by John Argus
‘What do you say, girl?’
Leah made a face and sat back on the edge of the desk. ‘Odd, I’ll grant you.’
Scott raised his eyebrows from the monitor. It was showing the tape from the building’s security camera, from very early that morning. Samantha Partridge was on the tape, walking out of her parents’ pricey apartment, along the hall to the elevator, down into the lobby, and then out the front door. She walked slowly and calmly, with no apparent concern on her face. Nor, apparently, any worry at being seen. Well, it was the early morning hours. Then again, she was entirely nude.
‘Looks almost like she’s sleepwalking,’ he said.
‘It does kind of, doesn’t it?’ Leah agreed.
‘By all accounts she had no worries, no stress.’
‘And according to her sister she never ever slept in the nude,’ Leah said.
‘Still, there’s nothing else to conclude from the tape,’ Scott decided. ‘Nobody forced her to go out like that.’
‘But where is she? Surely a nude girl walking the streets would be noticed and helped or reported, even in the early hours. Someone would have seen and called us.’
‘Unless the first person to see her snatched her,’ Scott suggested.
‘That would be really bad luck,’ Leah said, somewhat sarcastically, ‘falling into the clutches of a passing abductor when sleepwalking.’
‘Maybe she was in the road and got hit by a car, and now she’s in a hospital somewhere.’
Leah shook her head. ‘No, we’ve checked.’
Scott looked out the window frustratedly. ‘So how’s this for an idea,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘she was hypnotized.’
‘Hypnotized?’ Leah echoed, unconvinced.
‘Just a thought,’ he said, without much conviction. ‘Suppose she was seeing one of those hypnotists who claim to help with bad habits and phobias and he or she planted a suggestion for her to leave home.’
‘Come on,’ Leah scoffed.
‘You know those other girls disappeared from their beds at night, too,’ Scott went on, clutching at straws. ‘No one saw them go, but there’s no evidence they took any clothing with them. Their nightgowns were left discarded on the bed or floor. We’ve always assumed they put some clothes on before disappearing, but suppose they didn’t? Suppose they were nude when they left home, too?’
‘You make that suggestion to Lieutenant Michaels and he’ll hand you your head,’ Leah warned. ‘It’s pure speculation – and not very good speculation, at that. We don’t even know if this girl’s disappearance is related to the others.’
Scott looked up at her. ‘Now who’s kidding who?’ he snorted. ‘She’s a dead-ringer for both the Anderson girl and the Phillips girl. The three of them could be sisters.’
Leah sighed and nodded her agreement. It was the strangest part of the disappearances. That Anderson and Phillips looked so remarkably alike had raised a lot of eyebrows given that, so far as they knew, they’d never met and had no points of contact. That someone had managed to find such two similar girls in the city was little short of amazing. That he’d found three, if that were the case, bordered on the impossible. From their enquiries they knew the girls were the same height, the same weight, and they had almost exactly the same measurements. They were blue-eyed and blonde, their hair styled virtually the same, and their attractive features were very similar, too. They could almost be twins – or triplets, now.
They took the tape and walked out through the marble foyer. Their car was parked by the entrance steps, and Leah drew her trench coat around her as she stepped down to it and the cool wind whistled through the canyon made by the tall buildings.
‘It was cold last night,’ Scott said as he unlocked the car and got in.
‘You’d think that would have woken her,’ Leah said, getting in beside him and closing her door. ‘We’ll have to check with someone who knows about sleepwalking.’
‘How about Gladwyck?’ Scott chuckled. ‘He sleepwalks through his job every day.’ He started the car and pulled out into the street.
‘I’m actually coming to appreciate superiors who sit in their office all day and don’t bother me,’ she said.
He snorted. ‘That new captain is something else again, ain’t she?’
Leah nodded. ‘She’s getting on my nerves,’ she admitted. But more than that she was making her nervous. Too many times she’d felt a chill at the back of her neck, turned, and seen Mbweni looking at her. And whenever she did the woman would kind of smirk knowingly, look her up and down, then turn away.
Leah thought of the things she said, and a little rush of heat swept down through her belly into her panties. The thought of being bound naked before the woman made her chest tight. Her nipples hardened at once, transmitting little quivers of pleasure through her breasts as she moved, as they moved within the tight confines of her bra cups. The fact that she disliked the arrogant woman made little difference to her physical reactions.
‘Well, maybe a little discipline is what the district needs,’ Scott suggested without conviction. ‘It seems to have done wonders for Yi.’
Leah frowned uncertainly. Sara had certainly become far more tightlipped since her meeting with Mbweni. She wasn’t her usual bouncy self, and her eyes looked haunted. Since there had been no announcement and she’d not wanted to embarrass the girl by telling her she’d overheard the transfer ultimatum, she hadn’t really been able to discuss it with her. The few times she had tried to offer a chance for Sara to talk to her the girl had abruptly shirked away. Leah shrugged dismissively, looking out the window at the passing traffic. She had her own problems, after all, and Mbweni was the least of them.
It had been almost a week now since she had interviewed Morales. During the day her mind was filled with erotic flights of fancy involving herself and almost everyone she knew. It was bizarre. She kept fantasizing about people, both men and women, about police colleagues she’d known for years, people who lived in her building, witnesses she’d spoken to, schoolgirls she passed on the street, and even that bitch Mbweni, for that matter. And Sara, and Scott. And they weren’t idle thoughts either, but brooding fantasies that made her breasts rise and fall more rapidly as her breathing quickened, made her abdominal muscles clench and her pussy warm and moisten.
It had been bad enough that first day, but it was getting worse as time went by. She walked through the day in a cloud of sexual hunger, often finding it difficult to concentrate on her job as erotic fantasies spilled through her mind. Even watching the girl on the tape had made her nipples ache as she’d imagined having sex with her, then with Scott while they watched, then with both of them together.
And the nights were worse. She was masturbating every evening now, and then more after she climbed into bed to toss and turn throughout the night, her dreams filled with shameful submission to men and women. That first melancholic nightmare had been played out again and again in different settings in her sleeping mind. Every night in her dreams she was fucked roughly, climaxing again and again, and every morning she woke feeling as though she’d been the centerpiece of a gangbang.
She had twice given herself to strangers she’d met while desperately prowling nightclubs. The sex was desperate and carnal, and she climaxed repeatedly. But it was short-lived, as well, and left her feeling ashamed and dirty as she made her way home, although her body had a terrible craving she could not satisfy.
‘Doing anything much this weekend?’
She blinked in surprise and turned to Scott. ‘Um, no, I don’t think so.’
That night she could barely get through the door to her apartment before tearing off her clothes. She felt free, alive, as she padded back and forth, naked, her hands running up and down her body, cupping her breasts, fingering her swollen nipples, moving down to her hips and round to her buttocks.
Her apartment, number R3, was small and oddly shaped. It was a leftover, a kind of architectural surplus in the design of the building. It was on the top floor, which she shared with the various utility maintenance rooms, but the building owners had decided to maximize their income and create an odd little apartment. But at least compared to the rest of the building it was quite cheap, and after selling a small house her aunt had left her Leah was able to purchase it, with the help of a mortgage.
In the day the apartment was filled with light, and at night she drew the blue, vertical blinds and let her small lamps, and the reflected light from her aquarium fill it with soft, comforting blue-green light.
Leah paced back and forth. All the blinds were open, but she had few fears of voyeurs. The only light in the apartment came from the gas fireplace, the flames dancing around ornate stone ‘logs’, the watery light from her aquarium, and the glow of the moon through the windows, washing her flesh in pale white as she moved back and forth, filled with nervous energy and the sexual hunger that never seemed to go away.
The burr of her phone startled her. She stared at it for a few moments, and then picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Detective MacInnes?’ The voice was a deep purr, the tone somehow both mocking and threatening.
‘Yes.’
‘This is Captain Mbweni.’
She knew it, but she was startled regardless. ‘Yes?’ she said again, wondering what Mbweni would think or say if she knew she was naked at that moment. She felt a low buzz of arousal between her thighs as she stroked a hand up her bare belly.
‘I have been looking over the progress, or lack of progress, of the recent case involving the missing girls. I am not happy.’
And why, Leah wondered, would a captain bother to express her unhappiness to a lowly detective? But she said nothing.
‘I have decided that rearranging some of the detective pairings will allow for a new outlook on this case, so I have placed you with Yi for the time being.’
Leah, standing before her window and looking out at the city, blinked in astonishment. ‘But I thought—’
‘I’m sure you’ll be an excellent influence on her,’ Mbweni went on, ‘calm her down, help me to instill some discipline in her.’
‘I guess,’ Leah said warily. ‘But I thought she was, um, transferring.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ Mbweni’s voice fairly purred.
‘Well, the other day—’
‘Eavesdropping is not something you want to be bragging about, young lady, now is it?’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘Not that curiosity isn’t a necessary feature in a good officer, of course.’
‘It was my impression, ma’am,’ Leah said in a tone bordering on insolent, ‘that you so disapprove of Sara’s off duty behavior you wish her gone.’
‘Any woman with morals would disapprove of cheap behavior, MacInnes,’ Mbweni said, her voice icy. ‘But if a situation presents itself which might be to one’s advantage, then one can make use of such a person.’
‘I… I don’t understand, ma’am,’ Leah admitted.
‘No, of course you don’t.’ The woman sighed impatiently down the phone. ‘Do you not think the motivation for the disappearance of three attractive girls has a sexual component, officer?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Leah agreed, ‘yes.’
‘Then perhaps a creature as sexually active and loose as Yi might give us some insight, however unintentional, into that mindset.’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ Leah said.
‘Don’t be so naïve, MacInnes,’ Mbweni said dismissively. ‘It’s instinctive. You do it yourself.’
‘Excuse me?’ Leah said angrily. ‘I’m not altogether sure what you mean by that, but it sounds highly offensive and it’s thoroughly unprofessional of you to make such a comment.’
‘Who decides what constitutes professionalism, MacInnes?’ Mbweni growled. ‘A lowly detective or the captain she works for?’
‘I’m sure a board of professional standards would make a neutral party,’ Leah snapped, but she heard Mbweni laugh mockingly.
‘I know the ins and outs of professional standards better than you can ever imagine, young lady,’ the woman warned. ‘If you try to involve yourself in it I will twist you around like a pretzel and make you look as incompetent, mindless and pathetic as that disgraceful slut Yi. You do not want me for an enemy; believe me. And especially when I could be so helpful to you.’
‘Helpful?’ Leah asked guardedly.
‘As I said earlier, there are any number of ways I can take advantage of a girl like Yi; assignments I would not dare use most female officers for. She could infiltrate prostitution rings or strip clubs, for example, where the perpetrators of these disappearances may frequent.’
Leah stared openmouthed out of the window. ‘Are… are you suggesting…?’
‘I hardly think a girl who so enjoys flaunting her body would be traumatized by stripping before an audience,’ Mbweni confirmed. ‘And as morally loose as Yi is, asking her to sleep with a suspect should hardly produce too much coyness.’
‘That’s outrageous!’ Leah exclaimed, although for some inexplicable reason the thought of going to such lengths to work undercover secretly made her pulse quicken.
‘Oh, come now,’ Mbweni said persuasively, ‘less of the shocked little Miss Innocent. It’s not like I’ve asked you to do it. Not that you wouldn’t make a lovely stripper, of course, dancing before a room filled with horny men… and perhaps a horny woman or two…’
Leah felt her breath leave her at the words, at the undertones behind them, at the way their minds were working so closely. ‘A horny woman like… like you, perhaps?’ Leah ventured, though she didn’t know why she felt so compelled to ask.
There was a pause. ‘I wouldn’t turn my head away,’ Mbweni said, her voice silky. ‘No, I certainly wouldn’t.’
Another shock hit Leah’s belly, and she slid a hand down between her legs, rubbing a finger lightly against her swelling clitoris. ‘Well I’m sorry to have to disappoint you,’ Leah said, her voice tense.
‘You haven’t disappointed me… yet,’ Mbweni purred. ‘But remember how helpful a captain can be to your career, officer. An intelligent young woman like you could be on the promotional ladder in no time at all. But on the other hand, well, it would be such a pity to see your career hindered by all those sexist males who see you as nothing more than breeding material.’
‘Unlike you,’ Leah said, shifting her feet apart and leaning her back against the wall as she curled a finger and slid it into the tightness of her sex. Despite an intense sense of shame and confusion at her actions, she felt a hot flush of excitement and daring, knowing Mbweni would have no idea what she was doing.
‘Yi is a cheap, weak-willed tart, MacInnes,’ Mbweni went on. ‘I could have her on her knees between my legs in an instant if I wanted her. Perhaps I even will, just to amuse myself. But you’re a stronger type of female altogether, though not an equal to me, of course.’
‘What exactly are you proposing?’ Leah demanded, trying to keep her tone belligerent to signal her opposition to the woman’s plans.
‘Let us just see if we can reach an accommodation which will be mutually beneficial,’ the woman said, her tone now appeasing.
Leah faltered. Despite her dislike of the woman it was undeniably true that if Mbweni wanted to help her career she almost certainly could. It was equally true that most of the senior detectives she encountered were discriminatory bigots who thought of her as a dumb broad who had been taken in due to gender equality provisions.
But all this practicality aside, she was also fighting against the realization that the thought of being submissive in Mbweni’s presence was making her breathless, making her legs unsteady, which was why she neede
d the support of the wall. Her pride and dislike of the woman made the thoughts spinning around her head extremely difficult to accept, but she now had two fingers inside her and was fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘And would this mutual accommodation involve… after work activities?’ she asked tightly.
‘A young detective who becomes the aid of a senior office is at his or her beck and call at all hours of the day and night, officer,’ came the answer down the phone, the voice without apparent emotion. ‘Surely you’re aware of that.’
Leah had to fight this. She could not give in, she could not bow and scrape before the arrogant bitch. And what if Mbweni was merely pretending to be interested? What if she merely wanted Leah to acquiesce so she had a hold over her? ‘I… I’m not going to trade my soul for a promotion,’ Leah said weakly, ‘nor my body.’
Mbweni chuckled throatily. ‘Why, my dear, I wouldn’t want you if you did. That would make you almost as weak as Yi. After all, a lovely young lady like you could probably engineer endless opportunities with senior male officers to get the same thing, and I wouldn’t want someone who would willingly trade herself for promotion.’
Leah was bemused, finding it hard to think straight, feeling she was being easily toyed with. ‘Then, what…?’
‘The accommodation I have in mind, MacInnes, is not one between equals,’ the disembodied voice told her. ‘It is when the weak acknowledges the strength of her superior, abandons the pretense of independence, and does as she is told.’
‘That doesn’t sound like something I’m interested in,’ Leah said, the shadow of her hand still moving rhythmically between her thighs, and she slid down the wall to her haunches, dreamily inserting a third finger into her wet pussy as she talked.
‘I know, my dear. That’s what makes it all the more interesting.’
The phone went dead and Leah put the receiver back in its cradle, shaking her head.
She ran her free hand slowly up her side, cupping her breasts and flicking her thumb across one erect nipple. Unwelcome but darkly arousing images of her and Mbweni naked came to her mind, of herself on her knees before the tall woman, and despite disliking her the images provoked a hot thrill within her body and her breath to falter in her lungs.