She still invoked the image of an ice queen. But could her icy beauty still freeze men in their tracks and bring them to the brink of losing logic and reason? She doubted it. The last time that happened was over a year ago, when William Blackwell IV became Wesley Walters’s lover and she became William’s occasional object of affection. He called her his Glacier Queen, she’d loved that term of endearment. But it wasn’t for long. She had realized very quickly that to William she was just another whore, just as she was to Wesley. The two perverts had used her as a mere device to act out their sadistic fantasies. Yet she’d let them do it to her, believing that even if her dream of a modeling career had eluded her, all she’d endured would ultimately set her free.
She had been a small-town girl from the south, adventurous and fearless. At age sixteen she was ready to take a bite out of the Big Apple. Nobody had warned her that the Big Apple could be bitter and poisonous. As much as she’d prized her own beauty, the modeling world considered her a dime a dozen. She wasn’t good enough to grace the catwalk. She’d thought achieving a wafer-thin body could improve her odds, so caffeine, booze, and lines of cocaine became her natural sustenance. She’d slept with many men who’d promised her that gold-paved runway. None of them led her anywhere. She wasn’t even able to move out of the cockroach and rat-infested apartment she’d shared with several other girls. When she passed thirty, she was spiraling into a very dark place.
Meeting Wesley Walters seemed to be a blessing at first. He was looking for an assistant for his newly opened gallery in Chinatown—an attic in a crumbling building, she’d thought. But along with the meager salary she’d been offered, Walters also invited her to move into his two-bedroom apartment in the nearby Tribeca area. The idea of not having to sleep with the rats in that shithole was more appealing than the money itself. She readily agreed though she admitted to herself that Walters’s physical attributes had attracted her, too. He was tall, dark, with square shoulders and a powerful chest. Every time he looked at her, she’d melt into his dark chocolate eyes. But something else about him is dark, warned a voice inside her head. But she’d ignored it. He was irresistibly sexy.
Things were good for a few months. Walters was a perfect gentleman, showing no intention of taking advantage of her plight. He’d told her she was a beautiful woman and convinced her that giving up cheap drugs would make her blossom like a second spring. She did. She began to eat more real food and cut back on alcohol and smoking. Once a withered flower, she had come back to life, and Wesley Walters was her God.
She’d dreamed of Walters’s gentle touch on her naked body, fantasized his hot kiss on her parted lips. Their passionate love-making ran in her imagination many times a day. But there was no sign of her feelings being returned. If anything, Walters seemed to avoid anything that could lead to physical contact between them. Puzzled, she’d asked him if he didn’t find her desirable. He told her he didn’t want her to confuse love with gratitude. His honorable words touched her. That was the moment Wesley Walters had her, and she’d walked into his dark world willingly. They made love. But his love-making was nothing like her fantasies, it felt forced and mechanical. Still, she had convinced herself that Wesley was holding back because he didn’t want her to think he was taking advantage of her.
But Walters didn’t become a better lover. As time went by, Walters often sank into melancholy. A whole day would pass without him saying a word to her. She knew his gallery wasn’t doing well. They were only able to sell a painting or two every few weeks. Sometimes days would go by without a potential patron setting foot in their shop. She knew he wouldn’t last financially if the situation dragged on. She wanted desperately to comfort him, to share his burden.
One evening, after another bleak day at the gallery, they got back to the apartment after downing a few drinks at a bar. Walters sank into a lounge chair and began to flip through an art magazine listlessly. She went over and lowered herself in front of him, laying both hands on his knees. “Wes, I know the gallery is hitting a rough patch. If it helps, you don’t have to pay me until things get better, and things will get better.”
The magazine in front of Walters’s face shifted away, a pair of darkened eyes glared at her. Alarmed, she drew back, but couldn’t duck the magazine flying into her face. “Leave me alone, you fucking bitch, I don’t need your sympathy,” Walters snarled.
She fell back, her buttocks hit the floor with a thud, pain radiating to her lower back. She froze, looking up at the figure towering over her. Before she knew what was happening, Walters had grabbed the front of her blouse, pulled her halfway up and flipped her before dropping her face down. Her nose hit the parquet floor hard, stars bursting bright in her darkened vision. A ton of weight came down on her. She couldn’t breathe. When her eyes returned to normal, she realized that Walters was sitting on her back, ripping apart her pencil skirt. “You slut, whore, is this what you want?” he yelled, grabbing her hair, yanking her head backward. She screamed and begged him to let her go. But he refused to loosen his grip and continued ranting. She felt a searing pain, he’d rammed himself into her from behind, his body rocking to and fro as he pulled her hair with such force she thought her neck would snap.
She must have been out for quite a while. When she became fully conscious again, the clock on the cable box blinked in the dark, it was almost midnight. The door to Walters’s bedroom was shut. She didn’t know if he was in there or not. She limped to her own room and for the first time, locked the door from the inside. She didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, determined to tell Walters in the morning that she’d be getting out of his apartment as soon as she found a place of her own. As dawn approached, she began to wonder, where would she go? Back to live with the rats and cockroaches?
She got up early to take a shower and hopefully be on her way before Walters came out of his room. When she stepped out of her room, the aroma of French roast wafted from the kitchen. “Oh, you’re up. I made coffee, want some?” Walters appeared from the kitchen, holding a mug of coffee. He was his usual charming self, smiling as if nothing had ever happened. For a second, she thought last night was just a bad dream.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Walters came over and put a hand on her back, nudging her toward the kitchen. “You know I’ve been under a lot of pressure these days, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said tenderly. Almost immediately, she’d forgiven him, relieved that she didn’t have to leave, convinced that what he’d done to her was just an anomaly. One time, it’ll never happen again.
“How stupid you’ve been,” Simone said to the image in the mirror. She wound a big towel around herself and began to blow-dry her hair, thinking all the while how she’d approach Walters later in the office. He had never changed, and he never would change. Now William was dead, and it was just she and Walters again. She was sure when things quieted down on the murder investigation front Walters would be back to his old abusive self. Except now he had gained money and fame and therefore was even more dangerous. But she was no longer the gullible, defenseless woman she had been three years ago. If she played it well, she had a chance to control her own destiny.
She cut off the blow-dryer and rubbed a few drops of silky emollient conditioner in her hair. She picked up the hot flat iron from the vanity and glided it through her hair one strand at a time until the dull mane reflected light like a sheet of glass. After her face had been meticulously painted, she went to the bedroom to get dressed. She’d decided the previous night what she wanted to wear. A slim, ivory knee-length dress with a back slit and tucked-in waist. She put the dress on and stepped into a pair of nude three-inch-heel pumps. She had been wearing the same outfit the first time she met William Blackwell. She’d seen the lust in his eyes as they shook hands, and he’d told her she was bewitchingly beautiful. She glanced at the mirror, the woman inside was still bewitching, but also self-assured.
At first, William Blackwell seemed to have everything she’d wanted in a man. He was rich, charming, goo
d-looking, though in a pretty boy way compared to Walters’s overpowering masculinity. But William was generous, bearing gifts every time he came to visit at the gallery: a box of chocolates, large bouquets of flowers, and then a diamond pedant for her birthday. It was intoxicating just to hear his voice, the sound of English nobility; to get a whiff of his cologne, the fresh smell of the English countryside. Being possessed by him was her fantasy. But she only admired him from afar, satisfied with the fact that William’s money had not only saved Walters’s business but had also elevated his gallery’s ranking. Personally, being associated with William in public had fundamentally changed her social standing. She was no longer the nameless assistant in a nobody-gives-a-rat’s-ass gallery. She was now Simone Loveless, the lovely and beautiful assistant of the well-known W Gallery, often seen at the city’s society events with Mr. William Blackwell IV and his beautiful lady du jour. Her new salary, thanks to William, was enough for her to get an apartment of her own close to the waterfront in midtown east. She was free of Walters’s unpredictable temper and torment.
The revelation of the sexual intimacy between Blackwell and Walters was not a surprise to her. She had no moral issues with homosexuality. Actually, the togetherness of the two men had benefited her. She knew she had been standing on her toes at the edge of a cliff, leaning over to touch the glitz and glitter of William’s world. In the end, she’d fallen off the cliff onto the other side, but that side had turned out to be very, very dark.
After William bought the penthouse in the Crystal Palace, he’d invited her and Walters over for a house warming. She’d expected there would be other guests around but was surprised when she arrived to find the front door was ajar and everything was quiet. She pushed the door open and called Blackwell’s name. No answer, and no one was on the first floor. At the foot of the winding glass staircase she had heard a gagging moan. It came from upstairs. A cold wave surged from the pit of her stomach; goose bumps blanketed her entire body. She shook off her stilettos and tiptoed her way up the dizzying spiral stairs. On the second-floor landing she came to the wide-open double doors of the master bedroom and stopped in her tracks at the scene on the massive four-post bed.
Both men were completely naked. William was on all fours. Behind him, Walters was on his knees pulling on a tie knotted around William’s neck as if he was reining a trotting horse to a stop. The knot was cutting into William’s Adam’s apple, his eyes rolling back, his throat gurgling, his face contorted.
“Stop!” she gasped.
Walters let go of the tie, William’s head slumped forward. For a moment, they were motionless, William still on all fours and Walters on his knees. Then they began to laugh and collapsed on the bed together.
“We must’ve scared her,” William panted.
She was still unable to move.
“Simone, you just snapped us out of what we call an orgasmic trance,” Walters said casually, as if she’d just interrupted a game they’d been playing.
A game that horrified her but one she had forced herself to participate in.
She became proficient in administering erotic asphyxiation. She’d do it to one man, bringing him to that painful yet powerful climax while the other watched. In return, she’d earned William’s affection when he was in the mood for female-only company, expressed now and then on a one-on-one basis at his penthouse. Soon, blind ambition took hold and logical thinking went out the door. It was only a matter of time until Walters would be just a blip in the rearview mirror while she, Simone Loveless, would remain the glacier queen, the queen of pleasure to William Blackwell IV. She knew there was no chance she would be William’s wife, not even his girlfriend for a day in public. She didn’t care that William was a skirt-chaser, that he wore women like his expensive clothing, once with seldom repeats. If he kept her in his life, if her bank account continued to grow, nobody needed to know, and nothing had to be official.
And there was the leverage she’d gained on Walters. The business of the W Gallery was flourishing, and she was the necessary third wheel that had kept Walters’s lucrative relationship with William going. She knew her value.
Things were going swimmingly well. In fact, she had been on the brink of convincing William to finance her own agency. Sure, she was too old to be a model now but she knew the industry well enough to be the Madam of a modeling agency. The money required was pocket change for William and the aura of his persona could make her a success on both sides of the pond.
She had been so close. If it weren’t for that damned Empress Seal, that French slut. William’s death was a blow to Simone’s dream, but it was not the end of everything yet.
Simone let out a sigh. She took out a tube of lipstick from her handbag—Russian Red, William’s favorite. She smeared it on and looked in the mirror for the last time. She was the Glacier Queen again, and she had a job to do—she would claim what was rightfully hers.
*
Detective Ivelisse Rica had just sifted through the myriad information she and Ryan had collected so far about William Blackwell IV’s murder—again. The chalkboard on the partition of her cubicle was a colorful web of times, names, and places with many dots in between but fewer solid lines to make that crucial connection of “who, when, and where”.
The more she examined her work on the chalkboard, the less she was willing to accept the FBI’s assumption that the murder was directly linked to a Chinese drug ring. Yes, Blackwell was in possession of the illicit 489 opioid pill and, possibly, the one hundred cuts on his body were an act of the Chinese triad ritual killing. But the fact that Blackwell took a sleeping pill early in the evening while in the company of a guest made no sense. Somebody had put the sleeping pill in his drink or food. If that somebody, or the killer, was a member of the drug ring and if he had wanted to incapacitate Blackwell to make the strangling easier, why didn’t he just use a heavier dose of the 489 drug? He could’ve finished Blackwell without the trouble of strangulation and engraved his body to his heart’s content. Unless . . .
Ive’s eyes moved to the image she’d drawn on the board in yellow chalk. It represented the replicated Empress Seal.
. . . Unless the murderer and the thief were two different people.
Ive’s eyes shifted to the name prominently displayed in pink next to Blackwell’s in the center of the board—Gerel Garnier. She was at Blackwell’s penthouse hours before the murder. She and Blackwell clearly had a drink together at the hotel lobby bar before they went up to his penthouse. Didn’t Blackwell step away from the bar for a few minutes? Wouldn’t that be the perfect time for Gerel to spike his drink? Twenty minutes later, Gerel was seen on the security camera leaving the hotel lobby. And yet, Gerel didn’t tell Ryan she’d stopped in NYC on her way home the first time he interviewed her. Was she the thief? And why would she want something she herself had replicated? She knew exactly what it was worth. Three hundred thousand euros was not an insignificant amount, but a woman like her certainly wouldn’t retire on it.
That’s why Ryan had gone to France again. Ive hoped he could get to the bottom of things. Ive and Ryan had agreed that that Gerel Garnier was more of a mystery than a murder suspect. They’d obtained Gerel’s travel records which showed that she had arrived at JFK around noon on the day of the murder. She checked into a small hotel a few blocks away from the Crystal Palace and left around noon the next day. Ive had talked to the hotel receptionist who’d checked Gerel in. The young man remembered the pretty guest: friendly, with a slight European accent. Nothing that said she was nervous or trying to hide anything. That made Ive wonder if Gerel even knew of Blackwell’s murder before the news broke to the public. If Gerel had come to New York with the intention to kill, shouldn’t she have taken precautions with her real identity? Instead, she’d used her real name at the hotel and allowed her image to be picked up by the security cameras. If she’d killed Blackwell the previous evening, wouldn’t her instinct be to flee the city as soon as possible rather than linger until noon the next da
y? According to the hotel folio, Gerel had ordered room service around seven-thirty p.m. on the day she’d arrived and again at nine a.m. the next morning. The doorman recalled helping Gerel with her luggage and holding the taxi door for her to get in. Unless she was a psychopath wrapped in a sociopath, Gerel Garnier didn’t fit the profile of a murderer.
Ive pushed Gerel out of her mind, her fragmented reasoning was leading her nowhere. She’d wait for Ryan to call in with answers, or at least some clues to the Gerel Garnier puzzle. But who’s the killer?
Ive’s thoughts again circled back to two words—history, woman. Everything around the Blackwell death seemed to have something to do with the past, plus a woman. She’d told Ryan that. If Gerel was not the killer, could there be another woman?
Maybe she should pick through the forensic report again, there could be something there that she and Ryan had overlooked. Ive logged onto the NYPD’s crime management database and opened the Blackwell case file. There was nothing new, but something she and Ryan hadn’t considered significant jumped out at her. Two hairs, one brown one blond, had been collected from the carpeted floor of Blackwell’s penthouse bedroom. The dark one was about three inches and the blond one almost five inches. DNA testing was difficult since the strands didn’t have roots attached. And Blackwell was known to have lady friends in and out of his penthouse. She and Ryan had concluded that it was impossible to determine the last woman who had graced his bedroom, let alone pin her to the exact time of the murder. Revisiting the forensic report, Ive suddenly realized they might’ve overlooked someone important, someone who was always in the background of William Blackwell’s celebrity life in New York City. How could I have missed it? She needed to pay this person a visit.
*
From Maddison Ave., Ive turned onto 69th Street and parked on the other side of W Gallery. It was almost ten a.m. Through the large windows on the second floor of the gallery she could see the ornate ceiling chandeliers but they were not turned on, and first floor windows were dark, too. Nobody was in yet.
The Face of the Seal Page 21