by V. P. Trick
She had a thousand pictures of customers, all for future reference in case the killer was amongst them. She had looked at them all. Was he one of them?
She could not see him properly. She could not make up his face. A lanky man like her lover. Same height. The girl had seen the man’s face; she had not. She could not move, not yet. Not too late she hoped.
Excerpt from PI Unlimited, by Trica C. Line
Chris at Work as Usual
Chris left for work early while Patricia slept on. He had watched her sleep again. Fuck, he liked watching her sleep. Her limbs stretched loosely, and dark waves framed her face. She smiled in her sleep. Was she dreaming of him? He smiled back even if she wouldn’t see him.
Once his way through the hotel lobby, he handed the bellboy a twenty to go to the bakery two blocks down and bring croissants back for her.
“Leave them on her coffee table next to her orange juice.”
A small example of a hotel life’s many advantages. At rare times, like this morning, he understood why she lived here. But every other day, he didn’t have a clue why she stayed here. Who lived in a hotel nowadays? Most peculiar, as a lot of things she did. Thinking about her made him smile. Damndest woman. Loving her was an extraordinary gift, but not a simple one, and he loved every minute of it. His smile widened. She was up to something.
The library thing hadn’t worked out; she was so obviously becoming restless, Knot had taken a permanent residence. Although, thankfuckinggod, for now, she remained spooked by her latest body find. Hence, she shouldn’t go back to the diner for a while. He aimed for never if they found the killer before, but without any fucking leads on either the diner and Lemieux’s case, he had had better days. He’d never admit it to her, but in his opinion, those two investigations turning cold was a thousand times better than the team solving them if it meant her getting involved.
Her contribution to Lemieux’s case might have initiated an impressive improvement, though. Ham had confided early on during his pairing with Charles that the rookie kept staring at the floor at every fucking stripper joints they investigated. Chris hoped the damn woman had taken care of his shyness when she had dragged the kid the other night. Not that she wasn’t as coy with the nakedness of strangers, be they strippers or stiffs.
“It was my idea, Sir,” the rookie kept repeating.
Yah right, kid. You might think it was, but that’s just how good she is. “Tell me, Charles. Did she try to stop you at all?” No answer from the kid. “How hard did you have to work to convince her?”
“She’s always so, I don’t know. She wanted to help.”
“I think the word you were looking for, Charles, is supportive. And why wouldn’t the damn woman be? It was her fucking idea!”
Having your girlfriend take one of your officers to a strip joint was something. Outrageous, even for her. Reckless, two visits, two fights. Puzzling, there again, even for her. What was it with that club? The place had changed a lot in the last three years. No male strippers were on display now, not one pretty (or nearly cute) strippers either.
The night she had dragged him there, she certainly had not enjoyed herself, of that much he was sure. And that was fucking fine with him. He had caught the jerks in the dump checking her up and hadn’t liked the feeling.
She was a fine-looking woman, downright stunning when she wasn’t in disguise. That night, she had not gone for beautiful, she had gone for racy and way too sensual. He had wanted to cover her up with his jacket and drag her home. What the hell had possessed Lemieux to bring her there in the first place? Chris wouldn’t get an answer to that question in this lifetime. He hated those guys. What the fuck had she seen in Lemieux? In Joshua and Lemieux?
As far as he remembered, not one character in her books resembled Lemieux, in tastes at least. Chris had read her books, some more than once. He had read The J-man before learning about Joshua. A fucking good thing too, or he would have dug the jerk up just to put a few bullets in his bones. Had he been so focused on the female character (her) and that loser jerk J-man that he had missed vital information on a secondary character addicted to hookers? He had to read that story over again; he’d lock his guns in his safe during that quality time with the dastardly ghosts.
Very early on in their relationship, Chris had figured out her primary source of inspiration. Real life. Her way of dealing with life was changing it and twisting it into words, and as a result, except for details such as names, actions and locations, her works of fiction were often staggeringly real. She based her characters on people she’d met, however briefly. Maybe if he could get her to talk about Lemieux, he could understand her attraction to the jerk, but, Chris’s problem was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to get it.
And what if his probing made her want to know how the case was going? Getting her involved would be bad; her participation always was. To make her sad was even worse. She sure was trying hard not to think about the jerk, wasn’t she?
The drive to work at this early hour took less than a half hour. By the time he arrived, his smile had vanished.
“Ham, so that you know, I’m gonna follow you guys around for the next couple of days to get a feel on the kid.” Official reason. Unofficial? To get a feel on Lemieux. “I’ll split my time between you guys, and Frankke and Shapiro on the waitress cases.” Officially again. And unofficially, way off the record, he’d do some digging on the bath tub gamers. “You still lead. Just pretend I’m not there.”
“Roger lead, Boss.”
Patricia suddenly decided to spend the next few days at Ingrid’s, her publisher-friend-critic-father figure-drinking buddy-hawk mother, leaving Chris to his work days and nights. Hence, in the evenings, he worked on the cases, went for drinks with the guys, watched sports games, all things he did with or without her but enjoyed immensely more when she was around.
He barely had time to miss her. The smell of her. The feel of her. Her hair like silk on his skin. The softness of her lips. Her smiles. Her sassy remarks. He barely yearned for her, only mornings and nights. And times in between. It pissed him off. She sure damn well better be craving for him.
The investigations were going slowly. The life and death of Lemieux made for a screwed-up story. Here was a guy with money to spare, time to spare but who had lived in his fucking car for the last two years and dedicated all of his free time to hookers and stripper girls.
The few working women the team had managed to link to Lemieux − because of the amount of money the loser had spent, and the things he had asked for in exchange − all looked the same. Curly brown hair. Tallish. Slender like Patricia.
“The jerk’s pissing me off big time,” Chris grumbled to Ham as they reviewed the case. Fuck, he hated the whole bunch of them. And she said he was arrogant. Of course, he was, but he deserved to be, didn’t he? He was doing something with his life, keeping the place safer, keeping her safe and happy. Not like those five hackers assholes.
The dead waitress was Lemieux’s opposite. A good girl that one was, clean and straight, enrolled in college, earning good grades. She had not abused drugs and hadn’t fucked or dated anyone sleazy. Hell, she didn’t even drink. A near perfect girl, with near-perfect family and friends. As a rule, Chris didn’t talk bad about dead girls, but all this perfection was pissing him off. Boring as hell. No lead, all washed away by the rain. A random kill?
Random murders were the toughest to solve, the killer almost impossible to catch. Statistically speaking, a vast majority of victims knew their killer. During their acquaintance with their prey, or after the deed, the killers remained near. Thus, they made mistakes, however small, left clues, confided or bragged to someone.
Chris was patient, and he was thorough. Eventually, if there were clues to find, something to lead back to the killer, he found it. But if it were random, that little something would lead nowhere. The first diner kill had appeared random; the second didn’t. The MOs were too similar for the second kill to be fortuitous.
Chr
is didn’t like coincidences. He would even go as far as to say he didn’t believe in them, not in his work, at least, no way.
“Again guys. Common thread?” He asked as he was reviewing the cases with Ham, Charles, Shapiro and Frankke over lunch. After a morning with the first two, he was going to tag along with the latter for the afternoon. Shapiro was just there for the food.
“The rain, obviously.” Frankke.
“Could be coincidental,” Charles offered.
The others sniggered.
“Time of the murders, end of the shift.” Shapiro.
“Location’s different, blocks apart, but the diners are similar.” Frankke.
“The victims too are different but similar. College girls, young and sweet.” Ham.
“The more I think about it, the more I feel we should be looking at the two cases together.”
“Same for me,” Frankke agreed. “After all, wasn’t Patricia on her way to the old diner when she stumbled on the fresh kill?”
“Right now, Boss, the Puss in herself is a common thread between the two cases.”
“Thanks for pointing that out, Ham. Fucking depressing.”
“Roger gloomy.”
He and Frankke went back to both diners, repeating the same questions all over again. Lists of contacts, friends, neighbours, to cross check and see what came of it. Strenuous work. He was good at it; so were Frankke and Shapiro and the rest of his team. By Saturday, they had updated lists of a hundred and seventeen names from the first diner and ninety-eight names from the second. All names worth checking in more closely for all that seemed perfect might not be. Sometimes, small feuds, jealousies, old grudges went unresolved and festered into something bigger.
Out of those names, twenty-six were on both lists. Six degrees of separation they said. With years of experience on the job, Chris had found that, in a megalopolis like his, when one searched for it, the six degrees were overestimated. Friends and family had been most helpful, maybe too much. Suspicious. The diner staff of both places hadn’t. Suspicious too. Then again, Chris always assumed the worse until proven otherwise.
“We’ll see,” he mused out loud. “At least now, we have something to go on.”
Maybe he should crosscheck those lists with names from Lemieux’s case for, after all, those deaths all had one thing in common. Patricia. Nah. It seemed like a long shot, even for her. And he wasn’t that cynical, was he?
Patricia Comes Back Home
Patricia got back that Sunday. As always, she returned from Ingrid fatigued. Too much work. True to form, Ingrid acted like a dragon lady and questioned every single phrase she’d written and every character’s motives. The dragon rarely asked for changes, but her cross-examination made Patricia rewrite passages, clarify characters’ motives, add details, remove redundancies.
On top of work, they had indulged in girly activities. Ingrid was a party animal. While most nights Patricia contented herself with a single glass of red wine − on other nights when she wasn’t, she rarely had more than three glasses, no need, half into the second she was already tipsy − she was an amateur compared to Ingrid. If the woman didn’t have such a high tolerance to booze, she would be drunk.
They had drunk nearly two bottles a night. In Patricia’s defence, they had eaten out every night, lavish meals, had begun the drinking early (five o’clock sharp), and concluded it late (never before eleven).
Mercifully, for Patricia at least, the wine and dine had come without any men-chasing on Ingrid’s part. This month, her dragon friend was enjoying some young executive guy she had met awhile back. Luckily for Christopher too, since Ingrid had the bad habit of using Patricia on her hunting spree, as a faire-valoir. A bait. What were friends for, right?
Ingrid was very disciplined; she had Patricia up and about at six every damn morning.
“This is indecent. I can’t think this early.”
At her protest, Ingrid only rushed her more.
“And to think I don’t even get up for Christopher at this hour.” Well, not every morning.
Ingrid had warned her from the start she wouldn’t take any bullshit. “I know how good you’re at lying and pretending. And it’s fine for writing, fillette,” Ingrid had said when they had started the publishing house together. “But I want you raw and naked when we’re working. Figuratively speaking, of course, ma chérie.”
From time to time, a fleeting doubt would cross Patricia’s mind about the figurative part. Moving on. Having her sleep-deprived was an effective way to ensure she was raw and figuratively naked. Christopher frequently used the same technique (although, he was big on both figurative and tangible nakedness). Infuriating, both of them.
She spent half the week arguing with Ingrid and the other half editing her book with her. They also worked on themselves, her friend’s idea. Patricia was not the sharing type, but Ingrid had mastered the art of weaselling personal details out of her. But, since Ingrid, contrary to Patricia, was not shy with her affairs, Patricia learned more than she told.
Ingrid did not only share but she also over-divulged. This week’s confessions could have been titled: a fifty-something’s amorous and kinky sexual lifestyle. Patricia learned that women over fifty liked toys, from the oversized silicone models to lively young ones.
“Ah. Hum. Something to look forward to, then. Can we get back to my book now?”
All in all, as usual, the week had been great. She loved that woman.
She got back to her hotel suite around supper time. Should I call Christopher? If he came over, she wouldn’t be able to sleep until midnight, not if he realised her shoulder didn’t hurt anymore. It’s safer if I don’t call him. Safer. A bowl of soup from the downstairs restaurant was wiser. She was happy with a simple vegetable soup, hearty, healthy, with a piece of bread and some butter and cheese, and without wine. She dropped little cubes of cheese in her soup and ate them as they melted. Comfort food.
Comfort also came from the long bubble bath she took. She might have put too much bubble in the water, though, for she couldn’t see her toes poking through the water. She would have fallen asleep right there if she hadn’t started thinking about the Big guy. She exhaled slowly. Deeply.
She missed the feeling of a firm hand washing her back. Her shoulders. Her legs. All the other places that needed washing. She frowned as she admitted she missed the feeling of him. She missed him, had longed for him all week. How had she let that happen, she asked herself yet again? She had been clear from the start; she wanted nothing more serious than a casual fling. I should never have let him seduce me that first time.
From the moment they had met, she had sensed how easily she could fall for him. Dangerous. But she had let him, and here she was now, missing his company in a bubble bath on a late Sunday evening. So what if recently, they had agreed to stop pretending. OK, fine, she had; the man was so damn blunt, she suspected he had never once in his life pretended. He was steps ahead of her in their relationship, damn him. The man was impossible!
That being said, it didn’t mean she had to stop pretending to herself, did it? Surely, they were both too old for anything more. Obviously, she was fooling herself but so what? For now and the foreseeable future, it was simpler not to think about how she felt. Even if − and that if was ginormously hypothetical − even if she was crazy about the man, he didn’t need to know that, did he? Wasn’t he arrogant enough already?
The real problem was, since her resignation she was missing something. She had enjoyed belonging to a group, to a team. His team. His pack was better even than Joshua’s. All the thinking, the thought process of following a case, the male bonding, she liked. Observing him as he worked, she loved even more. She relished both the work and her boss, how crazy was that?
Unfortunately, none of the thousand soap bubbles provided input on how to get rehire. She had to find something, anything, about one of the murders, and then she could come back on top. Sort of. If she called Christopher and casually enquired how everything w
as going at the office, without asking specifically about the cases, he might let something slip. Hum. Like the Big guy ever slipped.
She had no intention of talking to him about Lemieux. Talking about an ex was a no-no in her book. Neither did she wish to ask about the diner girl, since he might be a tad mad at her for moving the body and antagonising the local police and being stuck with the case. Although to her defence, she had taken care of the second, hum, difficulty, and the third was entirely his doing.
He might also be a bit reluctant to her return because, the old diner case being so close to the other, surely he had to reopen her cold case. Damn. With the stripper Hamilton had found, Christopher had an extra four cases these days because of her. Conclusion? She better not probe him about work. Maybe she could do some work by herself, like before, without telling him. And if she did find something new, well, when she did, then she could let someone know (like a certain rookie). Or she might tell Christopher. Anonymous tip or something. She buried her smile in the bubbles; she had the beginning of a plan.
Looking into the diner murders wouldn’t help Charles, though, since those investigations weren’t his, but Lemieux was. Anything new she could provide? Nope. She had pretty much written all she considered pertinent in the damn report, and no way was she going back to one of those strippers clubs anytime soon. As for the diners, besides her vague leads, she had no clue what else to do. Even if, according to statistics, murderers were often friends or family members, or people known to the victims, it seemed to her the killings did not fit the norm.
The rain also played a part, somehow. So much rain in the middle of the night made for an unnerving scene. Time to change her perspective. She had wanted to use the case for her book. Her PI character was to solve the murder, but the woman couldn’t do that until she, the writer, knew all the details for real. That wasn’t working out fast enough.