Kress, Nancy - Oaths and Miracles

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Oaths and Miracles

Nancy Kress

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are

either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Forge Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kress, Nancy. Oaths and miracles / Nancy Kress.-1st ed.

p. cm. ISBN 0-312-85961-9

I. Title.

PS3561.R46025 1996 813'.54-dc20 - 95-39722

CIP First Edition: January 1996

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

FOR MY AUNT SANDY, WHO

ALWAYS LIKED THRILLERS, AND MIGHT HAVE LIKED

THIS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE author would like to extend grateful thanks to many people who

assisted with the writing of this book. Thanks to:

Dr. Kishan Pandya, M.D., for sharing his medical expertise; Jill Beves,

R.N., for her assistance with medical terminology;

Robert Murphy, New York Department of Investigations, for his many

helpful suggestions;

Terry Boothman, for his unique insight on Robert Cavanaugh's doodles;

Miriam Grace Monfredo, Mary Stanton, and Kate Koningisor, for their

generous critiques of early drafts of the novel.

Oaths and miracles are usually followed by deceptive statements.

-General Rules for Statement Analysis, Rule #9, Federal Bureau of

Investigation Interviewing and Interrogation, U.S. Department of

Justice

AUGUST

He that increases knowledge, increases sorrow. -Ecclesiastes 1:18

ONE

.FOURTEEN minutes into the midnight show at Caesars Palace, the

sixth showgirl descending the left side of the Staircase from Heaven

tripped.

Her name was Sue Ann Jefferson, from Amarillo, Texas, although in

Vegas she was known as Taffy. Her long legs had shaken throughout

the 9:00 P.M. show. Under the tight blue-sequined helmet with ice-blue

feathers rising two feet into the air, her face was the color of the

waiter's linen. Her huge brown eyes remained wide open and

unblinking during her fall, which tumbled her and her enormous blue

angel wings forward into the showgirl on the step below.

That girl, the most spectacularly built of a spectacular group, wobbled.

To keep her own balance and restore Sue Ann/Taffy's, she thrust her

gorgeous body backward. Her smile stayed hard and false as the blue

diamonds in her shoulder-length earrings. Over her shoulder she hissed,

"Bitch! Stay off the junk when you working!" Eighteen steps below, the

famous singer in the white dinner jacket sang on, unaware.

Sue Ann lurched upright, took another hip-swaying step downward on

five-inch sequined heels, and wobbled again. This time her knees gave

way. She sat down hard on her step, just as the showgirl above her,

smiling fixedly out at the audience, put out her foot to descend to that

same step. The foot encountered Sue Ann, not firm ground. The other

girl stumbled, gave a small cry, and fell on top of Sue Ann. Both girls

caromed into the spectacular body in front of them. The left side on the

Staircase from Heaven crashed down the steps in a tangle of feathers,

legs, wings, tassels, breasts, and earrings like flying chains.

The audience laughed and pointed. The famous singer half-turned his

head, glimpsed the writhing female pile at the bottom of Heaven, and

kept on singing. His eyes were volcanic rock.

In the line of showgirls on the right side of the staircase, Jeanne

Cas-sidy watched, smiled, waved her arms like an angel, and took the

next step down. She knew that Sue Ann wasn't using. Sue Ann was

Jeanne's best friend. Sue Ann had been like this-shaky, glassy-eyed-for

twenty-four hours now. She hadn't slept. She wouldn't eat. She

wouldn't tell Jeanne what was wrong.

The fallen angels picked themselves up and backed up the left side of

the stairway, lining up with those on the right. Only Sue Ann stayed

where she was, sitting in a heap on the stage, staring at nothing. The line

descended slowly, smiling, and walked around her. Dawn had lost one

earring. Tiffany's stocking had torn and her knee bled. The jeers in the

audience died slowly away as the customers, in suits and cowboy

jackets and evening clothes and polo shirts with shorts, grew uncertain.

The famous singer finished his song and started another. The girls

sashayed behind him, arms on each other's shoulders, a line of

half-naked pelvises and long legs that blocked Sue Ann from audience

view. Jeanne saw the stage manager rush out, grab the girl under the

armpits, and drag her off stage left. Kemper's fat bulging face was

purple.

The song finished. The audience laughed and applauded. The famous

singer bowed extravagantly, his moussed hair bouncing. The curtain

swept closed.

Jeanne pushed her way through the chattering gleaming bodies. When

the wall of flesh proved too solid, she used her elbows. "Owww! Bitch

..."

"Where is she? Fred, where did she go?"

"Outta here!" Kemper yelled. "A million dollars sitting in the audience

and you bitches think you can go on using-"

"Taffy doesn't use," Jeanne said coldly. "Where is she?"

"In the can. You get her outta here, Amber, I'm telling you, outta here

before Bobby gets back here, he'll have her tits in a jar-"

Bobby was the famous singer. Jeanne pushed her way to the backstage

ladies' room.

Sue Ann sat on a toilet, her body stocking in place, the stall door open.

Two girls dressed like mostly hairless tigers stood at the sinks. They

bustled out, striped tails twitching, without glancing at the stalls.

Jeanne knelt in the narrow space. "Sue Ann? What is it? What

happened, honey?"

The girl didn't seem to hear. Her eyes, huge and fixed, stared at

something straight ahead and invisible.

"Susie, it's Jeanne. I'm here. What is it? Is it Carlo? Did you have a

fight?"

"Carlo's dead."

Jeanne put out a hand, steadied herself on the side of the stall. Sue

Ann's tone scared her more than the words. "Dead? How do you

know, Sue Ann?"

"I know."

"Did you see it? What happened?"

"What do you think happened? You know what he is. Was." This was

said in the same voice: calm, empty, completely without inflection.

Jeanne's spine turned cold.

"Susie-"

"And now I'm dead, too."

The ladies' room door opened. Jeanne felt her heart skip. A sudden

vertigo took her, like the swoop of a great dark bird, blinding. A

showgirl dashed into the stall next to theirs and muttered, "Damn!" In a

moment urine tinkled into the bowl. Jeanne's vertigo passed and she

could see again: Sue Ann, motionless on the toilet, white to the lips.

"Sue Ann, you've got to get out of here. Now. Kemper says you're

fired anyway."

Sue Ann appeared not to have heard her. "He loved me," she said

tonelessly. "Carlo loved me."

"Now, Sue Ann."

"He did love me. He would have left his wife. Soon."

"Right. Get up. Stand up now."

"I was the first woman he really ever loved. I mean really." Her eyes

stared expressionlessly at the stall door.

Jeanne got to her feet. The weird toneless monologue made her

stomach lift and shiver. She heard the music start onstage for the next

number. She was supposed to be in it; so was Sue Ann. Without them

both the line would look skimpy. Carlo was dead. Panic turned her

angry.

"Get up, damn it! Get up off that toilet!"

Sue Ann didn't get up. But she turned her face to Jeanne's, slowly,

mechanically, like an automatic flower.

"Cadoc. Verico. Cadaverico."

"What?" Jeanne said. Her stomach flopped again. Sue Ann had

snapped. She was standing in a Las Vegas toilet with a crazy girl

marked for death. Then she realized Sue Ann was speaking Italian.

Something Carlo had taught her, some lying dago sweet talk from a

two-timing son of a bitch.

"It's a joke," Sue Ann said in that same flat voice. "A joke that will

make me dead."

Jeanne grabbed both Sue Ann's hands and yanked her off the toilet.

She dragged her out of the ladies' room and into the showgirls' dressing

room. Kemper had gone. From the stage floated the music for

"Somehow I've Always Known."

"Put this on." She shoved jeans and a yellow cotton sweater at Sue

Ann. When the girl didn't move, Jeanne grabbed Sue Ann's headpiece

and yanked. A handful of hair came off with the sequins and feathers.

Jeanne shoved the sweater over Sue Ann's head, right over the body

stocking and sequined pasties. The sweater stuck. Sue Ann gasped,

unable to breathe, and then pulled the sweater down over her head.

Without prompting, she kicked off her heels and pulled the jeans over

her feathered G-string. Her face was still expressionless.

Jeanne pulled on her own clothes and sneakers and grabbed her purse

and Sue Ann's. Both women still wore stage makeup. Their hair, Sue

Ann's dyed platinum and Jeanne's natural red, stuck out wildly. Jeanne

clutched Sue Ann's arm and steered her down the back stairway, past

the stage door to the basement, through subterranean corridors stifling

with boiler heat, and out a door beside a loading dock far from the

casino's glittery entrance.

What if they were out there now, in the parking lot? Waiting?

She forced herself to walk normally. But nothing was normal, nothing

would ever be normal again. Nothing had been normal for four months,

not since she'd come to Las Vegas to be Amber, not since she'd driven

her third-hand Ford Escort, a graduation present, out of her father's

East Lansing driveway because East Lansing, Michigan, wasn't good

enough for her, not her, not for Jeanne Cassidy who was made for fun

and bright lights and excitement. . . . Her stomach flopped again and

she thought she was going to be sick. Sue Ann moaned softly, the

sound oddly indifferent. Jeanne had heard that sound once, from a jack

rabbit caught in a coyote trap, resigned to dying.

"Keep walking," Jeanne hissed, although Sue Ann hadn't stopped.

One mile, two . . . the parking lot seemed endless. At this end there

were no limos, no Caddys, no Porsches. Jeanne had left her Escort

beside a wooden fence, hoping for some afternoon shade. Now the

fence was a shadowed looming barricade. It could hide anything. . . .

She shoved Sue Ann into the car, locked her door, and scrambled into

the driver's side. On the highway, Jeanne suddenly felt better and then,

a few minutes later, worse. Another wave of vertigo took her and the

car swung to the left. She pulled it back into the lane.

"Cadoc," Sue Ann said tonelessly. "Verico. Cadaverico."

"Will you shut up with that stuff?" A joke that will make me dead.

"Listen, Susie, where are your family? Your parents?"

"No parents."

"Sisters, then. Or brothers. Anybody."

"Nobody."

"Damn it, you must have somebody! Everybody's got somebody!"

"I had Carlo."

Jeanne wanted to slap her. Instead she kept her eyes on the entrance to

McCarron Airport. A jet screamed overhead, landing. Her abdomen

began grinding again and something wet and sticky slid between her

legs.

Her period. Now.

"Susie, where can you go? With who? Think, damn it!"

Sue Ann's voice, for the first time, lost a little of its toneless despair.

"My cousin Jolene. In Austin ..."

"Fine. Cousin Jolene, then. Fine." She would put the ticket on Visa. If

there was still room, there had to still be room, but she'd bought those

snakeskin boots-

Jeanne parked in Short Term Parking and yanked open Sue Ann's

door. The movement made another gob of blood spurt between her

legs-she could feel it, oozing through her body stocking and around her

G-string. Her fucking period always started at the wrong time, and it

was always bad. Her stomach ground and flopped. "Come on, Susie-"

They hurried, wild-haired, across two lanes of cars in the brightly lit

parking lot. Pain stabbed Jeanne's stomach. She faltered. "Listen, Sue

Ann, I just remembered, I have Tampax in the car, andT need-"

"No! Don't leave me-"

Jeanne peeled Sue Ann off her. "Just for a minute, I promise, I'm

bleeding like a pig, and the ladies' room is always out in places like this.

... I won't put it in until you're on the plane, I promise, but I have to get

it from the car. . . . Sue Ann, let me fucking go.'"

Sue Ann started to cry. Jeanne pulled herself loose and sprinted

between two parked cars, toward her Escort. Sue Ann wrapped her

arms around herself, shivering in the night desert air. It was 1:12 A.M.

The black car tore around the corner of the line of cars and barreled

toward Sue Ann. Jeanne, turning at the sound, her body whirling

slowly, slowly as if this were a dream, saw Sue Ann lift her face to the

oncoming car, the same way she'd lifted it to Jeanne in the toilet stall.

Cadoc. Verico. Cadaverico. Yellow floodlight gleamed on Sue Ann's

white lips. Overhead a jet screamed its descent.

The car hit Sue Ann without slowing down. Her body bounced off the

grille onto the hood, then flew backward. She hit another car, a green

Toyota spotted with rust, and slid to the ground. The black car, a

Buick LeSabre with California plates, disappeared around the lane of

parked vehicles.

Jeanne stood without moving, still in that eerie slow-motion dream.

When her legs did move, they carried her in a hesitant step, like a

wedding procession. Everything looked too bright, as if it had been

drawn by a child with new crayons. She saw, so sharp that it hurt her

eyes, the rust smeared from the Toyota on Sue Ann's yellow sweater,

at a precise point just above the left breast. Below the rust, a

blue-sequined pasty showed lumpy through the thin cotton. Sue Ann

hadn't zipped her fly all the way. Her eyes were still open.

Jeanne knelt beside the body and groped for a pulse in the wrist. She

didn't know how to find one anyway. She put her head on Sue Ann's

quiet chest, then yanked her head back as if it were burned. After that,

she couldn't think what else to do, so she did nothing.

From somewhere far, far away, someone shouted. Then there were

running footsteps, and the screech of sirens, and someone saying

"Miss? Miss?" Later, there were bright lights and coffee she didn't drink

and blue uniforms with gun belts and questions. Many questions. But

that was much later in this queer slowed-down time, and by then

Jeanne had already decided what she must not say, ever, to anybody,

anyplace, anytime. Not here, not at home in East Lansing, where she

was going as soon as they let her leave Las Vegas, nowhere. Not to

anyone.

Not ever.

TWO

KOBERT Cavanaugh, FBI Criminal Investigative Division, Organized

Crime and Racketeering Section, looked at the girl seated in front of

him and fought off irritation. It wasn't her fault that he hated

interrogating adolescent girls. And that's what this one was, no matter

what her driver's license said. She was twenty-one like he was an Arab

terrorist. The casinos didn't care. Not as long as they could prove it

was the girl lying about her age and not them knowingly hiring children

to pose half-naked at 2:00 A.M. for vacationing out-of-towners who

thought they were living the glamorous high life.

"Let's go over it one more time, Miss Cassidy."

"Ms.," the female LVPD uniform murmured behind him. Cavanaugh

ignored her. Her presence was obligatory; her political correctness was

not. And as far as Cavanaugh was concerned, this witness was a little

girl.

You're only twenty-nine yourself, he heard Marcy, his

soon-to-be-ex-wife, say inside his head. Cavanaugh ignored Marcy,

who was thirty-five. She was good at logic, even better at external

images, but bad at tuition. She was a great success in corporate

marketing.

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OathsandMiraclesNancyKressThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.OATHSANDMIRACLESCopyright©1996byNancyKressAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbook,orportionsthereof,inanyform.Thisbookisprintedonacid-freepaper.AForgeBo...

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