AT THE START OF SHIFT, SARA SIDLE FELT SHE HAD drawn the short straw—Catherine was on her way to Showgirl World to serve the warrant on the dressing room, while Detective Conroy was heading back to Dream Dolls to reinterview Belinda Bountiful and the other strippers—again. That left Sara to supervise the lab work at HQ, in particular following up on anything Greg Sanders might have come up with. With Grissom, Warrick, and Nick all tied up with the Lynn Pierce case, she felt like a ghost haunting the blue-tinged halls of CSI.
In particular, she hoped to take care of one frustrating detail. They had been trying to track down the Dream Dolls private-dance cubicle carpeting ever since Jenna Patrick’s body had been found. Ty Kapelos provided Sergeant O’Riley with the name of the cut-rate retailer who sold it to him. O’Riley’d been having difficulty getting in touch with the retailer, a guy named Monty Wayne, who ran a small discount business in the older part of downtown.
“Guy’s been on vacation,” O’Riley told Sara yesterday, “and his only other employee is this secretary whose English ain’t so hot.”
But this evening, upon getting to work, Sara found, on her computer monitor screen, a Post-it from O’Riley saying Wayne was back from his vacation. Even better, the retailer had provided his home number, saying it was okay to call up till midnight.
Sitting behind her desk and punching in the numbers, Sara tried to fight the feeling that she was spinning her wheels while everyone else on the CSI team was doing something really productive, not to mention more interesting. The phone rang twice before it was picked up.
“Wayne residence,” a rough-edged male voice intoned.
“Mr. Wayne?”
“Yes.”
“This is Sara Sidle, Las Vegas P.D. criminalistics. You spoke to Sergeant O’Riley, earlier?”
The voice brightened. “Ms. Sidle, yes…been expecting your call. How can I be of help to the police?”
“Sergeant O’Riley spoke to you about this carpeting in the back of Dream Dolls—”
But Wayne was all over that, wall to wall: “Oh yeah, I remember that shit. And it was shit—that Kapelos character got it cheap because I could barely give the stuff away.”
“Why is that?”
“Came from this manufacturer in South Carolina—Denton, South Carolina. I used to buy a lot of stuff from them, but they been slipping. I took these two rolls as a sample.”
“Would you know if anybody else locally carries it?”
“Hell, I doubt it. I happen to know I was their only Vegas client, even in their heyday. And now, hardly anybody buys from Denton anymore…might say they’re hanging on by a thread.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to laugh; so Sara forced a chuckle, and said, “Please go on, Mr. Wayne.”
“I doubt if there’s any more of that cut-rate crap in the state, let alone the city.”
“Thanks, Mr. Wayne. Would you have the Denton manufacturer’s number?”
“I already gave it to that Sgt. O’Riley, and I don’t have it at home. Why don’t you check with him? He and I went over pretty much the same ground.”
Probably including the “hanging by a thread” gag, she thought; but she said, “Well, thank you, Mr. Wayne, you’ve been very cooperative,” which was true.
He said it was his pleasure and they said good-bye and Sara hung up, quickly dialing O’Riley’s desk; she got the message machine so she tried his cell, catching him in his car on his way to the aftermath of a convenience store robbery.
“Yeah, I talked to Goldenweave in Denton,” O’Riley said. “They didn’t sell that carpet to anybody else in Vegas, or even in the southwest. Is that helpful?”
“Could be,” she said, thinking about it, the carpet suddenly seeming to Sara like the fabric version of DNA.
Finally feeling a little spring in her step, she bounced over to Greg Sanders in his lab, but found him sitting in a chair by a countertop, not working on anything, not even goofing off with a soft drink or video game or anything…just sort of sitting morosely.
“I was kind of hoping you might have something for me,” Sara said from the doorway.
But the spiky-haired lab rat just sat there, as if he hadn’t heard her.
She waited for a moment, then said, “Greg? Hello?”
He didn’t move.
Finally, she went to him, placing a hand on a shoulder of his blue smock. “Greg, what is it?”
Shaking his head, he looked at her. “This stripper case of yours…I hate it.”
“You hate it.”
“Can you believe that? A case involving exotic dancers, and I’m longing for a decomposing corpse or maybe another skinned gorilla.”
Sara pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “Be specific.”
His sigh lifted his whole body and set it down hard. “Okay—you bring me enough raw evidence to fill a warehouse, and yet I get nothing from the prime suspect, but a ton of stuff from all the coworkers. I mean, they’ve all been in that room…but Lipton? Never. And there’s enough DNA in that cubicle to start an entirely new species, only none of it belongs to him.”
“What about the roommate?”
Greg turned to look at her, eyes narrowing. “Yeah, I was gonna ask about her.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, first understand that there’s carpet fibers on the clothes of all those Dream Dolls dancers—any of them, all of them could’ve been in that private dance cubicle at any time.”
“We knew that. What’s that got to do with the roommate? Tera Jameson?”
Greg offered her a palm, to accompany the only halfway interesting information he had: “She’s got the carpet fibers on her stuff too.”
“Hmmm. She’s our other good suspect.”
Greg brightened. “She is?”
“Yes…but she used to work at Dream Dolls, herself.”
“Oh. Her DNA’s in the mix, too, by the way.”
“Could be the same reason. You get anything from the mattress or the sex toy?”
Another sigh. “Doing that next. I believe this is the first time you’ve brought me a vibrator.”
She smiled a little but, heading for the door, said only, “Don’t go there, Greg.”
Sanders managed his own little smile, before his expression turned serious as he returned to his work.
Sara, on her way to the office, had the nagging feeling she’d missed something, that the puzzle pieces were all before her now, and she wasn’t quite putting them together.
Detective Erin Conroy and Pat Hensley sat on metal folding chairs in the dressing room at Dream Dolls, a few of the dancers in various stages of undress milling about, applying expensive makeup and cheap perfume. Pat’s alter ego, Belinda Bountiful, didn’t go on for another half hour, and she was relaxing, enjoying a cup of coffee; so was Conroy, keeping it casual, not even taking notes.
Her back to the dressing table, almost plain without makeup, the garishly redheaded Hensley wore a low-cut lime top that shared much of her ample cleavage with the world; her jeans were funkily frayed and form-fitting, and she was barefoot, her toenails blood red. But it was the Dolly Partonesque cleavage that kept attracting Conroy’s attention.
Catching this, Belinda said good-naturedly, “If you got it, honey, flaunt it. I paid good money for these and I intend to get a whole lotta mileage out of ’em.”
The refreshing bluntness of that made Conroy laugh. Then she said, “We were talking about Tera Jameson.”
“Right. What else can I tell you?”
“Is Tera’s sexual preference widely known in your circles?”
Hensley shrugged. “She don’t advertise it, but she doesn’t hide it, neither.”
“What about Jenna?”
Hensley sipped her coffee. “She didn’t advertise it.”
“That she was a lesbian?”
“No. Anyway, like I told that other female dick, the other day—Jenna liked both flavors.”
“She was bisexual, you mean.”
“Yeah, I said that before. What are you getting at?”
Conroy chose her words carefully. “Another friend of hers claims Jenna was strictly straight.”
Hensley smirked. “Couldn’t have been somebody who knew Jenna very well.”
Conroy sat forward conspiratorially. “What if I told you it was Tera Jameson herself who made that claim?”
“I don’t care if Oprah told you: it’s a crock. Tera’s lying. Why, I have no idea.”
“Were Tera and Jenna having an affair?”
“Well, they did have one…”
“Right up to the time of Jenna’s murder?”
“No—it was over months ago. They still roomed together, but Jenna told me, in no uncertain terms, that she and Tera were history. Still friends! But history.”
“Because of Ray Lipton.”
Hensley nodded. “Jenna fell hard for the guy…. You mind if I start putting on my makeup?”
“Not at all.”
Hensley turned her back to the detective, began applying her makeup, and talking to Conroy in the mirror. “I can see why Tera didn’t like Ray, though.”
“Because he stole Jenna away?”
“Well, yeah, I guess, but…”
“Because he was a hothead?”
“That, too—though Lipton was mostly talk. I saw him do stuff like grab Jenna, by the wrists, y’know? But never hit her or anything.”
Conroy kept trying. “What else didn’t Tera like about Ray Lipton?”
“He looked down on Tera…he was very, what’s the word? Provincial in his thinking. To him, it was perversion, girls with girls.”
In the dressing room mirror, Pat Hensley was turning into the garishly attractive Belinda Bountiful. Conroy asked, “Pat…Belinda—this is important. Are you sure Jenna and Tera were involved, romantically? Sexually?”
A laugh bubbled out of the stripper. “Oh, yeah—I know for a fact!”
“Are you saying…”
Now the stripper turned and looked at the detective dead on. “Don’t spread this around, okay? I got a husband, and two kids. But I work in a kinda bizarre line of business, you might have noticed, and I don’t always see things, or do things that…conventional society would put their stamp of approval on.”
Knowing the answer, Conroy asked, “How do you know Tera and Jenna were involved, Belinda?”
And Pat was Belinda now, when she said, “’Cause one horny drunken afternoon, girlfriend, I let the two of ’em make a Belinda Bountiful sandwich…that’s how I know.”
Taking a long swig from her coffee, Detective Erin Conroy smiled.
“You like our Dream Dolls coffee, huh? It’s not bad, for a dive.”
“Not bad at all,” Conroy said, rising, placing the empty coffee cup on the dressing table. “Delicious, in fact.”
Almost as good, Conroy thought, as catching Tera Jameson in another lie.
In the dimly lighted, smoke-swirling cathedral of skin that was Showgirl World, Catherine Willows—in a black leather coat, canary silk blouse and black leather pants—stood at the mirrored bar and waited, her silver field kit on the floor next to her.
The music pounded and a blonde pigtailed dancer in a schoolgirl micro-mini-skirt outfit was up on stage, toward the start of her set, and a few other girls in lingerie were meandering through the audience, even though the place was barely a quarter full, an early evening lull.
The bartender, a fiftyish guy in gray-rimmed glasses, came back from the telephone. “Mr. McGraw will be right out.”
“Thanks.”
A blade of light sliced into the darkness from the left, bouncing like a laser off the mirrors, and then as quickly disappeared. Stocky Rick McGraw—in a dark blue suit and lighter blue shirt without a tie—emerged from his office.” “What can I do for you, Detective?”
“Crime scene investigator,” she said, handing him the search warrant. “I’m here to search the dressing room.”
The stocky club manager slipped the folded paper into the inside pocket of his suit without a glance. “Sure.”
Catherine lifted one eyebrow and showed him half a smile. “You told Detective Conroy you wouldn’t let her search the place without a warrant.”
A small shrug. “And you brought one.”
“Tera Jameson been in today?”
“Here now, but doesn’t go on for a while. Wasn’t scheduled—filling in for a sick girl.” He gestured. “She’s working private dances. You need her?”
“No. The night Jenna Patrick died, over at Dream Dolls—Tera worked that night, right?”
“Yeah. I told the cops all about it.”
“Tell me again.”
“Well, she was here, all right. We were kind of shorthanded, and she wound up doing sets at the top of every hour, for a while there.”
“Do you have any kind of record of that? Is there a sheet that logs which dancers went on and came off when…that sort of thing?”
“What do you think? They sign in, they sign out; that’s the extent of it.”
“But you would testify she was here all night?”
McGraw nodded. “Six P.M. to three A.M.”
Shaking her head, Catherine sighed and asked, “Dressing room in the back?”
“Yeah.” He gestured toward the back with his head. “Don’t you want me to round up Tera for you?”
Glancing this way and that, not seeing the Jameson woman anywhere, she shook her head. “Just the opposite. I wasn’t planning on her being here…. Keep her out, while I’m in there, if you can.”
“See what I can do…. No promises.”
Only two dancers occupied the dressing room when Catherine—lugging the silver field kit—entered. Back here, the accommodations weren’t much better than those of Dream Dolls. It didn’t matter how nice a club was, the dressing rooms were all the same.
The nearest dancer was touching up her makeup. She gave Catherine a noncommittal nod in the mirror, her wide brown eyes sizing up the competition.
Catherine asked, “Tera Jameson’s table?”
The dancer nodded toward the back. “She has the whole rear stall—she’s a star, y’know.” Turning from the mirror to look Catherine up and down, rather clinically, she added, “I didn’t know she had a new squeeze.”
Catherine said, “I’m with the police,” and flashed the CSI I.D.
“And that makes you straight?”
Catherine arched an eyebrow. “The Jenna Patrick homicide?”
Now the woman got it, but she didn’t seem to much care. “I didn’t know her,” she said, turning to herself in the mirror.
The other dancer had flopped onto one of the sofas, on her back, and was smoking a cigarette; she looked bored beyond belief.
At the far end, Tera had given herself some privacy by moving in a small clothes rack of her own, which she’d positioned as a wall between her and the next station. A window onto the rear parking lot was next to her table and obscured from view of the rest of the dressing room by that same clothing rack. Her makeup table and mirror was at right, while across the way—where there had once been another makeup station—another small rack of clothes was hanging with shoes below.
Tera’s station itself was neatly organized. The chair was pushed in under the table, makeup case closed and sitting on the left side of the table, a box of tissues on the right corner nearest the mirror, a towel folded in quarters in front of it, another draped neatly over the back of the chair. The routine was readily apparent to someone who had once been in the life. Catherine eased into the latex gloves and went to work.
The makeup kit looked more like a jewelry box with a lid that flipped up and three drawers down the front. The top opened to reveal some small jars and brushes, and lipsticks laid in a neat row in a padded section on the right side.
But among the jars of nail polish and makeup, Catherine found a bottle of spirit gum.
Pleased, she bagged that and moved to the top drawer, where she found more lipsticks, rouges, bases, and powders. The second drawer contained much the same thing and Catherine wondered how much makeup one dancer needed. In the bottom drawer, she saw a stack of fashion magazines; she almost shut it again, then stopped and removed the magazines, and—crammed down under them—found a fake mustache and beard.
The beard/mustache combo looked as though it could match the rayon fibers they had found at Dream Dolls. With a satisfied sigh, Catherine bagged this major find and set it on the makeup table.
Catherine casually flipped through the garments on the rack nearest the station. She knew how it improbable it was that the Lipton Construction jacket would be hiding out here in plain sight, but she had to look. The circumstantial evidence was mounting, but she could already hear some lawyer saying Tera had decided to imitate her friend Jenna’s old man act, and that’s why she had spirit gum and blah blah blah.
But if that jacket turned up here, that would really sell a jury….
She tried the other clothes rack and found nothing but stripper attire; however, when she checked down below, looking through the shoes, hoping to find a pair of man’s boots, she noted a small suitcase and a matching train case. Pulling them out from where they’d been tucked away, Catherine snapped the suitcase open and found various street clothes; the train case held, among other things, the cosmetics that had been missing from Tera’s bathroom this morning.
Suddenly Catherine knew this was Tera’s final night at Showgirl World. The woman would gather her last night’s wages—and this week’s check, due tonight—and book it out the window to the parking lot.
Catherine punched Sara’s number into her cell phone.
“Sara Sidle.”
“It’s me. I found spirit gum and the fake facial hair. There’s even a damn window right by Tera’s dressing table, for her to slip out of.”
“Wow! Why did she keep that stuff around? Why didn’t she dump it?”
“She’s here now,” Catherine said. “Maybe I’ll ask her. You touch base with Conroy lately?”
“Yeah, I’m in the car with her now, heading your way. Conroy wants to question Jameson.”
“What do you have that’s new?”
“Greg’s done with the tests on the evidence from the woman’s apartment,” Sara said. “Seems the sex toy has Jenna’s DNA on it, and the menstrual blood stains from the mattress? They’re from both women—Tera and Jenna, sharing a bed.”
“So Tera’s lover dumped her for a guy,” Catherine said. “Ray Lipton, a homophobic hypocritical hothead. Tera decides to get even and kill her unfaithful lover, then frame the interloping boyfriend.”
“She could have it all,” Sara said.
“It’s a motive,” Catherine said, “but we still need something to tie her directly to the killing—beard isn’t going to be enough.”
“Look,” Sara said, “keep Tera there till we get there.”
“I had better,” Catherine said. “She’s a definite flight risk. Bags are packed here at the club…next to that window.”
“Give us ten minutes. Oh yeah, one more thing Greg found—rug fibers from the lap-dance room at Dream Dolls turned up on jeans we took from Tera’s apartment.”
“Okay. I’ll see you…” Catherine’s voice trailed off. Then she said: “We’ve got her. She did it.”
“Huh? How so?”
Catherine smiled into the cell phone. “If there were fibers from the private dance room at Dream Dolls, on Tera’s clothes? She’s guilty.”
“But Tera worked there, too!”
“Yeah, she worked there before that carpeting was laid. Tera left Dream Dolls three months ago, and hadn’t set foot in the place, since—or so she said.”
“And the carpeting went in two months ago!”
“That’s right. We’ve got her.”
Sara spoke to Conroy, bringing her up to speed.
Suddenly Conroy was on the phone. “Keep Tera busy, if you can. Don’t play cop: I’ll make the arrest.”
Cell phone back in her purse, Catherine returned to the makeup station to gather her things, but the plastic bag with the beard had slipped to the floor.
When Catherine bent to retrieve it, she looked under the table and saw a vent in the wall near the floor. Pulling out her Mini Maglite, she shone the beam at the screws and saw that the paint on them had been freshly chipped. From her field kit she got a small screw driver, and crawled under the table to unscrew the four screws; then she pulled off the grate.
Inside the vent lay a dark garbage bag. She pulled it out and allowed herself a little smile as she opened it. In the bottom of the bag were the Lipton Construction jacket and the men’s boots Tera had worn that night.
And now Catherine could see it happening, in her mind’s eye…
…back in her quiet corner of the dressing room, Tera tapes down her breasts and dresses in clothes similar to Lipton’s. She shoves her hair up under a ball cap, glues on the fake beard and mustache and dons the dark glasses and the Lipton Construction jacket that she’d obtained from either one of his workers or a customer. She opens the window, watches for a quiet moment, drops into the parking lot where her car waits. Then, in drag, she drives to Dream Dolls, and somehow coaxes Jenna into the back room—either the disguise fooling the dancer in the dim lighting, or Jenna titillated by her former lover’s masquerade.
Once in the lap-dance cubicle, Tera slips the electrical tie around Jenna’s neck and yanks it tight. She watches the woman who betrayed her squirm in pain, then die.
Leaving the club, Tera returns—still in drag—and parks in the Showgirl World rear lot, waiting for the right moment to slip back through the window into the club, where she removes the disguise and hides the beard under some Vogue’s and the jacket and boots in the vent. Soon she is to be back on stage, entertaining the masses, never having left the club.
When the police come to her apartment, she puts on the act of the grieving former roommate, certain that the plot will work and Ray Lipton will spend the rest of his life in prison.
In building her alibi, Tera had run so tight a timetable that the damning evidence—the fake facial hair, the jacket, the boots—had been stowed away at Showgirls, for future disposal. But with cops coming in and out of the club, and all these eyes on her, Tera hadn’t yet dared sneak them out.
Catherine bagged the jacket and the boots, and then she closed up her field kit and gathered everything—it was quite a haul—and set them on the floor next to Tera’s station. Toward the front of the dressing room, the black dancer was about to go out in a silvery nightgown over silver bra and thong.
“Are you on next?” Catherine asked her.
“In about half an hour. I’m gonna go out and stir up some business, first.”
Catherine showed her a five-dollar bill. “A favor?”
The dancer snatched the fivespot out of Catherine’s fingers, then asked, “What?”
“Just go out there and see if Tera’s occupied.”
The dancer shrugged, went out, came back in less than a minute.
“She’s giving a private dance. Way down on the end—it’s a separate room, but no door. Slip out past the bar during a song, and she probably won’t see you. Between songs, she might.”
“Thanks.”
Catherine lugged the evidence outside and locked it in the Tahoe. As long as Tera hadn’t seen her, Catherine wasn’t worried about the woman splitting—she was giving a private dance, and still had no idea that Catherine was even on the premises, let alone what evidence the CSI had found.
With the Tahoe locked, Catherine checked the magazine on her pistol and reholstered it. Maybe she wouldn’t be making the arrest herself, but Catherine knew she was dealing with a killer. She glanced up the street, saw no sign of Conroy and Sara, and decided she better get back inside.
Inside again, she stopped at the bar where that fiftyish bartender was using a damp cloth on the countertop. She said to him, “Detective Conroy tells me you’re an ex-cop.”
The guy nodded.
“You know who I am?” she asked him.
“CSI.”
“That’s right. If there’s trouble, what are you going to do?”
He eyeballed her for a long moment. “Call 911.”
“Right answer.”
He absently wiped his cloth over the bar. “Is there gonna be trouble?”
Shrugging elaborately, Catherine said, “Anything’s possible.”
“I’ve heard that theory.”
Catherine instinctively liked this guy—not too excitable, no nonsense, just the sort of mentality needed in a place like this. “Detective Conroy and another CSI are on their way here now.”
The bartender waited for the rest.
“When they arrive, tell them I’m in the private room.” She pointed at the doorless doorway down on at the far end.
“No problem…Tera’s in there now, y’know, with a couple patrons of the arts.”
“Yeah.”
“She in trouble?”
“Oh yeah.”
Again he wiped the towel over the bar. “Wish I was surprised.”
“But you aren’t? Everybody else seems to like her.”
He shook his head. “They’re not paying attention. She’s a wrong chick, and I’m not talkin’ about her sexual inclination. It’s just…her train don’t run all the way to the station.”
Catherine smiled. Cops never stopped being cops, retired or not. “Can you make something happen?”
“Try me.”
“I don’t want any other dancers and customers going in that room. Not till I come back out, or Detective Conroy goes in.”
“I can do that.”
Several moments later, Catherine slipped inside the private-dance room, which was much bigger than the closet at Dream Dolls. It was actually more semi-private, able to accommodate two “private” dances at a time; the music in here was strictly from the outer club, leaching in through the doorless doorway—“I’m Not That Innocent,” Britney Spears. Two black faux-leather booths without tables were in there, so a dancer could essentially enter the booth and entertain; mirrors covered the walls, and right now no one occupied the table nearest Catherine.
In a red jeweled g-string and nothing else, Tera danced in front of the other booth, though her image danced on all of the mirrored walls. Catherine stepped forward so that the two guys sitting at the table could see her. They were burly guys wearing cheap suits, blue-collar bozos at a bachelor party maybe, one with a buzz cut, the other with longish dark hair. Tera turned her backside to her audience, looked at Catherine, nothing registering on the exotic features, and kept dancing.
“You want to join in, honey?” the longhaired guy asked when he spotted Catherine.
“You’re a little overdressed, ain’t ya?” the buzz cut wondered, and laughed drunkenly.
The criminalist said nothing, just leaned against a mirrored wall and waited; Conroy would be here soon, and if Tera wanted to dance the time away, that was fine with her.
But Britney Spears had run out of protestations about her innocence, and as soon as the song finished, Tera stopped dancing, and smiled coolly at the guys. “More?” she asked them; she had numerous bills stuffed in the side of her g-string.
“What about your friend?” the buzz cut asked, nodding toward Catherine. “Get her to join in!”
That was enough: flashing her ID, Catherine walked over and said, “You two have had enough fun.”
The two burly guys exchanged looks and decided she was right, and split, leaving Catherine and Tera alone, just as a new song came on.
“I’m working,” Tera said, and flipped the green-backs at the side of her g-string with a red-nailed finger.
“Not at the moment, you aren’t.”
Tera put her weight on one leg and smirked humorlessly at Catherine. “I have to get ready to go on…. I promised a guy…”
“How much is a table dance?”
“Twenty-five.”
Catherine took a twenty and a five from her purse and held them out.
Tera’s full lips pursed in a smile. “I said one of you three cops would be gay…didn’t think it was you, though…. What’s your name again?”
“Catherine.”
Swaying seductively to the music, Tera asked, “Are you on duty, Catherine?”
“No,” Catherine lied. “I just…had to see you again.”
Still undulating, keeping time with her body, Tera smiled, and danced closer and closer to Catherine. Speculative. Unaware, and drawing closer, Tera leaned in, her lips almost close enough to Catherine to kiss her. Through the doorless doorway, Catherine could see the ex-cop bartender pointing the way, and Conroy (Sara just behind her) barreling through the club, a hand going to the pistol on her hip.
Just before their lips seemed about to touch, Catherine said, over the din of the throbbing music, “I know you did it.”
Tera’s eyes popped open, and she froze.
“I found the jacket in the vent, the beard under the Vogue s.”
The stripper took two quick steps back, like she’d been punched. “No…”
“Yes. Fibers on your jeans prove you were at Dream Dolls that night. It’s over, Tera.”
On cue, Debbie Harry stopped singing, while Conroy stepped into the mirrored room, reaching behind her to pull out her cuffs; Sara Sidle entered and stepped up alongside the detective. Catherine saw Tera’s eyes narrow, sensed the woman was about to act, and reached out…
…but the stripper was too fast for Catherine, and whirled to grab Sara by the wrist, and—showing surprising strength—flung Sara into Conroy, knocking the two women into the wall behind them, smashing into one of the mirror panels, shattering the glass.
In the outer club, the bartender was rounding up patrons and herding them out into the parking lot.
Just as the mirror broke, Sara’s head careened off the wall; then she fell forward to the floor in a semiconscious heap, the deadly glass falling behind her like sheets of barely melting ice. Conroy stayed on her feet somehow, and was trying to pull her pistol. Neither woman seemed to have been cut, some part of Catherine’s brain noted, even as she got to her feet and whipped the pistol off her hip, filling her hand, pointing it at Tera, who swiftly, nimbly snatched up a long shard of glass.
As Conroy turned to face her, the stripper—clutching the shard like a knife, unafraid of cutting her own hand—jammed the jagged glass into the detective’s shoulder, and reflexively Conroy dropped her gun. Pain etched itself on Conroy’s face, as she slumped to the floor, clutching her bleeding shoulder.
Sara Sidle pushed herself up to her hands and knees, fragments of glass sliding off her back, and looked up to see Tera grabbing Conroy’s pistol off the floor. Still battling the pain reverberating in her skull, Sara reached for the pistol on her belt. Just as her fingers touched it, she felt something cold and metallic against her temple.
“Freeze.”
Her back to the open doorway, Tera clamped onto a handful of Sara’s hair and pulled the CSI to her feet. Sara opened her eyes to see Catherine standing directly before them, her pistol drawn and aimed at a spot just past Sara’s head. They had solved a murder, Sara told herself; they’d been so close to success and in just a few seconds, it had all gone so wrong….
That was when it dawned on Sara that these might be her last few seconds on Earth.
Catherine Willows pointed her automatic at the fierce-eyed woman holding Sara hostage. With Conroy in the way before, Catherine hadn’t been able to drop the hammer on the dancer. And now…now…
“Easy or hard, Tera,” Catherine said, as matter of factly as possible. “Your choice.”
The stripper held Sara in front of her, only a sliver of her face showing from behind Sara’s skull. For all the confidence she was projecting, Catherine knew she didn’t have a prayer to make this shot.
“Drop the gun, Catherine,” Tera said, “and let me walk out of here…or this skinny bitch dies.”
“I can’t do that.” Catherine glanced at Conroy who was on her knees to Tera’s left. The injured detective slumped slightly forward, her good hand digging under her coat.
Tera pressed the gun harder into Sara’s temple. “They say the second time is easier than the first…and the first time? Wasn’t hard at all.”
Slowly Catherine shook her head. “You know we can’t just let you walk out of here.”
“Sure you can, Catherine.” Those exotic eyes were unblinking, and very, very cold. “Drop the gun—now.”
Catherine swallowed thickly, sighed, and said, “All right, all right…you win.”
“I thought I might.”
Bending at the knees, Catherine held the gun slack in her hand, leaning toward the floor, about to put the weapon down. That was when Conroy’s hand came out of her coat and she shouted, “Tera!”
The stripper spun, roughly dragging Sara with her. When Tera saw something metallic in Conroy’s hand, she fired—not at Sara, but at Conroy, the bullet striking the detective in the chest, sending her sprawling backward, her hideaway spare pistol tumbling from her hand.
At the same instant, Sara had ducked to her left, the pistol explosion deafening her, the muzzle flash practically blinding her. But as she went down, she managed to jam her elbow into Tera’s ribs, breaking the stripper’s grip on her, creating a slice of daylight between them.
Catherine’s pistol spoke.
Tera made a brief, strange cry as the bullet entered her chest, mist erupting from her torso, the shot straightening her, momentarily, before collapse came. The murderer of Jenna Patrick was dead before she hit the floor, leaving Catherine Willows—with a gun in hand—to look at her own dazed reflection in the wall of mirrors opposite.
After kicking the pistol away from Tera, Sara reached down and sought a pulse, but found nothing. She turned to see Catherine bending over Conroy, and moved to join them.
The detective opened her eyes, closed them, opened them again. “Well, that hurt!”
Nodding, Catherine said, “You gave me a scare…didn’t know you were wearing your vest.”
Wincing in pain, Conroy’s good hand went to her chest. “The suspect?”
“Dead.”
“Good.” Conroy, helped to her feet by Catherine, added, “Politically incorrect as it may be…I say she deserves what she got…Sara, you okay?”
Sara, helping Catherine guide Conroy to a chair, said, “Fine—thanks to you two. How’s your shoulder?”
“Not so good,” Conroy said, the cloth around the wound blood-soaked. “Fingers are numb. You wanna call an ambulance?”
“Why don’t I do that,” Sara said and disappeared.
Catherine brushed a strand of hair out of Conroy’s face. “Just sit there—stay quiet. Ambulance will be here soon.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about quitting…going back home to be closer to my folks?”
“You think now’s a good time to be talking about this?”
Conroy shrugged with her one good shoulder. “I think maybe I’ll visit my folks, and then come back to work a while. Before I decide.”
“Good plan,” Catherine said, humoring the woman, who was clearly already in shock.
Sara returned. “Bartender called nine-one-one when he heard the first shot. Ambulance and backup should be here any second.”
Catherine rose and went over and knelt beside the sprawled-on-her-back lifeless body of the dancer.
Catherine Willows had rarely bothered wondering what her life would be like today, if she hadn’t gotten out of these damn clubs and into college and CSI. But now, looking at Tera Jameson looking back at her with dark dead eyes, Catherine couldn’t help but see herself there, on the floor, a lovely woman turned by a bullet into a piece of meat.
Or did places like Showgirl World and Dream Dolls turn women into pieces of meat, even without bullets?
She rose.
Sara asked, “You okay?”
“You know me—never doubt, never look back.”
Nonetheless, inside of her, Catherine Willows wondered if she had just killed a part of herself.