by Mia Thompson
She looked him in the eyes for a while, a strong gaze, almost cold, as if she just now realized Aston’s intentions. Then she laughed, more to herself than to Aston.
“Bye,” she said and left.
Aston closed the door, a little confused but happy to have gotten rid of last night’s entertainment with such grace. One chick had stayed at his old downtown apartment for twenty-three hours, despite his well-chosen questions. At least this one got it, eventually.
* * * * *
Sapphire moved down Rodeo Drive, avoiding eye contact with anyone that crossed her path, especially the crowds of tourists snapping pictures outside of the famous boutiques. She was wearing last night’s dress, old smeared make up, and her hair up in a messy bun. Her eight-inch high heels dangled from her hand. It was the first time she had done the walk of shame, and it would definitely be the last.
Her car was parked by the police station, and she still had an entire restaurant block ahead of her.
She could still feel the heat on her cheeks from before. She had kissed him. When his lips didn’t return the favor, she realized he was only leaning in to open the door. She exhaled hard, trying to rid her mind of the embarrassment and last night’s act.
The stubble from his five o’clock shadow tracing along her face till his lips reached hers. Their bodies together in one motion. Their eyes meeting for a second and Aston, almost surprised, grunted from pleasure.
Their bodies relaxing, leaning into each other. Then suddenly, he had tensed up and his demeanor changed dramatically. He shot out of bed. Sapphire hadn’t been sure what to do. She had heard of pillow talk, but assumed they were supposed to lie with their heads on the actual pillows.
It was bad. Well, it was really good, but the fact that it was really good was bad.
She wished she would have left once it was over, but she didn’t. For unknown reasons, her body hadn’t left the apartment.
Perhaps there was something that she had never been told about sex. Perhaps after the act the two bodies pulled towards each other like magnets. Except her body seemed to be drawn toward him and his body seemed to magnetize more toward the edge of the bed.
Being over twenty and still having her virginity intact wasn’t something Sapphire preferred to share with people. She wasn’t a prude or religious for that matter, she just never felt the urge for anyone.
At one point Sapphire thought she was a lesbian, then realized that option number two was even less attractive to her than option number one.
When she saw Aston, it was easy. She didn’t think; she just followed the animalistic part of her brain. A part she never thought she had. Desire was something very strong, if you’d never felt anything like it before. And she hadn’t, especially not with John.
She and John had dated for over six months and during that time, Sapphire had become a master of avoiding the act. Every time she was going to spend the night at his place or he at hers, a sudden conflict had managed to arise just in time.
Chrissy, Sapphire admitted, had been gracious about the whole thing, exercising the very reason why Sapphire had picked her in the first place. Chrissy knew she was a virgin, but that was it. Even her own mother assumed she had already been with numerous men. That was revealed in a stomach turning conversation Vivienne had insisted on having with her.
Her mother had come up to her with a strange expression.
“Darling…” Vivienne said, letting her hand fiddle with the eighteen karat locket hanging down in her cleavage.
“Yeah?”
“What do they like nowadays?”
Sapphire was about to ask: “What does who like now days?” When it became clear what her mother was asking.
“Mom, for Christ’s sake!” Sapphire jumped off the kitchen stool looking for the fastest escape path. Unfortunately, Vivienne managed to block it.
“But…young men are different from what I’m used to, it’s very hard to tell what they want and when they want it.”
“Mom, stop!”
“They seem more anally fixated. Does that sound right to you?”
After that, Sapphire couldn’t remember much. As a defense mechanism, her brain had deleted the rest of that conversation.
It was then that Sapphire realized what she was expected to be like, even at fifteen.
The minute she got to the police station and slid into her car, Sapphire noticed something was wrong. Besides being devirginized and brutally used, there was something worse. Something was missing from her Range Rover.
Her eyes were drawn to the rearview mirror. Empty. Where was it? Sapphire bent down searching the floor for it.
May 20, a few years back, Sapphire sat on a rock outside Winchester Private Academy.
The day before, Vivienne called her to tell her about the new art piece she’d bought. In the middle of the conversation, Sapphire heard a register cling shut and Noah, Vivienne’s personal shopper exclaimed, “Thank you, Darling.” Her mother was calling from Beverly Hills, not from the road or the private jet.
“Are you at the mall?” Sapphire asked bitterly.
Her mother scoffed. “Of course I’m at the mall; where else would I be on a Thursday at noon?”
“Oh, I don’t know, my dear Mother…On your way to see me in Winchester for my birthday?”
On the other line, all she heard were quick breaths, her mother realizing that she’d forgotten her daughter’s birthday yet again and working on a lie to fill the nasty crack.
“Well…don’t you remember?” Vivienne said. “We changed it last week, didn’t you get my e-mail? It’s typical of the Internet; I’ll have them put in one of those new high speed things right away when I get home.”
Sapphire remained silent. After so many years Sapphire should have known better than to believe that her mother would show up for her birthday…for anything really. It wasn’t necessarily that she wanted to spend her birthday with Vivienne and her entourage, but she definitely didn’t want to spend it alone. Chrissy was her only friend, and she had taken off for a family emergency, aka, ski trip the week before and wasn’t due back until the coming week.
“I would take the jet right now, darling, but I already agreed to attend a gala tonight, you see.”
“Can’t you send the jet for me?”
“Um…well…go spend some time with your friends. I can Fed-ex over some birthday pot, hmm? What would you like? How about some Bubba Kush?”
“No. It’s fine.” She hung up.
So there she was, sitting alone on a Goddamned rock on her seventeenth birthday…until Julia’s car pulled up at the entrance of the school. She thought she was hallucinating from wishful thinking, but it was definitely Julia.
“I left as soon as she came home from the mall,” Julia said as Sapphire ran up to meet her with a big hug. “She tell me to go and get her tampons and I say ‘yes, of course Mrs. Dubois, right away Mrs. Dubois’ and then I just kept driving.”
“You drove through the night? Won’t you get in trouble?”
Julia shrugged like it was nothing and pulled out a white chocolate cake, Sapphire’s favorite. “Es not homemade; I didn’t have time.
They set up in the empty school hall dining room. Julia looked around astonished.
“This es the cafeteria? Looks like es for kings!” she exclaimed. “I forgot the gift at the casa, but I got something for you at the store.”
Julia pulled out a little round package, a bundle of newspaper. Sapphire took it and undid the masterful wrap.
It was a vending machine Batman ring. Every morning before school when Sapphire was younger, Julia would turn on the Batman cartoon for Sapphire to watch while she prepared her lunch.
“E stupido machine. It took me twenty minutes to get this one; it kept spitting out Superman, Green Lantern, more Superman; no Batman.”
“Thank you, I love it.”
“Well, es better than nothing.”
They spent the next day walking around the small town of Winchester
and watching old movies at the local theater. It was still to this day, the best birthday Sapphire had ever had.
Sapphire put the ring on a chain and only wore it for special occasions. Very exclusive special occasions that involved serial killers and their entrapment. It was her lucky token, and whenever she wasn’t off hunting California’s most wanted she hung it in her car as a reminder of her adventures. Specifically, from the rearview mirror.
Now it was gone.
Chapter 5
Her butterfly kick was so powerful that the mitt flew out of her trainer’s hand and slid across the floor, all the way to a janitor, who stopped it with his foot and threw it back to Sapphire.
“O-kay…” Marco said as Sapphire handed him the mitt. “Storing some aggression today, are we?”
“Sorry.” Sapphire grabbed a towel to wipe her arms.
“It’s all right; just try to relax. Don’t use your anger to fight. Channel it and you’ll strike gold. How do you think Asians who practice MMA live to be a 120-years-old? They’re stress free.” Marco nodded to her, but more so to his own speech.
“Is that true? They really live to be 120?”
“No, I made it up. But it sounds good in theory, doesn’t it?”
Sapphire smiled at him. Marco was the best trainer she’d had so far, probably the youngest too. He was the tall, dark, and handsome type, adding muscular into the mix. Most girls’ wet dream. Most, but not Sapphire’s.
Still, she would miss him when they got to their last session…which had to happen sometime soon; she had already been with him way too long.
Marco had no idea that she was probably already a black belt by now. She wasn’t sure though; she never really kept track of the requirements. What she did keep track of was which personal trainer she went to and how long she’d spent with him or her. A person who obtained a certain level of skills within martial arts was registered with the government as a deadly weapon, and therefore, always watched in one way or another. If Sapphire was watched, it would be impossible for her to stay unnoticed. Instead, she set out to appear like any ditsy 22-year-old rich girl, not someone who had the knowledge and skills to take out a man three times her size. Of course, that was never what she set out to do. It was merely plan B in case plan A fell apart.
“You ready to go again, Mary?” Marco asked, standing ready with the mitts.
She looked at him, wondering what would happen to her plan B if the killer were trained like Marco. Would she still be able to take him down, or would she be added to the number of body bags, figuratively speaking of course—a killer hardly ever used body bags.
“I’m ready,” ‘Mary’ said, in her character-tailored voice. Mary Smith, she thought, had been the perfect name for a college student from a middle class background. If any questions ever came to Marco, he’d name the most common first name in North America, along with the number one most common last name. Brilliant. She smiled to herself.
When their session was done, Sapphire felt like she had gotten out most of the anger from what happened the night before. It could never happen again. Around Aston, she had forgotten who she was, and more importantly, who she wasn’t. She had become an ignorant girl for a day, just like Chrissy and her friends.
As she paid Marco with ‘Vivienne’ cash, leaving no paper trail, Chrissy texted her again. Sapphire didn’t have to look to know what it said, the same as all the others.
The first text read: Went home w him didn’t u, u dirty skank?
She didn’t answer, not because the dirty skank part offended her—it was apparently her generation’s way of displaying affection—but she wanted to forget about it all. Erase it from her mind as easily as pressing delete.
The second text: If he was silverware, would he b oyster, salad, or entree fork? Lol ;)
“You’re really coming along.” Marco slid the money into an envelope.
I better be coming along after two years of training.
“I’ve still got a lot to learn,” she replied with a smile. “Actually, I think I’d like to train more than once a week. See you on, say, Monday?”
She was almost at the door when Marco lightly grabbed her wrist.
“Or…” he said. “We could discuss some moves over lunch. Are you hungry?”
Sapphire weighed the option for about a second. The morning with Aston had left a bad taste in her mouth, and now that she was no longer a nun, Marco could have a different appeal. Was she attracted to him after all, or was it just revenge on Aston that she wanted?
She realized going out with Marco could end up one of two ways. The dinner meant more to Marco than it did to Sapphire, which would lead to awkward training sessions later. Or, the dinner could go great and Sapphire would find herself drawn to Marco, and one thing would lead to another. He would eventually want to see where she lived and would find out that she wasn’t a middle class college student, but an upper class rich girl who had never worked a day in her life and—oops—her name wasn’t Mary.
With that conclusion, Sapphire shook her head. “Sorry, I have to study. Big essay coming up.”
“All right, maybe another time then?” He held her gaze.
Out in the parking lot, the fifty-fourth image of Aston and the previous night hit her. Her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed as she tried to shake off the collage of memory flashes that played in her mind.
Usher’s annoying ring tone—that Chrissy had insisted she just had to have—interrupted her thoughts of the bastard who’d stolen both her virginity and self-respect in one night. The caller ID showed that it was John, her “boyfriend,” and she felt horribly guilty. Although she knew John had “cheated” on her several times, it wasn’t the person Sapphire wanted to be.
She had to talk to someone, and there was only one person she knew who was sworn to secrecy.
* * * * *
Aston drank his overly bitter coffee slowly, dragging his fifteen minute break to its fullest. He sat in the station’s cafeteria, which looked more like a five-star restaurant. He flipped the pages of the LAPD report he was holding and stopped at a sentence, grinding his teeth. He had hacked into the LAPD database and downloaded a few of their latest cases to see what he was missing. It wasn’t really stealing, just considered bad taste. After all, they were still part of the same county. Same county…different world.
“Son of a…” Aston yelled, then opted not to finish the sentence; the cafeteria lady had already scolded him once for cussing about the overly bitter coffee.
The LAPD had gotten a case of the infamous California serial killer catcher. Aston noticed that his grip had tightened around his fancy paper cup and the coffee was now being forced to the edge.
According to the newspapers, which printed misinformation more often than people thought, the LAPD had found the Double Blade Killer just a couple of days after Aston got transferred to Beverly Hills. What the paper hadn’t mentioned, the report now revealed. An anonymous caller sent the police to Garrison Park where, in a manmade pit, he was waiting for them. Handed to them on a platter with parsley garnish.
Though this was the first case in L.A.’s jurisdiction, Aston had been studying the cases since they first started appearing two years back. There was no official statement to the public, but existed by word of mouth, traveling from department to department. The fact that a man out there somewhere had started taking the law into his own hands, capturing murderers before the police even had any suspects, was humiliating. The police kept it hush-hush, of course. The media tended to screw things up. Either they printed misinformation or people bombarded the stations with fake leads, so the media was only told about one out of one hundred cases. The Serial Catcher, as he had been unofficially named, would remain under the radar until the day they caught him.
Aston had missed having his hands on the actual case, being able to get all the information and interrogating the killer himself. Whether it would have worked or not, at least he would have gotten a shot at it. Knowing his old chief,
swamped with drug dealers, killers, and other earthly matters, he wouldn’t do more investigation than needed. He’d be happy someone handed them a serial killer for free.
Oddly, all seven men in custody refused to reveal the truth of how they’d been captured. Not an honest word had been said since the ordeal started.
Lies had been plenty, but not a single true word. “The Butcher” who had roamed California eight months earlier said he was chased into the hole by a group of men, seemingly agents. A multiple rapist and strangler said he just fell into a hole and wouldn’t tell the Santa Clara police why they had been sent to the scene by a phone call. He then changed his story and told them he called. The list was endless and all stories were the same, but different enough to be bullshit.
Aston, however, had his own theory. He believed that the men, these tough murderers who thrived on putting out someone else’s life by their own hands, were embarrassed. Why, he had no idea yet, but he was convinced that he could have cracked the case in a week if only he had the opportunity to get his hands on it.
Only he didn’t get the opportunity, he got Beverly fucking Hills and a life worth of piss. The guy had been in his district while Aston’s ass had been planted on a velvet pillow.
This was the case Aston had dreamt of bringing in for the past year, and now it had slipped through his hands. He wasn’t ever going to get another opportunity; it wasn’t like the dude would visit Beverly Hills any time soon.
Back home, in downtown, cops let the fishes back in the ocean to catch the sharks. Here the sharks were the size of fishes and the fishes came in the form of jay walking.
Within a second, the false I-can-do-this feeling he had that morning from canoodling the rich girl had completely washed away.
“Detective!” Chief Anderson came toward him in a half run.
“Yes, Chief?”
“We’ve got a Twelve-Twenty again off Beverly Drive. I want all men.”
“I’m on it,” Aston said, restraining from throwing his coffee into the chief’s face.