Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 12

Open Arms

Matt Devine leaned against the lapis lazuli lining the Goliath elevator car behind the jam-packed crowd of passengers. He spread his palms and fingers on the icy stone, and willed himself to let the unaccustomed rage drain out.

Of all the people to witness him coming here. Damn Max Kinsella! It was his darn fault Matt was stuck in this impasse now. They were all being toyed with by a wildcat who’d cornered a mouse, all their lives at stake. Everything depended on Matt’s ability to break into and mind-meld with a twisted psyche, a serial killer’s sensibility probably.

He pushed forward as happy drunks made way for him. This was the twentieth floor, from which the tormented call girl who used the name of Vassar had plunged to her death only months before.

Plunged or was pushed? If her death had been murder, he could be here to see her killer.

He remembered the route to this room as well as the balcony view down into the dramatic Hyatt-style atrium sparkling like endless levels of heaven, and hell, to the marble lobby floor below.

The door plaque bore the numbers 2032. He knocked.

A woman answered.

She was brunette, beautiful, wearing very little, and she held a foldable straight-edge razor open in her naked palm.