by Sean Black
Two hours later, her right hand aching from several hundred scrawled signatures, her ass numb from perching on so many overexcited laps while they got their picture of her, she was finally back at her dressing room. As she opened the door, she saw a huge bouquet of red roses sitting on the table. How original, thought Raven, plucking the envelope from the center and tossing it down next to the flowers.
The way it bulged at the corners suggested it contained more than just a note. It was probably a roll of money and a phone number. Guys, usually rich local businessmen, often assumed that a thousand dollars in cash would somehow secure a night of passion for them to regale their buddies with at the local country club when they next played golf.
She dabbed at a bead of sweat running down between her breasts with a towel. These days, her body ached a lot more than it used to when she’d started out. The hair flicks gave you bulging or degenerative discs. Working the pole played hell with your shoulders. You started to damage cartilage from contorting your body into so many unnatural positions, and your sacrum, the large triangular bone at the base of your spine, which most people had never even heard of, started to swell up so bad that you had to sleep on your side. And those were just the physical maladies.
She could have written a book about the psychological damage the job would do if you weren’t careful: the suitcase boyfriends who saw you first as a trophy and then as a meal ticket; the constant temptation to drown your feelings in booze or drugs; the hundred and one small indignities you had to suffer on a daily basis, especially from other women.
She reached over and opened the envelope. Inside there was a wad of paper, folded over multiple times. Here we go again, she thought, recognizing the carefully measured printed lettering and the faint whiff of cheap perfume. She took out the note with a long, manicured fingernail and held it up to the light, scanning the words.
Please remember, Raven, I did this for you. It’s what you wanted. Even if maybe you didn’t realize it yet.
You’re always in my heart, baby.
Did what? Raven asked herself. Right now all she wanted was for this freak to stop sending her notes.
She dropped the paper on to the table next to the flowers, and looked up, half expecting to see in the mirror someone standing behind her. But the room was still empty.
She was no stranger to freaks, stalkers and weirdos. In this business you tended to collect them like most other women collected shoes. She already had a restraining order out against one ex-boyfriend, and she’d been in contact with the police in Los Angeles about this creep who’d been calling and writing to her for the past few months.
Knowing that the cops would want evidence, Raven took a couple of pictures of the flowers with her cell phone and put the note into her purse. Then she got dressed as quickly as she could.
Once she’d picked up her money from the club owner, she’d asked him about the flowers but he was short on details. They’d arrived at the club while she was out doing her meet-and-greet. The person who’d dropped them off had seemed like a regular deliveryman. No, he hadn’t seen the guy before. He gave a description that narrowed down to maybe a quarter of the male population: white, five feet eleven, brown hair, brown eyes. In other words, Mr Average. Yes, he’d take a look at the CCTV they had at the entrance but he doubted it would show anything.
With the best part of fifteen thousand dollars in her bag, and accompanied by two bouncers, she walked to her car, a midnight blue BMW 5-series sedan. The parking lot was emptying as they threaded their way through the pickup trucks and family vehicles (some complete with child seats) towards Raven’s.
She dumped her bag in the front passenger seat, got in and clicked the button that locked all the doors. She sat alone in the car, weighed down by the silence, as the two bouncers turned back towards the club. Raven closed her eyes, trying to center herself. She had a long drive ahead of her and knew better than to start out in an agitated state. She took a couple of long, slow breaths, visualizing her fear and anxiety as a series of small clouds drifting from her mouth with every exhalation.
There was a loud thud.
Her head snapped round and she saw a pair of eyes staring at her through the black slits of a ski-mask. He grabbed at the handle of the driver’s door, trying to get it open. That was when she noticed the long sheathed hunting knife dangling casually from his belt buckle. His eyes held hers for a moment, the intensity of his gaze paralyzing her. Thick pink lips rimmed by the wool of the mask mouthed something she couldn’t hear above the roar of the engine as her foot stabbed at the accelerator.
Then he blinked. The flutter of his eyelids was enough to break the spell. She threw the car into gear, and reversed at speed out of the space, only braking when the beeping of the parking distance control flat-lined to a near-constant tone. She put the BMW into drive and it shot forward, the headlights framing the man’s broad outline.
Yanking down hard on the steering-wheel, she narrowly avoided hitting him with the hood. Keeping her foot on the gas pedal, she pulled out of the club’s parking lot and on to the street.
She checked the rear-view mirror: the street behind her was empty. No one was following her. Her hands were still shaking – in fact, her whole body seemed to be vibrating with fear, her heart pounding in her chest. She grabbed for her cell phone, which was next to her on the passenger seat, thought about calling the cops, then decided against it. She wanted to go home, not stand around in a parking lot talking to the police.
She dropped her phone, switched on the radio and turned up the volume, hoping the music would blast away the fear that was settling like a thin film over her skin. She slammed her palms hard against the steering-wheel, rage edging out her anxiety, and pulled over into the driveway of a gas station about a thousand yards from the club’s exit, picking a spot near the out-of-service car wash that was pitch black. Then she waited, taking deep breaths, trying to gather herself.
A few seconds later she watched a pickup truck pull out of the parking lot and make the same turn she had. Raven took a deep breath as she caught a glimpse of the driver. It couldn’t be him. It just wasn’t possible.
The pickup wove across the central median and, for a moment, she thought she might be about to glimpse some divine justice. But the driver righted the car and continued on his way, like nothing had happened.
She pressed the button to lower her window, lit a fresh cigarette and started the car. Trembling, she pulled out from the darkness of the gas station and back on to the road.
Two
Carved pumpkin jack o’ lanterns with jagged teeth and diamond-slit eyes stared blankly at Raven from the front stoops of her neighbors’ houses as she turned into the quiet residential street nestled in the foothills south of Ventura Boulevard. Still shaken by what had happened outside the club, she’d used the long drive back to calm herself. Now she was clear about what she had to do.
As she pulled into the driveway, she pressed the garage-door opener, which was clipped to the BMW’s sun shield. The door swung up. She took a minute before she drove in, idling on the street, checking to make sure the garage was empty.
Satisfied that it was, she nudged the BMW inside, purposely leaving the door open behind her, then got out and walked to the front of the house. The street was quiet. A couple of cars were parked at the curb but they belonged to neighbors.
She walked back into the cool of the garage, opened the passenger door and took out her purse and the holdall that contained her stage outfits. As she closed the door, she glanced back at the BMW, a habit she’d developed when she’d had a bad night and needed to remind herself that her career had its compensations. It had been a gift from a man who had confused what Raven saw as a business relationship with something else. She had waited until he had given her the pink slip that transferred ownership of the car to her before letting him down gently. She couldn’t be bought, she’d said to him, with a smile; not in the way he wanted to buy her, anyway. She could only be leased, and
even then you never got the full package.
Over the years, she’d learned that you had to keep something back, some small piece of yourself. If you didn’t, you got your heart broken, and Raven had experienced enough heartbreak to last a lifetime. She had shut herself off and focused instead on making a life for herself and Kevin, and no one was going to take that away from her now.
Rolling her shoulders to ease the crick in her neck, she walked through the door that led from the garage into the hallway at the rear of the house, then into the kitchen. She put her purse on the counter, took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank half of it.
She pulled her work outfits from the holdall and jammed them into the washing-machine, then went back outside to collect the mail, leaving the door open so she could get back in quickly if anything happened. Nothing did, and the mail held no nasty surprises either. There were no handwritten envelopes, no death threats, nothing weird, just the usual junk mail and bills.
She walked back into the house and suddenly remembered something. She’d lost her sunglasses earlier in the week – she’d looked all over the house but hadn’t found them. Now she went back into the garage to check the car. Leaving the mail on the hood, she peered into the glove box, then under the seats. Nothing.
She stopped, trying to think where she might have put them down. It came to her. She had been unloading groceries from the trunk the day before and, unable to see in the gloom of the garage, she had taken them off. Maybe she’d forgotten to pick them up again.
She clicked the button to open the trunk, and walked to the rear of the car. The interior trunk light was faulty so she crossed to the light switches on the far side of the garage. The fluorescent tubes flickered into life, throwing fragments of harsh, savage light into the trunk. A horrific still image flashed in front of her. Then the lights steadied and she could see it clearly.
She stared into the maw of the trunk at a semi-clothed body, the stump of the neck covered with clean plastic sheeting, the ends wrapped tightly with string. Then she started to scream.
Three
The minutes dragged as Raven waited in the kitchen for the cops to show up. She smoked a cigarette, then lit a second from the fading embers. She thought about going next door or across the street to one of the neighbors but decided against it. Since moving in she had kept her distance from them, scared that they would work out who she was and what she did for a living. Anyway, no one had come when she had screamed. Not one person. The thought brought her close to tears.
She could have waited outside on the patch of front lawn, she guessed, but she was sure that no one was inside the house. There were no signs of anyone having broken in – no forced locks or smashed windows. Nothing out of the ordinary – apart from the decapitated body in the trunk of her car.
She reached over and turned on the tap, extinguishing the burning red tip of the second cigarette with the jet of water, then rinsing the flecks of wet black ash down the drain, jamming the stub into the waste-disposal unit and turning it on. Then she walked to the front door to wait for the cops.
Another minute passed. A long minute. She rubbed under her eyes, staining her fingers with mascara.
A flashlight swept across the glass pane in the front door, and she started. Then the bell rang. Raven took a couple of deep breaths and opened the door. A lone female patrol officer stood on the threshold. A cruiser was parked at the curb, its lights dappling the neighbors’ lawns and splashing red over the gaudy Hallowe’en decorations that sat in people’s front windows.
‘Ma’am, you called to report finding a body?’ the patrol officer asked, as her partner came into view from the side of the house.
Raven pulled the door wide so they could come in, noticing as she did so that her hands were still shaking. Suddenly everything tunnelled in on her. The red and blue lawn seemed to suck itself up from the ground and race towards her, the silhouetted paper cutouts of spiders, witches and goblins to start dancing at windows. She felt the strength disappear from her legs, and heard, from far away, a woman’s voice: ‘Ma’am? Are you okay? Ma’am?’
Raven was sitting in the back of an ambulance, an oxygen mask covering her mouth and nose. A paramedic crouched next to her. ‘Take it easy. You had a shock,’ he said.
Behind him, the street she lived on had magically transformed into a carnival of flashing lights and uniforms. Neighbors stood on the edges of their perfectly manicured front yards in their robes and slippers watching the show. The Hallowe’en decorations were still there but they seemed more festive than frightening. At the center of the carnival, the main attraction was Raven’s house. People in paper suits walked in and out of the front door and yellow crime-scene tape was festooned around it like bunting.
For a second Raven wondered what they were all doing there and then the events of the last few hours came back to her in a series of flashes that made her feel lightheaded all over again. She closed her eyes, and sucked hard at the oxygen.
‘She good to talk to us?’
This time when she opened her eyes a man and a woman, both dressed in business attire, were standing next to the ambulance. The guy was African-American, mid-fifties, and had a face that wasn’t so much lived in as forcibly occupied: heavy, hooded eyelids gave way to a wide boxer’s nose, which was offset either side by sports-trophy ears. The woman was a little younger, late forties maybe, her blonde hair cut in a short bob. She had bright blue eyes.
‘This is Detective Brogan,’ said the man, ‘and I’m Detective Wilkins.’
‘We’re from Van Nuys Division of the Los Angeles Police Department,’ said Brogan, finishing off what seemed like a well-rehearsed introduction.
‘Where’s Officer Stanner?’ Raven asked.
The two detectives looked at each other, puzzled.
‘Stanner?’ Wilkins asked.
‘From the Threat Management Unit? Someone’s been stalking me. He’s the one I’ve been talking to.’
Another look passed between Wilkins and Brogan, then Brogan turned away. ‘Just going to speak to the watch commander. Be right back,’ she said, her hands dipping into her pockets as she walked off.
Wilkins watched his partner’s departure, then turned his car-crash face back to Raven. ‘You feel ready to take me through what just happened?’
‘Where do you want me to start? Finding it in my trunk or before that?’
Wilkins cocked his head very slightly to one side. ‘Something happened before you found the body?’
‘Kind of, although I don’t know if it’s connected,’ she said.
She took him back through events at the club. When she said she was stripping, he didn’t react at all. Normally guys, regardless of their profession or in what capacity they were talking to her, showed something. Apparent disgust. Discomfort. A barely concealed excitement. But all Wilkins had said was ‘Uh-huh’, like she’d told him she was a waitress in a diner, then moved her on to the next part of the story. She’d liked him for his lack of reaction, even though the whole time she was speaking he seemed to be studying her, like she was a specimen under a microscope.
When she’d told him about the man who’d banged on her window in the parking lot he’d asked a lot of questions. How tall was the guy? What weight? Any tattoos? Once he was satisfied that she’d given him everything she could remember he’d moved her back on, skipping the trip home and getting to the moment when she’d popped the trunk.
By then the female detective, Brogan, was back and they went into a huddle before pulling in a couple of uniformed cops. Then they wandered over to the house where they stood outside talking.
Raven took a deep breath. She reached up and massaged her temples with the tips of her index fingers. At least Kevin hadn’t had to witness any of this. For that one small mercy she was grateful.
Brogan and Wilkins traded a look. They’d been partners for five years, long enough to develop a shorthand that didn’t require words. They called themselves Minority Report afte
r the science-fiction film. It was a running joke because, between their race, gender and, in Brogan’s case, sexual preference, they’d figured they ticked just about every diversity box the LAPD had.
Finally Brogan spoke, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her right ear. ‘You buying any of this?’ she asked Wilkins.
He looked skywards for a second. ‘Nope, but I don’t see why she would make the call herself if she’d killed the vic. Why not just dump the body somewhere? Drive down to Baja and stick it in a culvert.’
Brogan thought about it for a second. ‘How many of the assholes that we deal with do stuff that actually makes sense?’
Wilkins smiled. ‘Expressed as a percentage?’
Brogan nodded.
‘Between zero and none.’
‘Probably too early to be jumping to conclusions anyway. At least, before we speak to this guy from TMU,’ Brogan said.
‘Gotta work out who the vic is too,’ Wilkins added. ‘And what happened to her head.’
Brogan glanced across to the garage as a camera flash went off from one of the forensics photographers. ‘Think I can answer that one. Buddy of mine from Central told me they had a caper yesterday morning where they found a woman’s head stuffed into a newspaper vending machine down near the Federal building. They thought it was maybe some Islamist shit but it turns out the vic was a porn star. I’ll give him a call, let him know we found the rest of her.’
Wilkins gave his partner a grim smile. ‘This buddy down in Central tell you the vic’s hair color?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Well, if the carpets match the drapes then we know for sure it’s the same broad.’
Brogan grimaced. ‘I doubt her carpet would help us much. Those gals are usually clean as a whistle down there.’ She paused for a second. ‘Were you on the force for the “Four On the Floor” case?’ she asked.