Long Way Down, page 19
“Maybe it wasn’t a natural escalation,” she said. “Maybe he was just testing methods to see which he liked best.”
“Could be. Scarring someone like that, though, is an awful committed experiment.”
“I think we’ve established he’s a piece of shit, though.”
“Touché. But for whatever reason, he didn’t want to carve his tribute into Lana and Lynn.”
She frowned. “Which makes me wonder who his real target was.”
He lifted his brows, inviting her to explain.
“Okay, so.” She took the last sip of her Coke and pushed her dinner things aside. “We’ve got Lana and Lynn, who look similar, and are in the same art class. Then over here” – she spread her hands far apart on the tabletop – “you’ve got the victims Pongo told us about. Four prostitutes.”
“Who we can’t include in our investigation unless we know who they are, and if they’ll cooperate with us.”
“Right. If they’re legit victims – if Pongo’s telling us the truth – then there’s a big gap between the first four vics and the last two. We can’t know unless we interview them, but right now it seems safe to say they don’t move in the same circles as Lana and Lynn.”
“Do you think he wouldn’t tell the truth? Pongo, I mean?”
She made a face. “I don’t see why he’d lie. This doesn’t involve him in anyway…except the club’s on some kinda crusade lately, I think.”
That piqued his attention. “Really?”
She thought of a dark alley, and the click of plastic riot gear, visors pushed up onto helmets, and staggering, drugged girls wrapped hastily in towels and tablecloths. She swallowed hard and schooled her features. “I dunno,” she lied, and hoped it was convincing. “He said something about them doing the right thing or something.” She waved it off and, thankfully, he let her change the subject. “Let’s say what he said is true.”
“Then that means our guy either moves in two different circles…”
“Or the hookers were practice.”
Contreras nodded, face grim. “That’s my thought. It’s something I’ve read about in other serial cases before. It happens with murders sometimes, too. The perp wants to make sure their methods work, and so they test them out on a vic they think either won’t be missed or won’t come forward.”
“He experimented with the working girls, then, and Lana and Lynn were his main targets.” She circled the girls’ names, written one atop the other, and said, “Are they the only targets, though?”
“People can talk about rehab and therapy all they want, but in my estimation, once a guy starts raping, he doesn’t stop. He might not have another target picked out yet, but he will pick one, eventually.”
“Or,” she said, skin crawling with nerves, “every woman in that class is in danger right now.”
Fourteen
From the notepad they moved to the whiteboard, separating the vics into three groups: those they couldn’t talk with, those whose rapes they were investigating, and a new column for potential vics; here, Melissa jotted down the names of all the other women in Lana and Lynn’s figure drawing class. Across the top of the board, she pinned their enlarged Polaroids of all the men they’d interviewed so far, from Jason, Lana’s ex, to Professor Dubois. Without alibis verified yet, with schedules still to check and another round of questions with both girls needed, it wasn’t possible to eliminate anyone yet. They each had their hunches, their doubts…and frustrations.
The captain came by, bald head bright and shiny thanks to the countless times he’d run his hand across its surface, a nervous tic he exercised while he stood over them, and shared his misgivings about tomorrow morning’s press conference. “These things never go well. There’s never enough goddamn answers for the press.”
“Do you want us there, sir?” Melissa asked, hoping he said ‘no,’ thoughts occupied with all the useful things they needed to do tomorrow.
He shook his head. “Nah. Want you out getting me those goddamn answers. Bring Rojas and Novak up to speed; get them to check alibis and corroborate witness statements.”
“That’s one of the problems, sir,” Contreras said. “We don’t have any witnesses.”
“God damnit.” He left them with a stern warning not to, in his words, “get sidetracked” with Osborn. “He’s batshit crazy and he’ll try to get inside your head. Don’t let him.” The last was said with an emphatic glance Melissa’s direction that she resented, more than a little.
Rojas knocked on the door a few minutes later, and they spent a half-hour walking through the case with him and his partner, Novak. The eagerness of their questions, the glint in their eyes said they too had been affected by that dreaded word. The idea of a serial had infected them.
When Melissa yawned so widely her jaw cracked, Contreras checked his watch and muttered, “Shit.”
“What time is it?” she asked, dreading the answer. Her feet and face had gone numb.
“Ten ‘til eleven.” He flipped the file he was reading shut and stood. “I’m calling it.”
For once, she didn’t argue.
He checked his phone as they tidied up, and then whistled.
“What?”
“Sing Sing got back to me. We can see David Osborn at eleven tomorrow.”
The knowledge hit her like an espresso shot: it didn’t energize her body, but sent a pulse of adrenaline through her that intensified her headache and left her hands unsteady. “Huh. Alright.”
“Go home and get a good night’s sleep. Osborn’s tricky, and you’ll have to be at the top of your game. Warden says he prefers talking to women.”
She nodded, and gathered her stack of notebooks to keep her fingers from betraying their tremor. “Right.”
They turned out the lights, ensured her makeshift sign was still affixed to the conference room door, and headed back through the bullpen.
Where Pongo was waiting at her desk.
“Damn,” Contreras murmured. “Puppy’s got it bad.”
“You can’t call him that,” she whispered back, “he’ll probably like it.”
Contreras failed to smother a laugh in his palm and headed for the main door. “I’ll see you,” he called back over his shoulder. “Eleven, remember? And Pongo, good to meet you, man!”
“Yeah, you too,” Pongo said, hauling himself upright and arranging his hair. He tossed a lazy wave at Contreras’s back as he slipped out of sight, and then turned toward Melissa, elbow propped on the desk, chin landing in his open palm.
He was not, she noted, as sleepy as he was pretending to be. His eyes sparkled under the harsh lights, one corner of his mouth tugging upward in a smirk.
She couldn’t decide if it was anticipation or dread that kindled in her chest as she approached him, her breaths a little quicker and shallower, helpless but to respond to that hint of a smirk. “What?” she asked, when she stood beside the desk.
“You too tired?” he asked. “You headed straight home?” The way his tongue touched his lower lip, turning it shiny, suggested he could have had a host of alternatives on his mind, alternatives her body responded to with a flush of heat and a pulse of awareness.
“I need to get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”
His grin widened, flashing teeth. “That’s not what I asked, sweetheart.”
She glanced around, checking to see if anyone had heard the endearment. It was bad enough Contreras knew about him; she didn’t want her private business broadcast to the whole department. But Sloane was the only other detective still at her desk, absorbed in something on her computer, and the janitorial crew was busy unrolling the long, orange cord of the vacuum across the floor.
A touch landed on her wrist, two light fingertips over her pulse point, which meant he could feel the way her heart leaped in response. His grin had darkened, when she looked back at him.
Don’t, she thought. Don’t call me that. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t think my heart’s leaping because of you.
But it was, and they both knew it.
She swallowed thickly. “Have you been sitting here the whole time?”
“No. I went out for a while and came back.” The light in his eyes shifted to a new kind of eagerness. “You still want to get one of those girls I told you about to come forward?”
Her heart leaped for a different reason, now. Her lungs flooded with the scent of the hunt. “Yeah. You got one of them to talk?”
“I might be able to, if you help me. Wanna take a ride?”
Outside, his bike sat matte, and black, and deadly in an understated way…in a no-parking zone.
“How have you not gotten a ticket?” she asked as they walked toward where it sat crouched beneath a streetlight, an unreflective void of wrapped pipes and flat paint.
“See, that’s the magic thing about being a Dog,” he said, chest puffing out with pride. “Even the cops don’t wanna fuck with you.”
“Or haven’t noticed you yet.”
“Oh, they’ve noticed.”
As if on cue, a patrol car crawled past, its windows down, the driver shooting them a dark look. He didn’t stop, though.
Melissa was a little bit impressed…and also disappointed that a criminal organization held that kind of sway over law enforcement.
Pongo, the little shit, waved at the cop, and plucked his helmet off the handlebars. It was matte black, like the bike, but had a little white pawprint decal on the back of it. He offered it to her.
She frowned. “You only have the one?”
“Yep. So you wear it. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll get pulled over.”
He pointed at the retreating patrol car and grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet.”
“You ride without a helmet often?”
He shrugged. “Eh. Sometimes.”
Her stomach lurched like it had earlier, when he’d talked about the prostitutes. He had a helmet, which meant if he rode without it, it was because he’d given it to his passenger. His female passenger.
How many women did he go around calling sweetheart? Did he have cute little nicknames for them, too?
Or, a worse thought: was he courting other cops in different departments? Using female detectives to further the club’s aims?
“Dixie?” he prompted, brows knitting. “You okay?”
She took the helmet. “Yeah.” When she crammed it down onto her head, she discovered that it was too big for her, and that it smelled of his shampoo, something citrusy and fresh that he always left behind on her pillows. She clicked it into place and tightened the strap with a lump in her throat.
He reached up to check the fit when she was done, sliding a finger along the tender skin under her jaw, eliciting a prickle of goosebumps down the back of her neck. He nodded, seeming satisfied, and his gaze dropped to her waistband. “Gotta lose the badge and gun.”
Anxiety flared at the notion. “What? No.”
“Come on, Dixie. The place we’re going, you can’t walk in looking like a cop. You gotta pretend you’re a civilian and play it cool.” His head tilted, gaze assessing. “Can you do that? Can you actually be cool?”
She drew herself upright. “Cooler than you,” she shot back.
He laughed. “Aw, baby, not even close, but that’s cute.”
“You’re–” She caught herself before she stupidly parroted his own word back at him, uncool as summer back home, and the quirk of his brows said he knew what she’d almost said.
“Badge and gun,” he prompted, “or I’m not taking you.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
She put both in her bag and felt naked for it.
He gave her a long, up-and-down once-over, after. “Hm. Guess you’ll do.”
“Guess I’ll do? Where the hell are we going?”
“You’ll see. Come on.” He straddled his bike and held out a hand to help her on. “M’lady.”
She didn’t take his hand – but did have to grip his shoulder as she climbed up onto the tiny little bump seat and found the footpegs with her boots. It was a precarious perch, even sitting still, and her belly fluttered with nerves.
“I’m not starting her up until you hold on,” Pongo said over his shoulder.
She tightened her grip on both his shoulders.
He tsked. “Nah. That’s not gonna cut it.”
“Who are you, my mother?” she griped, but she did want to talk to the vic, so she slipped her arms around his waist and took a tight hold of his middle.
It wasn’t the closest they’d been. They’d been naked and fitted together in nearly every configuration, overlapping and breathing heavy and scoring one another’s skin with blunt nails. But something about sitting snug against his back like this, feeling his ribs expand on his next breath, her chin tucked over his shoulder, felt intimate in a way they never had been during sex. In the throes, base pleasure outcompeted every other sensation. But like this, now, she could smell soap and cologne and skin; could see the little nick at the top of his ear usually covered by hair and wonder how he’d obtained it. He had freckles on the back of his neck, too, faint brown, where the sun stole beneath the rear edge of his helmet like seeking fingers.
He toed up the kickstand, shifted the bike fully upright, and cranked it.
She’d been on the back of a dirt bike a few times, growing up, and on an underpowered street bike, once. Neither compared to the sound and the feel of the Harley springing to life between the footpegs.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, before she could help herself.
Pongo must have heard, because he turned his head so the streetlight caught the baby-fine, blond prickles of his five o’clock shadow. “You good?” he called over the rumbling engine.
“Yeah.” She laced her fingers together over his lean stomach and squeezed until she felt her knuckles pop. “Let’s go.”
He couldn’t open up the throttle in the city the way he undoubtedly did on the road north, but even in stop-and-go downtown traffic, the Harley’s leashed power was impressive. Though she wasn’t piloting it, it made her feel powerful; like she had the ability to take off, or maneuver, or run somebody down if need be. It was a feeling unfamiliar to her, but one she thought she could get addicted to.
As he’d predicted, no one pulled them over, though they passed more than one patrol car.
A guy in a parka walking down the sidewalk tossed them a little two-fingered wave and Pongo threw one back.
“Friend of yours?” she asked in his ear.
“We keep in touch.”
When she’d first joined the force, she’d been impressed by the network of undercovers and CIs that kept the precincts informed of street activity…but had since learned it was nothing compared to the Dogs’ underground contacts. God only knew howe many “friends” Pongo had in this city.
Twenty minutes and far too many redlights later, Pongo turned into a jam-packed, chain-link-fenced parking lot next door to a black-painted building decked out in blue neon. The signage out front read Cool Down, and that uneasy, sinking feeling returned to her gut as he killed the engine and climbed off the bike.
“A club?” she asked, frowning. She could see bouncers at the door.
“Yeah. Now. Hold on.” He was still sitting, far leg pulled up to rest on the fuel tank so he could face her. He raked and arranged his curls with both hands, practiced movements that looked like old habit. “Before we go in, I wanna make sure you’ve got your head on straight.”
She passed back the helmet so she could fold her arms and give him an unimpressed look.
“This is a club, yeah. The kinda club where ladies get up on stage and–”
“It’s a strip club.”
“Yeah.” His brows lifted. “Can you handle that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He made a face. “Look, sometimes women aren’t cool with…” He gestured toward the building. “All of that. I want you to be prepared, is all.”
“Pongo, I’m a professional,” she said, firmly. “Look at what I do for a living. You think some boobs are gonna knock me off my game?”
He shrugged and stood. “Okay. The girl we’re looking for is called April. April Showers when she’s on stage.” He slipped an arm around her waist and steered her out onto the sidewalk, hand riding low on her hip.
When she stiffened, he leaned to whisper in her ear. “If you’re not going in as a cop, you gotta look like we’re out for a fun night together, yeah?”
She sighed – but he was right. She forcibly relaxed her posture and leaned into his side, which felt like a bigger deal than it was. They’d slept together, for God’s sakes; what was a little clinging on a sidewalk?
There was no accounting for the way her stomach flipped when he patted her hip and murmured, “Atta girl.
“Hey, boys,” he greeted the bouncers at the door, and plucked at his hoodie so the dog stood out beneath the blue neon.
The two big-shouldered men nodded to one another, and motioned them through.
It became immediately apparent, once inside, that Cool Down wasn’t the sort of club who catered to high rollers. The dark couldn’t hide the dated, dingy booths and the smudges on the mirror-backed bar. It had been years since it was legal to smoke indoors, but the scent of old, stale cigarettes lingered, undercut with the sour notes of spilled liquor and sweat.
It was crowded, a sea of dark silhouettes seated around the catwalk and central stage, where a blonde in a patriotic G-string worked the pole halfheartedly to “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
Melissa stood up on her tiptoes to be heard over the music. “That her?”
“Nah. Supposed to come on at the top of the hour.” His hand found its way into her back pocket and he didn’t miss the chance to squeeze her ass. She pinched his side in retaliation, and there was a laugh in his voice when he said, “C’mon, let’s get seats.”
There weren’t any upfront, but Pongo leaned down to speak in a guy’s ear, a handshake was exchanged that wasn’t quite slick enough to conceal the rolled cash he passed over, and then the man and his friend stood and offered their chairs.
