Midnight Louise and I pussyfoot through the empty lot that is dead center across from Maylords.
“Coyote,” she declares after a long sniff of the ground.
“So what else is new? That Wild Bunch runs this town after dark.”
“Might be a witness.”
“You that eager to see a coyote after one almost made you the main course?”
“A witness is a witness,” she says. “Besides, that other one would never have come within shiv range had I not been thrown from the motorcycle saddlebag and knocked out.”
“Well, you were, and it is lucky that I was around to face off Fangpuss.”
“Good job, Popster! His two front teeth must have been older than your latest whisker growth, though.”
“That was a primo coyote and you would have been Instant Appetizer, had I not been there. Next time you may not be so quick to secretly tail a bad actor. That motorcycle joyride into the desert dark could have fricasseed your fantail. If I had not been tailing your tail they would not have been able to peel you off the asphalt in the morning.”
“Yadda, yadda,” she says. This younger generation has no respect for anything but MTV. “Nose to the groundstone, Daddy-o. Everybody and his brother and sister and second cousin have been marking territory on this lot. Not much vacant land left in Vegas.”
The chit is correct on both counts: bare desert scrub is a rarity inside the city limits. Where it exists, every life form except alien invaders tries to establish a beachhead. I sniff coyote, all right, and domestic dog. Ugh! And rat and mouse, and several of the lizard variety, even tortoise.
What I am looking for, though, is Man. Not woman. I am not about to cross woman off my suspect list, but high-powered rifle attacks usually indicate the male of the human species. Unless we are talking somebody aberrant, like Miss Kathleen O’Connor, whom I have seen dead with my own eyes, after my associate Miss Louise offed her on a desert road.
Of course, I do not tell Miss Louise that she offed her. I encourage the fiction that it was an accident. I like my little dolls feisty, which means that I do not want them feeling guilty about their lethal tendencies.
“We can clearly see here,” I note, “the shell casings where the dastard crouched to take aim. I am sure that this once-vacant lot will soon be crawling, quite literally, with crime-scene investigators.”
“We should brush out our tracks.” Louise sits and twitches her long, bushy extremity over a swath of dirt, sand, and gravel.
Showoff! She is more than somewhat vain about her long hair. She makes it clear that my buzz-cut one is not a very efficient broom. Just as well. I do not do women’s work.
I am forced to stand back from the mini-dust storm her cleanliness fetish is stirring up.
While doing so I detect something interesting: pads other than ours have been all over this lot for a long time. My practiced sniffer gets into the act. After several impassioned sneezes and a long walk around the perimeter I return to Miss Louise and her obsessive-compulsive cleaning motions.
“Forget the yard work,” I tell her.
“Why? You want the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to come calling at the Circle Ritz and the Crystal Phoenix with plaster casts of our feet?”
“Forensics is not into pad-prints. Besides, this place is loaded with them, not just ours. Nice, fresh ones. I think we have a few dozen witnesses to track down. From the way they scattered in all directions, they must have been on the premises when the first shots were fired.”
“A colony?” she asks.
“Not exactly,” I answer.
“Then what?”
“A gang.”
“Oh, great. Gangsters will not unbutton their lips for us.”
“This gang will. I know the top cat. One Ma Barker.”
“Ma Barker! What a name for a self-respecting feline! She must be one low-down excuse for female empowerment.”
“I cannot say,” I answer mildly. “All I know is that she could be your grandmother.”
Miss Louise’s big gold eyes widen like headlights on high power.
I cannot wait to bring her home to mother.