The three men spread out around the stain.
“The rain took most of it, but you should be able to get a blood type.”
“You’re standing in my crime scene, miss.” The detective glared.
Fogel glanced around the room. “Really? I’m sorry. It wasn’t marked. I thought I saw someone I knew up here and just came up to say hello.”
“Jun, who is this person standing in my crime scene?”
Officer Jun cleared his throat. “This is Detective Fogel, from Pittsburgh PD.”
“Oh, you mean the drunk woman with a gun we were kind enough to not charge last night? The one we could still charge this morning, if we changed our mind? Felony possession of a concealed firearm. Drunk and disorderly. That woman?”
“I wasn’t—” Fogel started to protest, then closed her mouth. She didn’t remember.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did her superior officer say about all this?”
“We haven’t called him yet, sir.”
The detective scratched at his chin. “No, we haven’t, have we? Not yet.”
Fogel forced a smile and started toward the door. “Sorry, professional curiosity. You’re right, though. Not my jurisdiction.”
The detective blocked her path. “Has her firearm been returned to her?”
“Yes, sir. Her identification too.”
The detective’s head tilted slightly to the left. “Do you know who’s responsible for this, Detective Fogel?”
“I’m not sure whatthisis.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
“I work Homicide. Looks like you have a vandal running loose. That’s not my area of expertise.”
“We’ve got a vandal who looks to have disabled nearly a dozen cars, all the same color, mind you, at two different locations. He firebombed one of them with a Molotov cocktail. We’ve also got multiple reports of shots fired, two bloodstains, counting this one, indicating people were hit. Yet, we have no bodies. Nobody here, nobody at area hospitals. A whole lotta nothing. You know what else is weird about all this?”
Fogel said nothing.
“All these white cars, including that bonfire in the parking lot, have fake tags. Not stolen, mind you, but fake, and I’ll be damned if they don’t look as good as the real thing. None of the VIN numbers check out, either. They’re bogus. Never manufactured. These cars don’t exist. They don’t seem to belong to anyone. Not a single guest of the hotel or visitor. Nobody has claimed ownership of a single one.”
“Sounds very perplexing,” Fogel said.
“What brings you from Pittsburgh to Fallon, Nevada, Detective?”
Fogel shrugged. “I’m just a big fan ofTop Gun.”
8
“You should slow down.”
I knew Stella was right, but every time I lifted my foot off the gas, some involuntary urge forced it back down. The yellow lines of the highway rolled under us as nothing more than a blur. Tumbleweeds and thin trees beside the road blew by so fast they appeared indiscernible from the barren desert floor. The rain of earlier had been burned away by bristling heat. I looked down at the speedometer, the needle hovered near ninety-three.
“Please, Jack.”
I lifted my foot and eased the Jeep down to seventy; forced myself to keep it there.
