“I’ll take you back to the hospital,” she said, pulling her car keys from her purse. “Or you could come to my place for a nightcap.”
“Celine, you know I can’t—”
“Sleep with me. Yes, I know. But I also know you well enough now to know that you’re going to camp on my doorstep anyway, so why not be comfortable on my couch?”
She did have me pegged. “You promise, no hanky-panky?”
“I may have to take a sleeping pill to keep my hands off you, but I promise,” she smirked, rolling her eyes.
“If you dress up in your motorcycle outfit again, I may have to borrow one of those pills.”
“Oh, you liked that, did you?” she asked in a raspy voice.
Damned if I wasn’t already feeling aroused. I wiggled my finger at her and shook my head. “I plead the fifth.”
Celine fixed us a drink and I got comfortable on the plush couch. We talked for a couple of hours, mostly about motorcycles so I could keep control, but after a while, Celine tried to lead the conversation in another direction. The bedroom.
Just as I was convincing myself to give in to the heat emanating off Celine, my cellphone rang. “Casey Dennis.”
“It’s Becky. We’ve caught the killer!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Michele Michaels
“No, please. Please don’t hurt me. NO!”
“Michele. Wake up, honey, you’re having a nightmare.”
“Lula?” I asked, confused and disoriented.
“There you are,” she said, smiling down at me when I opened my eyes.
We were in my bed, and she was propped up on her elbow, running a finger down my arm. I panicked and jumped out of bed, grabbed my robe and ran into the living room, nearly stepping on my cat. I collapsed on the couch, tears running down my cheeks.
“What is it, Michele?” she asked, running after me. She was completely nude but I was so upset that I couldn’t appreciate it.
“No, get away from me,” I cried, holding my hand out to keep her at bay.
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong?” she pleaded, kneeling in front of me.
“No. I can’t…” I choked on my tears. “It’s you… I can’t.”
“Honey, you’re not making any sense.” She tucked her fingers under my chin and lifted my eyes to meet hers.
The tears exploded again. I was sputtering and stammering, and I couldn’t stop crying.
“I’m not going anywhere, Michele. I’m here and you don’t have to be afraid.”
“No. No,” I cried out. I took a deep breath to try and control my sputtering. “Everyone leaves me. My father died when I was twenty, my mother ten years later, and then my sister died last year. I have no children, no spouse, no one. Everyone leaves.”
She moved to the couch and wrapped her arms around me and I sobbed into her embrace.
“Hold me, Lula. Please, just hold me.”
Rocking me softly, and holding me close, she repeated, “I’m here, honey, I’m here.” She kissed the top of my head and I began to think clearly again. “It’s okay, Michele. You’re not alone.”
Denali jumped up in my lap and kneaded my lap before she laid down.
“And your cat’s here, too,” she said.
Swallowing a sniffle, I chuckled at her. “I guess I do have someone,” I whimpered.
“And you have me, Michele. I won’t leave you.”
Wiping my eyes, I replied, “You can’t promise me that, Lula.”
“Is that what this is about? You think I’ll desert you now, when you are so vulnerable?”
“No. You’re too noble a woman; I sensed that the first day.”
She rubbed a tear from my cheek. “Honey, please tell me what your nightmare was about.”
Remembering what brought on my emotional melt down, I began trembling again.
Lula took my hand in hers and squeezed it. Her warm embrace and the feel of her touch calmed my turmoil enough to gather my frightened thoughts.
“You were making love to me and all of a sudden you were coming at me with a knife,” I stammered.
“No. Oh no. I would never—”
Squeezing her hand, I spit out the rest of it. “And then you were stabbed right in front of me. I couldn’t… I couldn’t see the killer’s face, but I could see the pliers as they came at my mouth.”
“My God, Michele. That was some nightmare.”
“I’m sorry I went a little crazy on you. It just seemed so real.”
“The stress of learning that someone may be after you was just too overwhelming for you,” she explained convincingly.
“Do you really think so?”
She nodded, her strong face soft but concerned. “You joke like it was nothing, but I can see behind those jokes and I know that you’re afraid. Hell, I’d be worried if you didn’t have nightmares after learning that.”
She was trying so hard to make me feel better, and it was working, but there was a scratchy feeling in the back of my throat, reminding me that she was also the killer in my nightmare. Maybe the killer lulled the victims in first, made wild, wonderful love to them and then tortured and killed them. That would be my luck. I didn’t really believe she could be the killer. You can’t make love to someone the way she did and be a murderer… right? But then I remembered that she was killed in my dream. She was killed trying to protect me… no, that can’t happen. I can’t let that happen. I may be insecure, but I’m not a coward who would allow her to be hurt. Certainly not because of me.
Pulling my hand from hers I stood up, wrapping the robe tighter around me. I walked to the window and stared out at the city lights twinkling in the night sky. “Lula, you have to go.”
“What are you talking about/” she asked.
Turning back to her, I controlled my tears and hardened my face. “I’m talking about I want you to leave. Now.”
“You can’t be serious, Michele. It was just a nightmare.”
Or a premonition. Her nakedness was breeching my determination, and I had to look away again. “I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think you and I are going to work out. There’s just too much of an age difference. We have nothing in common.” The tears stinging my eyes were punishing me for lying. We had so much in common it was astonishing. “We should end it now while we can still be friends.”
“Exactly what part wasn’t working out? The fun? The conversations? The sex?”
“The sex was great, but that’s just biological,” I responded.
“Oh, I get it,” she snipped. “I love to travel, you want to travel. I love to take pictures, you love to paint them. I love to eat, you love to cook. I love cats, you love cats. Nope, you’re right, we have absolutely nothing in common at all.”
“Lula, please, just—”
“Forget it,” she said, clearly angry. “I’m not sure why you’re trying to push me away all of a sudden, but it’s certainly not because we have nothing in common.” She stood up and searched my face for the answer and my face betrayed me. “You’re trying to protect me. That’s it, isn’t it? You think your nightmare will come true and I’ll be hurt.”
She had an unfair advantage in that she was strikingly beautiful, standing there au naturel. It was hard for me to concentrate as my eyes ran over those taut muscles, firm breasts, and sinewy legs. She must have seen me running my eyes across her body, because she turned around and I almost gasped when I saw her butt dimples. I had seen her front side as she made love to me, but this was the first time I was seeing her backside and the sight of her firm yet squeezable ass made my tongue hang out like Pavlov’s dog.
“Lula, that’s not fair,” I said breathlessly.
She turned back to me and put her hands on her shapely hips. “All’s fair in love and war, honey,” she said, taking a step closer to me.
“No, I can’t let this happen. It’s not about what I want.”
She stepped closer still and cupped my cheek with her hand. “What do you want right this
second, Michele?”
“Are you kidding? I want to squeeze your butt, of course, except I can’t—”
She took my hands and wrapped them around to her buttocks and all sense of priority went out the window. I caressed her butt cheeks and felt my eyes swirl with expectation. She untied the belt on my robe and pulled it off my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Then she looked at me as I had looked at her, with hungry eyes. I forgot to be insecure about my wrinkled body as her eyes appreciated my physique.
“You strip my soul of its hiding places and fill it with yearning,” I whispered.
She took me by the hand and I let her lead me back to the bedroom. “And now I will take away that yearning and replace it with indescribable ecstasy.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Casey Dennis
Celine insisted on driving me to the police station, although I told her there was nothing either of us could do, other than observe the interrogation. And that would be at Becky’s invitation. Becky didn’t say who they had arrested; she was in too much of a hurry. But she sounded very excited on the phone and pretty sure that she had caught the killer. I wasn’t getting my hopes up. I knew from experience that until you have solid evidence that places the killer at the scene, you don’t have a case. I had to admit, though, that I felt a twinge of excitement as we walked into the precinct.
The front desk directed us to the detective unit, which was on the third floor. There were a lot of differences between my precinct in Texas and this one. But there were more similarities between them that had me feeling like I was back on the job.
“Excuse me,” I said to the first person I came to in an open room full of desks. “I’m looking for Detective Littleton.”
The haggard-looking man sitting at the desk never took his eyes off the computer screen as he pointed toward the back of the room. Yep, just like every precinct I’ve ever been in.
“Over here, Casey,” Becky called from a glassed-encased office that I imagined was the captain’s office.
“Dr. Aponte. I didn’t expect you to come,” Becky said as we walked up to her.
“Chief Dennis needed a lift,” Celine replied as if she were helping a colleague out, which, in a way, I guess she was.
Smiling pensively, Becky invited us into the office, where the nameplate on the desk read, Captain Julie Simmons. I’d only worked with male captains before and that was part of the deciding factor to become a sergeant so that I could be captain one day. I guess being chief of security at the hospital will have to do.
Becky introduced us. “Captain Simmons, this is Casey Dennis, Chief of Security at Angelstone Women’s and Children’s Center. Casey, this is my new captain, Julie Simmons.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Julie said, walking around her desk and extending her hand. “As Detective Littleton stated, I’ve only been here a few months, and I hear you’ve only been on the job for a few days, is that correct?”
“Yes, and I apologize for not getting over here sooner and introducing myself. It’s been a crazy three days,” I replied, mesmerized by her large brown eyes and full, red lips. She looked less like a captain of a police force and more like a movie star with perfect teeth, nose, and skin. Not only was their captain a beautiful female, but she was also black.
“No need to apologize, Chief Dennis. Your first day on the job where someone dumped a body on your doorstep should take precedence.”
“Please, call me Casey, Captain. And I would still like to meet with you at a more convenient time to discuss the mutual collaboration of the hospital and precinct.”
“Yes, I would like that,” she stated, still holding my hand, gazing up at me with her flowing chocolate eyes. “And please, call me Julie.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m not sure I can do that, Captain. It was trained into me, if you know what I mean.”
She chuckled, her eyes acknowledging her understanding. “I do know what you mean, but just this once, I think it would be all right to put your training to the side.”
“Uh, hello. I’m Dr. Celine Aponte,” Celine cut in, a bit of tension in her voice. She held out her hand to Julie, who was forced to let go of mine to shake it.
“It’s good to meet you, Dr. Aponte,” Julie said, glancing at Becky, who nodded. “I understand that you might have some insight to the killer we’re after?”
“I’ve told Detective Littleton everything I know… that I am permitted to tell her without betraying the doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“Yes, of course,” Julie replied non-accusingly. “We appreciate any help you can give us on this case. We are extremely excited by the few clues we gleaned from your meeting this evening with the other psychiatrist. Detective Littleton used that information when she interrogated the suspect she arrested earlier.”
Becky glanced at me with a subdued smile on her face. “Casey, the captain said you could help me interrogate him, if you’d like?”
Interrogation was one my favorite parts of the job. That and putting the handcuffs on the bad guy. Inside, I was already feeling the adrenaline churning, but I was careful not to show it.
“Sure, if you think I can help, I’d be happy to. Who did you arrest, Becky?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I told you that we picked up Terrence Wilkerson tonight.”
“Who’s Terrence Wilkerson?” Celine asked.
“He’s a security guard in your building, Dr. Aponte,” Becky explained.
“Yeah, and he hit me up for a job,” I included. “In fact, he probably had my card on him.”
“He did; that’s why I wanted you to help me interrogate him,” Becky replied. “If only to throw him off balance.”
“Good thinking,” I said, impressed with her deduction. She may be a probie, but she’s got the intellect. “So, how did you find the guy?”
“Dr. Watson’s office faxed over the name of the temp agency they thought might be involved, and I went over there right after I met you two at the restaurant. The agency was happy to provide the client’s name when they heard he was a person of interest in a murder case.”
“And the evidence?” I asked, hoping she had hard evidence to back it up.
“Oh yeah, lots of evidence. He dropped out of dental school five years ago and has been working as a security guard since then. I checked with Dr. Aponte’s building manager and Wilkerson has only worked there for three and a half months.”
“Wait, he told me he’d been there for five years,” I interjected. “But then I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised at a serial killer lying to me.”
“I imagine he was trying to impress you for the job,” Captain Simmons offered. “He wanted to find a way into the hospital system to plot his next attack.”
“It doesn’t add up,” I said, shaking my head. “This guy’s not on my team, so how did he get those pictures? Unless…” I raked my fingers through my hair as my mind searched every possibility. “I didn’t meet him until after the prayer service for Scottie’s son, so I wouldn’t have recognized him if he weren’t in uniform. Having a uniform on would have caused me concern since he wasn’t my employee. He could have pretended to be a patient’s visitor. And Michele’s picture in the cafeteria could have been taken by anyone.” Two out of three, but the last one had me stumped. I stopped and looked at them, realizing that I had been pacing as I was talking to myself, because I was standing in a different spot now. Embarrassed, I shoved my hands into my jeans and played with the bullet. “Anyway, how could he have gotten a photograph of Celine? If he were her patient, she would have recognized him.”
The captain and Becky looked at Celine.
“Can I see the photo again?” she asked, holding out her hand. Becky walked out of the room and over to her desk. Then she returned with the composite in the evidence bag.
Celine studied it closely and then a surprised look washed across her face. “I don’t know why I didn’t see this before,” she said, pointing at herself in the composite. “
This was taken for a magazine last year when I became the head of the department. It was taken at the magazine studio to save time. They interviewed me while that was going on.”
“So, anyone could have gotten that picture from the magazine. Do you remember which one it was?” I asked, forgetting that I wasn’t a detective anymore.
“A Boulder Psychology,” Celine replied. “The December issue.”
“We searched his apartment and didn’t find a magazine like that,” Becky informed her. “We’ll check his computer and see if he has it digitally stored. In the meantime, we did find these.” She picked up an evidence bag from the captain’s desk. It had a pair of dental tools in it, including pliers for extracting teeth. “The pliers had blood on it and I was just about to have it sent to the lab for analysis. We also found a tooth in the trash can in the bathroom. We’re testing it for DNA as well.”
That was pretty compelling evidence, but my gut was telling me they were jumping the gun, so-to-speak. Until the DNA came back on the blood, Becky only had circumstantial evidence that didn’t place him at the scene of the crime. She didn’t have the killer’s weapon.
“What about the knife?”
“We tested a few kitchen knives for blood. We didn’t find any but we don’t believe he tortured them at his home. We’re still looking for his torture chamber.”
“Okay, so are you ready to do this?” I asked.
With a full confession we wouldn’t need hard evidence, although I’d prefer both. “Yep, let’s do this,” I replied. “Celine, will you wait for me? I know the police are watching you, but until the killer is behind bars, I’d prefer you not be alone.”
Celine smiled at me, her green eyes smoldering. “Can I watch you put the screws to this guy?”
Chuckling, I shrugged my shoulders like James Cagney and said, “Sure doll face. Just let me get my billy club first.”
“Oh, you. You knew what I meant,” she retorted.
“Dr. Aponte, you’re welcome to join me in the observation booth,” Captain Simmons offered. “Your clinical expertise might be very valuable.”
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