I showed this to Bill and admitted as much. “All the rest just seems like distraction.”
He didn’t think so. Of the Surgeon General’s report, he said, “Well, this is just generalities, really.” He turned his attention back to the medical articles.
“Keep it, though.” I was alarmed that he seemed on the verge of tossing it into recycling. “After you pore over those snore-fests from the Massachusetts Doctor’s Club or whatever, you’ll start to see it. The pattern I found in those women doesn’t seem to have much to do with medicine. Or with normal suicide patterns. Look, see?”
I had his attention again but he didn’t seem happy about it. Maybe he thought the Surgeon General dumbed things down too much, for the sake of the common slob. Medical journals were more impressive. Lawyers don’t really like to hear any opinion that isn’t spoken by an “expert.” Still, I pointed at a few things I’d highlighted in the Surgeon General’s report. “Women are less likely than men to kill themselves. Women in their age group are very unlikely to commit suicide, even if they are widows. Suicide is most common in men over age 85, and then in young people and teenagers.”
“Carol, Carol.” He took the report away from me like a parent removing something harmful from his child’s grasp. “I’ll read it, I promise. I only meant that a list of generalities about suicide doesn’t further our cause as much as solid research.”
“The Surgeon General isn’t exactly some uneducated schmuck writing editorials. It’s not only a person but an office of the government, Bill.”
“Point taken. I wasn’t talking down to you.”
“I know that. I’m just trying to save you a little time. Those medical articles are beside the point. Twelve years of research to tell us conclusively that people are more likely to kill themselves if they’re depressed or terminally ill? Well, um, yeah.”
Thinly Bill laughed at my impatience. “I’m going to review these materials this weekend and maybe make some calls. I want you to head home and take it easy. You look a little worn out.”
I wasn’t worn out. I had a slight headache from library work, and maybe I was feeling a bit frustrated, but I wasn’t worn out. I had the oddest feeling that I was in trouble for something. Bill seemed distracted and unhappy.
“Carol, go on home. You look absolutely drained.”
I gave it one last hopeful try. “Are you sure we don’t have any work here to finish first?”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
“Okay, well, promise me that you’ll look these things over carefully.”
He promised me.
“You’re not angry at me, are you?” I asked, deciding I didn’t want to spend the weekend wondering about that.
Quickly he answered, “No. Goodness, what a silly question.”
“You seem agitated, though.”
“Oh, this.” Bill made a broad gesture at all the paperwork I’d brought before him and then at my legal-pad list of dead women. “It’s worrisome.”
“Why?” I wanted to know.
“Oh, you know me. I worry about things. Crazy things that never end up actually happening.” He said again, “You know me.”
“I know that when you worry that way, you usually get stuck in a ritual, and then I have to come snap you out of it. Is that going to happen?”
Bill raised his eyes to me, and though I had been half-joking, he was not. But he tried to sound as if he were, and that was surprisingly creepy. In a tone of such weird lightness that I barely recognized it, he said, “Don’t worry. I won’t call you at midnight on a Saturday again. Go on home, Carol.”
“Go on home,” he said again as I backed out, leaving him to watch the almost useless pile of materials I’d brought to him about suicide.
*****
Suzanne Farkanansia caught sight of me and I heard her voice wafting over a few cubicles. “So how was the big research trip to the library?”
“Fine,” I called back, continuing on my way out the door.
She was long-legged and caught up with me. “You were out for quite a while. It must have been pretty productive.”
“Eh.” I shrugged.
“Did you learn anything interesting?” she asked. When I hesitated, she said, “Oh, that’s right. It’s a big secret. You’re not supposed to tell anyone about it. Just between you and Bill.”
“Well it’s just not that big of a deal,” I tried to explain. “Not nearly as interesting as it sounds.”
“Does it sound interesting?” questioned Suzanne. “I wouldn’t know. What’s so interesting about it? What could your buddy-bear Bill have you tracking all over town for?”
“Oh, stop it,” said a third voice, and I turned to see Charlene emerging from her cubicle. “God, Suzanne, quit pestering her. It’s confidential, obviously.”
Suzanne glowered at Charlene. “Hello? Is anyone talking to you?”
Charlene wasn’t susceptible to sarcasm; that kind of thing went right over her head. She said, “There’s no reason to pick at Carol because you’re unhappy with your job.”
“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because my job is no longer my job. Carol seems to be happy to do my job and doesn’t spend a lot of time doing hers.”
Raised voices in one corner of an office cause dead silence in all other corners; everybody was listening to this exchange and I wished I could crawl under a desk and hide. Since, as an adult, it was unseemly for me to hide, I raised my hands in a placating gesture to the two women. “Hey, it’s nothing to get upset over. I just—”
But they were no longer listening to me. Suzanne probably felt a lot of animosity toward me, because she was not referring to her job so much as to Bill when she accused me of jumping on her territory. Regardless of that, she and Charlene had a long history of rivalry that had sprouted its office-political limbs years before I ever showed up at MBS&K, and I’d bet you even they didn’t fully understand where it all had started. It was like one of those old monster versus monster movies, Dracula versus the Werewolf, or Frankenstein versus the Mummy, where the monsters are in conflict simply because they are both monsters. In this case, it was Uber-Paralegal versus Robo-Secretary, a battle in which the casualties all die of ennui.
“You can’t seriously feel threatened because someone else got sent to do research. It happens all the time. Gail’s done it, and Daphne’s done it, and Melinda’s done it.” Charlene was somehow capable of listing any person who’d ever left the office for a research project, and she would have done so, except Suzanne interrupted.
“I don’t care who gets sent where, as long as it’s not my job they’re trying to steal out from under me.”
Sincerely, Charlene said, “I don’t think anyone here wants your job. Your job seems pretty awful.”
Suzanne blinked in amazement. “And just what do you know about what I do?”
“Well, you never seem very happy with it.”
“We don’t all come swinging in to work humming the Brady Bunch theme song,” snapped Suzanne, shooting a condescending look in my direction, “but that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy.”
Charlene continued, obliviously, “You’re just unhappy because Bill Nestor doesn’t use you any more. So big deal. Everyone else does. You’ve got plenty of work.”
Finally it seemed to occur to Suzanne that their voices were very loud, and she lowered her tone to a whisper when she told Charlene, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, it’s Bill, right?” asked Charlene, also lowering her voice in one of her unusual bows to the social niceties. “You like Bill Nestor and like working with him.”
Like anyone who’d thought her motives were not apparent, Suzanne looked mortified for the briefest moment before saying, “I’m a valuable resource, and I work for everyone.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was saying before. But Bill can’t ask you out anyway; it’s against company policy.”
Suzanne had gone a deep shade of red. “I’m completely uninterested in bein
g asked out.”
“He wouldn’t ask Carol out, either,” said Charlene, as if this was supposed to be reassuring.
“Since you’re so interested, Charlene, Bill is up to his eyeballs in eligible women. They come tromping into the office every week and flash their money around, and he never asks anyone out. So you see, it’s not really an issue about whether Bill has a date this weekend. I’m talking about my job.”
Charlene peered at Suzanne for a few seconds. “That didn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion about anything,” Suzanne said to Charlene. She finally turned her attention back to me. “I dictated some notes that I need transcribed today, but it looks like Bill gave you the afternoon off.”
I was happy to be receptive, if only to stop this ugly scene. “Just give me the tape. I’ll do them.”
“Oh, heavens, no. By all means, go on your merry way. I’ll just tell Brent I need a secretary to cover while you’re gone.”
She flounced away—I was surprised by this, not sure I’d really ever seen anyone flounce before, but there it was. I looked to Charlene, who was watching Suzanne as if mystified.
“That was strange,” said Charlene.
“I didn’t mean for you to get involved.”
“I don’t like her antagonizing you that way,” said Charlene, now speaking very softly indeed. “She’s done this before, picked on a secretary, gotten people transferred or fired. The firm doesn’t get a lot of good, long-term secretaries, and I don’t want to see you driven away just because she’s jealous. Turnover is so unproductive.”
Coming from Charlene Templeton, this was as serious a vow of friendship as I’d ever heard.
*****
My research-weary, preoccupied brain had me feeling punchy, so I had a beer that didn’t make me any more clear-headed but did make me feel better about being punchy. Then my cutie-pie Gus called and made me feel even sillier, in a happy kind of way.
“I’m so sorry; I got so busy this week,” he told me. I had only heard from him briefly since Tuesday night. He’d given me a short call on Wednesday evening saying, “I got paged onto a case, and I have to work on it before my weekend off, but I haven’t stopped thinking about you all day.” The case he was helping with was one that had made the news, the shooting death of a young man in a department store parking lot. I had tried to catch Gus on the news but he wasn’t lead on the case so they didn’t let him talk. Now, tonight, he said, “My supervisor really works hard to make sure I get free weekends with my son, so I try to do all I can during the week to keep her happy.”
“Augustus,” I said, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me. Someone got shot. I think that’s more important than my social life.”
“Hey, I found something interesting today,” he said.
That made one of us. I exclaimed that I was interested in his discovery.
“Seems like a shame to have to wait until next week to tell you about it.”
“That is a shame,” I agreed. “How much time do you have before Doug gets here?”
Doug’s mother was bringing the boy to Kansas City that evening, but the drive from Omaha took several hours.
Gus told me that his son wouldn’t be in town until after nine. So I suggested that he come over to my house and tell me about his interesting discovery, and he was not averse. This was my attempt at lobbying for another dose of the Gus-man, because he could have just told me his interesting information over the phone. It was nice of him not to bring that up.
“Are you still at work?” I asked, hearing the familiar sounds of phones and voices behind him.
He said that he was just heading out the door.
“Come over before changing your clothes,” I said. “Bring your badge.”
He laughed softly, voice low over the phone. “What for?”
“I want you question me, put me under some sort of arrest and maybe search me for concealed weapons.”
“Fine,” said Gus. “But you have to put on one of those little—” and here I was sure he was going to suggest “French maid uniform” or “lace corset” or “leather bustier,” but what he said was, “—secretary outfits with the buttoned-up sweater and sensible pumps.”
“You sick monkey,” I murmured, feeling a thrill all the way through my body.
“Do as I say,” Gus warned, “or I’ll be forced to treat you as a hostile suspect.”
“Oh, God, yes, do that.”
*****
“I’m Detective Haglund with the KCPD.” Said detective stood glowering in my doorway. To my great pleasure, he wore a light trench coat, even though it was seventy degrees outside, and had his badge flipped out, pushed toward me. “Ma’am, I’d like to ask you some questions.”
And in keeping with his request, I wore a tight pencil skirt, my four-inch pumps and a silky blouse buttoned as high as it would go, nearly pinching my neck. I’d even fastened my hair back in a prim little barrette. I wore not a stitch of underwear.
“What is this about, Officer?” I asked.
“I’m investigating suspicious activities,” he said, filling the doorway with his big solidness.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
“Ma’am, I’m afraid this is not a voluntary interview.” Gus moved through the door, and I blocked his path ineffectually and purposefully. Our bodies had to smash together for him to get by, his arm had to circle my waist to keep me from tipping over on those ridiculous heels. My skin had little defense with just that filmy blouse between him and me, leaving my nipples deliciously grazed and standing out rather sharply against the material. Gus’s eyes lingered there and tickled me.
“You can’t just barge in here making all kinds of demands,” I told him haughtily as I closed the front door. “I have my rights.”
Gus caught me by the shoulder and spun me around with startling ease, herding me against the wall of my front hallway. “Put your hands against the wall, ma’am,” he instructed brusquely, and I did so without thought, utterly at his command. I hadn’t heard this tone of voice from him before. I loved it. A yelp of surprise escaped me when he kicked my feet apart, and I would have fallen but for his arm around my waist. He held me steady, kept me from twisting my ankle or stumbling, pressing my hips enticingly against his groin which was, I noticed breathlessly, showing signs of enjoying this game as much as I. Then he leaned into me and began a full body search. As his fingers stroked from my wrists down to my ticklish armpits, he said in my ear, “We have received information that you are exerting influence on an officer of the law.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I argued, trying not to giggle when he poked at my underarms.
“Be still,” he ordered softly, his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel his breath there. “Our source is utterly reliable. He states that you seduced him by a copy machine. He states also that you exerted unfair influence over him by charming his sister.”
“Neither of those things is a crime,” I said defensively. “It’s not my fault his sister doesn’t know squat about her word processor.”
He paused for a moment, and I realized that he was controlling his laughter. Then the full-body search was on my breasts and lingered there for a few seconds, teasing me until my limbs began to melt into a pool of pure lazy liquid. I sagged into the gorgeous bulk of him, ready to be ravished.
“Don’t try that with me,” he said roughly, giving my arms a gentle tug upwards. “I’m not just some dumb cop. You’re going to answer my questions.”
“You haven’t asked me any questions,” I murmured, eyes half-closed.
His hands came to my hips, snagged my skirt and began tugging it up my thighs. “What I want to know is why a beautiful woman like you wants to seduce some dumb cop.”
I twisted earnestly under his touch. “I have—,” I tried to say, though his full body search had reached fully into my body, and it was a little hard to speak, “I have parking tickets I want fixed.
”
“Is that so?”
“And that dumb cop was extremely sexy.”
“Interfering with a law enforcement officer is a felony. But he refuses to testify against you.”
“He can do anything he wants against me.”
“Don’t get cute.” Gus cushioned my head and then pushed me against the wall, his massive frame pressed hard behind me. I think he had four hands. They were all doing fabulous things. “If you want to avoid prosecution, you’re going to have to get very cooperative with me.”
“Yes, Officer.”
“That’s Detective.”
“Yes, Detective.”
“I’ll need to confiscate your belongings.” He meant my clothes. I was already half out of them. But as I tried to reach for my buttons he stopped me. “Did I say you could move? You assume the position, and I’ll take care of this.”
“Yes, Detective.”
“I think you can leave the shoes on.”
“Oh absolutely.”
I was permitted to move, a little, to accommodate the strip search. Now ordinarily I might be a little shocked at the thought that I’d be stark naked in high-heels while a detective interrogated me in a kinky sex game, but at the moment it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I was happy to comply with all the demands; I am a law-abiding citizen, after all.
“I win again,” I said softly as my skirt hit the floor. “I’m always the first one naked.”
“You should be naked all the time,” confessed Gus, not in his play-acting voice but in his dead-serious horny-Gus voice which was just as good.
“You get naked, too,” I said. “I’m eager to bribe you to drop the charges against me.”
I felt rather than saw him shake his head, and I heard rather than saw the unfastening of his belt buckle. He turned me again and kissed me for the first time since he’d arrived, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d been looking forward to that. I felt tender like an open wound, his clothes softly scratching at my skin. Into my hand he pressed a condom and said, “The dumb cop says you’re handy with these.”
My Boss is a Serial Killer Page 13