by K. T. Tomb
Their parents and in-laws rode to the cemetery grounds in silence with the men, and when they arrived at the gates, the mourners were surprised to see a gathering of townspeople and friends holding vigil for the two murdered women. They’d been active in the community and had done a lot of good for the town ever since they’d moved there so many years before. It was heartwarming for Mike and Rick to see the outpouring of love and respect they’d received since the murders.
At the graveside, the priest continued his liturgy as one after the other family members and friends of the women succumbed to rivers of tears. Mike sat beside Rick in the front row by the graves and saw nothing at all from behind his dark sunglasses. When the last word had been said and the last hymn had been sung, both men stood up to place a rose on each of the caskets and watched silently as they were slowly lowered into the ground.
As he turned away from the grave, Mike noticed a woman at the back of the gathering who looked very familiar. She could have been one of Erin’s cousins, but he wasn’t sure. Her face was obscured by a birdcage veil and large Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses. What was obvious and irritated the hell out of him was what she was wearing. The fire engine red, Jackie O-style jacket and matching red designer pumps somehow didn’t seem appropriate or respectful of the occasion, and he was overcome by the urge to confront her about it.
Blindly, he stepped through the crowd towards her, pushing people aside in his haste. But when the woman saw him approaching her, she turned and walked quickly to the road and slid into the back seat of a waiting car. Just before she closed the door, she turned to take one look back at him, lowering her sunglasses slightly in the gesture, then slammed the door and the car sped off.
Mike was immediately fixed to the spot like he’d seen a ghost. Suddenly, he realized what it was about the woman’s too-bright jacket that had triggered such a reflexive reaction from him. Just then, Rick came up behind him.
“Hey buddy, what’s the matter? Who the hell was that? She seemed to be in a big hurry to leave.”
“Rick, have you had a chance to go through Sheila’s things yet?”
“What?”
“Come on buddy, you heard me. Have you sorted through her things yet? You know, packed anything up?”
“Nah. I haven’t been able to even open her closet, dude. I’m either gonna leave everything where it is or pray her mom and sisters do it for me and take everything away. Why? You’re acting so weird.”
“I think you’ll find that ridiculously expensive pair of red high heels she asked you for your anniversary last year is missing.”
“The Jimmy Choo-choo’s, or whatever they’re called?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Because I think I just saw Chelsea Leib wearing Erin’s red Chanel jacket that I got her for our anniversary last October and I could have sworn that she had on Sheila’s shoes too.”
“Fuck. We’ve got to call the police.”
“Yup.”
***
Sara stayed the night this time and I was awoken with a very pleasant surprise.
She had tied one of my ties over my eyes and pinned my hands to the bed with hers. She then used her mouth—slowly, kissing, sucking, licking until I was standing like a Marine at attention. Once she was satisfied with my level of arousal, she straddled me. She was hot, and slick and soft and she took every inch of me inside her. She kept my hands pinned to the bed, which pushed her slightly forward and she was able to use her hips to move me in a circle. The whole time she kept her hips pushed down, grinding, onto mine. Perhaps the most sensual thing about it was that every inch of me could feel her. Every drop, every soft contour inside her, I felt all of them. It was almost more than I could handle, and I was certainly not able to handle much longer than she.
Once we finished—loudly—we showered. The woman was quite honestly insatiable. She pushed me to my knees, and wrapped one leg around my head, pulling my face into her. I’ve never been a fan of the shower—lubrication seems difficult to achieve with the water—but it was not a problem for her at all. I loved the taste of her; I loved how soft she was against my nose. She finished, again, and wrapped my arms around her and leaned back against me, her hair hanging in wet ropes, steaming from the shower, and she closed her eyes. I loved the way she felt against me, I loved her pink, soft skin. Once we were finished in the shower, we climbed out, and toweled off. Then she invited me out to breakfast.
“What sparked that idea?” I asked.
“Today is Mardi Gras. Did you forget?” she asked as we dressed.
“I guess yeah, it kind of slipped my mind,” I answered. “I’ve had a pretty pleasant distraction the last few days and I basically have lost track of time.”
That made her smile. Every woman liked to be complimented. Complimented about their shoes, their hair, their clothes, sure. They would so much rather be complimented about their performance in the bedroom though.
“Well, I gotta get to work, I’m open for a while yet today, but then I’m free. I figured we’d hit up a couple parties tonight?”
“Sure,” I said.
I was dreading it all already. I could tell that it was becoming something more than just fun on the side for her. What scared me was that it was for me too. My last relationship had ended poorly, and that wasn’t something that I planned to ever relive. Besides, Sara was way too far from home for anything to work out well. She was like a toxic poison to me, almost like a tick or a leech. While she was there, none of the pain, none of the bad feelings, none of the anxiety. It was all suppressed, like the toxin they exuded when they were feasting. Then, as soon as she was gone, the numbing effect would slowly wear away, and I would be left with a pit in my stomach. This had only happened to me once before; with the ‘regular’ back home. Normally, I don’t care about the women I sleep with. I don’t normally wonder why they can’t do the things in bed that they do with me with their husbands.
I learned the hard way that, if I did start caring, a lot of people ended up hurt and I ended up in a place that I never wanted to be in in the first place—between a husband and a wife. I loved my job. I loved what I did. I loved that sometimes, after being with me, women had the confidence to go home and fix whatever was wrong with their marriage.
I hoped Sara did not realize how pensive I had suddenly become. She went to work, saying she would let me know when she was done so we could get together later. After she had left, I walked outside the hotel dressed casually in light clothes. Even at that time of year, New Orleans was ridiculously humid. I hated humidity; made me sweat and I hated sweating in public. I decided to go back to the café I had visited the morning before. Their coffee had been particularly good.
I was relaxing, reading a book on my phone when I noticed the same man from the previous day. This time he didn’t have his camera. Normally, that kind of thing wouldn’t spook me, but I’d been pursued before—when a client's husband stalked me. Thank God, Jake helped me out of that situation.—and I started having flashbacks of the experience. It was a feeling I hated, and it was something that I was still working to forget. I tried not to think about it, but couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been careless at all.
I know I’ve been a bit… loose… out here, but there’s no reason someone should be following me right now. My client base is wide, but it’s not that big.
I got up and started walking off in the same direction I had gone the day before. If that guy was following me, I would just duck into a shop—one of the bigger ones—and try to lose him that way. If he still stuck with me, I’d know I was in trouble. I was constantly checking over my shoulder when I realized my mistake. He could be anywhere. He could be across the street; or even in front of me at any point for all I knew. If he knew the area better than I did, which was a distinct possibility, then I was really in trouble. People like that don’t just follow other people at random. If there was something he wanted to talk about, he would have approached me.
Since he hadn’t yet, I knew that talking was not on his agenda.
Just as I started to feel confident that I’d lost him and was doubling back to the hotel for another siesta, I saw him again. Just out of the corner of my eye, but then he vanished again. I ducked into a store and texted Sara.
***
Someone’s following me. I noticed him yesterday, and now he’s sticking to me. Be careful.
Sara got the text, expecting something sexy, but instead she was shocked and surprised. She was about to close the store and get ready. The outfit she had planned for Mardi Gras would have knocked every guy off his feet. She couldn’t wait to show off, and to show off for River. She knew how to dress, knew how to impress, and she was going to blow River’s mind.
Shit, who is this guy? What have I gotten myself into now? she thought then replied, Meet me in the same place tonight? We’ll talk then, lose him in the crowd and then head back to the hotel.
***
The contractor knew that he had been made. He had to get to the set-up point. Originally, he had planned to set up where he could get a clear view of the street where the target had met the lady the day before, but he now thought that he would go to the nest outside the hotel instead. When a rabbit is spooked, it runs in a wide circle, coming back to its original starting point. Eventually. The game changed, and became a waiting game rather than one of pursuit. As a hunter, that suited him just fine.
Chapter Twenty
I made a wide circle, wondering where my tail was.
I didn’t see him, and hadn’t in an hour and change. I decided to slowly work my way back to the hotel so that I could get ready quickly and then go to meet up with Sara. I stayed away from the windows. I tried to read, but it didn’t do a whole lot to take the edge off.
One more night, I told myself. Then I’ll get the hell out of here.
Finally, I showered and left the hotel. I tried not to look like a person who was being followed. I can’t say that I actually succeeded or failed at that, but I know I did a decent job of keeping my eyes forward and using the glass windows on office buildings and store fronts to keep an eye out behind me for the tail from yesterday.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m not really that worried,” I said and didn’t mean it. I was worried. But it could wait.
“Okay, well then let’s go.”
Sara looked like a model in the dress she had on. And the heels somehow made her legs look even longer than usual. I couldn’t wait to get her alone. But that night was going to be one of the world’s greatest parties. We started drinking, and then we kept drinking. We danced; at one bar, a two-step to country music. Then at another, we were grinding on each other like teenage kids in a nightclub. There actually were teenage kids in that nightclub. I always wondered how kids got into those places, and I could only conclude that it was due to shoddy bouncer-ship, or because some eighteen or nineteen-year-old was smoking hot.
The streets were crazy busy, and at that point, we were both stumbling. I had no idea how much or how many we’d had that night. I just knew that I had a bombshell on my arm, and that, since she’d been bringing her ‘A’ game the past two days, I was finally going to bring mine. I couldn’t wait to rock her world. We finally made our way through the crowds and noise and were just about at the hotel entrance when she stumbled so badly she dragged us both to the ground. Then there was a noise that seemed louder than the entire crowd on the street—the laughter, the music blaring from open club doors, all of it combined seemed to compress into one loud, piercing sound that left my ears ringing—and chunks of stone exploded off the side of the hotel building. It took me a second to process what had happened. When I finally realized that we were being shot at, I dragged her through the lobby doors and shouted at the staff there.
“Call the police—there’s a shooter out there!”
Complete chaos ensued. The shooter fired only once more, and took a large chunk of stone off the corner of the hotel. The crowd immediately dispersed, people flying in every direction all at once. It created mass pandemonium and, because of the drunken state of the celebrants, the gunfire, and the almost immediate reaction and fear of the crowd, a mass riot started.
***
“For the record,” I told the FBI agents, “I do sleep with women for fun.”
I directed the comment at the female agent and she looked away again. I could not figure her out. One minute she was giving me signals that told me she was hot and heavy and ready, the next she could maintain eye contact and it seemed like she despised me. Tough read, this one.
“Yes, that seems to be true, according to the young woman named Sara in New Orleans.”
“So, remind me again why you’re questioning me?” I still didn’t get it. Maybe I was just being thick—who knew? Maybe I didn’t want to acknowledge the situation going on around me.
“Because,” Hernandez replied. “You were shot at. Two married women were—are—dead. And the round that was shot at you came from a very specific gun; a custom job. We’ve matched ballistics to a number of other murders. Or rather, hits.”
“There’s a hit out on me?” What the hell? This was news to me. I knew that people got angry about cheating wives. And I knew that sometimes, it caused people to make bad choices and even sometimes led to divorce, which could be ugly in itself. I never thought that it would be ugly enough to cause someone to want to kill me. Who could possibly have enough information out there to find me anyway?
“Apparently so,” said Hunter. “Anyone you can think of?”
“Well… it’s kind of obvious. The people I met with were married. So I would guess a husband,” I said. These agents were striking me as less and less competent by the minute.
“That’s originally what we thought too,” Hernandez said.
“Here’s the thing though,” Hunter added, “our profilers were ruling these two deaths as serial murders. Someone out there is killing women who have contacted…” I started to cut her off but she pushed past my objection, “or was trying to contact you.” That shut me up. “And is also a woman.”
“Well, that throws a wrench in things, doesn’t it?” I said. This was pretty much the stupidest thing I’d heard in a while. A woman, killing other women who were looking for something so much more than what they were getting at home. I just didn’t get it.
Always the smartass, I supposed.
Chapter Twenty-one
“I can’t believe the damn G-Men came in here and took our case,” Hoya said and slammed his fist against the desk.
“Fuck ‘em,” Strong said, “we’re gonna finish this thing. These were our cases, and if this is a serial killer, we’re taking him—or her—down.”
“Okay, so where do we start?” said Hoya.
“We’re interviewing the friends today. This is what we do. We hit them, hard. Push them with the facts that we know Sheila was in contact with someone. We don’t know Erin ever contacted the person at that number.”
That’s exactly what they did. The FBI told them there was a good chance the killer was female, so the detectives decided to interview the friends. One at a time. The first couple of interviews went quickly. Being so close to L.A., they had each interviewed their fair share of scumbags and murders. They had a very good idea of what they were looking for. The shiftiness, the fear of making eye contact, sometimes outright indignation. Innocent people were typically curious. They wanted to know why they were being picked up and for what. Guilty people typically got defensive.
That was when the call came in from Mike Mancini and it blew the whole case open. After spotting one of his wife’s friends at the funeral of the two women, he’d called the police to tell them he suspected that the woman might be the killer they were looking for. Apparently, the bitch had turned up at the graveside wearing what Mr. Mancini suspected to be clothing belonging to the two dead women. Macabre, to say the least.
It didn’t take the combined team of Hoy
a, Strong, Hernandez and Hunter very long to put a SWAT team on the ground to storm the Leib house, and the minute the search warrants had been signed, they were breaking down the front door of Zack and Chelsea’s upscale home.
They arrested Chelsea Leib without incident and, as her husband called the family lawyer, the officers from the Crime Scene Investigative Unit scoured the couple’s bedroom, laundry room and garage for the items of clothing.
It took them a while and even the two FBI agents were beginning to think that they would come up empty when there was a shout from the garage.
“I’ve found them!”
Inside the trunk of Chelsea’s black Mercedes SLK was a trash bag containing a red Chanel-tailored jacket and a pair of red Jimmy Choo high heels. The items were bagged and tagged and carried off directly to the police crime lab for DNA testing. Lucky for the law enforcement officers, dry clean only clothing and leather high heels were like a magnet for skin cells and sweat; both excellent sources of DNA.
Chapter Twenty-two
Three days later, Chelsea Leib had been transferred to the county lockup. The DNA evidence was due back at any minute, but even without it, she’d already been charged with murder and had been booked and processed. She’d met with her lawyer several times, and each time, she’d refused to say a word. In fact, she hadn’t said a thing outside of the answers to the processing questions since she’d been taken into custody. That didn’t bother the police or the FBI agents one little bit. The DNA results would speak for themselves.
About an hour after her lawyer had left, Agent Hunter walked in and placed a yellow folder on Strong’s desk. He looked up at her expectantly.
“We’ve got a match to both our victims.”