Private Vegas (Private 9)

“The Cessna 172 is an extremely stable aircraft,” I said, “very forgiving, even to a beginner. Plus, I know what I’m doing, as you know.”

“Let’s go, okay?” she said.

She buckled up. I gave her a pair of headphones, then I concentrated on my aircraft.

The sky was dark but with decent visibility. I went through my checklist, and once we were cleared for takeoff, I made sure my compass and directional gyro were aligned to the heading of the runway, then departed with a bit of a right crosswind.

I focused on the airspeed indicator, and while keeping the airplane running straight down the runway, I waited for it to reach the critical speed of about sixty before putting a little back pressure on the control yoke. As the spinning propeller exerted a leftward force on the airplane, I pushed in a bit of the right rudder.

Then I flew the runway heading until I was given vectors to proceed on course toward Atlantic Terminal, one of the private hangars at McCarran International, an hour and fifty minutes away.

The Cessna climbed out at a fairly standard five hundred feet per minute, and once we were at five thousand feet, I leveled out the plane and got us into cruise mode.

Los Angeles was lit up below us. The cars on the roads and freeways looked like a mechanical representation of a human circulatory system. Civilization glowed. After we cleared the suburban sprawl outside of LA, the vast desert was absolutely black.

We flew in a clear, starlit sky, and finally, my lovely, profoundly loyal, and very brave friend Justine relaxed. When we were about fifteen miles from McCarran, I began pulling the power back to 2,100 rpm, which set up a nice three- to four-hundred-foot-per-minute descent to the airfield.

Ten minutes later, we were taxiing toward the hangar, the hotels on the Strip looming in the background. When we were safely at a stop, I helped a very shaky Dr. Smith to the ground.

I hugged her.

She clung to me, and then, holding hands, we trotted toward the Atlantic Terminal and the hired car waiting to take us to the hospital.

Chapter 111

THE RIDE FROM the airport to Mountain View Hospital was swift and silent. Justine and I arrived just after one in the morning and went straight to the ICU, where a dozen hysterical parents were waiting for news of their kids, casualties of a bus plowing through the doors of a nightclub.

There was no getting to see Val.

I stalked Dr. Steven Ornstein, the attending physician, until I cornered him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He told me he was sorry, but only family members could see Val.

“I’m her father,” I said.

He gave me a tired smile, said, “Yes, I see the resemblance. What’s your name again?”

He found my name on Val’s admissions forms, then took me into a niche in the hallway and summarized her situation.

“She nearly drowned,” he said. “That’s not a figure of speech. She was half dead when she was brought in. Right now, she’s undergoing tests of all kinds. That means chest x-rays and CT scans as well as a neurological assessment. If her brain was deprived of oxygen for too long, she could have seizures or permanent damage.”

I said, “You’re saying she almost drowned in Las Vegas? In what? The Bellagio fountain?”

“She was found semiconscious on the bank of a pond, her hands bound behind her back with plastic ties. She had lacerations from the ligatures,” the doctor said, indicating his wrists. “There were abrasions on her thighs, and she’s got a pretty good contusion on her forehead. She could still die. It happens. But she fought like hell.”

I said, “Are you saying she was dumped in this pond?”

“There’s a car in there. I understand divers are going in when it gets light,” the doctor said.

I wanted to curse the paint off the wall, bang my head against it. I thought of Val, terrified, bound inside a car trunk, the water coming up around her face. Christ. I wanted to kill whoever had done this to her.

I thanked the doctor, then Justine and I took up a vigil in the waiting room outside the ICU.

During the following hours, we put down several quarts of coffee. At around four, I went to shake down the snack machine, and when I returned with Bugles and Doritos, Justine was laughing.

She said into her phone, “Three against one? Are you some kind of ninja? I’ll tell him. Yes, I’ll call Caine. Get some sleep.”

Justine hung up, still smiling.

“You okay, princess?”