Still fishing. Women. “They’re not.”
She smiled. “You haven’t set a date yet?”
“We’re still a ways out from that.”
“Oh? How far out?”
“There’s this place, Oort’s Cloud, somewhere out beyond Pluto, sort of a hatching ground for comets—”
“Therapy might help, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
We turned onto her street. The lack of activity had finally got to the hordes, or maybe it was the heat. Only one news van was parked on the street. No police cars, not even banners of crime scene tape since the place hadn’t checked out as a crime scene. The house looked like it always had. The van was local, Channel 25, so we’d caught the network guys and gals napping.
I pulled into the driveway too quickly for the crew in the van to react. They were scrambling out as Dallas and I jogged up the walk to the door. She got it open before they were able to aim their minicams. Dallas darted through first and I yanked it shut behind me. Channel 25 might have got a shot of the front door closing. Explosive stuff, although we still had to get back out.
Dallas screamed.
I turned, caught her as she fell, and lowered her gently to the cool foyer tiles as I looked around, reaching for the gun I still wasn’t carrying.
On a rosewood table against one wall, two lacquered vases in matching Chinese designs flanked Milliken’s head. His head… goddamn. Like Jonnie, the D.A.’s tongue protruded dark and horrible through bloated lips. His eyes were empty milky orbs.
I didn’t have any idea who K was, but in only twenty-four short hours I’d maybe solved Skulstad’s problem, and I’d been locating missing persons right and left. This PI thing was really panning out.
CHAPTER SIX
BACK TO THE station we went. Before they got started on me, I said to Russ Fairchild, “You guys didn’t by any chance overlook anything at Sjorgen’s place when you were poking around over there yesterday, did you?”
This did not appear to amuse him. Nor did it get a chuckle out of Clifford Day, who looked ready to Mirandize me with a rubber hose if only Russ would give him the nod. But now, more than a decade into an enlightened twenty-first century, they no longer do that. They just think it and wish for the good old days.
Cliff was quiet, giving me a hard stare. He was a real behemoth. I doubted that he could get over the obstacle course wall in less than a long afternoon, but he might’ve knocked it over in two seconds flat, and I’d have bet a ten-spot he could wrangle a drunk to the sidewalk with the best of Reno’s finest.
“Finished?” Fairchild said. “Anything more you want to say?”
I nodded toward the see-through mirror. “How’s the view from in there? Good?”
“Damned ugly, most of the time. Only thing you can see from in there is in here, if that gives you any idea, but the coffee’s a lot better. Anything else, Angel? I wouldn’t want you to bottle any of that shit up, herniate your brain, then try to sue the department.”
I smiled. Fact is, I was starting to like this guy. “Call me Mort, Russ. And I don’t make heads. All I do is find ’em, which is more than I can say for the RPD.”
At that, Day moved an inch closer, like a glacier with intent.
“You and your ex,” Russ said. He gave me a sour look, then lit a stinking Joe Camel, waved out the match. Guess he wasn’t a Bic or Cricket man.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” I said. “Air’s not all that wonderful in here to begin with.”
He blew smoke in my direction, and I found it harder to like him. He’d been so much friendlier about this time yesterday. His eyes were red-rimmed, suit rumpled. I doubted that he’d slept much that night, if at all.
“You want to smoke,” I said, folding my arms like the locking of a vault, “I want my lawyer. Joe Needham. We’ll see whose Joe is more annoying to whom, your Camel or my Needham.”
Cops don’t like lawyers any more than they like IRS agents. He glared at me, took another drag, then stubbed out the butt.
This time we went through it five, maybe six times. After the third time I lost count. On occasion, when the interrogation room door opened, I could see a glare of lights in the hallway and hear the voices of media buzzards. It’s a distinctive sound, like human bark strippers. Dallas and I were truly in the eye of the hurricane this time.
My story was no more complicated this time than last. There wasn’t much to tell, so we went over and over what Dallas and I had done the night before, which certainly hinted at who they thought might have killed Milliken. Dallas and I didn’t have much in the way of alibis except each other, which didn’t overly impress the men in blue. I was glad I’d tipped that grad student the ten. He remembered me, but couldn’t vouch for our whereabouts from the critical hours of midnight to six when it was thought that Milliken’s head was placed in Sjorgen’s foyer—an unmarked car had been outside until midnight and the Channel 25 van had pulled in at six that morning and neither one had seen anything.
None of which was the least bit conclusive, but without anything more substantial than putting us at the top of their wish list, the police couldn’t hold either one of us. By two thirty Dallas and I were back on the street, this time taking corners sharply in the Toyota and timing traffic lights to lose a collection of network vans behind us.
“Now what?” Dallas asked. She looked pale and drained. I had the car rolling down Kietzke, fast enough to make the mirror howl.
“How ‘bout Tahiti?”
She closed her eyes. “I would, but we were told not to leave town, or maybe the county. Or the
