‘Leave Kate out of this. You know absolutely nothing about her.”
“Don’t ever assume that I haven’t done my homework on her—on both of you. I keep track of everyone in my life, I have to.”
“Call the maintenance guy on your way out, Rosa.”
“Why?”
Because that door is going to shatter when it hits you in your ass!”
“I know for a fact that if you weren’t with Kate, we’d be fucking now, regardless of whether that little tart had knocked on the door. You’re still in love with me, Paige. Why can’t you just admit that and be truthful to Kate, she deserves that at least.”
“Just get out, Rosa. Just get out.” I rested my elbows on the edge of the desk and lowered my head into my hands—regretting the last several minutes.
“We’re good together, Paige. I think you know that and that’s why you find it hard to leave Kate and commit to us. You’re fighting me too hard on this one. And for god sake make up your mind on what you do want, twice I’ve left your office now confused and turned on. Next time, I’ll make sure we’re not disturbed.” She swung the door open and left.
“Next time?” I whispered to myself. “Perhaps I should get some mace!” I opened the envelope up to see what was inside. It was empty. Confused, I got up to go and find Juliana. Sitting at her desk in reception, I asked her why she had handed me an empty envelope.
“Please don’t be mad at me, Miss. Bleu, but I…I…I knew that woman was in there and I had walked past and Mike was just down the hallway, so I ran into…I don’t even know who’s office it was, and I just grabbed an envelope. I didn’t want you to get into any trouble.”
I had been put well and truly in my place. “Well we’ll say nothing more about it, then. Thank you, Juliana, for being so alert.” I made sure that no one had heard our conversation and then headed back to my office. I could smell Rosa’s perfume still lingering in the air when I walked back in—it was overpowering.
♦♦♦
Emily came bounding into my office, she was excited. “I think we might have a lead on this case. Samantha Freeman. She’s a doctor and I think we should pay her a visit.”
“Okay, you can tell me about her in the car.”
We pulled out of the parking lot and headed off downtown. I drove and Emily scanned through her notes. “Samantha Freeman. Here she is. I went through a load of those emails, by the way, my eyes are fried from constantly searching through them. She’s on the list of clients for Ms. Raven Black’s fetish parties. The funny thing is that Richard was telling me that he knows at least three of the victims were patients of hers. Now this is where it gets interesting. These patients were all diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Taylor Conner had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago and had had the operation to remove both breasts. She was given the all clear but several weeks before she was murdered, she was tested again and the results came back positive. She told her friends that she didn’t want them to watch her suffer. Again with Stephanie Lockhart, she had been diagnosed with brain tumors and they were too advanced to be removed. She literally had weeks to live. Tina Smith, her kidneys were failing, she had a kidney transplant but her body began to reject it. She was on the waiting list but time was running out fast for her. Louise Hicks. She had heart disease. It was hereditary most of her family members suffered, she didn’t want to die the same way that they had. Mandy Freeman and Amber Martin were terminally ill too. If three of these victims are connected to Doctor. Lambert, I bet my bottom dollar that the others are too.”
“Seems as though we might have a serial killer who’s acting like an angel of mercy. So how are things between you and Richard?” I asked as I continued to drive through the City.
“I can’t complain. He’s good in bed…and on the kitchen table…and on the sofa…and this car.”
“Disgusting! And it had better not have happened in this seat and this steering wheel had better be sanitized,” I complained searching inside Emily’s purse that she’d put at her feet, for any sort of sanitizing cloth.
“Hey, hands out, you don’t know what I’ve got hidden away in there.” She slapped my hand away from her purse.
“I don’t want to touch anything that has Richards’s bodily fluids on, or yours for that matter!”
She reached inside her purse and pulled out a mini packet of sanitizing cloths and then taking one out, she wiped it over the leather wheel as I drove. “Better now?” she joked.
We arrived at Doctor Lambert’s office—parking just outside of the main entrance to the brick building. Her office was on the fourth-floor. I flashed my badge to the receptionist and asked to see Doctor Lambert regarding the deaths of some of her patients. Three people sitting in chairs against the wall, no doubt waiting to see her, gasped as they heard that her patients had died and the FBI were investigating. She showed us into the Doctor’s office immediately.
A tall-woman, 6ft 3” stood by a bookshelf with a book in her hands, opened. She wore glasses and was reading an excerpt from a page. She looked at us as if she knew her game was up. “You can leave us now, Callie. And perhaps you had better re-schedule my patients.” Her voice was low-tone and calming. Callie closed the door behind her.
“Doctor Lambert?” Emily asked her.
“Yes. I think I can guess why you are here. The FBI wouldn’t turn up on a whim.”
“We’re investigating the murders of Taylor Connor, Mandy Freeman, Tina Smith, Louise Hicks, Jessica Crawford and Stephanie Lockhart. Are they all patients of yours?” I asked her.
She sighed heavily. “Yes, they were indeed. I’m going to make it easy for you. I can’t accept that they were murdered, that is not a word that condones what they were all going through. Every one of those women were going to suffer and the cost of treatment is horrendous. They couldn’t afford it and neither could their families. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve had patients pleading with me, on their knees begging for me to end their lives right at that point. Have you ever seen how devastating terminal illness is and how it affects all of those around you? At first, I thought it was absurd that these women were begging me to commit such an act. I would have been sent to jail, maybe even on death row. Never would I again practice in the medical field.”
I looked over at Emily—was this Doctor making a confession? Emily looked as surprised as I was.
“You see, dying from a terminal illness isn’t dignified. These patients not only died from what ailed them but also had to endure the financial stress and most of them having passed that debt onto their families, leaving them with the burden of trying to pay it off. I honestly couldn’t see them suffering any more. So, knowing that Raven Black was always looking for girls to please her clients, I told my patients, obviously before they began to deteriorate, that they would be able to pay off their debts and not leave their families with their burdens. In exchange, I would give them the answer to a dignified end. We made love—it was their last euphoric moment before they died, and they didn’t die horrifically. Yes, you found them in a compromising way but it was like an absurd joke. I had to make you think that a serial killer was out there committing these crimes to throw you off the track. I’m not ashamed of what I did, they needed my services. I only wish that it hadn’t needed to come to this situation. Money is the devil here, not me.”
I pulled out my handcuffs and asked Doctor Lambert to turn around and hold her hands behind her back. “This has been the easiest arrest that I’ve made,” I told her. “I know that you thought you were helping these women, and maybe in a strange way, you were but did murder them, whether they asked you to, or not. You committed murder.” I did feel sorry for her and also for the women involved but I had a duty to carry out and it wasn’t my place to judge, that would be for the court to decide.
♦♦♦
Kate was laying on the sofa when I arrived home. She was asleep and looked peaceful so I crept across the room and into the kitchen, where I poured myself a glas
s of Syrah wine. I stared out of the window—the grass needed mowing and the flower beds were looking a little shabby. I sipped on my wine and began to feel humble at the fact that I still had Kate to come home to at the end of the day.
Perhaps it was the overwhelming guilt that I was feeling that led me to start cooking dinner. This was usually left up to Kate as I’m the first to admit I’m a shit cook. I peeled and boiled the potatoes and threw some frozen veg into another pot of water and then placed two pork chops in a frying pan, searing them nicely before turning the heat down. The smell of the food cooking woke Kate up, where she came to join me and ended up saving the gravy by cooking it herself. We plated it up and sat at the dining table, where I had set out the cutlery and a bottle of Reisling in a bucket of ice and two goblet glasses.
Kate poured the wine out. “So it’s not like you to cook. What have you done that you’re guilty of?” she joked.
“I wanted to cook for us both. You were asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you. How are you feeling now?”
“I’m okay, honestly, I think sometimes I cause a fuss over nothing. I was just a little shaken but you make me feel safe, Paige, you really do.”
I put my cutlery down at the side of my plate and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. She smiled—her tawny brown eyes were filled with warmth. “I do love you.”
“I love you too. Now eat your food before it gets cold.”
♦♦♦
Guilt had kept me awake and I lay in bed thinking about how I should have handled Rosa right from the start. She had somehow managed to worm her way under my skin and it was hard to shake off the fact that she had caught me off guard. She had seen right through me and was right about me not stopping had Juliana not interrupted us. I turned over onto my side to face Kate who had her back to me. Rubbing her thigh, I tried to gently wake her. She mumbled. “Kate, I need to tell you something.”
She wriggled. “Can’t it wait until the morning?” she groaned.
“No, I really need to tell you now.” I nudged her.
“Hey!” She turned over to face me, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “This had better be good, Paige, I’m really tired.”
“It’s not my fault, you have to believe that,” I whispered.
“Believe what?”
“Mike. He had us work on a case…it’s finished now but he called in reinforcements to help out with the case and get it dealt with quickly. I didn’t know that he had asked Rosa to join us.”
“Rosa!!” She sat up fast, angrily plumping the pillows behind her back. “Rosa? You worked with Rosa and you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.” I sat up to join her at her level.
“What the fuck, Paige? You wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me something that you SHOULD have told me when she first came on the case!”
“And have you react like this? I couldn’t concentrate on a case if I had you on my mind which in fact has happened, so please don’t act so high and mighty when it comes down to telling home truths. I still hurt, Kate! I may hide it but seeing you in bed with that tart just about killed me inside. I’m trying really hard to get that image out of my head but every time you blow up at me it just all come flooding back.”
“So what are you saying, Paige? That I should just keep my fat mouth shut and let you get away with your lies and god knows what else.” She became hysterical and reasoning with her was just impossible.
“Oh, just forget it, Kate. I’m sleeping on the sofa!”
“Good! And take your rotten pillow with you, I don’t want to smell your scent in my bed right now!” She threw the pillow at me as I was about to head out of the doorway.
I picked it up off the floor and like a punished puppy, I went downstairs and curled up on the sofa—feeling very sorry for myself.
Waking up to Kate making loud banging noises in the kitchen, I knew she was still holding her temper tantrum. I jumped up from the sofa and found her holding two pots in her hands where she was just about to bang them together. “What the hell are you doing, Kate?”
“Why should I let you sleep? Do you think that I slept at all after you so politely woke me up and informed me that you and her—that tramp, have been working together and I was clueless. Oh, I bet you had a good fucking laugh at my expense, didn’t you!” Tears were streaming down her face—she was trembling and scared.
“Kate, please stop. We can’t keep doing this, don’t you understand that? I need you in my life, please, for god sake please stop making me feel worse than I do.”
“Why, Paige? What did you do that’s made you feel so bad? I’m sure that working with Rosa must have brought all those feelings back that you had for her—I’m right, aren’t I?”
I paused with my answer. Just by the lack of an instant response she banged the two pots together and then threw them on the ground—storming out of the kitchen-through the front room and out through the front door where she threw herself down on to the tarmac drive—her legs beneath her and her banging her head on the ground—slapping the palms of her hands.
I ran outside after her. “Kate, don’t do this. Get up! I love you! I love you, Kate.”
In between the screaming and slapping the ground, she snarled at me, “You fucked her, didn’t you? You fucked her, Paige…” Her crying was heartbreaking. How could I have been so thoughtless? How could I tell this fragile creature that I had almost given up on us and allowed Rosa to half-fuck me? In Kate’s eyes, that would have counted as infidelity and I know that I’d lose everything if I told her.
“Nothing happened, Kate, we didn’t, I love you and only you. I picked her limp body up in my arms and carried her back inside the house before we gave any of the neighbors a show. Seeing her in her distressed state wasn’t worth hurting her any more. I sat on the sofa with her laying her head on my legs—stroking her hair until she became calm.
“I think we should set a date for our wedding,” she said as she blew her nose on a tissue.
I stopped stroking her hair and looked down at her. “Whatever you want, Kate. Whatever you want.”
♦♦♦
Other Published Books
The Paige Bleu Series, Case 321, Case 503, Case 16, Case 537, Case 92
The Dark Cully’s Mistress
Lesbian in Question
Pink Crush
Loving the Pink Kiss
Pink Seduction
Vampire Changeling
Erotic Spirits
She’s on the Ball
The Submissive Scullery Maid
Sex, Ropes and Chains, Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4
Touching Gloves
Stop! in the Name of Love
Tell Me What to Do
The Memoirs of Ivie Smith
Case 92 Page 3