Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 36

Stunt Double

Temple sat in her condo in a funk as she grazed through the morning paper, viewing what Silas T. Farnum hath wrought.

She was probably the last person at the Circle Ritz who subscribed to the local paper. Staring at that day’s “second front” with its slightly out-of-register color photos of the parking lot crowd wasn’t the kind of promotion she’d want to get even a not-quite client. It was a sea of Spock ears and tinfoil hats.

She was even in one pic, caught in the act of turning Rens over to his happy owner. Temple wondered if Penny could recognize photos of herself. Or see herself in the mirror even. Just then, Louie skittered through the living area from the second bathroom litter box, his tail fluffed to radiator-brush size. He dashed across the glass cocktail table, claws razoring right through the opinion pages and classifieds section, a bizarre marriage in modern journalism, and raced on into the bedroom.

“Louie! Slow down, Mr. Black the Ripper.” Cats did that, suddenly tore through the house as if they’d gotten a moth in their ears or laid a major stinky in the litter box.

Temple bent to retrieve the scattered papers, thinking she should save the savaged second section, half-client or no half-client, and then stared at the paper’s yet-unread front page.

DEAD “ALIEN ASTRONAUT” HAS CLASSIC JUNGLE TEMPLE FEATURES, read the headline on the story below the fold. A sketch purported to be “obtained” by a freelancer was obviously based on smartphone shots caught on the run when the body first fell. Next to it was a photo of a purported “alien astronaut” from a Mayan temple. Temple squinted at the image—it did look like “air hoses” were coming from his head, and the figure was tilted at the angle of astronauts leaving Earth’s gravity.

This whole mess made “good print” and YouTube these days. She turned to the story’s “jump” to make sure no one had mentioned her name, and there was Farnum in a photo, beaming like he’d just ballooned into Oz.

Temple’s mind was on a mad, mad, mad merry-go-round.

She had no idea how she’d answered one phone call and was now involved with a notorious site of double murder, or at least of double body-dumping.

Not to mention a “ghost” hotel-casino building that was expected to attract hordes of customers by being invisible.

Or how Las Vegas’s mythical “mob” and “Area 51 alien” presence had met on one scruffy lot owned by one dapper oddball.

She ran the last few days past her mental movie screen. Standing on that hard-packed sand and watching Silas T.’s revolving spaceship restaurant appear and disappear ten stories up.

Standing on that same spot with the sand now burning in broad daylight and trying to explain herself and Farnum and his high-tech magic act to Molina.

The awful moment when the actual plastic and canvas that hid the real construction came billowing down in slow-motion, carrying one bronzed, naked male human body and a black feline figure that was twisting down like a furry screwdriver to disappear near a ground-level swell and strut out like a stunt cat when next seen again.

Cats could walk away from falls from extraordinary heights.

Dead men couldn’t.

Temple pictured the corpse on Molina’s cell phone. One hesitated to stare at naked dead men, or women. Well, one would if one was not a person professionally charged with dealing with such bare facts of life and death.

But those faint pale lines, the so-called alien scars could have been made by wire. She was sure Grizzly Bahr, no relation, had considered that possibility. Bundled in a sheet and wire for transport and then left naked at the top of the building. Why not? Great place to stash a body, in a hidden edifice.

Yet, had it been so precariously placed that a misstep by a house cat had given the game away, not any nearby perpetrator?

Somebody had “dropped” bodies there for some reason, which would mean somebody wanted Farnum’s project to be the hot public potato it now was.

So was Farnum the instigator or the victim, the perp or the target, of the dead men?

Temple turned to the sensational front page. You’d think the Review-Journal had morphed into the Crackpot Gazette.

She studied the stone figure. Then looked at the sketch. She attired Las Vegas Man in Maya Man’s headdress and gear. A definite resemblance, but in the features and the profile, not the context.

Omigod! Penny and Rens. Facial features not registering, blurring out, needing … context. Clues. She sent newspaper sections flying as she frantically patted down her cocktail table top for the slim outline of a smartphone.

Search and … seized!

She ignored contact groups labeled “Friends” and “Family” and went to one named “Iffy.” She checked her faithful wristwatch with the second hand. Please, please, please be in.

“Molina,” came the familiar bark.

Yes! Good doggie, reliable doggie.

“I need to see the body.”

“Which body of the two in question are you hankering to view?”

“The ancient alien.”

“Of course. He’s off-limits to the public, the press, even the President of the United States.”

“They wouldn’t be able to help ID him.”

“And you are?”

“I think I know him from somewhere.”

“Won’t happen, even if you met him on Mars during your lunch break.”

“I’m dead serious. I need to look at him out of context, not in it. I have temporary prosopagnosia.”

“I don’t care if you have terminal halitosis. That body is on lockdown.”

“Grizzly Bahr would let me in. I know he would.”

“Am I to infer that he has performed some highly unprofessional courtesies for you before?”

“Uh … no. I just suspect he would, like I suspect I know the body. I mean the dead man. I wouldn’t know his body, since I hardly looked at it on your cell phone, and of course I haven’t seen any naked strange men. Or strange naked men. Recently. Ever. But I didn’t really see his face. That’s what I think I subconsciously recognized. The face. But the context temporarily blinded me.”

Molina suddenly snapped at someone nearby. “Just leave the reports.

“I’ll call the coroner,” she told Temple. “If Bahr okays it, you’re in. I’ll let you know later. Much later. Some of us work on actual cases as a career, not a hobby.”

Temple hung up with a smile.

Molina was going to find out that Temple and crusty ole Grizzly Bahr had an affinity that went a lot farther than a last name that sounded the same.