Death in Smoke by Barbara Elle

Author:Barbara Elle [Elle, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

Suspension of Disbelief

The names of the forgotten must be spoken, in deed and words.

Speak the unspeakable. It is the poetry of this world.

The horizon cast deep purple shadows by the time Leila got on the road. The miles reeled by as the world disappeared into darkness. Occasionally, a four-wheeler barreling at a speed limitless as the horizon overtook her.

The text came with a map. Meet us here. Leila clicked on the map and put the address in the GPS.

The drive would be easy. She was used to Sven's Norwegian-tinged accent, and the highway was a straight shot to the destination.

Although the road appeared to be a straight line, in fact, it could be deceptively meandering. The brain makes sense of world. Left. Right. Close. Far.

Depth perception is learned behavior. It is a trick of the mind, the deception of sight, a habit to be unlearned for anyone who chose to represent the world in three dimensions with strokes on a piece of paper. All in all, drawing wasn't a very useful skill, except as decoration, as her former husband often reminded her during their now defunct marriage.

But it was better to not question that vision, any more than question why she was driving a rental car on a highway headed towards what was probably another dead end, one that wouldn't lead any closer to finding Susie's killer. Leila knew it was not a coincidence that Kansas figured in two murders, and no matter how muddied colors became on a palette, the result never equaled black. That was just basic color theory, a belief that would never let her down.

Kansas was at the intersection of the two murdered women, but was the connection more than random?

It had to be. She knew it.

It appeared like a ship on the open ocean, its halo of lights piercing the blackness of the low hills: the Potawatomi Indian Reservation and Casino.

Why on earth did Sally Obanauer want to meet her here?

“Ju haft reach-ed yore destinatione, de crow redervstion und gasino,” Sven's garbled, chirpy voice announced.

She passed under the Casino archway, carved with Native American symbols, and up the broad drive towards her destination, past a sandstone and brick building complex, styled as if it had been abandoned in the Mojave Desert, rather than Kansas.

Guess this what happens when Native American culture meets gambling, Leila mused.

Following the signs up the winding drive, she dead-ended in a self-park garage, a multi-story bunker of a building, packed with huge pick-up trucks and SUVs parked shoulder to shoulder, row upon row, full. Signs pointed up a concrete ramp, only to find that level full, and up two more floors, until she finally located a space on Level 5, wedged between an oversized SUV and a concrete pillar. The compact rental barely made it in.

Who drove out to this place to gamble in the middle of the week?

The overhead fluorescents flickered (and nothing makes an ugly building uglier than harsh, unnatural florescent light), insufficient to chase away the shadows. She grabbed her backpack, made mental note of J513, and headed towards unmarked double doors.

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