The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  Nicole put the car in park and looked up and down the street. “What’s here?”

  Kent pulled out the file and pointed to several items he had highlighted. They all belonged to the “Everything’s Aglow Boutique.” The charges were large—over five hundred dollars—which would not be outrageous for couture fashion, except they were all large, round figures. No taxes. No $499. Plus, look at this address in this part of town. Boutique his ass.

  “So, you are thinking this isn’t a fashion outlet we are looking for?”

  “Nope,” he answered as he got out of the car.

  “Are you going to share what you think it is?”

  He just gave her that look. Of course he wasn’t. What would be the fun in that?

  Kent strode up to the door and found a small intercom. He hit the button.

  The speaker crackled to life. “Password?”

  He leaned close to the intercom. “I was referred by customer number seven two eight one.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then a loud clunk sounded as the door was unlocked. It swung open into the building. Nicole’s hand went to her holster, but he shook his head. Nudging the door open all the way, Kent peered into the darkened entry. A shiver passed down his back. Red brick buildings were not his favorite. But what had he said to the technician? A reign of terror had to be ended.

  They cautiously made their way through the dark room as the door swung closed behind them. Only a dim light up ahead gave them direction. They reached a booth, screened in like a confessional. It was all very Catholic, except that the screen was made out of a sheer burgundy chiffon with lace trim.

  A figure stood on the other side. “A little early in the day for a referral.”

  The voice was smoky smooth, with a touch of southern grace.

  Kent put his arm around Nicole, who stiffened under his sudden embrace. “She was finally in the mood to try something different and I, well, I want to watch.”

  Nicole’s eyes narrowed as she realized where they were. She shot him that ‘we will talk about this later’ glance, but otherwise played along.

  “Yes, my friend Carla—”

  “We don’t use real names here,” the figure said. “You mean customer seven two eight one.”

  “Yes. I was told to ask for her regular.”

  “You’re in luck. She is still finishing up after a late night,” the sultry voice said. “We require payment first.”

  Nicole looked at Kent, but he shrugged. “Sorry, I must have left my wallet in the car.”

  She wasn’t buying it, but she pulled out her credit card. “How much is it?”

  “For the two of you, twelve hundred.”

  “Dollars?” Nicole asked incredulously, and then snatched the card back and gave the mysterious clerk a different one. “Here use this one.”

  The card disappeared for a moment, and then was returned.

  “Um, don’t you want me to sign anything?” Nicole asked.

  “Darling, no one ever asks for a return,” the voice explained. “Door number seven. And today’s safe word is ‘honeysuckle.’”

  Kent guided Nicole down the hallway as she put her card back in her wallet.

  “You are enjoying this way too much,” she whispered.

  Ah, but he was.

  Kent had known that Mrs. Sutton was wound a bit too tight, but this, this club was an interesting twist. However, once you had seen one sex club you kind of had seen them all. Sure, some put on more glam, while others were more of the industrial vibe like this one, but they were all the same. They provided discreet sexual exploration, for a price.

  Quickly, they arrived at door number seven.

  “Are you sure I can’t be the one to watch?” Nicole asked.

  “Sorry. I called shotgun first.”

  He kissed her neck, though, to let her know he wouldn’t let it go too far. Or least not after she used the word “honeysuckle.”

  Kent opened the door and even he was a bit surprised at the elaborate and quite extensive collection of sadomasochistic equipment. The walls were lined with it. Ball gags. Whips and chains. Oh, my.

  Nicole hovered by the door. A tall figure emerged from the back of the room. Dressed in a black and red corset and fishnet stockings, she had to be at least six and a half feet tall and in those six-inch heels? She rose to nearly seven feet tall. Her head was shaved down to her mocha skin except for a flaming red Mohawk that must have added another ten inches to her overall height. She truly was a dark Amazon amongst men.

  Of course, with that came a very prominent Adam’s apple. The dominatrix wasn’t really a she, but Kent got the impression that is how she liked to be referred to.

  “Don’t be shy,” she cooed. “I am Darling, and if it’s your first time, we don’t need to use any of the toys.”

  “Come on, honey,” Kent encouraged Nicole. “You know you always wanted to try the lifestyle.”

  Darling dragged the edge of her whip along Kent’s cheek. Her long, fake gem-studded eyelashes batting. “Oh, so it seems you’ve taken a walk on the dark side.”

  “You could say that,” Kent replied. The number of sex clubs an effective profiler had to explore was shockingly high. “But really, this is all about my baby.”

  Nicole put her hand out for Darling to shake, and then must have realized that would seem silly, so she retracted it which made her look all the more nervous.

  “I, I want whatever Mrs. Sutt—”

  Darling shook her finger. “No names.”

  Nicole sighed. “Customer number seven two—”

  Darling chuckled. “No. In here she is known as ‘Queen S.’ “

  “Queen S, then.”

  Darling walked in a circle around Nicole, eyeing her up and down. “Girl, you’ve got some strut, but I don’t think you could handle Queen S’s indulgences. How about we just tie you up a little and start with some light spanking?”

  Nicole backed away. “Okay, I am sorry, that’s it. Honeysuckle.”

  Darling must have noticed the glint of gold at Nicole’s waist, as her voice got deeper.

  “Of course in a totally nonsexual way.”

  Kent raised a hand. “Don’t worry. We aren’t vice.”

  The tall transvestite didn’t quite seem to believe him as she took another step back.

  “We just need to know if Queen S talked about her daughter and what was going on at home,” Kent reassured her.

  “No, no she didn’t.” Darling rushed on. “I am telling you, it was all business once she was here. There was a lot going on, just no talking. I mean, I feel sorry for her with the whole stalking thing, but she never talked about it.”

  Nicole cocked her head. “If she never talked about it, how do you know about her daughter’s situation?”

  Darling looked at Nicole, then Kent. “Um, King S, of course.”

  “You mean they both come in?” Kent asked.

  Darling chuckled. “No, no, of course not. He comes in through the gentlemen’s entrance at the back.”

  “The Humidor Club and Bar,” Kent stated, almost hitting himself on the forehead. Off of Nicole’s quizzical look, he explained. “Another large, rounded, expense on their credit card.”

  “This is a small city, and we are the only upscale club in the area, so we have two distinct companies so that husbands do not run into wives in the lobby.” Darling continued, “Of course, one day they nearly did intersect here. It was a bit of a cluster, but we managed.”

  So both parents felt the need to indulge their lesser angels. Apart. Very interesting.

  If they were keeping such secrets from one another, and Lyla was hiding an iPod, what else was the family hiding? The more you rattled their cages, the more they seemed to break apart. Was it just the long-drawn-out stress, or something else?

  “What exactly did ‘King S’ say?” Nicole asked.

  “Well, not so much ‘say’, but ‘sobbed’. The poor bastard pays nearly a grand to come in here and cry. Without my h
elp. It’s kind of pathetic, really.”

  “What exactly does he cry about?” Nicole asked as Kent’s mind whirred. The wife wants to be punished, and the husband is looking for absolution. This really was taking family dysfunction to a whole other level.

  “Just how helpless he feels that he can’t protect his family. How he is worried that Lyla will try to kill herself again. How they can’t seem to conceive.”

  Kent’s head jerked up. “Conceive? You mean they are trying for another child?”

  Darling nodded. “Yes, it is why we seldom…‘finish,’ if you know what I mean. He is saving the swimmers for her.”

  Were they trying to carry on normally and give Lyla hope, or had they written her off? Perhaps the killer hadn’t just picked Lyla. Maybe he had picked the whole sad family. This brought up a whole slew of new suspects. Was the killer truly targeting Lyla, or simply threatening her to get back at her parents?

  Something itched at the edge of Kent’s brain. A piece of the puzzle. The main piece of the puzzle was still missing. And he wasn’t going to find it here.

  “Thank you so much, Darling,” Kent said as he leaned over and kissed her hand. “You have been most helpful.”

  “I can give you two a rain check if you want.”

  “That would be delightful,” Kent answered playfully as Nicole elbowed him in the side.

  “Actually, I need to speak with someone about reversing the charges on my card,” Nicole stated as Kent escorted her from the room.

  He then winked at Darling. “Later,” he said.

  * * *

  Nicole elbowed Kent again as he closed the door.

  “What?” he responded. “Even transvestite, bondage dominatrixes need love.”

  She just ignored him. It was usually better that way. “The question is… did we get twelve hundred dollars’ worth of intel out of that interview?”

  Kent waved his hand, dismissing her concern. Per usual. There was no one at the booth, but she was pretty sure the “Boutique” would credit her back rather than have a vice raid. Her captain definitely was not going to approve this expense.

  As they moved toward the exit, her phone vibrated in her pocket. A lot. She pulled it out to find about ten texts from Jimmi. Rather than read them, she just dialed the number and put it on speaker.

  “Detective Usher?” Jimmi’s voice was high and rushed. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

  “Obviously,” Nicole answered, still slightly shaken from the club. “What is it?”

  “I found…” Jimmi said as keystrokes came over the line. “I am texting you a screen capture of some documents.”

  Within moments, her phone vibrated again. She loaded the picture. It was a copy of the threats made against Lyla.

  “And?” Nicole asked.

  “They were made from a fellow student’s computer. A Jennifer Stark,” Jimmi stated. “Only Jennifer was in London on vacation at the time.”

  Nicole looked up to find Kent looking off into the darkened room. Only the soft glow of the cell phone’s light illuminated them. He was piecing together the puzzle. Nicole could see where this might be leading. Yet, she could not catch up with the profiler.

  “But anyone could have used that computer. Even Harold, for that matter,” Jimmi answered even though it wasn’t him she was necessarily talking to.

  Jimmi raced on. “Except I can tell that the sender actually spell-checked the item. Here is the original document before it was corrected.”

  Nicole looked down to see that many of the words, especially with vowels, were misspelled. More specifically, they had the vowels out of order.

  “Dyslexia,” Kent breathed softly.

  Lyla was dyslexic.

  But it couldn’t be. Why would she send herself threatening notes?

  “Hold on, hold on,” Jimmi said excitedly. “I am downloading the security footage. The lab has motion-activated cameras for theft control.”

  There was an agonized silence as Jimmi scanned the footage. “Holy crap! It was definitely Lyla at the computer.”

  Nicole tried to wrap her mind around it, but still struggled.

  “It gets worse.” Jimmi continued. “She tried to erase them, but there are multiple searches for paranoid schizophrenia and how the courts handle juvenile offenders.”

  Nicole shook her head. There was no way. But Kent looked up.

  “Call the Suttons,” Kent ordered. “Let them know that we are heading over right now.”

  The profiler didn’t wait for Jimmi to even acknowledge the order as he cut off the call and strode to the door.

  “Kent, wait,” Nicole urged as she caught up with him. “There must be another reason why she sent those notes.”

  “The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

  As they exited the sex club, Nicole grabbed his sleeve. “Child murderers are the least likely, and a girl? Serial killing? It is unheard of.”

  “Until there is the first.”

  “But she was only eight when it began,” Nicole argued. “You said yourself the crime was too sophisticated for even Harold. How could an eight-year-old do it?”

  Furious, Kent jerked from her grip. “I’ve been wrong before.”

  Nicole knew the guilt he felt. As much as the profiler liked to buy his own press that he was perfect, he was far from it. They had both seen the devastation when his intuition had led him wrong. The last time that happened, he’d ended up chained in a basement, and she… well, she had nearly died.

  They were in the car and on the road in an instant as her phone rang again. Nicole hit speaker. “I’ve tried all the Suttons’ numbers,” Jimmi said, nearly out of breath. “There’s no answer.”

  “Keep trying,” Nicole said as she hung up.

  Kent put his hand out. “Let me.”

  Nicole handed the phone over and watched Kent type in two words. “I know.”

  Why would he send those two words? Especially to Ruben’s, her partner’s, phone?

  Then it hit her.

  “You traded Ruben’s phone for the iPod.”

  Kent shrugged. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  But anger welled up in Nicole. “You just tipped off a suspect with another officer’s phone. Kent, this could come back to burn Ruben.” Typical Kent. He thought only of himself. “And why tell Lyla? Why?”

  “The cage needed to be rattled.”

  Nicole gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe you’ve rattled it too much.”

  Siren wailing, it took them less than three minutes to cross the bridge and make it to the Suttons’ neighborhood. Another minute, and she pulled the car to a screeching halt outside their door. They were out of the car and bounding up the steps two at a time until they noticed the door was ajar.

  The quadruple-locked security door with titanium bars was ajar.

  With one hand she dialed Jimmi and with the other pulled her weapon.

  “Jimmi, we are going to need backup.” As they stepped over the threshold, they found blood. Lots of blood. “And an ambulance.”

  She hung up before hearing his answer.

  “Help!” a woman’s voice cried from the living room.

  Kent rushed forward heedless of the danger as she checked her corners. They found Mr. Sutton on the floor. It looked like he’d taken multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck. Mrs. Sutton was sobbing so hard that it was hard to understand her.

  “I tried to stop her!” she cried.

  Nicole sank to her knees. In the woman’s hysteria, she wasn’t holding off the gushing wound to the jugular. “Let me.”

  But the woman’s hands slick with blood stayed hovering over the wound. “I was just trying to protect her.”

  Well, her husband was about to die if that bleeding didn’t get stanched. “Move!” Nicole urged, and elbowed the woman out of the way. As she put pressure across the neck, she could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse push back against her fingers. Almost as if the heart were trying to drain the body. She couldn’t l
et it.

  “Where did Lyla go?” Kent asked.

  “Downstairs,” the woman choked out, wiping her hair out of her face, but only smearing it with more of her husband’s blood. “This house used to be a speakeasy. I think that is how she was getting in and out.”

  Kent charged down the hallway.

  “No!” Nicole yelled. “Wait for backup.” Or a damned ambulance, but it was no use. The profiler was off, and nothing could stop him.

  “Mrs. Sutton,” Nicole said trying to get the woman’s attention. She seemed transfixed by the retreating profiler. “Carla!”

  Startled, the woman jumped, her whole body shaking.

  “Carla, I need you to put pressure on that chest wound. Can you do that?”

  Instead of helping, though, the woman shook her head. “I’ve got to find Lyla.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Nicole pleaded, but Mrs. Sutton took off down the hallway that Kent had disappeared down.

  Grabbing a blanket off the couch, Nicole used it to put pressure on the chest wound while she gripped his neck wound. Alone and soaked in blood, Nicole cursed Kent’s name. Why was she always the one left to stanch the bleeding?

  * * *

  Kent breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The tight, narrow, humid tunnels were a bit too much like a basement complex he frequented not too long ago. His tiny flashlight was not helping much. And the fact that he didn’t bother to grab Nicole’s gun.

  Minor details. He’d caught killers with less. Not many of course, but he had caught them.

  Sweeping his light, he noticed a glint down one of the passages. He backtracked and shone the light. In the thick shadows stood Lyla, a large knife in her hand, streaked with blood.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she said, sounding in shock.

  He didn’t blame her. He was a bit surprised by it as well. Perhaps Nicole was right. Maybe he had rattled the cage too hard. He’d known something was wrong earlier. He should have ditched getting actual proof and simply acted on it earlier. All of this could have been avoided.

  “It’s okay, Lyla,” Kent said as he inched forward. He did not want to antagonize the girl in any way. After all, she was the one with the weapon. “You can drop the knife.”

  “I didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t want to.”