GRAY MATTERS

And just like that, he was gone. A pigeon. Walked straight out of the house that had for the past two years been his home—his very own two-story Eden furnished by his owner with all the food and warmth and love he could ever ask for. Walked out of it with no foreboding as to the perils he might encounter in his new, boundless environment, or as to the anguish he would cause that beloved owner of his, who by accident or subconscious faith left the front door open on January 15 and hasn't seen her bird since.

And he isn't just any bird. He is a virgin white pigeon, with a gangster's limp stemming from two fractures suffered in his leg—an injury that had done little to hinder him from walking all over his house when he resided there, spending his cageless days in the good company of his owner, other birds, and even multiple dogs. Nor did it stop him from walking straight out the front door and into North Las Vegas, directly into the region of Belmont Street and Carey Avenue.

If you see him—and you'll know it's him because he'll have a metal band on his leg (the tracking number to which was a casualty of a computer meltdown), he won't show any fear around other animals, and he is much more of a walker than a flier—then pick up the small, docile pigeon, and call his heartbroken owner, Red Wilson, 649-8100, who has yet to close the door on the possibility of seeing her pigeon again, and therefore has kept a notice running in the Review-Journal, offering a reward to whoever finds her little biblical bird.

"Yes, he might've been killed," she says, "but I'm still hoping I'll get him back."

Headline in the Honolulu Advertiser: "Vegas monorail seen as model"

"AP—Mayor Mufi Hannemann yesterday said he has new ideas on how to finance a mass transit system on O'ahu after studying the Las Vegas Monorail ."

From the UK News-Telegraph regarding our consumption of Kobe in Vegas:

"The city's soaring demand for Kobe beef, a tender Japanese delicacy, is ... creating shortages elsewhere.

"Las Vegas now buys more than New York and at some restaurants the meat sells for $125 (£70) per pound.

"'We used to Fed Ex a few pieces over once a week,' said Mark Hoegh, of Oregon-based Kobe Beef America, one of the country's biggest suppliers.

"'Now almost every restaurant on the Strip has Kobe beef on its menu and we're pushing in an entire truck.

"There are some orders that are hard to fill.'"

Forgive locals who thought defense attorney James "Bucky" Buchanan already had a reality show. With connections to high-profile cases like the Binion trial and 311 Boyz, Buchanan has long starred in the original reality series: news. But with the premiere of Las Vegas Law this week on Court TV it is official: Buchanan will be fighting for clients and ratings. "It's a reality show. It is true. It is about how the law system works in Las Vegas and I think the viewers are going to find it real interesting," Buchanan says. "We take a show from when the person comes into my office to discuss their problems and we go directly into court. There is no acting and there is no staging. It is just true reality." And, while many of the crimes boil down to drugs and violence, Buchanan says he has one other edge: "Some of it has to do with the way I practice law. I am a little more emotional than most lawyers."

"There's always hope—but no, I don't think she's alive," Martha Harris has said in regard to her missing daughter, Lindsay, 21 years old and believed to be lost in the Las Vegas Valley.

She was reported missing eight months ago, when her car was found abandoned between the Luxor and Excalibur casinos, and since then all paths to finding her, dead or alive, have failed to bring any bit of closure to her ailing mother. And that includes the one that led a team of more than 250 searchers into the Valley's southern desert on January 21 to scour for evidence of her whereabouts.

But detectives from the Henderson Police department say the investigation continues.

Lt. Fred Thompson, who is in charge of the case, says that he has a detective pursuing evidence, and that he will assign more people to the case if new evidence calls for it.

For now, all that has surfaced, according to investigators with the program America's Most Wanted who are also on the case, is that Lindsay departed her small hometown of Skaneateles, New York, for the West Coast in 2003—at the age of 19—and after a brief stay in San Diego, California, moved to Las Vegas, where she lived with her clandestine lover, Solomon Barron, and was arrested on multiple occasions for her clandestine line of work—prostitution. It was Barron who, after failing with several frantic attempts to reach Lindsay on her cell phone from his business in New York on May 5, delivered to Martha the news that her daughter was missing. Since then she has been waiting.

Says Thompson, without a doubt thinking of Lindsay's mother and her insufferable uncertainty: "We'll continue to pursue her case until she's found, either dead or alive."