“I remember her as a little kid, so to me she’s always a little kid. Objectively, she’s alluring. And I think she played it to the hilt. Not with me, though. With me, she used the helpless-female dodge. ‘Please, Lieutenant, you’re the only one I know that can control him. I feel safe when you’re around.’ And moron that I am, I bought it.”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m an idiot. But at least I was smart enough to ask my wife’s opinion about helping her out before I agreed to do it.”

“And Rina said yes?”

“Rina said she’d back me either way. But we both knew that I’d agree to do it because of Donatti’s potential for violence. It could be something terrible happened to Terry, but I’m beginning to think that she planned this all along and I’ve been had. And now I got a teenage boy living at my house and my wife is renting him a piano.”

Marge laughed. “She’s renting Gabe a piano?”

Decker looked sour. “She heard him play this morning. Apparently, he’s some kind of piano genius. Now she’s got him a teacher and I don’t know what else. All I know is it’s going to cost me money.” He hit his forehead. “I’m ready to retire. What the hell did I get myself into, Marge?”

“You’re not going to retire. You’d die.”

“Maybe not retire retire, but I was certainly ready to kick back. How did I get bamboozled into letting this kid into my life?”

“You’re asking me? I adopted Vega and haven’t slept a night since.” She paused. “It’s better now. But I still worry until I get that phone call, telling me ‘good night, Mother Marge.’” She threw up her hands. “Some people take in stray cats. We take in two-legged creatures. It’s not so smart, but at least we don’t deal with litter boxes.”

OLIVER HUNG UP the phone. “That was Las Vegas.” He looked at his notes. “Detective Silver. He said he’d stop by the hotels but not to expect anything. The hotels keep their registries pretty damn private unless there’s a warrant or an overriding reason to expose their patrons.”

Marge said, “How about two dead girls?”

“That’s why I got the kind of cooperation that I did. But until we have more evidence, we’ll be hitting a brick wall.”

Marge said, “We could go there and hunt around the hotels ourselves, but I don’t think we’ll get much. Could be Garth is using an alias. Vegas is a place where people come to reinvent themselves. And each hotel is enormous, with lots of wings and hundreds of rooms.”

“Needle in a haystack.”

Marge shrugged. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Nothing.”

“Neither am I. I’ve never seen O.”