First Thrills

Off to her left she could see two police cruisers, lights flashing as if they were at the gates of hell. They had tried to approach the house from another direction, where the water was higher, and were stalled or stymied by the depth of the flood. Another police vehicle was approaching cautiously behind one that was stalled. Her rescuers attempting to reach her?

She knew they didn’t have a chance to get to her before the killing storm, and a chill of fear passed through her. The feeling intensified as she saw that the police were otherwise occupied. They hadn’t come for her. Instead they were looking down at a figure in a wetsuit washed up near the deteriorating shoreline. Was it Rob? Mira squinted, staring. A bushy mustache caught her gaze as they flipped the figure onto its side. Pedro the pool boy?

As if on cue, the sky continued to darken and a seagull appeared out of nowhere. Dive-bombing, it headed for Mira’s hair as if it were a nest. She’d heard that the seabirds could go crazy when there was a hurricane, especially the gulls. There was a screaming sound and Mira couldn’t tell if it was the bird or herself.

Then she became aware of another noise, not the screaming of a gull but a strange mechanical beating sound, and all at once a helicopter appeared. It maneuvered until it was directly overhead. The pilot was looking down and pointing at her.

She’d been seen!

She was saved!

She waved at the chopper frantically. The helicopter dipped, steadied, and a cable with a safety hitch was thrust down at her.

“Any others?” A man barked down to her through a small yellow bullhorn.

Mira knew when to seize opportunity.

“My husband,” she yelled. “Oh, God, I warned him not to take the boat out! He’s not a very good swimmer!”

The man with the bullhorn nodded to let her know he’d understood.

Jagged lightning rent the sky and the pilot looked away worriedly. The lightning hit again and again. The copter lurched and a female face peered down at Mira.

The blonde from the surveillance videos!

Mira remembered L. S. Crum’s report: Grad student… Marine biology… Did a lot of diving together… Coast Guard Reserve…

Did a lot of diving together!

Over the beat of the thrashing helicopter blades, she didn’t hear the gull’s scream this time. With its sharp beak, the bird was rushing at her again, right at Mira’s eyes.

The last thing she saw before she closed them was a familiar face next to the blonde’s in the open ’copter doorway. It was a face that did not regret its own er’s sins of omission nor his sins of commission. It was the face of a most unworthy sinner.

It was Rob’s face. And if he had been close, she would have seen herself reflected in his eyes.

***

JOHN LUTZ is the author of more than forty novels and 250 short stories and articles. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, The Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short-story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award. His SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female, and his The Ex was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay. His latest book is the suspense novel Urge To Kill.

LISE S. BAKER is a licensed private investigator and a member of the World Association of Detectives. She has been nominated nine years in a row for California Investigator of the Year by CALI (California Association of Licensed Investigators). Her award-winning novel The Loser’s Club was inspired by John Lutz’s fictional detective, Fred Carver. Collaborating with Lutz on the short story “Eye of the Storm” is a dream come true for this writer/detective.

Currently, Detective Baker is working on a murder case for the Northern California Innocence Project. This is in addition to running her agency, L.S. Baker Investigations, which specializes in fraud investigations.

The Dead Club by Michael Palmer and Daniel James Palmer

I’ve always loved Vegas. And not just in a “I love going there” kind of way, which I do. It’s really much more than that. Vegas is like a second home to me. In the same way some people turn all warm and tingly inside when they stroll into, say, a knitting shop, that’s how I feel as soon as I take my first footsteps onto the blood-red carpeting of a Vegas casino.

I’m home.

Funny thing is, I’m a doctor, a general practitioner, and a darn good one. So you’d think after seeing my fair share of emphysema cases and a battalion of concerned parents whose teenage kids have just started lighting up, that I’d despise the cigarette smoke that clings to the ceiling and the table felt. But you’d be wrong. I love it, despite having quit the nasty habit to win a bet some twenty years ago.

And who says gambling can be dangerous to your health?

The sounds of chips plinking against one another are like birdsongs to me. I love watching the waitresses work the room-the ones destined to seduce some high roller and those still strutting their stuff, despite being as well- worn as flea market furniture. I love the unending sea of lights and the symphony of the slots, praising the winners with their bells and chimes, while goading the losers into pointlessly dropping more down the hatch. But what I love most about Vegas is winning money and that’s something I’ve always been very good at doing.

Now, Lee Anne, she’s my wife, might be quick to disagree with that last claim, but she tends to focus on the negative. See, as any real gambler knows, you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet and that means the losses with the wins. What Lee Anne can’t seem to grasp is that even with the expected dry spells over the years, if you add it all up, I’ve won more money than I’ve lost, which is more than most players could honestly claim.

Some folks who know me best, Lee Anne for one, might argue that I had no business attending the AMA symposium on osteoporosis, held at the Luxor in Vegas, but Lou (he would be the head of my group, and the one flipping the bill) didn’t seem to mind since I needed the continuing medical education credits.

“Bobby, do you really have to go for a whole week?” Lee Anne asked, while I was packing.

One thing to know about my wife, she only calls me Bobby if she’s really unhappy about something I’ve done. To my friends, I’m Bob and at work I’m Dr. Robert Tomlinson, but at home, at least lately, I’m far more Bobby than I am Bob. Over the years, I’ve come to use Bobby myself whenever my behavior veers a few degrees from the center.

Yeah, I told her, I had to go. But of course, that was white lie. I did have to go, but not for the CMEs. I mean, Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas without a little bit of sin thrown into the mix. You know, take the sweet with the bitter.

My first night in town, I skipped out on the Cardinal Healthcare- sponsored cocktail hour and rolled into the Bellagio’s vast casino. I wanted to wet my whistle with a little blackjack at the fifteen dollar table just to get the juices flowing. Since most of us docs were staying at the Luxor, I had no desire to bump into any of them out on the floor. See, I was harboring a wee bit of guilt about spending my practice’s hard earned money on the conference and not being the all-functions, all-the-time sort of guy. I figured, so long as I didn’t run into anybody who recognized me, I wouldn’t have to feel bad about having skipped out on the cocktail hour. Of course, even at the Bellagio I was spotted. But later I’d be glad because that was how I got introduced to The Dead Club.

The cocktail hour back at the Luxor was only half-cocked and already I was down three hundred on a string of