My Miata keys were in the tote bag I dropped near Alexandra’s shrine, which I’m sure is burned out, too.”
The EMT dredged up a dripping-wet object from the ground. “The fire guys said you grabbed this as they were dragging you out.”
Temple nodded. “I never go anywhere without my tote bag. Maybe the car keys stayed in it.”
Matt felt inside it until he pulled out the keys.
Temple regarded him with pleading big baby-blue-grays.
“Okay. You stay here. I’ll get the Miata.” He picked up her tote bag and headed outside the claustrophobic circle of huge, pulsing, squawking, flashing emergency vehicles.
“Here are three NSAIDs,” the EMT said, handing them over with a paper cup of water. “It’ll dull the pain.” She looked over her shoulder to where Matt had vanished. “So will that.”
Temple felt grateful to have no more injuries than, say, a fall off a skateboard in a flood channel. The kids were always sneaking off to them for practice. Superficial wounds was the term.
The Miata’s low red nose soon threaded through the maze of heavy-duty trucks.
Matt got out to come around and lift her into the passenger seat. Temple had to remember to keep her gauze-covered palms from contacting anything. And her knees would burn like heck when she tried to walk, but she just had to get in and out of the car twice more.
“You’re crazy to take Molina up on that odd invitation. We should go straight home,” Matt told her.
Temple leaned over to inspect his watch face. “Oh. Ten thirty. You have to leave for work soon.”
Matt shut his eyes. Then he opened them and got out his cell phone. “I’ll alert Electra to be there to help you out when we get home. I can make the radio station in fifteen minutes from the Circle Ritz. You deserve to see Molina eat more crow. And I’m curious too.”
* * *
An oddly unofficial group of vehicles formed a second circle at the small paved maintenance parking lot for flood-control workers at the end of Aloe Vera Drive, directly behind Violet Weiner’s property.
The pale slash of empty concrete riverbed through the desert and the unlit empty acres that constituted one of Las Vegas’s hundred or so retention basins made civilization seem far, far away.
Matt pulled the Miata to a stop next to Detective Alch’s Crown Vic, obviously Molina’s ride home, because she leaned against its side.
Dirty Larry’s Impala looked low-down and dirty compared to the contemporary vehicles. He sat on the front hood, feet dangling and head down, like a juvenile delinquent.
Rafi Nadir’s black SUV was parked opposite the white Crown Vic. Interesting position and effect, Temple thought.
It wasn’t until Matt off-loaded her and sat her on the Miata’s hood that Temple noticed Max standing on the fringe of the group, sans vehicle. They had converged on this site from all directions for an oddly unofficial, but appropriate, conference.
And it turned out that it all began and ended with … Dirty Larry.
“You planted that Barbie doll in my house,” Molina told Dirty Larry. “Was whatever reason you did it worth your career in law enforcement?” Molina moved into close-confrontation distance.
“We burned the Barbie Doll Killer, didn’t we?” Dirty Larry’s words were a mumble, and his cynical, defiant eyes were downcast for once and stayed there.
Temple couldn’t help thinking that Podesta was a latter-day Rebel with a Cause. But what cause, what point?
“You risked more lives,” Molina said. “Miss Barr’s tonight, for one. And you literally toyed with mine by making it look like my daughter was in danger.”
“And my daughter,” Rafi said, moving toward him, fists balled.
Molina put a hand on his arm. Rafi was off the force, too, and had been for a long time.
“You are through on this police force and any other,” she told Larry.
He shrugged. “For what cause? Flirting with a homicide lieutenant with intent to catch a killer?”
This time Molina took an infuriated step toward the guy, and Rafi put a cautioning hand on her arm.
Alch just pulled out his cuffs. “Lieutenant?”
“Obstruction,” she said between set teeth. “Dereliction of duty. Endangerment of a minor. Public endangerment. Give me a minute. How can I count the ways?”
“Everybody might want to cool down,” Max said from his position aloof from the group. “You all could do each other a lot of career damage, and the loose canon is right: the main objective—identifying and stopping the Barbie Doll Killer—is a done deal.”
“And you’re an expert on not doing oneself a lot of damage,” Molina argued bitterly.
“Yeah. I’m an expert.” Max looked over at Matt, holding Temple protectively tight. “You’re scaring the civilians, officers. Hell, you’re scaring me. You better get your stories straight for the paperwork. Petty vengeance is not going to see any of you through.”
They quieted as his words reminded them no one official had acted entirely “professionally” for the past few months.
Matt eyed him curiously. “You’re not furious this guy got Temple going head-to-head and hand-to-hand with a serial killer?”
“You forget ‘heart-to-heart.’” Max smiled at Temple. “Gandolph chided me for underestimating you. I didn’t even remember you at the time. Sorry about that. Look, Devine. You’re an advisor, a mediator. There’s too much fear and fury bubbling under the surface here. Help us out.”
Meanwhile, Temple couldn’t keep her eyes off the case’s odd man out.
It was rewarding to see all the crime-solving pros with their feathers ruffled over little her stumbling across the Barbie Doll Killer, but it was Dirty Larry who’d bullied the others into pressing forward on the case, no matter what.
“Did you know,” Temple asked Larry, “that you messing with the lead detective’s head and maternal instincts to get her personally involved risked making you a suspect yourself?”
“Sure.” He quirked her a smile that could easily pass as a smirk. “Whatever it took.” His glance ricocheted fast off of Molina’s and Rafi’s. “All I ever wanted was the guy who did that to my stepsister—strangled her almost to death and put her in a living nowhere—stopped. I don’t care what happens to me now.”
Another uneasy silence was turning into wakelike solemnity.
“Sure you do,” a voice said.
Molina’s. And she had more to say.
“And you have a lot more to enlighten us on, but Kinsella is right. We all went off the reservation, either on this case or … related issues. I don’t know all the whys and wherefores of what you did, Larry, and we will go over every bit of it, but I still can’t stomach letting you stay on the force.”
Dirty Larry shrugged again.
Temple realized, hey, gosh, he’d probably grown up in the same nurture-starved environment as his stepsister and suffered from the same lack of—ta-dah—that psychobabble favorite: self-esteem. Actually, that terrible crime had motivated him to get into law enforcement and make sure the elusive killer was caught. So he was as obsessive in his way as the Barbie Doll Killer.…
Max was right. Temple was a bleeding heart. She looked over to find him winking at her.
Meanwhile, Matt was giving her an encouraging hug. Ooh, she was going to ache all over tomorrow from doing the Fireman Drag tonight.
“I’ll mediate for you police persons,” Matt said. “Someplace way more comfortable and conducive to compromise than this wilderness.”
Rafi made a considering face and turned to D. L. “There’s always private security work in Vegas.”
“Not Vegas,” Dirty Larry muttered.
Lieutenant C. R. Molina looked so relieved she actually quirked a smile at Rafi Nadir. He did a Dirty Larry and lowered his glance.
Temple smiled at Matt. He took that for an OK to kiss her hard back into the land of the living.… Danger was an aphrodisiac.
“Devine,” Molina said, not commenting on the kiss. But she could have been, Temple thought. “I’ll pick a neutral location and e-mail you. We’ll … put all the pieces together before breakfast tomorrow.”
Matt gave Temple a look. The last thing he needed tonight was an early morning call, but it sure wasn’t going to put a kink in anything. When he turned to lift her off the hood and into the Miata, she saw Max had vanished. Where had he parked, anyway? Had to be mysterious about everything.
Alch caught up with them before Matt could start the car to leave. “You kids. Get outta here. I’ll calm Carmen and Rafi down,” he told Matt, leaning in the driver’s side open window. “You’ll have sane people to deal with in the morning.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be one of them,” Matt answered.
Alch patted his shoulder. “Sure you will. Mister Midnight knows Elvis.”
“You listen to my show?”
“Hey. I work late hours and live alone. There are worse things to do.”
Alch moved back to the trio of boss and her two onetime suitors.
“I’d hate to be in Larry’s shoes,” Matt said, thinking the same thing Temple was. “For someone as buttoned-down as Molina is, she sure has stirred up a lot of sticky man trouble.”
“And then there’s Max,” Temple said as they drove away.
“Max and Molina? Oil and water,” he pronounced.
“Aren’t those both ‘holy’ elements in your religion?”
“Yes, but holy hell in the romance department.”