No One Will Hear You

by Matt Clemens

  “How exactly?”

  “On tonight’s show, announce that the FBI is coming in to lead the Don Juan investigation. Turn the heat up a little.”

  “Last time we turned up the heat, a dead body wound up on my doorstep.”

  “Last time you turned up the heat by ignoring him. This time, let him have all kinds of attention from J.C. Harrow and Crime Seen. Maybe he’ll get cocky and make a mistake.”

  Harrow frowned. “Well, we’d love him to make a mistake, but we don’t want another innocent woman paying for it.”

  Amari was shaking her head. “What I mean is … tell Don Juan he needs to communicate with you now, so you can help him tell his story. That the FBI will insist on taking Crime Seen out of the equation.”

  Harrow called in Michael Pall for his opinion.

  “We have precious little forensic evidence,” Pall said. “I’m starting to think the only way we’ll catch this guy is to smoke him out. You don’t need to be a profiler to know this one’s a narcissist of the first order. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest lover—what more do you need?”

  When Harrow ran it past Byrnes, the executive’s only complaint was that he hadn’t gotten the word soon enough to plug it on the UBC nightly news.

  Everyone was in agreement—the show would deal with Don Juan by announcing that the FBI would soon join the investigation. Amari (and Polk) went happily off to arrange for that Killer TV crime lab work.

  Harrow retired to his office. He read the latest drafts of his script, okayed them, sent them along to Byrnes. With still an hour till air, just killing time, he returned to his interrupted fan mail. After that, he decided to at least check his e-mail account.

  Very few people had this address and fewer still used it, since everybody knew Harrow rarely checked it. Mostly what he got was jokes from his Iowa buddies.

  One name and subject line did catch his attention: a message from Carmen, the subject line reading Re: Don Juan, with an attached file.

  Carmen was high on the list of those who knew how rarely Harrow checked his e-mailbox.

  He phoned her.

  “I didn’t send you an e-mail,” she said. “You’d never read it.”

  “That’s what I thought—thanks.”

  He ended the call before she could question him.

  Then he phoned Jenny Blake. “Can you come to my office?”

  “Shouldn’t you be in hair and makeup?”

  “I think I have an e-mail from Don Juan.”

  Her response was the click of a hang-up.

  He tracked down Amari and Polk. Soon they and the rest of the team, including Carmen, were in his office. Bad news traveled fast.

  Half were seated across from Harrow’s desk, the rest standing. Harrow was on his feet, Jenny in his chair at the desk with the laptop before her.

  Polk said, “So you really think it’s from him?”

  Whether he was asking Harrow or Jenny wasn’t clear.

  Jenny said, “Date is today, but the time is one forty-seven a.m.”

  “I was in bed then,” Carmen said. “I did not send that.”

  No one had accused her of it, but she seemed a little rattled. After all, the last Don Juan video had come in via her e-mail.

  Jenny downloaded the file, then played it.

  Like the others, it showed a beautiful drugged woman being made love to.

  When Amari saw the woman’s face, she said, “That’s her—Hollywood Boulevard victim.”

  She was a brunette, her hair longer than Ellen’s, but with the same type body as Harrow’s deceased wife. Another woman he couldn’t save.

  When she screamed, Harrow made himself watch.

  Then when the blade flashed into the screen, there was a millisecond of red (not blood—cloth?), and the blade came in from a different angle. Though the woman was still centered in frame, the camera was more to her right now.

  As usual, the metallic voice of the killer came on. “A promise is a promise, Mr. Harrow. Next week, would you like to try for four?”

  “Something’s different,” Pall said.

  “Very different,” Harrow said.

  “What?” Laurene asked.

  “That camera moved. Don Juan has an accomplice.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  They were all idiots.

  All of those TV stars and “forensics superstars” and Emmy-winning reporters—fools.

  Billie Shears laughed and the sound was brittle and echoey in the bathroom of the nonsmoking motel room. The morons still seemed think she was a “he,” unless they were withholding that theory for their own sneaky purposes.

  Naked, she sat on the lidded john, listening to the muffled blather of commercials on the TV as she smoked her third filter-tip Kool. Exhaust-fan hum made it a little tough to tell when the show came back. She let smoke curl out her nose. What was the old axiom, never commit a misdemeanor while committing a felony?

  Like she gave a crap!

  She took another deep drag, held it in, blew it out. When she heard the Crime Seen theme music, she stood, lifted the toilet lid, pitched the butt in, let the lid slam back in place, and went out to where she could sit on the bed, next to her victim.

  He was already dead, of course, dark, slender, handsome, in his mid-thirties, the blood pooling in the lowest places where his body touched the mattress.

  Tonight’s Crime Seen had given a good share of its attention to Don Juan. Had to hand it to ol’ Don Juan—placing that nude slaughtered bimbo outside UBC’s front door was real showmanship. She almost wished she could match him.

  But Don Juan was less an artist and more an egotist. The kind of grandstander who thrived on the attention that such public displays brought.

  Billie was more private. She was no exhibitionist, no sexual show-off—to her, each assignation was intimate. Lying back on the bed, she touched the corpse’s cool shoulder.

  This man, for example, was special to her. They all were, of course, but this one possibly more so. Until now, her victims had been straight men, seduced by a woman, though she had shrewdly led the police to misinterpret her work as gay-themed homicides.

  Now she would throw the authorities this curved ball (these curved balls?): the late gentleman lying next to her really was gay—openly so (as their investigations would soon determine).

  And this sweet gay man had fallen for her ruse as hook, line, and sinker as the police had. Could even Meryl Streep have delivered a performance so multilayered? An actress playing a transvestite male?

  But Billie had pulled it off.

  That was how her date had wound up on this bed next to her, slowly assuming room temperature.

  She gazed over at him with clinical affection, the gaping wound in his abdomen, in and up, tearing through lung, liver, stomach, and heart. Swift, even merciful—he had been dead before he could know what was happening.

  So stoned, he hadn’t even managed a gasp. He had just issued a confused, loopy grin, seeing the hedge trimmers. … Then he was gone, head lolling to one side like a man who’d just reached a dreamy orgasm.

  The blood around the edges of the wound was already starting to darken as it dried from exposure to the air.

  Good, she thought. I don’t have all night. …

  Billie pushed up on a palm and gazed into his eyes, glassy now, a vibrant green when he was drawing breath. These eyes stared blankly at the ceiling as she rolled toward him, her lovely, lithe body as nude as her victim’s. She leaned her face in only inches from the open wound, like a dog sniffing a hydrant, so she could feel the last vestiges of warmth seeping from his body….

  Since childhood, she’d been unable to comprehend why God took the lives of people who did others little if any harm, while leaving behind evil bastards who hurt anyone who crossed their path. Even members of their own family.

  He worked in mysterious ways, all right.

  She did, however, understand the Godlike feeling that came with choosing who lived or died. The pow
er of life and death … what greater aphrodisiac could there be? A shivery little thrill ran through her.

  On the small flat screen, Harrow was going on and on about Don Juan: “This is footage of the live studio audience from our show last week, when Don Juan expected us to focus our attention on him.”

  “I wonder what kind of lover J.C. Harrow would make?” she said softly.

  The body on the bed next to her appeared to have no opinion.

  “None of the studio audience members fit the profile of the killer we’re helping the LAPD track down.”

  Profile! What a joke. The profile for her would say she was male. After all, worldwide, ninety percent of serial killers were male. Eighty-six percent were heterosexual, so if she was a male killing males, as the cops thought, she would be flying in the face of that particular statistic.

  Eighty-nine percent of victims were white, and serial killers usually murdered within their race. The poor gent on the bed next to her backed up those numbers. She smiled at him. Billie was so much more than the sum of a bunch of statistics …

  … and before this was over, the LAPD and Harrow’s Crime Seen team would both learn that.

  “Despite our best efforts,” Harrow was saying, “as well as those of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Sex Crimes Division, Don Juan remains at large … though we are growing closer to apprehending this monster with every passing minute.”

  She giggled, giving her victim a gentle elbow in the ribs, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t share in her amusement at Harrow’s silly melodramatics.

  “What’s he going to say next?” she asked her silent lover. “ ‘We don’t want you good folks out there in TV Land to worry any, just ‘cause two clever serial killers, who are way smarter than us, are at large terrorizing our fair city. My team of superstar blah blah blah will protect you from blah blah blah.”

  The victim made no comment.

  She sat up and leaned over to press the pad of his big toe.

  The indentation remained. Blood was gone from there, having seeped to the lowest spot, the heel.

  Time to get back to work.

  She loved her role. Few people in this life had as much fun at their craft, their art, as she did.

  “You’re going to spend over sixty thousand hours of your life working,” she good-naturedly informed the corpse. “Well, not you, lover, you got early retirement. … But you might as well choose a profession you enjoy. That gives you job satisfaction and a real sense of accomplishment. And what a happier place this world would be.”

  No disagreement from the corpse.

  “What’s the old saying?” she asked. “Do something you love, and you’ll never waste a day in your life. That’s certainly the way I feel….”

  Glassy eyes studied the ceiling.

  “Did you feel that way? When you were alive? I hope so. Though I guess if you were living one of those quiet lives of desperation, maybe I did you a favor tonight.”

  Whistling a happy tune, she picked up the hedge trimmers and carefully positioned them across the victim’s thighs. It would be a shame to nick his nice slender but muscular legs when she took her trophy. He was special—he deserved the care she was taking….

  On the flat screen, J.C. Harrow was closing the show.

  “We have one final piece of business before we wish you good night….”

  She looked up toward the TV, hands leaving the handles of the shears.

  “The Los Angeles Police Department has asked us to make an announcement on their behalf.”

  Interest bubbled within her. So few things in this world could actually perk her interest, and here she was getting that rush for a second time in one evening.

  “Beginning tomorrow, the FBI will be taking over the investigation into the killings attributed to Don Juan and Billy Shears.”

  A lovely spasm coursed through her, a kind of mini-orgasm—Harrow had reported on the latest “Billy Shears” killing at the top of the show, but the emphasis tonight had been on Don Juan.

  Now, as the program came to its conclusion, here she was getting a real primetime mention—and equal footing with Don Juan!

  Since childhood she’d dreamed of it—being famous, becoming a star, a movie star perhaps, a TV star certainly, but a star.

  FBI attention to Don Juan meant FBI attention to Billie Shears! So happy was she with her increased importance, she bent over the corpse as the titles ran on the show, and planted a tender kiss on lips dead a good hour by now. Cool, soft, pliant lips….

  “I know you’re watching, Don Juan, so pay special attention now—once the FBI is here, you and I will no longer be able to communicate. These coming hours represent the last chance you have to talk directly to me.”

  She returned the already-positioned hedge clippers, opened the blades, and lifted his scrotum and penis over the bottom blade, letting them rest there. Tensing her arm muscles, she took one last look at her lover’s face, then slammed the handles, the blades snipping off the trophy as neatly as if it were the small branch of a sapling.

  When she had the trophy bagged, she wiped off the blades of her trimmers with toilet paper and flushed it.

  She was tuckered.

  Sitting on the lidded stool again, she lit up another Kool and let the thoughts drift in.

  The LAPD bringing in the FBI, she liked that. Showing up the likes of the cops had been almost too easy. The so-called “all-star” forensics team of J.C. Harrow had presented no real challenge, either. So far, at least.

  She blew smoke toward the exhaust fan.

  Raising the stakes like that, they were doing her a favor—she could accelerate the scenario. She had been waiting a long, long time to achieve fame—no reason not to get on the fast track now. Head for the ol’ fast lane. She grinned, standing to drop the cigarette into the toilet.

  Though the blood had mostly settled when she took her trophy, plenty of red had still got on the sheets, her tool, and herself.

  Soon she was stepping under the shower’s near-scalding spray. Felt wonderful, luxurious. Soaped herself slowly, enjoying the spray on her body, getting lost in a steamy cloud.

  No need to shampoo. The alopecia universalis had taken care of that. She had not found any doctor who could figure out how to regrow the hair that had fallen out back when she had turned eighteen; they all said it was an “autoimmune disorder.”

  Her body hair had deserted her, just like her mother. Scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, pussy, it was all gone, leaving her hairless as a baby—hairless-er actually, and never coming back.

  What had been a crisis for a young woman had become the perfect gift from God. Being hairless was one of the reasons she could share a bed with her victims. If a crime-scene investigator found a hair, it would be her latest victim’s, or from her latest wig.

  Billie smooshed at the fogged-up mirror with a towel, then admired her hairless body in the glass. She was twenty-eight but still looked eighteen, a nice slender shape, like a model’s, if bustier. She liked the way she looked without hair. She wore the fake eyelashes and thin fake eyebrows just so she would blend in with the outside world. At home, she didn’t bother.

  She put on the short, coal-black wig, tugging it into perfect place. It was modeled after one she had seen Kate Bosworth wear in a movie. The actress was beautiful, but Billie Shears looked even better in it.

  Dressed again, her tools and trophy packed up, she took one last lap around the room. Her ensemble included plastic booties over her shoes—she had rubbed out her bare footprints in the carpeting and used a damp towel to wipe up any footprints on the bathroom’s tile floor.

  Her towel, from after the shower, hung from the rod. Knowing she wasn’t in CODIS, the cops’ DNA database, was a plus. That meant she could leave DNA behind and it would only further confound the police—and now the FBI.

  What was a naked woman doing in a motel room with a naked gay man? they would wonder.

  As she exited, she smiled. The cops, the FBI, J.C. H
arrow himself, could ask question after question; but she would still have her secrets.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When the call came in early Saturday morning, and Harrow saw AMARI in the caller ID window, he hoped it was personal.

  It wasn’t.

  He threw on chinos, a tan polo, and a brown sports coat, climbed in his black Equinox, and drove quickly to the address in West Covina, a nondescript non-chain motel, two stories with a courtyard parking area.

  Anna was waiting just outside the lobby. She was in dark slacks and a gray silk blouse, big black purse on a strap over her shoulder, her stylish dark hair nicely tousled by the balmy breeze of this overcast morning. He wished he could check in at this motel with her and spend a pleasant day getting to know each other in the Biblical sense. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Billie Shears is pissed at you,” she said, meeting him as he climbed out of the Chevy.

  “Is she now?”

  “Oh yeah. Appears you spent too much time on Don Juan last night.”

  He fell in alongside her as she headed inside a turquoise-and-gold lobby where it was still 1977.

  “She left a note for you at the front desk,” she said, “and a body in a room upstairs.” “Lucky me.”

  “Oh, there’s more. Somebody’s stopped by who wants to meet you.”

  He closed his eyes. “FBI?” “Lucky you is right. He’s waiting upstairs.” Evidence techs behind the front desk were gathering security video. The desk clerk, a young black woman in a light blue blazer, was trying to hold her emotions in check.

  As they ascended an open stairway around which the airy lobby was designed, Anna handed Harrow a plastic bag inside of which he could see the note.

  JC,

  I said I would take your tackle—but now you have to wait your turn.

  I will line my trophy case with prize after prize till you can’t ignore me anymore.

  Next week you make ME the star of CRIME SEED and maybe I will take a week off. But if you even MENTION Dong Wadd I will step up the fun! Maybe one a day—how would you like that?

  It’s what you get for ignoring me last night for that hack Dud Wand—get it? Hack! Ha! ha!