by Matt Clemens
“No. We could be a group. Our own group.”
“There’s an idea.”
They clinked bottles again, not so tentatively.
“Achy Breaky Heart” was playing. Such an old corny song, and playing so loud. But it lent itself to line dancing, and the bunch out there was having a great time.
He thought about taking Gail back out onto the floor, but he didn’t quite feel up to it. Anyway, he liked this quiet time with her.
As the world continued to wobble on its axis, Danny wondered if he was drunk not on beer but on this pretty woman, and the silly, giddy sense he was falling in love. He hadn’t felt this way about a girl since high school. They just seemed to connect.
“Good thing you’re in my group,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Dangerous for a girl to come to a bar alone.”
“Really?”
“There’s a lot of date rape, and worse.” He couldn’t believe he’d said that. Not exactly romantic….
“You said you were a cop. You must deal with some bad people.”
He’d told her he was a cop in Santa Monica; she’d told him she worked for a Chicago company and made regular California visits.
“Bad people? Sometimes I do, yeah.”
He told her about this morning. It had suddenly become an hilarious anecdote, and she laughed often and in a sweet, fetching way.
“Now I know I’m safe,” she said, and she looped her arm in his. “With you.”
“I don’t know. I know some pretty rough characters on the PD.”
“Then am I in danger?”
“From me? No way.”
“Not even … date rape?”
She said that with a smile. A suggestive one. His head was doing a dipsy doodle.
Suddenly his voice sounded defensive to him. “I wouldn’t … force a woman. I would never take advantage.”
“I was just teasing. … Look, it’s getting a little loud in here. Crowded, too. Maybe we should find someplace quieter. Where we can really … talk.”
The noise was getting to Danny, too, contributing to his wooziness. Leaving the bar seemed like a good idea. He tried to think of some quiet place in Reseda, maybe a restaurant, when she made a much better suggestion.
“My motel’s not far from here,” Gail said, her smile just a glimmer at the corner of her mouth. Her expression held promise but also excitement, and a certain nervous edge.
“Uh, sure. Sounds good.”
“I don’t ever do this.”
“What?”
“I don’t pick up men. You need to know that. It’s just … Danny, you’re different. I feel like I’ve known you forever. So please … don’t think badly of me.”
“I don’t! I’m not!” This was the soberest he’d felt in about an hour.
They rose, Danny hoping he could hold it together—his legs unsteady, his stomach, too. He was feeling like he might be getting the damn flu or something.
Following the lovely redhead toward the exit, he had the fleeting thought he should maybe beg off, collect her contact info, and just head for home. He could just see himself folding her into his arms and moving in for the kill and … throwing up in her lap.
But her swaying hips, in those tight blue jeans, were like the swing of a watch in a practiced hypnotist’s hands.
Outside, with the sun down, a cool breeze swept in off the ocean, providing the fresh air Danny needed to feel a little better.
A concerned Gail took his arm. “You look a little green around the gills, honey. You okay?”
“I’m fine … never better.”
Screw it.
He drew her close and kissed that lovely moist mouth, and she kissed back, her tongue darting into his mouth, like a teasing snake’s. They kissed again, and again, then broke the clinch to come up for air.
“You’re fine, all right,” she said, her smile taking on a wry tilt. “You up to driving?”
No.
“Sure,” he said.
She studied him. “Honey, you had twice as many beers as I did….” “Did I?”
“Why don’t you just ride with me, and we’ll bring you back here when you’re feeling better?”
This was a decent enough neighborhood and his off-duty piece was safely hidden away in the spare tire compartment and locked inside the trunk.
“Good idea,” he said. “You drive.”
She led him to a white Kia Sorento. And then they were inside the vehicle, kissing in the darkness behind tinted windows. When he started nuzzling her shoulder and trying to get a hand under her top, she said, “Whoa there, big fella—don’t leave it all in the gym. Save a little for the big game.”
He grinned at her goofily. “Is there gonna be one?”
“I’ve got a nice big king-size bed in my motel room where we can discuss that.”
“Okay,” he said, with an even goofier smile.
As she pulled out of the parking lot, he asked, “What kind of work you do?”
“I’m a headhunter,” she said.
“That sounds scary.”
“Not for the one doing the hunting.”
“… If I wanted a better job in police work, could you help?”
“Sure.”
Gail made a right onto Roscoe and he settled back into the seat and enjoyed the ride with the window down, the fresh air gliding over him. By the time they got to the motel, he was feeling better and—given this company—he figured he wasn’t likely to pass out or fall asleep on Gail.
Tomorrow, he would have something to talk about with Nucci that wasn’t the goddamn Gruners. In fact, when he got to Gail’s room at a former Ramada Inn, and they were safely inside, her arms wrapped around him tight, his ribs—where Lloyd Gruner had piled on him—didn’t even hurt anymore.
They kissed standing up for a while; then Gail fanned herself, let out some air, rolled her eyes, said, “Wow,” and took a short breather. She built them each a mixed drink from some bottles of liquor and soda on the dresser; these they downed quickly, both eager to finish what they’d started.
Soon she was wrapping herself around him as they stood by the bed, kissing him hard, tongue darting in and out of his mouth, his hand on her blouse cupping a full, firm braless breast, its tip diamond hard.
The lightheaded feeling was coming back, but Danny didn’t think that was the drink—he was drunk on Gail, and anyway there wasn’t any blood in his head, not the big head, anyway….
She unsnapped his shirt, quick but methodical; then her mouth moved down his neck onto his smooth, nearly hairless chest, even as her hands started fiddling with his belt and that giant, prizewinner’s buckle.
Her kisses reached his stomach as she pushed him backward onto the bed, where he sat, legs dangling off its edge. She peppered his stomach with kisses as she unbuttoned his jeans, then tugged them to his ankles.
Danny fumbled with her top, but wasn’t having much luck. For some reason, his hands seemed to be about half a minute behind his brain.
She stuck a thumb inside the waistband of his shorts, tugged them down, too, as his erection sprang up and had a look around, as if seeing what it had missed. The throb of his member was a pleasant ache, oddly the only feeling that seemed to dent the haze.
Then everything turned soft and warm as she slipped him into her mouth, suckled, then moved up and down the shaft as hypnotically as her swaying hips when they had lured him to this room.
She must have sensed how close he was and let him ease away. Rising, she said, “I have to slip something in me, lover, before you can slip inside me….”
“Mmmmmm,” he said.
“Only be gone a minute. Get those damn boots off and be buck nekkid when I get back. I’ll show you the kind of dancing you don’t do in a line….”
She smiled mischievously, and moved away.
Groggily, Danny sat up and tried to focus on her fine, sweet shape as she headed toward the bathroom. She was still dressed, but there was no mystery abou
t the heart-shaped bottom awaiting under those tight jeans. Slowly, she pulled the spaghetti-strapped top over her head and showed him the ivory skin of her lovely back.
With a smile, before ducking into the bathroom, Gail turned off the room light, scant illumination filtering in through sheer curtains on this second-floor window. For a moment she was caught in a shaft of light from the bathroom, a topless beauty with a wicked smile.
Then she shut herself within.
He bent down and started tugging at a boot. Then another boot. Finally he sprawled out on the bed. He was there a while. Long enough for his erection to lose interest.
When the bathroom door did open, the light wasn’t on. Danny had no idea how long she had been gone. Had he drifted off awhile? Might have been ten seconds or ten minutes. In the darkness, all he could make out was curly hair, the ivory skin of one shoulder, and the fact that she was holding something.
In this light it was impossible to tell what. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she was hauling over a pair of those big garden shears, like the ones back in his folks’ garage. The ones the old man to this day used to trim the hedges. No Mexican gardener for his old man….
But in this pitch-black room, he’d seen very little, really, and the thought that had registered seemed absurd. Garden shears—really. …
She was coming to him now, cooing … or was it more like … purring, even … growling? He tried to reach out for her, but his arms felt leaden and he wondered if he could even lift them.
The wooziness seemed worse now; then the figure was towering over him, only he could no longer focus, his eyelids heavy, so very heavy. He would swear she was holding garden shears. He tried to focus on the point of the object, but it dropped out of sight.
There was a quick, terrible, sharp, excruciating pain at his gut, forcing horrible momentary clarity upon him, followed by warmth, all-encompassing liquid warmth, spreading over his stomach, dripping onto his legs.
That feeling was followed by overwhelming cold in his upper body, as if all his body heat were being siphoned off. He worked hard at keeping his eyes open, but could not. Thoughts flitted through his brain, butterflies on a sunny day, but he couldn’t catch them, not any of them; then the butterflies were gone and so was the sun and any other light.
As the coldness seeped through him, Danny Terrant thought, I think those were garden shears.
Then the world turned black.
Chapter Fourteen
Harrow’s take on Lieutenant Anna Amari was this: she was efficient and smart and tough; and she smelled really good for a cop.
Tuesday, she’d brought over the sketch of the John Doe victim and a copy of the security video from the Star Struck. Apparently not content to leave them with Harrow’s assistant, Amari had handed them over personally.
They had discussed the drawing briefly, then took a pass through the grainy footage. She was a knowledgeable cop and provided some insights.
“Real planning went into this,” she said, as they sat together at Harrow’s desk before his computer screen. “Killer did his homework. Knew where the cameras were, not just in the hotel, but along his route.”
“You’ve checked the traffic cams, then.”
“Yes, and every convenience store and other business that might have a view on the streets approaching the Star Struck.”
“Were you able to tie him to a car?”
“No.” Abruptly she rose. “Okay, gotta get back at it.”
And she was gone.
On Wednesday, she called. She grilled him pretty hard about his team and their capabilities. Not nosy, exactly, but clearly up to something. He had no idea what.
Now here it was Thursday, and Vicki had just buzzed him to say that Lieutenant Amari was on line two. If she was stalking him, he didn’t think he minded.
“Harrow,” he said.
“What’s your opinion of the Dodgers?”
He smiled. “I never thought about it, Lieutenant Amari. Are they suspects in the Star Struck investigation?”
“What kind of straight male has never thought about the Dodgers?”
“We can talk later about how you made that deduction. I’m an Iowa boy. We don’t have any big-time professional teams. I always kind of dug the Yankees, though.”
“That’s just sad.”
“What is? That Iowa doesn’t have a big-time baseball franchise, or that I’ve watched a Yankee game in my time?”
“Yankees. Just so obvious. You need retraining. I’ll pick you up at your office.”
“Okay. When?”
“Six-thirty. Dodgers and Cards tonight. That’s the Cardinals?”
“Yeah, I know that much.”
“Prepare to be reborn, J.C.”
“Sounds messy.”
“Just be out front at six-thirty.”
“Okay—dinner after?”
“Dinner during. Dodger Dogs.”
“What’s a Dodger Dog?”
“Jesus, J.C., you really were born in a barn.”
She hung up.
He smiled. He hadn’t been bossed around by a woman like that since … his smiled faded a little. Since Ellen.
Funny thing, he caught himself checking his watch as the afternoon rolled by. Did he actually have a date? Beyond his life at Crime Seen, and the colleagues who’d become his surrogate family, he had no real friends in California. He knew people out here, of course, had neighbors he spoke to, retail businesses where he was friendly with staff, but that wasn’t much of a social life….
Back in Iowa, he had work friends extending from the sheriff’s department to the DCI, and through his wife and son, other friendships had been forged. None had lasted beyond the Christmas-card level, after he moved out here. He’d heard that when couples divorced, friendships with other couples fell away; but he’d never have guessed the same was true when a spouse died.
So he found himself oddly excited by the prospect of an evening out with Anna Amari. But was it because she smelled good (for a cop)? Or because he was hoping to get an update on Don Juan? Probably both, as he really did have that madman on his brain.
Since the snuff video on Monday, they had received no further communication from Don Juan; and the Killer TV team’s discreet efforts to track him down were getting nowhere.
Other than the video, the police had a lock on all the evidence, so there just weren’t that many directions to go. If the LAPD had made a victim ID, they hadn’t shared it with the media. And Crime Seen, like the rest of the press, had acquiesced to the chief’s request to keep the details of the murder to themselves. For now.
On her Tuesday visit, Anna had responded to Harrow’s seemingly casual inquiry about Don Juan with a single piece of information: “The dead woman’s fingerprints aren’t on file anywhere.”
Which meant not in any applicable database—law enforcement, local licensing, federal government, you name it.
As the afternoon wound down, Harrow stopped by Jenny Blake’s office and found the small, tidy space empty.
Jenny had reduced the standard desk, filing cabinet, and trio of chairs to just desk and chair. If not for the open laptop on her desk, Harrow might have thought the office vacant.
The laptop, however, meant she was still at work—it was an appendage of hers, and you don’t leave an arm or leg behind.
So he was not surprised when the petite blonde appeared in the doorway, popping the top of a diet soda.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked.
“The Hollywood sign victim—still unidentified?”
Jenny, with her hacking skills, was always the first to know.
“Yep,” Jenny said. She passed Harrow, moved behind her desk, and sat. “Why?”
He stood opposite her, folded his arms. “How good is our facial recognition software? By ‘our,’ I mean yours.”
The laptop was to Jenny what the utility belt was to Batman—whatever she needed was in there.
She raised an eyebrow and her express
ion indicated she was a trifle insulted by the question.
He asked, “Can you hack DMV records and match a frame from that video to a driver’s license photo?”
“But that’s illegal,” she said, with a lyrical lilt.
“I didn’t ask if it was legal.”
“Take some time,” she said, with a shrug. “Have to try to isolate a frame where she’s not screaming … and preferably has her eyes open. But you know what the little train said.”
“I think I can?”
She nodded and smiled.
Wow, he thought, she’s come a long way. …
He glanced at his watch. “I have a, uh, an appointment this evening. But call me when you’ve got something.”
She was already at it.
He would wait for another time to suggest she add a visitor’s chair to her office ensemble.
In the corridor, his phone vibrated.
“It’s six-thirty-five,” she said. “You’re late. I’m in a yellow zone. Shake it.”
Anna clicked off.
He did, too, getting into the elevator. He liked this woman. She didn’t take any crap nor was she afraid to dish some out, and there was a nice spiky sense of humor underneath.
When he stepped into the late afternoon sun, Harrow found Anna in a silver Mazda Miata, top down—the car’s, not hers, unfortunately….
She bestowed him a faintly mocking smile as he approached. “I said shake it, big shot. Don’t make me give myself a ticket.”
He was chuckling as he climbed in.
Anna wore a home Dodgers jersey, the white shirt’s blue lettering a striking contrast with her dark hair, olive complexion, and red-glossed lips. Blue shorts showed off perfect tanned legs. Oh my.
Harrow had the sudden realization that he wasn’t going to a ball game with a fellow officer, but a beautiful woman. And a second realization, dawning slowly not suddenly, said: You haven’t had a date since … since you were a goddamn kid going out on dates. …
As she goosed the gas and the car leapt away from the curb, Harrow tried to think of something to say. He had the awful feeling that he would never again think of anything to say….
“I was a little early,” she admitted, “and almost came up to your office. But in this wardrobe, maybe your team would get the wrong idea.”