Nightwalker. Part 28

"I resent that," Ringo commented.

"He doesn't care," Dillon translated, shooting a warning look at Ringo, who snorted disdainfully.

"Please," Nikki begged. "Let's eat."

They were settled at an all-night buffet and it was nearing 2:00 a.m. when Dillon's phone rang. The cops? he wondered.

It was was a cop--but not one Dillon would have expected. a cop--but not one Dillon would have expected.

"Dillon?" The voice was feminine.

"It's Sarah. Sarah Clay, from forensics."

He sat straighter. "Sarah. Thanks for calling me. Have you found something out?"

"Yes. They've just brought in a corpse, and.... I saw the news tonight that you were there when Jessy Sparhawk was attacked by a couple of guys wearing black. I could be way off base on this, but they've just brought in an apparent suicide. A guy took a dive off the roof of the Rainbow. He's about thirty-five, no ID, but we're running his prints through the system."

"You said an apparent apparent suicide," Dillon said, frowning. suicide," Dillon said, frowning.

"That's what it looks like, and I'd even believe that's what it was, if he weren't dressed all in black. I thought you might want to know. I don't know, maybe I'm way off base, but the black clothing made me think there might be a connection."

"Who's there right now?" Dillon asked quickly.

"The place is pretty quiet. I think Tarleton is around somewhere, doing the autopsy. I can meet you at the entry and let you in."

"I'll be right there," Dillon told her.

Even though Adam would be with Jessy-and Clancy was guarding the house, plus he had a few homemade alarms-Dillon didn't want Jessy and Adam going back to his place without Brent and Nikki. No one minded.

Dillon left them with the rental and took his own car out to the morgue. He saw Sarah Clay waiting just inside as he parked.

She opened the door and let him in, then told him that since a few people were still around working, it would be smart if he put on scrubs, which would make him less noticeable.

As soon as he was dressed, she led him to one of the freezers and pulled out a drawer.

She explained that the M.E. hadn't done more than a cursory inspection of the body as of yet. It had probably been photographed, and probed to determine lividity and time of death, but otherwise it was pretty much in its original state.

The man's own mother wouldn't have recognized him. He had apparently landed facedown, so there was no face left.

Not that that really mattered from Dillon's point of view, since he hadn't seen the attacker's face, because of the ski mask. The man's build seemed to be the same as the slighter attacker's, though, and when Sarah showed him the man's s.h.i.+rt, which she pulled from a pile of neatly folded clothes on a nearby table, the style appeared to be the same.

He stared at the corpse, then at Sarah. "Anything on the prints yet?" he asked her.

"Yes," she told him, then picked up a file folder and began to read. "Harold Miffins, alias Nigel Tombs, alias Burt Tolken. He's got a record a mile long, but mostly for petty theft and breaking and entering. Thirty-five. No known family. He's moved around a bit. Hailed from Flagstaff, started on his petty-crime spree in Los Angeles, came to Vegas, went to New York, returned to California, then came back to Vegas. No drug arrests. Looks as if he just couldn't hold down a job, so he kept returning to a life of crime."

"Anything about what he'd been doing in Vegas before he took his plunge?"

"So far, if the cops have gotten anything, I don't know," she told him.

He looked at the body for a moment longer. It was a twisted ma.s.s of blood and bruising. Whatever his past crimes, he had just paid a hefty price.

Dillon thanked Sarah, and as she led him back to the front door, she promised to call him if she heard anything. "I'd really like to know who he was working for," he said.

She laughed. "I don't think they hand out social-security forms when they hire you for a hit."

"He was connected to someone here in Vegas. You don't plan a coordinated hit like tonight's on your own, not when your past crimes are pretty much limited to knocking over convenience stores. He was no master criminal."

She smiled. "No."

"You're really burning the midnight oil," he told her.

She grinned. "I'm going places," she told him confidently. "The more tech knowledge I can master, the better a detective I'm going to be. I'm aiming for homicide detective, then I'm going to be a lieutenant in homicide, and from there I'm going to make my way to the top."

"I'm sure you will," he said.

She let him out. "I'll keep in touch."

"Thanks, Sarah. Thank you a lot."

Jessy was glad that Clancy was friends with Brent. She barely barked when they arrived, then went over to both Brent and Nikki looking for attention. Brent left Jessy with Nikki, then took Adam, and together they went through every room in the house. They declared the house clean. "Still, I think we'll hang around a while," Brent said.

It was well past 3:00 a.m., and Jessy could hardly keep her eyes open. They had stopped by her house on the way to dinner so she could show Brent and Nikki how to work her alarm, and she had picked up a bunch of her own things, so there was really nothing to keep her from going to bed.

She yawned, and Nikki laughed and said, "You should get some sleep."

"I'm certainly going to bed. I'm too old to stay up this late," Adam said with a grin.

"I think I'll have a cup of tea, and if Dillon isn't back by then, I'll call it a night, too," Jessy said.

"I brew a great pot of tea," Brent said, and shrugged. "My father was Sioux, but my mother was off-the-boat Irish. I come by my talent honestly."

So Adam went off to bed, and Jessy and Nikki sat down in the living room to wait while Brent did his thing. Ringo joined them, his spurs jingling as he rested his feet on the coffee table.

Jessy turned to Nikki. "Were you...born with the ability to see the dead?"

Nikki shook her head and leaned back, closing her eyes for a minute. "No. One of my best friends was murdered, but I saw her standing at the foot of my bed just after it happened. I went through all the usual. I thought I'd been dreaming, that I'd had a nightmare. Anyway, that was a while ago now, but I still don't have all the answers." She glanced at her husband, who was in the kitchen. "Brent was very young when he first saw..." She paused, looking at Ringo, who appeared to be sleeping, his hat pulled low over his brow. "The past," she finished.

"Ghosts," Ringo corrected, clearly not asleep after all.

"Brent was just a kid, on a trip through the Dakotas with his parents, when he saw the Battle of the Little Bighorn being played out all over again right in front of him. After that, it became a natural occurrence for him. But it's not easy. Just because you can see a ghost, that doesn't mean the ghost wants to interact, which, I imagine, is part of the problem here."

"Ladies, ladies," Ringo said, rising. "Think about it. What did you know when you were born? Or when you were a toddler? Some ghosts are quick learners, some struggle. Some are afraid because they can't accept what's happened to them. Some play out their lives over and over again, some move on and others stick around and make new friends."

Brent came out of the kitchen with the tea, but it was Ringo he addressed. "Adam said that Dillon thinks the strangest thing about this case is that Rudy Yorba seems to be following Tanner Green. When Green takes off, Yorba takes off."

"He's afraid," Ringo said firmly. "I think they both are. I've been careful to stay out of sight when I'm following Green. He may not even be disappearing on purpose. He may not even know how to communicate yet. We'll have to keep hoping."

"What about Rudy Yorba?" Brent asked.

"He might be afraid of Tanner Green, or he might not know the ropes of being dead yet. Hard to say," Ringo mused, then leaned toward the teapot and tried to inhale. "You know, I don't miss whiskey, but I sure do wish I could taste that tea." He stood. "I'm going to go to bed and snore as loud as I can, see if I can bug Adam," he said.

He clinked his way to the hall.

Jessy stared after him. "It's as if he's really here," she said softly.

"He is is here-somewhere. He's made of energy, and one of the few things scientists agree on is that energy can't be destroyed," Brent explained. "So where does a person's energy go after death? Maybe heaven and h.e.l.l really exist and that's where it ends up. I've never met a ghost who knows the truth of it, so..." here-somewhere. He's made of energy, and one of the few things scientists agree on is that energy can't be destroyed," Brent explained. "So where does a person's energy go after death? Maybe heaven and h.e.l.l really exist and that's where it ends up. I've never met a ghost who knows the truth of it, so..."

"Some of them choose to stay to help," Nikki said. "Maybe it's a form of karma. Who knows?"

Jessy sipped her tea, which was both delicious and soothing. Then she yawned again and gave in to exhaustion. It was hard to believe she could sleep after the events of the day-and night-but she was quite certain she could. She rose and said, "Thank you both for everything, but I think I have to get some sleep now. I can't tell you how much I appreciate not having to be afraid when I do."

"For what it's worth, I think you're doing pretty d.a.m.n good learning to deal with the whole ghost thing," Nikki said, smiling.

"Because now I know it's the living I need to fear," Jessy told her, then headed for the hallway and the comfort of a soft mattress.

It felt wonderful to take a shower, as if she was was.h.i.+ng away the horror of the attack.

Afterward, even though she had her own things, she found one of Dillon's T-s.h.i.+rts and crawled into it, towel dried her hair and curled up in bed.

It took only seconds for her to fall asleep.

Dillon knew he didn't need to worry about his house. He didn't have a high-tech alarm, but he had Clancy. Of course, she was flesh and blood, and she was a dog, dogs had to go out-and he never let himself forget the fact that dogs could be poisoned. He watched her carefully, but he counted on more than just Clancy to provide protection.

His windows were all discreetly rigged in his own adaptation of the old Paiute hunting style. If anyone tried to break in through a window, they would trigger a nylon net, which would fall over him, then tighten if the intruder tried to struggle free. At the same time, a buzzer sounded in the kitchen, loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house. On top of that, he was licensed to carry a firearm, and he did: a small, specially equipped Glock with one extra shot, giving him ten bullets.

Even so, it was good to find Brent and Nikki waiting up for him when he got home. He immediately told them about the latest body and his theories.

"So because this guy was in the system, and his boss was afraid he'd left blood at the scene and we would find him, he took him down before he could talk?" Brent asked.

"That's the way I see it," Dillon told him. "We have to move on this. Jessy loves her job. I don't want it to end her life."

As soon as Brent and Nikki were gone, Dillon locked the door and secured the dead bolt, then headed to his room, yawning. No one was going to have more than a few hours' sleep before they started fresh in the morning.

He found Jessy sleeping, and a wealth of emotion swept through him. He wasn't sure how it was possible to care about someone so much so quickly. Even if this ended well, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't walk right out of his life.

He turned away and headed toward the bathroom for a shower. He glanced in the mirror as he pa.s.sed and saw that his hair was in disarray, and there was a smudge on his cheek, and thought that it would have been nice if someone had told him about that.

Then he stripped down and stepped into the shower, closed his eyes and let the water rush down on him.

He heard a noise and instinctively turned off the water, tension filling him, then stepped silently out of the shower, reaching automatically for the first weapon he could find: the towel rack. If he needed to, he could rip it off the wall.

"It's me!" Jessy said quickly, her hypnotically blue eyes huge.

"You were sleeping," he told her.

"I know, but I heard you come in," she said, smiling.

"You must be exhausted."

"I am-but not that exhausted."

Heedless of the fact that he was dripping wet, he took her into his arms. The water on his heated skin quickly soaked the T-s.h.i.+rt, which seemed incredibly erotic. He kissed her, tugging off the s.h.i.+rt, which was only an irritating barrier between them. In a matter of seconds her eyes were on his again as her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell, and then she was back in his arms.

They kissed, the steam filling the air around them and adding to the rising heat in their bodies. Then he lifted her until she straddled his hips, and they both laughed as he carried her from the bathroom to the bed, where together they fell to the mattress. Their laughter faded then, and he s.h.i.+fted, moving into her, exhaustion fading away in his urgency to be with her.

They moved swiftly, climaxed violently, then drifted down and made love slowly. Eventually, they fell asleep, tangled in one another's arms.

To Jessy's astonishment, Dillon was still asleep when she woke up.

She tried very hard to slip out from beneath him without waking him up. It was early-especially considering that they hadn't actually gone to sleep until around eight-thirty-but she was a creature of habit, and she had been meeting Timothy for breakfast for so long that she was pretty sure it would be impossible for her to sleep late in the morning anymore, no matter how hard she tried.

She slipped on a simple T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans for the time being, thinking that she could shower and dress in something more presentable once Dillon was awake.

Clancy was waiting for a chance to go outside, so Jessy let her out, and then put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee brewed, she checked in the living room, but Adam was nowhere in sight, either. Feeling hungry, she made herself some whole wheat toast and realized that she hadn't eaten much the night before. She'd been starving when they got to the buffet, but her appet.i.te had waned once Dillon received the call from the woman in forensics.

She realized that she hadn't even asked him anything about that when he had come in. She had needed to touch him, to be with him, and nothing else had mattered.

Her toast popped, and she found some b.u.t.ter and jam. With her plate in one hand and coffee cup in the other, she rounded the counter toward the living room, figuring she would watch the news.

But as she came around the counter, she froze.

The living room had been empty. Empty, and as quiet as the dead.

No longer.

Tanner Green was sitting in a comfortably upholstered chair.

Behind him, standing as if he was ready to run at any minute, was Rudy Yorba.