by Elise Noble
The last steps of a dead woman.
The last steps of a condemned man.
I stopped the film, their shadows still on the screen, my eyes fixed on the image.
I didn’t get it. I genuinely didn’t get it. They’d been so into each other, and Ethan looked out for Christina whenever strangers came near. Why would he hurt her himself?
I was still puzzling over it when Mack called again.
“You are never going to believe what I’ve found.”
I could tell from her breathless tone it was something good. Mack rarely got excited over anything but computer code, and I doubted she’d be calling me about that.
“Emmy ate pineapple on a pizza?”
Normally if she caught sight of that topping, drastic measures were taken. Last time someone put a slice in front of her, she blew it up with one of Nate’s explosive pens.
“Nope.”
“Ana sat through an entire episode of X-Factor?”
Ana’s attention span for reality television was even shorter than her fuse.
“Guess again.”
“Black’s Aunt Miriam’s signed up as a volunteer at the animal shelter?”
The only thing that bitch hated more than dogs was showing compassion to any living creature.
“Getting colder. For a detective, you’re not very imaginative.”
“I give up. Just tell me already.”
“Fine.” She sounded a little disappointed. “Christina was a hooker.”
“Sorry, come again? For a moment there, I thought you said Christina was a hooker?”
“Otherwise known as Crystal.”
“Holy shit!” I whispered. “How the fuck did you find that out? And how the fuck didn’t the police?”
“I guess they didn’t look that hard, although it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to find. I ran her face through that image recognition program that Luke wrote and it trawled the internet for me. She popped up on a website catering to the higher end of the market. It’s called ‘Rubies are a Man’s Best Friend’, the rubies in question being the girls they’re hiring.”
A hundred thoughts flew through my mind, and none of them were pleasant. Had Christina been working on the night she died? Had she and Ethan met in the club, just two lonely hearts out for a bit of fun, or had he booked her in advance?
“What’s her going rate?” I asked Mack.
“The girls on the site are rated one to five rubies. She’s a four. I got Logan to call, and that means her rates start at four grand a night.”
“We’re in the wrong profession.”
“That’s just for the company. Apparently, any extras are agreed between the girl and her ‘friend.’”
I guessed straight sex would add another thousand, maybe two. Ethan certainly had that kind of money; I just hadn’t imagined him spending it on prostitutes. Had I been wrong about him?
“I wonder if they could have had a row over money?”
“Or perhaps exactly what these ‘extras’ would entail.”
“It’s possible. The complete lack of motive is something that’s been puzzling me, and this could give him one.”
I’d almost convinced myself that everyone else had misjudged Ethan, but this new information made me look at him in a different light.
What if Mr. White had another side to himself that he kept hidden?
One that he didn’t show to Ronan, Melinda, or Lisa? Or me?
Right now, I didn’t know the answer, but since I’d been sucked into this mess, I was damn well going to find out.
CHAPTER 21
STUPID O’CLOCK IN the morning, and the helicopter door rattled as I slammed it shut. Fuck this shit.
I was furious with Ethan because he’d kept his penchant for prostitutes from me and angry with myself for having the wool pulled over my eyes. No, not just wool. A whole fucking sheep.
How could I have been so blind?
Otis was waiting for me when I landed in Redding’s Gap, the car engine running and the air conditioning on full.
“Back again, eh? Waste of time, if you ask me.”
“Good thing I didn’t ask you then, isn’t it?”
What I didn’t admit was that I was beginning to think he was right. My short tone gave him pause, and we spent the rest of the journey in silence. Thank goodness for small mercies.
At the prison, the grim-faced wench whose job it was to search me was in a temper as foul as mine, but I wasn’t in the mood to take any of her shit.
“Strip,” she commanded.
“Go on, take a good look. I bet it’s not often you get to see thighs without cellulite.”
That got me a cavity search.
And the cavity search earned her a BOLO for her personal vehicle. I’d get Mack to add it to the police database later. Suck on that, bitch.
Ethan looked up at me when I stomped into the room, a tiny smile playing on his lips. Two days ago, I’d have found it endearing, but now I wanted to slap it right off his face. Maybe I would have if it hadn’t been for the eyes I knew were watching.
I’d barely sat down before I started. I couldn’t help myself.
“Did you forget to tell me something?”
The light in his eyes faded, replaced by confusion. “What?”
“When you said you took women home to fuck, you didn’t think it might be pertinent to mention that you paid them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Christina. Or did you know her as Crystal? She was a fucking hooker.”
He shook his head, the only part of him that wasn’t secured to something. “No. No way. I wouldn’t have paid her.”
“Don’t lie!”
“Dani, look at me.” An urgency in his tone made me pause. “I’ve never paid a woman for sex. Not once. Believe me when I say I haven’t needed to.”
“Girls like that don’t work for free, Ethan. Not when they can earn four thousand bucks a night by spreading their legs.”
“She didn’t get four thousand bucks from me.”
“You don’t know that. You already said you don’t remember.”
“I remember what I was doing earlier in the day, and at no point do I recall thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I’ll hire a girl for the night and have her meet me in a nightclub.’ I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“The internet?”
“I didn’t even have a computer. The screen on my laptop failed, and it was at the repair shop. They’ve probably still got it. If you don’t believe me, get them to check my search history. You won’t find any sites full of half-naked girls.”
The thing was, I almost did believe him. And I could certainly understand the bit about not having to pay girls to sleep with him.
“Some men get a thrill out of it,” I tried again.
“I wasn’t one of them. When I’m with a woman, I want her to feel pleasure from my touch, not because I’m gonna slip her a couple of large afterwards.”
“What if you’d got her home, and then she asked for money? If she’d led you on?”
“I’d have shown her to the door.”
“How about if you were turned on? Aroused? If you wanted to get your rocks off and she was right there?”
“I’ve got a hand and an imagination, Dani. And, believe it or not, some morals.”
The stubborn side of me wouldn’t give up. “Well, I still think somebody had to have paid her.”
“It wasn’t me.”
We looked at each other.
“What if…?” I started.
My words fizzled out as my brain went into overdrive.
What if somebody else had hired Christina and told her to pick up Ethan for the night? The tape didn’t show their initial meeting. What if instead of him approaching her, it had been the other way around?
But how did he end up killing her? That was the bit that didn’t fit in all of this. I could only think of two possibilities. Drugs, or…
“Ethan, did you ever touc
h drugs? Indulge in a few recreational pharmaceuticals?”
“I took Molly once, years ago. Scared the shit out of me. Nothing since.”
…he didn’t.
Was that possible? Could somebody else have been in the room with them?
I thought of the stray hair. The police had assumed it came in on Christina’s clothes, but what if it hadn’t? Then there was the messed up blood.
Could something as vile as that be staged? How? Don’t get me wrong, I’d taken lives before, but on the rare occasions I did it in cold blood, everything was neat and tidy. Same with Emmy. I wasn’t sure where to start with a scene like the one in Ethan’s bedroom.
But I knew several people who’d have a better idea.
“Dani?” Ethan’s voice cut into my thoughts. “What if someone else hired her?”
Way ahead of you there, buddy.
“That’s what I’m wondering. What if she was working that night, and you didn’t realise?”
“Why would someone do that?”
“To make it look like you killed her.”
His eyes widened. “That’s crazy.”
It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I had that quote framed over my ornamental fireplace as a reminder to keep my mind open.
While I couldn’t quite say the other scenarios were impossible, none of them fitted with the man sitting in front of me. What if there was another option? A big ol’ can of worms just waiting to be opened?
Well, I always did like fishing.
“Crazier than you killing her yourself?” I asked Ethan.
“I don’t know.” Desperation crept into his voice. “The cops told me I did it, no question.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been wrong.”
“But why was I in the car? The police said I was on the run, trying to escape from what I did.”
“Maybe you were trying to get away from whoever was in the house instead? If there was a nut with a knife in my bedroom, I’d have run too.”
“I guess.” Ethan paused as he turned that over in his mind. “I thought I deserved to be in this hellhole if I could kill someone like that.”
“Perhaps you should be trading places with somebody else.”
For the first time, I heard a new note in his voice. Hope. “What the hell should I do now?”
I thought for a minute, then gave him an answer he probably didn’t want to hear. “You do nothing. If there is a murderer running around out there, I don’t want to tip our hand. I want him to feel safe while I hunt for him. Or her.”
“Her?”
“I’m not ruling anything out.”
Women were every bit as dangerous as men, sometimes more so. The Blackwood team was living proof of that.
He closed his eyes. “Dani, what if someone tries to hurt you as well?”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“Why are you doing this?”
A good question. I could say it was because Emmy was a bitch, but deep inside, I knew that wasn’t true. She dumped the case on me to make a point. Once she’d made it, I could easily have palmed it off on one of my team when she lost interest. But I didn’t.
The truth was, I was intrigued, first by Ethan’s apparent breakdown, and now by the realisation that all might not be as it seemed. The little girl in me, the one that always asked “Why?” wanted answers.
And although I didn’t want to admit it, there was another reason. And that was Ethan himself.
“Because I believe in justice.”
“Thank you.” His voice was hoarse. “I wish I could say more, or do more, but I can’t. Just thank you.”
I itched to reach over and squeeze his hand, but I couldn’t. Instead, I tore my eyes away from his and forced myself to stand.
“I can’t come back until next week, but if I have more questions, I’ll send Lyle. Talk to him, yeah?”
“Okay. Stay safe. Nothing else matters. I don’t matter. Just stay safe.”
That was a lie. Ethan did matter, and more than I wanted to let on.
Instead, I gave a half-hearted nod. “I’ll do my best.”
CHAPTER 22
MY FIRST CALL when I escaped from prison was to Mack.
“Is there any more footage from the club? I want to know if Ethan had been expecting Christina, or if he approached her in there.” Or maybe something else.
“You mean whether he’d pre-booked?”
“Exactly.”
“Sorry, that was the only film on the server.”
There had to be more cameras. Had to be. No club the size of Liquid had only one. They needed to stay alert for theft, drugs, and assault, and that meant having eyes everywhere.
“I did find out something else, though,” Mack continued. “You know Christina’s roommate?
“Stefanie?”
Her details had been in the police file. She’d been interviewed after the body was found, although the transcript consisted mostly of sobbing.
“Stefanie is also known as Sable. She gets three rubies.”
Holy hell. “Nice one, Mack. Can you get me her address? I think I should head over for a little chat.”
“Sending it now, and I’ve got another piece of good news.”
“What is it?”
“Luke’s mom’s delayed her visit, so you get a stay of execution on dinner. She got through to the next round of some tennis tournament, which takes precedence over her son.”
Sad, but on balance, I had to be happy for Luke because his mom was a bitch. And it also gave me more time to work the case.
Two roommates, two call girls, one murder. Were they involved in something together? This puzzle had more pieces than I ever could have imagined.
According to Mack, Stefanie lived in an apartment block on the edge of the city. A nice enough area, but when Christina was alive, the pair of them could have afforded something better with all their rubies. Was the rest going to their education? A drug habit? Fancy vacations?
Mack had helpfully included Stefanie’s class schedule, and I saw she had a business lecture until five. In the meantime, I decided to confirm my suspicions. My next call was to Emmy.
“Have you been to Liquid recently?”
“Getting bored of Black’s? Is it time for a refurb?”
“No, I just need to find out how many cameras they have, and I thought you might know.”
Emmy noticed things like that. Black, her husband, had trained it into her since she was a teenager.
“Oh. Yeah, there’s loads. If you keep your head down and hug the right-hand wall, then cut across by the first pillar, you can get to the manager’s office without being spotted. Other than that, you’d better smile.”
I didn’t even want to know. “So if I was looking for a camera covering the area beyond the bar, I’d be in luck?”
She thought for a second. “There are three.”
“What do you think the chances are that they’d still have the tapes from the night Ethan was there?”
I did some sums in my head, but Emmy did them faster. “Twenty-three days since the murder? You should be good. If they haven’t changed in the last couple of months, they’ll be on a thirty-day loop.”
Again, didn’t want to know. “Thanks, bitch.”
“Always happy to be of service. Are you on your way back?”
“Just climbing into the helicopter.”
The trip to Riverley couldn’t go fast enough for me. The instant I touched down, I was out and jogging across the lawn.
“Why are you running? Is there a shoe sale on that I haven’t heard about?” Bradley called.
He was over by the back terrace, standing next to a pink swan taller than he was. There were going to be words about that, I was sure.
“I need to get to a nightclub.”
He looked at his watch. “Bit early for that, isn’t it?”
“It’s
for work.”
“That’s what they all say. Do you want me to do your make-up?”
“No time for that.”
I blasted through the kitchen, startling Emmy’s housekeeper. Normally I’d hit a midday slump and coffee would be calling out to me, but today I was wide-awake as I ran past the espresso machine. I needed keys, any keys—I didn’t care which ones. I punched in the code to the key cabinet and pulled out the first set that came to hand.
Oh joy, it was Emmy’s Corvette again, the car that started all this. I guess that was kind of poetic. A minute later, I was in the driver’s seat and flooring the beast out of the driveway. The driver of the truck I just missed laid on his horn, but I just gave him a wave and mashed my foot to the floor. Right now, I had more important things on my mind.
Liquid was dark in the day, a contrast to nighttime when it was lit up with enough bulbs to rival the Las Vegas Strip. I rattled the front doors. Locked. Never one to give up, I wandered around to the service alley to find the smoking door. Every establishment like that had one, and it was usually unlocked. Heaven forbid people should have to fiddle with a key before they could get their hourly fix of nicotine.
Yup, there it was, a nondescript grey door wedged by a folded-up pizza delivery leaflet. I pulled it open and walked into the gloom.
My shoes squeaked on the concrete as I walked down the corridor, listening out for any employees. A cleaner shuffled by pushing a cart, but I ignored him and he ignored me. That wasn’t who I was looking for.
The place was almost deserted, and I managed to get all the way to the manager’s office without seeing another soul. The door was ajar, and a man I vaguely recognised as the owner sat at a desk, bent over his laptop.
“Knock knock,” I said.
He looked up with a start. “Who the hell are you?”
Slimy, Emmy had said, and the man’s little piggy eyes roamed over me as I handed over a business card and explained. It felt like I was doing that a lot lately. Explaining. Perhaps I could save time by having some flyers made up? Dan di Grassi, specialist in impossible investigations, difficult questions, and crashing cars. Although I didn’t mention the hooker part. Some things were better kept to myself.