Tourists clung to one another, badly shaken. Margo searched the crowd for her charges and finally caught a glimpse of purposeful movement. The Ripper Watch reporters were on the move again. She swore in gutter Latin that would’ve shocked Cicero and pounded after them. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, catching up at last. “You can’t go in there!”
Dominica Nosette flashed her a pitying smile. “Love, never tell a reporter what she can’t do—can’t is one word we don’t understand.”
Then they reached the zone of destruction. They’d beat SLUR-TV, the in-station televison news crew, to the punch. Dominica and Guy started filming steadily on every side as more reporters arrived, trailing cameras and lights and microphones. Then Margo caught her first glimpse of the blood and the broken bones.
Oh, my God . . .
While the newsies interviewed shaken eyewitnesses, station security zipped up a body bag with an extremely deceased individual inside. It wasn’t the first time Margo had seen a dead person. Not even the second. And her mother’s murder had been far more brutal a shock. But blood had stained the golden “bricks” of El Dorado’s floor, leaking down between the paving stones in rivulets and runnels, where Margo had never expected to see it. And if that glimpse into the body bag had been accurate, the dead man had been shot in the face, point-blank.
With a very large caliber firearm.
What in God’s name happened up here?
Margo began to tremble violently as the remembered smell of burnt toast and spreading, stinking puddles of blood smashed into her from her own childhood, from that long-ago morning when it had been her mother’s body zipped up and carted out, and her father led away in handcuffs. . . . She wrapped both arms around herself, biting her lips to keep them from shaking. Violence like this happened in places like New York or London or even Minnesota, where drunkards beat their wives to death. But murder wasn’t supposed to happen in a place like La-La Land, not where happy tourists gathered for vacations of a lifetime, where residents pursued dreams that came true every single day, where delightful amounts of money changed hands and everybody had fun in the process. Margo discovered she’d pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, unable to drag her gaze away from the macabre load as security carried away the grey zippered bag with the remains of a stranger inside.