Eyes of Darkness Read online

  She said, “Don’t be pathetic, Michael. You know damn well the down payment for the house came out of my earnings. You always spent your money on fast cars, good clothes. I paid every loan installment. You know that. And I never asked for alimony. Anyway, all of that’s beside the point. We were talking about family life, about Danny.”

  “Now, you listen to me — ”

  “No. It’s your turn to listen. After all these years it’s finally your turn to listen. If you know how. You could have taken Danny away for the weekend if you didn’t want to be near me. You could have gone camping with him. You could have taken him down to Disneyland for a couple days. Or to the Colorado River to do some fishing. But you were too busy using all those women to hurt me and to prove to yourself what a stud you were. You could have enjoyed that time with your son. He missed you. You could have had that precious time with him. But you didn’t want it. And as it turned out, Danny didn’t have much time left.”

  Michael was milk-white, trembling. His eyes were dark with rage. “You’re the same goddamn bitch you always were.”

  She sighed and sagged. She was exhausted. Finished telling him off, she felt pleasantly wrung out, as if some evil, nervous energy had been drained from her.

  “You’re the same ball-breaking bitch,” Michael said.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Michael. I’m even sorry if some of what I said about Danny hurt you, although, God knows, you deserve to hear it. I don’t really want to hurt you. Oddly enough, I don’t really hate you anymore. I don’t feel anything for you. Not anything at all.”

  Turning away, she left him in the sunshine, with the ice cream melting down the cone and onto his hand.

  She walked back through the shopping arcade, rode the escalator up to the casino, and made her way through the noisy crowd to the front doors. One of the valet-parking attendants brought her car, and she drove down the hotel’s steeply slanted exit drive.

  She headed toward the Golden Pyramid, where she had an office, and where work was waiting to be done.

  After she had driven only a block, she was forced to pull to the side of the road. She couldn’t see where she was going, because hot tears streamed down her face. She put the car in park. Surprising herself, she sobbed loudly.

  At first she wasn’t sure what she was crying about. She just surrendered to the racking grief that swept through her and did not question it.

  After a while she decided that she was crying for Danny. Poor, sweet Danny. He’d hardly begun to live. It wasn’t fair. And she was crying for herself too, and for Michael. She was crying for all the things that might have been, and for what could never be again.

  In a few minutes she got control of herself. She dried her eyes and blew her nose.

  She had to stop being so gloomy. She’d had enough gloom in her life. A whole hell of a lot of gloom.

  “Think positive,” she said aloud. “Maybe the past wasn’t so great, but the future seems pretty damn good.”

  She inspected her face in the rearview mirror to see how much damage the crying jag had done. She looked better than she expected. Her eyes were red, but she wouldn’t pass for Dracula. She opened her purse, found her makeup, and covered the tear stains as best she could.

  She pulled the Honda back into traffic and headed for the Pyramid again.

  A block farther, as she waited at a red light, she realized that she still had a mystery on her hands. She was positive that Michael had not done the damage in Danny’s bedroom.

  But then, who had done it? No one else had a key. Only a skilled burglar could have broken in without leaving a trace. And why would a first-rate burglar leave without taking anything? Why break in merely to write on Danny’s chalkboard and to wreck the dead boy’s things?

  Weird.

  When she had suspected Michael of doing the dirty work, she had been disturbed and distressed, but she hadn’t been frightened. If some stranger wanted her to feel more pain over the loss of her child, however, that was definitely unsettling. That was scary because it didn’t make sense. A stranger? It must be. Michael was the only person who had ever blamed her for Danny’s death. Not one other relative or acquaintance had ever suggested that she was even indirectly responsible. Yet the taunting words on the chalkboard and the destruction in the bedroom seemed to be the work of someone who felt that she should be held accountable for the accident. Which meant it had to be someone she didn’t even know. Why would a stranger harbor such passionate feelings about Danny’s death?

  The red traffic light changed.

  A horn tooted behind her.

  As she drove across the intersection and into the entrance drive that led to the Golden Pyramid Hotel, Tina couldn’t shake the creepy feeling that she was being watched by someone who meant to harm her. She checked the rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. As far as she could tell, no one was tailing her.

  12

  THE THIRD FLOOR OF THE GOLDEN PYRAMID HOTEL was occupied by management and clerical personnel. Here, there was no flash, no Vegas glamour. This was where the work got done. The third floor housed the machinery that supported the walls of fantasy, beyond which the tourists gamboled.

  Tina’s office was large, paneled in whitewashed pine, with comfortable contemporary upholstery. One wall was covered by heavy drapes that blocked out the fierce desert sun. The windows behind the drapes faced the Las Vegas Strip.

  At night the fabled Strip was a dazzling sight, a surging river of light: red, blue, green, yellow, purple, pink, turquoise — every color within the visual spectrum of the human eye; incandescent and neon, fiberoptics and lasers, flashing and rippling. Hundred-foot-long signs — five-hundred-foot-long signs — towered five or even ten stories above the street, glittering, winking, thousands of miles of bright glass tubing filled with glowing gas, blinking, swirling, hundreds of thousands of bulbs, spelling out hotel names, forming pictures with light. Computer-controlled designs ebbed and flowed, a riotous and mad — but curiously beautiful — excess of energy consumption.

  During the day, however, the merciless sun was unkind to the Strip. In the hard light the enormous architectural confections were not always appealing; at times, in spite of the billions of dollars of value that it represented, the Strip looked grubby.

  The view of the legendary boulevard was wasted on Tina; she didn’t often make use of it. Because she was seldom in her office at night, the drapes were rarely open. This afternoon, as usual, the drapes were closed. The office was shadowy, and she was at her desk in a pool of soft light.

  As Tina pored over a final bill for carpentry work on some of the Magyck! sets, Angela, her secretary, stepped in from the outer office. “Is there anything more you need before I leave?”

  Tina glanced at her watch. “It’s only a quarter to four.”

  “I know. But we get off at four today — New Year’s Eve.”

  “Oh, of course,” Tina said. “I completely forgot about the holiday.”

  “If you want me to, I could stay a little longer.”

  “No, no, no,” Tina said. “You go home at four with the others.”

  “So is there anything more you need?”

  Leaning back in her chair, Tina said, “Yes. In fact, there is something. A lot of our regular junketeers and high rollers couldn’t make it to the VIP opening of Magyck! I’d like you to get their names from the computer, plus a list of the wedding anniversaries of those who’re married.”

  “Can do,” Angela said. “What’ve you got in mind?”

  “During the year, I’m going to send special invitations to the married ones, asking them to spend their anniversaries here, with everything comped for three days. We’ll sell it this way: ‘Spend the magic night of your anniversary in the magic world of Magyck!’ Something like that. We’ll make it very romantic. We’ll serve them champagne at the show. It’ll be a great promotion, don’t you think?” She raised her hands, as if framing her next words, “The Golden Pyramid — a Magyck! place for
lovers.”

  “The hotel ought to be happy,” Angela said. “We’ll get lots of favorable media coverage.”

  “The casino bosses will like it too, ’cause a lot of our high rollers will probably make an extra trip this year. The average gambler won’t cancel other planned trips to Vegas. He’ll just add on an extra trip for his anniversary. And I’ll be happy because the whole stunt will generate more talk about the show.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Angela said. “I’ll get the list.”

  Tina returned to her inspection of the carpenter’s bill, and Angela was back at five minutes past four with thirty pages of data.

  “Thank you,” Tina said.

  “No trouble.”

  “Are you shivering?”

  “Yeah,” Angela said, hugging herself. “Must be a problem with the air conditioning. The last few minutes — my office got chilly.”

  “It’s warm enough in here,” Tina said.

  “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m coming down with something. I sure hope not. I’ve got big plans tonight.”

  “Party?”

  “Yeah. Big bash over on Rancho Circle.”

  “Millionaire’s Row?”

  “My boyfriend’s boss lives over there. Anyway . . . happy new year, Tina.”

  “Happy new year.”

  “See you Monday.”

  “Oh? Oh, yeah, that’s right. It’s a four-day weekend. Well, just watch out for that hangover.”

  Angela grinned. “There’s at least one out there with my name on it.”

  Tina finished checking the carpenter’s bill and approved it for payment.

  Alone now on the third floor, she sat in the pool of amber light at her desk, surrounded by shadows, yawning. She’d work for another hour, until five o’clock, and then go home. She’d need two hours to get ready for her date with Elliot Stryker.

  She smiled when she thought of him, then picked up the sheaf of papers that Angela had given her, anxious to finish her work.

  The hotel possessed an amazing wealth of information about its most favored customers. If she needed to know how much money each of these people earned in a year, the computer could tell her. It could tell her each man’s preferred brand of liquor, each wife’s favorite flower and perfume, the make of car they drove, the names and ages of their children, the nature of any illnesses or other medical conditions they might have, their favorite foods, their favorite colors, their tastes in music, their political affiliations, and scores of other facts both important and trivial. These were customers to whom the hotel was especially anxious to cater, and the more the Pyramid knew about them, the better it could serve them. Although the hotel collected this data with, for the most part, the customers’ happiness in mind, Tina wondered how pleased these people would be to learn that the Golden Pyramid maintained fat dossiers on them.

  She scanned the list of VIP customers who hadn’t attended the opening of Magyck! Using a red pencil, she circled those names that were followed by anniversary dates, trying to ascertain how large a promotion she was proposing. She had counted only twenty-two names when she came to an incredible message that the computer had inserted in the list.

  Her chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe.

  She stared at what the computer had printed, and fear welled in her — dark, cold, oily fear.

  Between the names of two high rollers were five lines of type that had nothing to do with the information she had requested:

  NOT DEAD

  NOT DEAD

  NOT DEAD

  NOT DEAD

  NOT DEAD

  The paper rattled as her hands began to shake.

  First at home. In Danny’s bedroom. Now here. Who was doing this to her?

  Angela?

  No. Absurd.

  Angela was a sweet kid. She wasn’t capable of anything as vicious as this. Angela hadn’t noticed this interruption in the printout because she hadn’t had time to scan it.

  Besides, Angela couldn’t have broken into the house. Angela wasn’t a master burglar, for God’s sake.

  Tina quickly shuffled through the pages, seeking more of the sick prankster’s work. She found it after another twenty-six names.

  DANNY ALIVE

  DANNY ALIVE

  HELP

  HELP

  HELP ME

  Her heart seemed to be pumping a refrigerant instead of blood, and an iciness radiated from it.

  Suddenly she was aware of how alone she was. More likely than not, she was the only person on the entire third floor.

  She thought of the man in her nightmare, the man in black whose face had been lumpy with maggots, and the shadows in the corner of her office seemed darker and deeper than they had been a moment ago.

  She scanned another forty names and cringed when she saw what else the computer had printed.

  I’M AFRAID

  I’M AFRAID

  GET ME OUT

  GET ME OUT OF HERE

  PLEASE . . . PLEASE

  HELPHELPHELPHELP

  That was the last disturbing insertion. The remainder of the list was as it should be.

  Tina threw the printout on the floor and went into the outer office.

  Angela had turned the light off. Tina turned it on.

  She went to Angela’s desk, sat in her chair, and switched on the computer. The screen filled with a soft blue light.

  In the locked center drawer of the desk was a book with the code numbers that permitted access to the sensitive information stored not on diskette but only in the central memory. Tina paged through the book until she found the code that she needed to call up the list of the hotel’s best customers. The number was 1001012, identified as the access for “Comps,” which meant “complimentary guests,” a euphemism for “big losers,” who were never asked to pay their room charges or restaurant bills because they routinely dropped small fortunes in the casino.

  Tina typed her personal access number — E013331555. Because so much material in the hotel’s files was extremely confidential information about high rollers, and because the Pyramid’s list of favored customers would be of enormous value to competitors, only approved people could obtain this data, and a record was kept of everyone who accessed it. After a moment’s hesitation the computer asked for her name; she entered that, and the computer matched her number and name. Then:

  CLEARED

  She typed in the code for the list of complimentary guests, and the machine responded at once.

  PROCEED

  Her fingers were damp. She wiped them on her slacks and then quickly tapped out her request. She asked the computer for the same information that Angela had requested a while ago. The names and addresses of VIP customers who had missed the opening of Magyck! — along with the wedding anniversaries of those who were married — began to appear on the screen, scrolling upward. Simultaneously the laser printer began to churn out the same data.

  Tina snatched each page from the printer tray as it arrived. The laser whispered through twenty names, forty, sixty, seventy, without producing the lines about Danny that had been on the first printout. Tina waited until at least a hundred names had been listed before she decided that the system had been programmed to print the lines about Danny only one time, only on her office’s first data request of the afternoon, and on no later call-up.

  She canceled this data request and closed out the file. The printer stopped.

  Just a couple of hours ago she had concluded that the person behind this harassment had to be a stranger. But how could any stranger so easily gain entrance to both her house and the hotel computer? Didn’t he, after all, have to be someone she knew?

  But who?

  And why?

  What stranger could possibly hate her so much?

  Fear, like an uncoiling snake, twisted and slithered inside of her, and she shivered.

  Then she realized it wasn’t only fear that made her quiver. The air was chilly.

  She remembered the complaint that
Angela had made earlier. It hadn’t seemed important at the time.

  But the room had been warm when Tina had first come in to use the computer, and now it was cool. How could the temperature have dropped so far in such a short time? She listened for the sound of the air conditioner, but the telltale whisper wasn’t issuing from the wall vents. Nevertheless, the room was much cooler than it had been only minutes ago.

  With a sharp, loud, electronic snap that startled Tina, the computer abruptly began to churn out additional data, although she hadn’t requested any. She glanced at the printer, then at the words that flickered across the screen.

  NOT DEAD NOT DEAD

  NOT DEAD NOT DEAD

  NOT IN THE GROUND

  NOT DEAD

  GET ME OUT OF HERE

  GET ME OUT OUT OUT

  The message blinked and vanished from the screen. The printer fell silent.

  The room was growing colder by the second.

  Or was it her imagination?

  She had the crazy feeling that she wasn’t alone. The man in black. Even though he was only a creature from a nightmare, and even though it was utterly impossible for him to be here in the flesh, she couldn’t shake the heart-clenching feeling that he was in the room. The man in black. The man with the evil, fiery eyes. The yellow-toothed grin. Behind her. Reaching toward her with a hand that would be cold and damp. She spun around in her chair, but no one had come into the room.

  Of course. He was only a nightmare monster. How stupid of her.

  Yet she felt that she was not alone.

  She didn’t want to look at the screen again, but she did. She had to.

  The words still burned there.

  Then they disappeared.

  She managed to break the grip of fear that had paralyzed her, and she put her fingers on the keyboard. She intended to determine if the words about Danny had been previously programmed to print out on her machine or if they had been sent to her just seconds ago by someone at another computer in another office in the hotel’s elaborately networked series of workstations.