No Immunity

darkened. Only the occasional headlights and reflective road signs illuminated the backseat cage.
    Potter turned off into Gattozzi, the rumble of the engine growing deeper as it pulled the car up First Street. There were no streetlights; the dark was broken only by headlights and by the light from windows of old miners houses renovated a century after their creation, from the picture windows in the cafes, and from the dimmed saloon windows. And the round white light globe in a protective cage outside the county sheriff’s department, Gattozzi Station.
    She walked into the plain, serviceable, government-issue tan room that smelled of tobacco and Pine Sol. A bearlike man was sitting on a swivel chair behind the counter. There was no flag or state seal. The only decoration was a large photograph of a small, dank old slab building. In it cells and mattressless cots were visible through the doorway to the main room, and in that room she could make out the metal eyes to which leg irons were hooked. “The old county jail, behind the old courthouse in Pioche. Not a place you’d want to visit twice.”
    “Nor is this. I assume you’re Sheriff Fox?” she said.
    “Right, there, lady.”
    “And you need a second opinion about the body Dr. Tremaine called me here to view?”
    “It’s the truth we need. About the woman you brought here and dumped in the morgue before you sped out of town.”

CHAPTER 17

    There is a “rule of living” in California: “Keep clear of windows in an earthquake.” In New York it’s “Don’t make eye contact on the subway.” Brad Tchernak added to himself, In Las Vegas, “Never drive on the Strip when you’re in a hurry.” Not at midnight, not at dawn, not at four on a Saturday afternoon. He idled in the number-four lane. The sun was already inching toward the calm cover of the Mountains. But here on the Strip, life fizzed. Banks of utility lines transformed the power of Hoover Dam into millions of lights in the dozens of casinos crammed into these few blocks. Lights glowed, crackling, snapping on and off in wildly clashing colors, huge, soaring, screaming, trying vainly to shout down their neighbor. To his right sat a glowing green casino large enough to hold the entire Emerald City; to his left, King Arthur’s Palace; and ahead on the left, a miniature New York City, Brooklyn Bridge fudging the Empire State Building. Coming up on the left a huge pyramid gleamed the black of the Underworld. Ahead of him the Stratosphere tower soared more imposing than McCarran Airport’s. All dazzled, beckoning, promising.
    Tchernak loved it. The enchantment stopped at the casino door, and Kiernan hated the predictable disillusionment of it all. The City of Dependable Disappointment, she called it. But for Tchernak, Las Vegas was one great party with ever-new friends, endless diversions, beautiful women, and few inhibitions. It was the party of all parties, and the morning after, you were expected to have no memory of it.
    After he found Grady Hummacher and collected his first fee, he’d treat himself to a night in New York, New York.
    Eight, or was it ten, lanes of cars idled between the casinos. Good that it’s me and not her, Tchernak thought, grinning at the picture of his employer—his former employer-fuming, muttering, opening the window to stick her head out and cause trouble. By now she’d have cut in and out of every one of the lanes, cell phone to mouth as she bitched to the highway patrol.
    He, on the other hand, had used this lull to study the map. Louisa Larson’s clinic looked to be a couple miles north. He shifted into second gear as the casinos thinned, and was in third by the time he passed through the civic center and on north. When the first barred window came into sight, he rechecked the address. Boarded windows led to broken windows, to a neighborhood of mom-and-pop stores struggling between deserted buildings like clover in sidewalk cracks. Horseshoe apartment complexes surrounded bare-dirt courtyards. Louisa Larson’s address was on the next block.
    Behind a macadam parking area the Larson Clinic sat crisp and white in the predusk haze. Browning cacti lined the sides of the long narrow building. The whole sad area looked like it had been sucked dry by the thirsty dice palaces to the south.
    Tchernak pulled up next to a dark blue BMW and strode to the door, relieved that he’d made it before Louisa Larson packed in her black bag for the day.
    Office Hours: Monday,