Cat in an Alien X_Ray Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  For all those who bring these wise and “ancient aliens”

  called cats into their homes and hearts,

  nine dimensions are not enough.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Previously in Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …

  Chapter 1:

  Conduct Unbecoming

  Chapter 2:

  Phoning Home

  Chapter 3:

  Ménage à Murder

  Chapter 4:

  Home Alone

  Chapter 5:

  Wynning Number

  Chapter 6:

  Louie Has His Ups and Downs

  Chapter 7:

  Stunted!

  Chapter 8:

  Unlawful Entry

  Chapter 9:

  Close Encounter

  Chapter 10:

  Mother Ship

  Chapter 11:

  Nightcrawlers

  Chapter 12:

  Open Arms

  Chapter 13:

  Graveyard Shift

  Chapter 14:

  The Thin White Line

  Chapter 15:

  Slugfest

  Chapter 16:

  Dead on Paradise

  Chapter 17:

  Short Stack

  Chapter 18:

  Law and Order: Crimeshoppers

  Chapter 19:

  Honeymooners

  Chapter 20:

  The French Connection

  Chapter 21:

  Let Them Eat Crow

  Chapter 22:

  A Fine and Secret Show

  Chapter 23:

  All at Sea

  Chapter 24:

  Law and Order: Truce or Consequences

  Chapter 25:

  Romance on the Rocks

  Chapter 26:

  Going, Going, Going, Gone … Viral

  Chapter 27:

  We Are Not Alone

  Chapter 28:

  The Unusual Suspects

  Chapter 29:

  Fringe Benefit

  Chapter 30:

  Fallout

  Chapter 31:

  Short Stuff

  Chapter 32:

  Identity Crisis

  Chapter 33:

  Synth You’ve Been Gone

  Chapter 34:

  Law and Order: LVMPD

  Chapter 35:

  Black Ops

  Chapter 36:

  Stunt Double

  Chapter 37:

  Bad News Bearer

  Chapter 38:

  Body Double

  Chapter 39:

  Murder Ménage II: Naked Came the Clue

  Chapter 40:

  Frank Talk

  Chapter 41:

  Northern Exposure

  Chapter 42:

  Track of the Cat

  Chapter 43:

  Cat Tails

  Chapter 44:

  Cop Shop Talk

  Chapter 45:

  Murder Ménage III: The Thirteenth Sign

  Chapter 46:

  Max’s Midnight Hour

  Chapter 47:

  Falling for You

  Chapter 48:

  After the Fall

  Chapter 49:

  Left Behind

  Chapter 50:

  Night Stalkers

  Chapter 51:

  Hit Me with Your Best Shot

  Chapter 52:

  Astral Protection

  Chapter 53:

  Two Close for Comfort

  Chapter 54:

  Cat and Mouser

  Tailpiece:

  Midnight Louie Discusses Alien Species

  Tailpiece:

  Carole Nelson Douglas Goes to the Dogs

  By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Previously in

  Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …

  Las Vegas is my beat.

  I love this rambling, gambling entertainment capital with its super-sized dose of lights, action, and cameras—security or otherwise.

  The lights … the security and tourist cameras … and the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. Our landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin’ on the glitz.

  For a Las Vegas institution, I have always kept a low profile.

  You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside or out and about. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

  Being short, dark, and handsome … really short … gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. So would some other guys, but they do not have my lush hirsute advantages.

  Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I play her bodyguard without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

  Our most recent crime-busting adventure took us deep into a conspiracy of magicians that resulted in a string of murders being solved, while some remain unsolved.

  That Neon Nightmare club, now shut down, was also the site of a key incident in this ongoing tangle. That event was a shakedown, not a murder. And—I must blush to admit, if I ever do anything as wimpy as blush—I was not there to witness this event, in the course of protecting my Miss Temple. I hear on good authority that two takeover thugs (wearing concealing masks and cloaks à la Mr. Darth Vader of film fame) crashed a meeting of the conspiring magicians who called themselves “the Synth.” The pair demanded at gunpoint the Synth members present hand over a hoard of concealed cash. In my absence, the Las Vegas feral cat pack, led by Miss Midnight Louise (no relation) made the invading pair into props for an Olympics-level scratching post claw-down. The Vaders fled, trailing blood, but remain anonymous.

  So, there is much private investigative work left for me to do, as usual.

  Then you get into the area of private lives. I say you get into that area. I do not. I remain aloof from these alien matters among humans. Why can they not be sensible and let Mother Nature or a visit to the vet for what is called “altering” arrange these things? Or resort to breeders, aka “matchmaking sites,” if you are of the tony, pedigreed sort? While it is important that humans assist in discouraging the overpopulation of our kind, when it comes to their own mating behavior, there is an overpopulation of indecision and angst.

  I do not see how having two perfectly adequate males as a selection for one’s life mate is a problem. If, unlike me, you have not had the happy procedure that allows me to be a bon vivant simultaneously entertaining multiple dating possibilities whilst not littering irresponsibly … you are out of luck, so get over it and go monogamous for life. Otherwise, I can recomme
nd a good surgeon who tosses in a free tummy tuck with the deal.

  I cannot give away the more intimate details of my roomie’s life. Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the lose–lose situation of her life and times.

  Here is the current status of where we are all at:

  None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-five books now. I am an “alpha cat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

  My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s color word is in alphabetical order up to the, ahem, current volume, Cat in an Alien X-Ray.

  (Obviously, a large dose of Weird has hit Sin City, the one blot on the map it is hard to out-weird. However, my breed is known for a mystical bent, not to mention reincarnation to the power of nine, so I am more than somewhat ready to tango with anything alien.)

  Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I here provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

  To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited with her elusive love …

  … the once and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in an Irish Republican Army bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, Mr. Max joined the man who became his mentor, Garry Randolph, aka magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.

  The elusive Mr. Max has also been sought—on suspicion of murder—by a hard-nosed dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.…

  Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, aka Mr. Midnight, a radio talk show shrink on The Midnight Hour. This former Roman Catholic priest came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.

  Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame—Mr. Rafi Nadir, working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah—now knows what is what and who is whose.…

  Meanwhile, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland …

  … one Miss Kathleen O’Connor, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina did, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine.…

  Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s sad, and later sadistic, history indicates she might not be dead and buried like all rotten elements, things are shaking up again for we who reside at a vintage round apartment building called the Circle Ritz. Ex-resident Mr. Max Kinsella is no longer MIA, although I saw him hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while in the guise of a bungee-jumping magician, the Phantom Mage.

  That Mr. Max’s recent miraculous resurrection coincides with my ever-lovin’ roommate going over to the Light Side in her romantic life (our handsome blond upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine) only adds to the angst and confusion.

  However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that in Las Vegas. A magician may have as many lives as a cat, in my humble estimation, and events now bear me out.

  Meanwhile, any surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything is always up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

  All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter …

  … Miss Midnight Louise, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Investigations, Inc.…

  … and needing to unearth more about the Vaders and the Synth, a cabal of magicians that may be responsible for a lot of murderous cold cases in town, and are now the objects of growing international interest, but as MIA as Mr. Max has been lately.

  So, there you have it, the usual human stew—folks good, bad, and hardly indifferent—totally mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is left to me to solve all their mysteries and nail some crooks along the way.

  Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

  With this crew, who could?

  Chapter 1

  Conduct Unbecoming

  I am running ears-back, footpads flat-out down a dark alley.

  This is not normally a problem for lithe ninja me. My skintight, full-body black catsuit is next to invisible in dark narrow spaces, and my hidden shivs are primed to scale any porous material I encounter, including the careless wandering person in my way.

  The only thing in my way in this alley is a blank brick wall. I make a hard right, striking sparks off concrete with my rear brakes, and splitting enough nails to visit a pedicurist in the morning, were I a metrosexual sort of guy.

  Which I decidedly am not.

  Another blank and topless wall forces me left, and then right again. I sense my pursuers gaining on me, but I have no idea who—or what—they are. Or where we are. It feels like I have been running like this for blocks.

  I spy a bright pinpoint at the end of my tunnel, put my paws to the pavement, and rocket toward it with my patented burst of cheetah-level speed. Midnight Louie is no easy catch.

  I crash through the bright light like a circus tiger through a giant paper embroidery hoop.…

  Only there is no sawdust to land on, just another inescapable tunnel, this one all spotlights and aurora borealis.

  My pupils have slitted needle-thin, but the light is burning so bright, I am blind as I fall through empty air into apparent nothingness, my agile spine spiraling down like a drill bit.

  “Louie,” a voice calls, echoes.

  Wait! Stop the action. I am being called back from the brink of annihilation by a familiar voice. My Miss Temple needs me. I cannot go splat on an unseen surface. I must fight gravity. My limbs thrash.

  Then something from behind grabs me, shakes me, rattles and rolls me.

  Never have I been so helpless.

  “Louie.”

  Wait! The voice is not Miss Temple’s. It is female but from another species speaking through my roommate’s usual whispered little nothings.

  Who has the nerve to come between a guy and his girl?

  I am shaken more softly, and the light fades into the dark gray of a room without light.

  I feel my pumping limbs slow and slacken. Around me are dim familiar forms, the most familiar—and acting like it—is indeed my Miss Temple.

  “Louie, you are just dreaming. Nothing is chasing you but the Sandman. Wake up. You’re tattooing my thigh with your thrashing feet.”

  She is slipping her hands around my cushy warm midsection to heave it upright, and me with it.

  “Sorry, boy, but that stings. You are off the bed for the rest of the night.”

  I am ushered to the edge of the zebra-print spread and nudged until I have no choice but to puddle down to the cool wood parquet floor.

  What a way to be awakened! Tossed out on my ear, although it is actually my feet that hit solid ground first, thanks to my native athletic ability.

  I sit up and wash these exiled ears of the unfriendly decree from my very own roommate, whose bacon and backside I have saved on numerous occasions.

  I am surprised to find my shivs still stretching and contracting, as if yet in that state of running for my life. I must admit I keep them highly honed.

  They have never run so much as a nylon stocking (although women and particularly
my Miss Temple do not much wear such things anymore) in my interaction with the human female population.

  And I have never been kicked out of bed before. Is that a blow to a guy’s ego.

  And I have never been so sure I was one dead mallard as I was a couple minutes before.

  What a nightmare!

  I shake my head. I must be slipping. Speaking of that, I decide to slip through the French doors to the small three-sided patio Miss Temple’s condominium offers. Perhaps the cool night air will soothe my ruffled feelings.

  I stretch my frame full up to work the lever-style handle with my usual light-shivved touch and fall through to the stone patio beyond, turning to push the door gently shut behind me.