by Paul Heald
But, if she confessed, they would guess she had come to kill them. They would resist if they realized that they had nothing left to lose.
“So, I went into the den of lions and what’s my reward?” She shook her head vehemently. “You break into my house. You make up stories and you try to get your friend out of jail by putting me in his place.” She did not have to feign anger. The rage at the invasion of her privacy was real. The incomprehensible stupidity of those who did not see the righteousness of her cause took her to a place beyond frustration.
“You’re playing with my reputation,” she explained as she pulled the Glock out of her purse and trained it on the professor’s forehead. “Now, I’m going to play with yours.”
* * *
From her position in the rental car, Angela had no trouble recognizing Susan Jenkins. After all, she had been the only interviewee critical of the porn industry. What was she doing at the condo gate? She couldn’t be there for a threesome. Please don’t let it be a threesome! She sat in the car with her stomach doing flip flops, wondering what she should do and cursing her curiosity. Once Susan was let in, the miserable spy concluded that a confrontation with her husband in Janet’s townhouse could not be any worse than what her imagination was serving up in the car. She stumbled as she got out and walked back down the alley, but Janet had closed the garage door after her return. She tried to push up the small bathroom window, but it was shut tight.
Frustrated and anxious to have it out with her husband, she walked back out to the street and in desperation tried a ruse she had seen work on a dozen television shows. She strode quickly to the gate and before she could reconsider her course of action, she pushed buzzers at random and until she heard a young man’s voice greet her through the speaker.
“Federal Express, package for you . . . Mr. Carson,” she read the name confidently off of the plastic panel and was rewarded with a sharp click as the gate unlocked itself. She stepped in and ran to the vestibule of Janet’s townhouse to find her husband. Should she storm in or knock? She hesitated. If she burst into an innocent scene, then she would look like some jealousy-crazed idiot, but if she knocked, then they’d be forewarned.
She pulled her hand away from the door and inched around to the side of the house, to a narrow window that looked into the kitchen. At first, she saw nothing but the big butcher’s block in the center of the room, but then she saw a sliver of movement beyond, in the room past the kitchen. Two people on the living room sofa, her worst nightmare coming true.
* * *
“Professor, you need to stand up slowly and unzip your pants.” Susan had no intention of shooting her audience as they sat on the couch. Such a scene might lead the police directly to her. A different tableau would need to be staged, one that would force the police to conclude that she was a heroine rather than a multiple murderer. “There you go,” she said as he complied reluctantly to her command, “now you’re going to get a little taste of what it’s like to be a porn star.”
She held up her smart phone and pretended to train the small camera on them. “When we get this little video of you two posted on the internet, you’ll have an idea what it’s like to have someone trash your reputation.”
As long as they assumed she was planning their humiliation instead of their death, she figured they would play along. She would direct a little bondage scene where the young professor would pound the veteran porn star nice and hard, leaving little doubt about his savage urges. She would ask him to gag his partner, tie her hands behind her back and lay her on the sofa. When he was positioned squarely on top of her, a bullet to his temple would pin her down, tied and immobilized, pretty throat ready for Susan’s elegant tightening fingers. When Layla was dead, it would be a simple matter to move the professor’s hands around the strangled neck. When the police arrived, they would lament that the vicious rapist could not have been stopped in time and they would comfort the trembling woman who had shot him. The end game she orchestrated would also seal the fate of the porn director currently sitting in the county jail. Any evidence uncovered by Janet and Stanley would die with them.
“Very nice, professor. Loose boxers are always best.” She trained the gun on Stanley and spoke to Janet. “Now, Layla, I think you know what happens next in this scene. You need to go ahead and stroke his cock.” The actress hesitated for a moment but complied. She touched him tentatively through his shorts, cupping his testicles with one hand and stroking him with the other.
“Hmm.” Susan looked at his unresponsive member. “Let’s give him something to look at, shall we? Rip open the front of your blouse.” Janet started to unbutton her top button. “No! Rip it! Give him that ravishing ‘just fuck me’ look.” Janet groaned, buttons went flying and Susan approved of the torn garment that would make the rape look even more real.
The top of Janet’s breasts now rose over her torn blouse. Stanley looked away, but Susan forced his eyes back. “Have you ever seen anything quite so nice, Professor? Rumor has it that they’re real too. Why don’t you touch them for me? Just reach out and touch them.” He dragged the tops of his fingers lightly across the swell of her bosom. “No! Grab them hard! Harder! Now, suck him off Janet. Get him good and ready.”
Just as she had in so many films, she started to brush her lips gently back and forth. When she felt no response, she took her hand and pulled on the object of her attention, sucking softly at first and then harder as she worked her fingers up and down. “That’s the spirit Layla, now you’re workin’.”
* * *
For a brief moment, Stanley looked down into Janet’s eyes and saw something that might have been an apology, a plea for sympathy, or simply fear of what might happen if he did not rise to the occasion as Susan demanded. His first instinct was to step back indignantly and put an end to the ridiculous charade, but the look in Susan’s eyes and the menace in her voice forced him to reconsider. She was clearly agitated and mentally unbalanced. What kind of a person forces fellatio at gun point? And what if she were the killer? She had admitted to being in Don’s office around the time of the murder. He groaned, not in sexual ecstasy, but in the realization that he was not willing to the take the chance that she was merely bluffing.
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore Janet’s increasingly desperate ministrations but the inward turn of his mind just made the sensation more palpable.
He opened his eyes and looked around the room for something that he could use against the demented ex-porn star. The living room drapes were closed, and the only potential weapons, Janet’s collection of heavy lucite Adult Video Awards, were just out of reach. As Susan continued to urge him on, he could feel his cell phone banging against his thigh and he slid his right hand, hidden from her view, into his pocket. If he could remember the location of McCaffrey’s speed dial, then maybe the detective would overhear and puzzle out the situation. His fingers traced a path along the keypad that hopefully led to the detective’s number, either that or the order taker at Pizza Villa was going to get an earful.
When Susan suggested that a tied-up version of Janet might be more stimulating for him, he looked around the room again, trying to find a safe place to rest his eyes, not on his partner’s swelling breast, not on the pinpoint eyes of their tormentor. To his astonishment, he saw something by the kitchen and was horrified to see his wife’s face in the lower corner of the window, hand over her mouth, a look of horror in her eyes. From her angle, she could not see Susan. All she could she was a gorgeous porn star sucking hungrily on her husband. He opened his mouth to call out, but abruptly choked off his cry when he realized the danger of bringing her to Susan’s potentially deadly attention.
He tried instead to signal her with a nod of his head, but Angela picked up on none of his panic. Instead, she ducked her head and disappeared from view.
“Look at Layla, Professor,” Susan warned him. “Look at the way her lips are wrapped around that nice cock of yours. Pull up your skirt up sweetie and shake your ass a litt
le bit. There you go! See that, Mr. Professor. That’s what you’re going to be fucking in just a minute.”
“Could you stop pointing that gun at me,” he pleaded for the benefit of whomever might be on the other end of his desperate phone call.
“Alright,” came the reply, “we’ll see if keeping Layla covered instead will improve your performance.”
* * *
Angela lowered her head and vomited into the bushes. Her first impulse was to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. After ten years of loving and laughing and working together, how could her husband throw it all away? She no longer knew him and as she crouched on her hands and knees, wiping the bile from her chin, she didn’t recognize herself either. Pregnant and married to a cheating, unemployed, horny sleazebag. Was this really her life? She stood up slowly and staggered back to the gate, floundering in her own personal hell while her husband approached ecstasy in the warm arms of his new lover. She pushed the gate open and took one step out.
“Fuck you,” she screamed hoarsely as she stopped and turned. “And fuck every one of you who can’t keep your hands to yourself and your dick in your pants!”
In a blind rage, she reversed direction and ran across the courtyard. If she was going to feel like shit, she was going to let them know that they were no better than pieces of shit themselves. She rattled the front door of the condo and pounded on it, but no one responded. “I know you’re in there,” she yelled as she darted to the kitchen window, but a quick glance revealed no one. She moved farther along the brick wall and stood outside the living room windows. The curtains were closed, but she knew what lay behind them. “I know you’re in there!”
When she got no response, she looked quickly around and grabbed the first heavy object in sight, a ceramic garden gnome with a pointed cap. She took him in both hands and tossed him through the window. When the she got no immediate answer to her challenge, she grabbed the gnome’s smiling wife by the apron and sent her through the adjoining window. This toss caused the curtain to part in a shower of glass and she was stunned to see a woman training a gun on her husband.
As in a dream, she could hear Stanley telling the woman to remain calm as she jerked the gun back and forth from him to Janet and then through the broken window. Her husband sounded very confident and reassuring as he tried to convince the woman to lay down the weapon. From her perspective, the three figures in the house looked framed, as if they were on television, and she watched the woman with the gun approach the window with an unexpected sense of detachment.
“Toss your phone in here and come around to the front door,” she said, pointing the gun back at Stanley and jerking her hand to the right. “Come inside as quick as you can or I’ll blow his head off.”
She saw Stanley shaking his head no, while Layla moved slowly back toward a book shelf on the living room wall. Angela stood frozen for a moment and then she saw Layla nod her head urgently. She reached out, placed her phone on the window sill and sprinted around the house to the front door.
* * *
As soon as Angela disappeared from view, Layla snatched the Lucite obelisk she had won at the 2005 Adult Video Awards and threw it straight at Susan’s head. The intended target ducked before getting off a wild shot in Layla’s direction that lodged in ceiling above her head. Before she could get off another round, Stanley had tackled her, ripped the gun out of her hand and pinned her to the floor. The killer of Jade Delilah put up a frantic struggle but when Layla added her body weight to the squirming figure, she was finally subdued.
Only then did they notice the pounding on the locked door.
“Angela?” Stanley yelled from his position on Susan’s back. “Come back to the window.”
A moment later, the face of his wife appeared, looking scared, then confused, and finally vaguely amused at the image of her husband and her imagined rival riding a squirming ex-porn star like a tandem bicycle.
He smiled at her and tightened his grip on Susan’s wrist as she made one final attempt to grab the Glock. “Could you call the cops, please?”
She nodded, pulled her phone off the window sill and dialed 911. In a calm and almost matter-of-fact voice she described the situation to the dispatcher and promised to let them in at the gate when they arrived. Then, she looked at her husband, and a slightly sardonic look passed over her face. “You might want to zip up before the cops come.”
XXXIII.
THE TAIL END
Susan began protesting her innocence as soon as the police entered the condominium. She insisted that the two friends of Donald Johansson had framed her in order to get him out of jail. Her story gained early traction with some members of the police department as contradictory statements were filed concerning the incident in Janet Stephens’ residence, but all speculation ended when Detective Stuart McCaffrey reported the conversation from Stanley’s phone recorded on his answering machine. He also obtained a search warrant for Susan’s Malibu home. The elusive purple sweater was nowhere to be found, but through an amazing stroke of luck, he reported finding a small ball of fuzz on the floor of the closet which proved to be a perfect match for the fibers found on the window sill at murder site. As soon as the fiber tests were confirmed, the head of Eden Studio was released, and Susan admitted to killing Jade and assaulting the others, while simultaneously, and unsuccessfully, asserting the defense of reasonable provocation.
Stanley and Angela stayed in California for two more weeks, making themselves available to the police for questioning and enjoying a well-earned vacation. They were sunning themselves by their hotel pool one afternoon when the former professor got word that the former porn mogul was finally back home. He lay down his cell phone next to a cold beer and sighed.
“Don’s finally out.” He leaned back in the chaise lounge and smiled at his wife who had bought a bright red one-piece Speedo to celebrate the end of their ordeal. “He’d like to take us to dinner tomorrow.”
“He owes you at least that much! You were amazing.” The success of the investigation, in addition to her own role in the finale, had completely changed her mind about Stanley’s taking the case. “If it weren’t for you, he’d still be rotting in jail.”
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head, took a sip of her virgin piña colada and looked at him with admiration. “What was the worst part for you? As bad as I felt when I looked in Janet’s condo, I can’t even imagine what it was like for you.”
He shook his head. “Having a loaded gun pointed at me by that nut case was pretty bad, but it wasn’t the worst.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “The worst thing was calling home at one o’clock in the morning and hearing Max answer the phone. I’d rather be shot than hear that again.”
She squeezed back. “You do believe me, don’t you? There was absolutely nothing going on.”
“I believe you,” he said gravely. And keeping a straight face he added, “But if you’re still curious about what it’s like to be with a man and Nanci . . .” His wife reached over and poured her icy drink down the front of his swimming trunks. He jumped into the pool with a maniacal laugh and judged the assault well worth the look on her face.
* * *
The next night, they met Don at an upscale restaurant not too far from their hotel. He looked relaxed and serene as he hugged his friends warmly and sat down in the corner booth with them. The first thing he did was apologize for costing Stanley his job.
“Is there no chance that the university will take you back, given that I turned out not be a vicious killer?” He folded his napkin in his lap and looked seriously at his friend.
“No,” he explained, “the President knows that I was a close case for tenure anyway, and she’s still pissed off about all the negative publicity that I brought the university. Not to mention that I violated about twenty-seven different human subject rules when I let Janet and Angela conduct interviews without me. They weren’t trained or approved, so even if I went back, I’d get totally hammered for tha
t.”
“He’s got a bunch of resumes out,” Angela interjected. “Something will turn up.”
“Maybe he should consider being a professional investigator,” Don replied. “He’s one-for-one with hopeless cases.”
Stanley laughed. “I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. Anyway, Janet’s at least as responsible for your release as I am.” The three placed their orders with a waitress who looked at them as if they were celebrities. “By the way, have you talked to her?”
“Very briefly,” he replied, “she’s filming something this week for Janus. We’re going to touch base later.”
Angela, sensing this was an uncomfortable subject, switched gears. “Tell us what you’re going to do? For better or for worse, you’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“I’m still having a hard time thinking of jail as a contemplative retreat,” he laughed, “but being there did help me sort some things out. I’ve decided to go back to seminary. I’m not a big believer in signs, but I have a feeling that my work in LA is finished.”
“Wonderful!”
“And there’s no way to salvage the studio?” Stanley asked.
“Miriam actually did me a favor by burning down the place. The insurance money is going to pay off most of the creditors and the remaining ones seem satisfied with taking the rights to Toys in Babeland.”
“Does that mean it’s going to show up in our mall this fall?” Angela asked.
“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. “With Jade dead and . . . how she died . . .” His thoughts trailed off and she finished for him.