Killer Instinct

by Barbara Winkes

  “Not really.”

  “How about that lady over there?”

  Sometimes, they encouraged each other’s bad habits, too. The woman Vanessa had pointed out was wearing jeans and a red top, long dark wavy hair. She gave the old-fashioned jukebox a kick when it failed to give her change back.

  Joanna winced. “No. Anger issues. I’m just fine.”

  “Are you?”

  “Catch any dirty cops lately?”

  Vanessa stirred her Martini with a somber look.

  “You know you were right. No one talks to me that much anymore. I think you’re my only friend. That’s sad, when you think about it.”

  Joanna laughed, though she was still uneasy about the revelation, a memory lingering in her mind, struggling to the surface.

  No.

  “It’s not the quantity that counts,” she said.

  “It counts a little in this case. I wonder if I should change departments. Then again, I believe in the work I do. I’m not a quitter.”

  “I agree. You don’t give up easily—and no, I didn’t mean it that way. I was trying to be nice.”

  “Oh, you are. I’d be eating those wings by myself if it wasn’t for you.”

  “Or maybe you’d be sharing them with this guy,” Joanna nodded in the direction of the tall, muscular man who had just walked in, Vanessa’s type.

  The Internal Affairs inspector signaled the bartender for another drink before she said, “I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of night.”

  It was something they both could agree on.

  Chapter Two

  Vanessa wasn’t willing to give up her principles under any circumstances. Joanna had to give her that. She had resented her for some time and was sure the feeling had been mutual. In the end, they had realized they weren’t each other’s enemy, that in fact their enemies were the same.

  She couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t possible, right? That would be too cruel. She had to see Vanessa again, soon, and asked her to look into some details after all, if only for her precarious peace of mind.

  Another time, when she’d been much younger and naïve enough to think she could do her part to change the world, Joanna had caught her first serial killer case. She was hit with reality quickly when it also became one of her unsolved cases, the one that battled for front and center stage with Decker in her nightmares. She had to admit that the memory had become fainter over time, in over a decade, because there was too much evil in the world. At some point, it all blended together in one ugly picture. She remembered more clearly now. The women had been tortured with sharp objects, including pencils and ball pens. She recalled being puzzled about the choice of weapons when the individual in question had a range of tools in his arsenal. Maybe the pens hadn’t been part of the torture. They had been used to make the cuts more precise…The first murders had looked erratic, then more and more planned out and staged.

  Oh God.

  No.

  It didn’t mean he was back. It didn’t mean he ever stopped. It wasn’t her job.

  She called Vanessa on her cell and landline, and as expected, both calls went to a voicemail.

  “Call me back when you get this. I need to ask you a favor.”

  In the past, she would have gone back to the station and look up those files herself, but of course she couldn’t do that. It was a question whether Vanessa would be willing to go look for answers that would make Joanna sleep better, but she’d take that chance. If anything, Vanessa could pass on the information to the investigating detectives. Someone had to look into that connection.

  That someone wouldn’t be her, because she had to be at the warehouse early for the double shift she’d signed up for.

  At least, one of the other drivers could give her Nate’s number, another avenue to pursue.

  Joanna didn’t have many illusions left, but if she got this wrong, she’d never be able to forgive herself.

  * * * *

  Vanessa called her back later. They missed each other once again, but Vanessa’s message was clear: If it’s about the case, I can’t help you. Take a vacation.

  Joanna shook her head. Nate wanted a vacation, and see how that turned out. Besides, there was a reason why her co-worker had saved for years to go on his. Those long-term plans were always tricky. Life could screw with you at any given moment.

  Even so, she had to do something. She left another message for Vanessa to come to The Copper Door tonight, then called the station and asked to speak to the detective on the case.

  Less than a minute later, she heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line. Joanna suppressed a sigh.

  “This is Detective Alden speaking. You have information on a case?”

  “Theo, this is Joanna. I need to—”

  “Okay, listen, because I’m going to say this only once. Whatever you need, I don’t care. We’re busy here.”

  The next moment, the line was dead. Joanna stood, telling herself she shouldn’t be surprised. Her former co-workers had each dealt with the situation in their own way. They had thought they knew her. Some might have secretly agreed with her, but on the outside, they all had to save face, couldn’t condone her actions. That part she understood. The cutting scorn from someone she had once considered a close friend, still stung. What was worse, she didn’t have a chance to pass on the information. Were they looking in the right place?

  It was back to plan A.

  After her shift, Joanna returned to The Copper Door. She had a beer and stuck to the peanuts this time. For this conversation, she needed a clearer head. Because of work, she didn’t have much time to follow the media. It didn’t matter. If the police had made progress, they weren’t likely to share it with the public, not to tip off the perpetrator. If it was the same asshole she had hunted eleven years ago, she wouldn’t worry about that. Nothing had worked so far—it might be time for a different approach.

  You’re in over your head.

  It wasn’t something she liked to hear, not even from her own voice of reason. Joanna looked around the bar, willing to shut her out. The woman who had kicked the jukebox yesterday was there, sitting by herself at a table. She caught Joanna looking and crossed her legs, giving a smile that was nothing if not inviting.

  It didn’t look like Vanessa would see her. Joanna’s cell phone rang just when she was getting up to join the woman at her table.

  “Hey, I can’t make it tonight,” Vanessa said. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “If you could do this for me: There was this case I worked eleven years ago. He stabbed the women with all kinds of tools and knives—”

  “Joanna, stop it. I’m not going down that road.”

  “There were traces of ball pens and pencils. We weren’t sure why, but there could be a connection. Theo won’t talk to me, so I trust you to pass this on. They have to look it.”

  Vanessa sighed. “Okay. I’ll tell him, if you leave it alone.”

  “I swear. I just want to make sure this is taken care of.”

  “Theo’s a good detective. He will look at all the possibilities. Wait, when did you talk to him?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t do it to yourself, or either of them. It’s not fair.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”

  Joanna disconnected the call, feeling sorry for herself all of a sudden. She hated that feeling. She had an idea what would help make it go away.

  She slipped the cell phone into her pocket, picked up her beer and walked over to the “anger issues” woman. Contrary to what she’d told Vanessa the day before, she wasn’t always so picky.

  “Hello there. Would you mind if I sat here?”

  “Not at all. My name is Grace.”

  How appropriate.

  * * * *

  Joanna had made bad choices before and dealt with the resulting, more or less vague, self-loathing. She was a pro when it came to that. As she got up from the king size bed in Grace’s ot
herwise modest apartment, she felt a tad dizzy even after only two beers. The sex had been…not worth it. For some reason, Grace’s reactions seemed exaggerated and fake. She was attractive, but there was no connection, no chemistry. It all seemed mechanical, the memory making her shudder.

  “You won’t forget to call me back, right?”

  “No way,” Joanna said.

  Right, there was no way she’d see Grace again, and in her mind, she was already moving on. This kind of thing happened. She had other things to deal with, like the question whether Theo would get over himself and hear her out—these days, or at any point in their lives, ever. Once upon a time, they had worked well together.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay a little longer?” She cast a look outside the window, where the snow was still—or again—coming down. “Damn weather. I should have stayed in Cali when I had the chance—but, on the other hand, I wouldn’t have met you.”

  Joanna answered Grace’s hopeful smile with a forced one.

  “That’s true. I better go before it gets worse out there.”

  When she left Grace’s apartment, it was just after midnight. She should have gone home and catch some sleep, but she felt too restless. She didn’t want to go back to The Copper Door, so she chose another, quieter bar, where she ordered a Manhattan that she sipped slowly, undisturbed in her corner booth.

  Her instincts seldom betrayed her.

  She had known that he would kill again. She had an uneasy feeling about Grace, but that might just be that pesky voice of reason talking.

  What the hell were you thinking?

  I was horny, and I wanted to stop thinking. About the dead women. The slasher’s victims. They had called him that for a lack of specifics in his MO. He must have become more sophisticated over the years—after all he had managed to escape arrest for a long time. Norman Decker’s victims. She had managed to rescue Mila Folsom from his clutches, but he was long gone. So they had all thought. Then Mila started to reclaim her life, made new friends, went to parties and invited a quartet of young women over to her home.

  Decker broke in and shot all of them, except Mila, because he wanted her to live with the horror, every day, for the rest of her life.

  When Joanna got that tip from an anonymous source, all emotions were turned off for those hours it took to formulate a plan and carry it out. She’d get away with it, wouldn’t she? After all he was a killer—who would suspect anything? She sought him out. When he opened the door, she pulled the trigger four times, once for each of the young women whose only fault was that they wanted to enjoy dinner with a friend. Decker, as it turned out, had gotten rid of the murder weapon.

  She had cried every night after walking out of Mila’s apartment, resenting everyone around her, resenting herself because life went on, indifferent to the atrocities that happened all the time. Joanna stopped crying after Decker was dead, though for some reason it didn’t make her feel better. Or Mila. All they felt was the grim relief that Decker couldn’t hurt anyone else. The monster, however, had multiple heads, growing back ten for every one you cut off.

  Even though she felt slightly dizzy—she should have had real food at some point—Joanna ordered another drink. She didn’t want to go home. There was no escape.

  Vanessa’s argument had been that individuals like Decker thrived on chaos and terror, that it was important not to give in to those impulses, even if most people felt he deserved the fate that met him.

  Then there were the widow and the baby. Joanna had little understanding for any woman who would tell another woman what she could and couldn’t do with her body. Women who sided with killers, in her opinion, were beyond any human understanding. No matter what you found in their history—and often it wasn’t pretty, but sometimes there wasn’t any hint at all—there had to be some sort of responsibility, some accountability. She knew that many of the men she’d put away received letters from women. Marriage proposals had been exchanged in a couple of cases. There was a certain lure in evil.

  Not for Joanna. She had tried and failed to do her best to make it all go away, to help create the kind of world she wanted to live in. Her mother had always said she was a dreamer. Days like this, Joanna missed her more than she resented her for putting her own dreams above all else. She had run away in the dead of night, without warning, when Joanna was ten years old.

  * * * *

  She had somehow made it home and onto the sagging couch once more. When Joanna woke, it was light outside, and the sounds from down the streets indicated that the day had started without her, some time ago. It seemed like everyone was doing well without her.

  The phone rang, and Joanna picked it up immediately, hoping for news from Vanessa.

  “Hi, Jo,” the cheery voice said.

  Joanna barely kept herself from groaning. Jo? Usually, it took a long time before she granted the people around her the right to use a nickname. The caller was nowhere near that category.

  “Grace. It’s so nice to hear from you.”

  The other woman was completely immune to her sarcasm.

  “I was hoping you would say that. Look, I know we didn’t part under the best of circumstances. I’m sorry, my mind was on so many things, but I’ve finally sorted everything out. Would you give me another chance?”

  Joanna raked her hand through her hair. She massaged her temple to ward off the headache she felt forming. Those Manhattans had been a bit much on top of the beers. Not to mention expensive. Voice of reason, it’s not your turn. I know damn well this was one bad idea after the next.

  “Grace, I don’t think this is going to work out. I am sorry.”

  “Are you seeing anyone else? Did you cheat on somebody?”

  None of your business. Joanna had the impulse to hit end call, but for some inexplicable masochistic reason she hung on.

  “No to both. I just think…”

  “One more date, please? I promise my entire focus will be on you, as you deserve.”

  “One more date. All right.”

  “Thank you so much, Joanna. I swear to you, you won’t regret it.”

  Joanna was regretting it already, but she kept that to herself.

  “I have to go, I have another call,” she lied.

  “Wait, when can I see you? Tonight at The Copper Door?”

  “Sure. See you then. Bye.”

  She called Vanessa, who, to her surprise, picked up right away.

  “If you’re free, you can meet me at the coffee shop on 37th. I have half an hour.”

  “I’ll be right there.” This was clearly a gift horse from Vanessa she didn’t want to mess with. Vanessa didn’t express it very often, but every once in a while Joanna got the feeling that her friend did feel guilty. At the moment, Joanna wasn’t above exploiting the sentiment for all she could.

  Distantly she wondered how Grace had gotten her number. Then again, she had probably left her cell phone out the other night. She had to be more careful with these things—especially when it came to women with anger issues.

  Vanessa was already sitting at a table by the window, a specialty coffee and a donut in front of her. Joanna felt a pang of jealousy at the petite woman who seemed to burn calories like crazy. How did she do that? She wasn’t out in the field all that much. Joanna knew that if she wasn’t working out on a regular basis, her lifestyle would cost her a lot more, and even so, she was often tired of it all.

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “You promised me to let it go if I could give you something good, right?”

  “Right,” Joanna said, her heart beating faster. “You guys are any closer to catching him?”

  “Baby steps, but they’re going into the right direction. The woman who got away, she said she met the guy at a bar downtown, and they went to a motel. One of the slasher victims was found in the same motel.”

  “That’s not a coincidence. Is he getting nostalgic? Trying to send a message? Could he have a partner, or a copycat? She wasn’t found in the mo
tel. Do they know where he planned to kill her?”

  “Joanna,” Vanessa warned. “Theo and Allison have it covered. This is all you get. Now have a spa day, or go away for a weekend. Don’t do anything. I don’t want to see you in jail again.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind so much the first time.”

  “Because the first time you did something incredibly stupid that put our whole division under scrutiny,” a male voice said behind her. “Now we care.”

  Turning around, Joanna realized she’d been ambushed.

  “Oh, hey. That’s a surprise. Yesterday you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Theo didn’t pull himself a chair. He probably enjoyed towering over her. It took a whole lot more to intimidate Joanna, and besides, she knew him.

  “Maybe I’m worried I didn’t make myself clear enough. This is my case. You don’t have a case. You don’t work for this department anymore. Stay away.”

  “Would you, or anybody, have thought of looking into a case from eleven years ago? A thank you would have sufficed.”

  “Thank you, Joanna. Now stay away.”

  “Be nice.” Vanessa sighed. “Theo, sit down, okay? This is not what I had in mind. It was supposed to be a peace mission.”

  To Joanna’s surprise, Theo started to laugh. To her even bigger surprise, it was infectious.

  “Yeah, sure, make fun of me. I’ll get myself another one of those donuts. Don’t kill each other.”

  After Vanessa left the table, there was silence for long moments. They should have felt uncomfortable, but didn’t. It might be that her encounter with Grace had taken uncomfortable to a new level. This wasn’t so bad in comparison.

  Theo seemed to be done yelling at her or react to her with scathing disappointment. Passing on the information, she hadn’t hoped for any improvement in their relationship, but if that was a side effect, she’d take it.

  “How have you been?” he asked.