Verwandte Artikel zu CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Skin Deep

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Skin Deep - Softcover

Preisler, Jerome

 
9781439160824: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Skin Deep
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1439160821 ISBN 13: 9781439160824
Verlag: Pocket Star, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

A retired judge has been found brutally murdered on the outskirts of Las Vegas, complete with a macabre yet masterfully intricate tattoo on his face . . . the third seemingly random victim of the mysterious kidnapper dubbed by law enforcement as the “Tattoo Man.” The judge wasn’t the first person to have been abducted, drugged, and permanently altered with tattoos and body modification . . . but he was the first to wind up dead.

At the same time, several other deceased are turning up all over Sin City with their body art mercilessly removed—and the timing would seem to suggest to those in authority that all of these crimes are somehow related. But Las Vegas’s top crime scene investigators—Catherine Willows, Ray Langston, Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, and Greg Sanders—aren’t jumping to any conclusions, as they attempt to connect the dots by entering the secretive and tight-knit body art community—one that is intensely wary of outsiders. . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jerome Preisler is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series. His musings and reflections about baseball appear in “Deep in the Red,” a bi-weekly column that runs throughout baseball season on the New York Yankees YES Network Online. A native New Yorker, he divides his time between New York City and Maine.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

THE TOWN OF MIRIAM was some four hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas in the Virginia Mountains, a drive of less than seven hours when highway traffic was light and his radar detector showed the road to be clear of trolling state police. He had made the trip often in recent weeks and this time had set out late on a Wednesday night, pushing past the speed limit most of the way there. Because he’d taken a low dose of his painkiller, it had not made him drowsy, and he’d needed to stop only for gas.

At around a quarter past six on Thursday morning, he had parked on the residential street where the father and son lived and then sat fifteen or twenty yards down from their home to wait. The tall evergreen hedge bordering the sidewalk screened the yard from view but also gave him some convenient, well-situated cover. He would not stay long; his intention was simply to observe their patterns and routines. By late afternoon, he would be on his way back to Vegas, giving him a full day to recover from the trip and prepare for his after-dinner appointment with the judge.

The yellow school bus pulled up to the house at seven o’clock, flashing its lights and extending its stop sign. He had noted in his previous visits that it was always on schedule, and this morning was no different. The boy, too, was invariably prompt when it arrived—credit the father.

Sipping the coffee he’d picked up at a diner near the railway depot outside town, he watched the father and son come down the gravel path to the street. Something inside him snarled as they hugged and the boy jumped aboard the bus. But he had managed to keep its bite in check so far and knew he could do so until the right moment came.

Credit the man who once had been a father.

Now the stop sign folded back against the school bus, and it rumbled off. The father stood and watched its wide rear end for a moment before turning back to the house. He would typically leave for his job at the auto-repair shop forty-five minutes later.

Straightening, the man in the car put his coffee cup in the holder beside his seat. On previous days, he’d waited to follow the father. On others, he’d charted the son. He had not decided between them. Or, more properly, the decision had yet to be revealed to him.

After a minute or two, he drove on after the bus, remaining several car lengths behind. A few more pickups, and then it was out carrying the children over a local road that rolled west toward the edge of town, where the Catholic church and outbuildings stood between dun-colored mountain slopes to back defiantly on the sheer drop of the valley ridge. In Nevada, the desert wilderness always breathed close on civilization’s neck. Its people understood this secret in their bones but would never share it with the tourists for fear of scaring them off. Every beast needed to be fed, and it was important to keep the swarm, with its money and giddy excess, lured by the tantalizing lights.

At the wrought-iron fence in front of the church grounds, the bus driver made a last stop to discharge his youthful passengers, idling at the gate as the students shouldered their bookbags and walked to the converted priory that served as their schoolhouse.

In his car behind the bus, the visitor again waited for its stop sign to be retracted. Once its operator drove off, he would move on past the church, wait a few minutes, and then circumspectly double back to resume his watch.

He never forced his inspirations and truly did not know whether it would be the father or the son. But time was growing short, that much was sure, and he felt confident the choice would present itself to him before long.

When it did, he meant to be ready.

Chinese food on Friday nights, Saturday mornings at the golf course, and Sundays out on the patio snoozing with his face under an outspread copy of the Wall Street Journal. Among the pleasures of retirement, Quentin Dorset supposed he placed the highest value on his leisurely, untroubled weekends.

He keyed the ignition of his Lexus SUV in the parking area outside Wu Liang’s, got the air going, popped on his lights, and waved to the driver of the Jaguar idling in the slot beside him. Joss Garland, a regular in Dorset’s dinner group, tapped his horn in acknowledgment and pulled out with his two passengers, Anthony Cervelli and Matt Pakonen. A moment later, Dorset saw the retired bishop of the Diocese of Las Vegas, Monsignor Sebastian Valdercourt, follow in his Honda.

Dorset had known the clergyman for twenty years. And he went back even longer with Garland, who had been among the Strip’s most well-known casino managers once upon a time. His boisterous storytelling was peppered with names like Sinatra, Presley, Newton, and Ann-Margret, who Dorset still thought was the sexiest woman ever to kick up her shapely legs onstage.

Yes, Joss had been a bona fide mover, and the same could have been said about all of the members of the group. Cervelli had headed the Nevada Gaming Commission throughout the 1980s. Pakonen was a celebrated defense attorney who’d represented mob boss Anthony Frattone at the height of his unrivaled power in Vegas—and whom Dorset had ironically gotten to know on a social basis after presiding over an extortion-racketeering trial that sent Frattone to prison for a quarter-century.

But the diverse bunch included more than just former legal and political big wheels. Or, putting it another way, Dorset thought, recognizable but attention-starved old farts, me paenitet, Monsignor. Blake Weller was a bestselling novelist in his thirties, Sheldon Cranston an agent representing dozens of current entertainers, Lars Ullen a preeminent chef. Though he was onstage at the Sands tonight and only joined them on occasion, Jackie “Rob” Calston one of the group’s relative newcomers, was half of Rob and Hood—pun obviously intended—the hottest illusionist act in town.

Surfacing from his thoughts, Dorset watched Garland’s Jaguar leave the outdoor lot, passing under the ornamental Chinese arch. No sooner had it swung onto Spring Mountain Road than he heard a buzzing noise over to his left. He glanced around as Ullen, wearing a silver jet-style helmet, sped off on his little Italian scooter.

Dorset supposed he’d better get going as well. He would drive back to Vista Bella on his customary route, heading in the opposite direction of the Jag toward South Decatur, then taking the interstate and Summerlin out to his home off the gated community’s eighteen-hole golf course. First, though, he’d make his usual stop at the gas station and Food Mart on the corner of West Charleston.

It was now a few minutes past nine o’clock. All told, he’d be in his living room mixing a Bitter Canadian by ten.

He backed out of his spot and drove under the arch to exit the plaza and merge with the evening traffic.

After stepping down from the district court, Dorset had second-guessed his decision on a host of occasions. He was in good health for a man of sixty-eight and felt he could have stayed on another five years, perhaps longer. But losing his wife had robbed him of something vital to the post. He didn’t know what name to lay on it. Commitment? Focus? Really, he didn’t know. He and Gilda had bought the Vista Bella house just three months before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They’d planned to spend their weekends shooting holes on the course, socializing at the club, easing into their senior years. It was never to be, though. They hadn’t even had a chance to furnish the house when the pernicious disease took her from him.

And so he’d vacated the bench. The transition had been undeniably...

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Verlag
Pocket Star
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1439160821
ISBN 13 
9781439160824
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
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Verantwortliche Person
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