Trix

by Kate Morris

  “Yeah?” she asked with a scratchy voice as if she were a heavy smoker.

  She was very hung over or still high or drunk, Jack wasn’t sure which option fit the current state. He stood back and let Craig talk to her for a moment. They found out her name was Olivia, and she lived in the same apartment as their deceased. She allowed them in without questioning further or arguing. Hearing of her apparent roommate’s death had stunned her.

  “Agents from our forensics lab will be here soon,” Craig explained as the woman lit a cigarette, pulled her short robe closed more tightly, and plopped down onto a tattered couch. “They’ll want to see the room where she stayed and will likely take things from here. If they find anything, you may need to leave the premises. Is there anywhere you can go for a day or two?”

  “What? Yeah, fine,” she answered, clearly in shock at the news.

  “Is there anyone else here with you?”

  She shook her head. “My boyfriend just left to get us breakfast.”

  By the looks of things, Jack wanted to suggest calling him and telling him to pick up soap, buckets, mops and scrubbing sponges.

  “We just have some questions for you,” Craig said.

  “Me?” she asked on instant alert. “Why me?”

  “You were her roommate,” he explained. “You’re not a suspect, ma’am.”

  The woman ran a hand through her dirty, unkempt pink, blue, and black hair that hung down her back. One side of her head was shaved. Jack wasn’t sure what it was that made young women everywhere want to do this. He was surprised Keagan hadn’t done it yet. She wore chipped black nail polish, about seven rings, and had her eyebrow pierced, as well. She was wearing a faded men’s t-shirt under the equally short robe. Her bare legs had a lot of bruises on them. At one time, likely before drug addiction became her primary goal for living, she was probably a pretty girl.

  “I can’t believe this happened to fuckin’ Steph,” she said and exhaled a long-held breath.

  “We’re sorry for your loss. How long had the two of you lived together?” Craig asked.

  “’Bout six months.”

  “Does anyone else live here with the two of you?”

  She nodded and indicated by lifting her chin, “My boyfriend. He lives here, too. Just the three of us.”

  Craig asked about her boyfriend and his name and left the room. Jack knew he was going out to call in a profile on the boyfriend. Since the boyfriend wasn’t here, then he could’ve made an excuse about breakfast just to go back to the crime scene knowing the police would be finding it soon. He and Lorena took over the interview.

  “What did she do for a living?” Jack asked her.

  The young woman bit her fingernail, took a puff of her cigarette and said, “She was a dancer like me. We danced at The Fig Leaf.”

  Jack doubted any of them wore fig leaves on stage. “When was the last time you saw her alive?”

  “’Bout three weeks ago,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you report her as missing?”

  She looked at him and explained, “She said she was going up north to meet with a client.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Olivia glanced around, clearly uncomfortable and answered, “Sometimes we did that. We met up with men we knew from the club.”

  “To party?”

  She nodded with embarrassment.

  “For money, you mean,” Jack stated, understanding what she meant very clearly. She nodded again. “Who was this client up north?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about that shit. It’s bad enough we have to do it.”

  Jack figured that the rent in the building was cheap and that they were making at least a living wage dancing, so that left one reason why they’d need more money. The fact that she kept pulling down the sleeves of her robe probably meant she was hiding needle tracks.

  “Did she ever go away for this long before?” he asked her.

  “No, not usually weeks. Sometimes a weekend.”

  “Then why didn’t you report her as missing?” Jack asked, trying to conceal his anger.

  “I just thought…I don’t know. I should’ve. I thought I’d get in trouble. I don’t have the money to get out of jail. I don’t have no one who would bail me out.”

  He nodded but frowned just the same.

  “It’s just weird, though, ya’ know?”

  “What’s weird?” Lorena asked, drawing closer. She’d been hanging back doing God knows what.

  “She was really gettin’ her shit together, really figurin’ it all out.”

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked.

  “Going to school in the mornings. Got off the…stuff, quit drinking.”

  “By stuff, I assume you mean drugs?” Lorena guessed.

  She nodded. Apparently, Olivia was not on the same twelve step program.

  “What was she going to school for?” Lorena asked.

  “I don’t know… dental something…teeth cleaner kinda’ job. I was real proud of her. She’s like a kid sister to me.”

  “Did she have regulars at the bar? Anyone who was bothering her or fixated on her?” Lorena asked next as she took notes.

  “Yeah, a few. Hell, we all do. If you work in a strip club, you’re gonna have fuckin’ creepo stalkers.”

  Jack frowned but had to admit that she was probably right. Women who danced around naked in front of men were bound to have problems. He just wondered if any of those men was Trix.

  They spoke with her for a while about her job, the men that came in and realized that she wouldn’t be able to help on that angle. The roommates worked different shifts and different days of the week most of the time.

  “Did she have a boyfriend?” Lorena asked.

  She vigorously shook her head, “Are you serious?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Olivia grinned sadly and said, “She’s gay. Steph hates men. Got molested when she was a kid by her perv uncle and again by a teacher in high school.”

  “Then, did she have a girlfriend?”

  “No,” she said. Then she changed her mind and said, “Well, maybe. She liked this girl she was working with at the dental thing. They do like free clinics for poor kids and shit. She liked that woman. I think she was older than Steph. I don’t know.”

  Jack figured this wasn’t much to go on. They already knew that the serial killer was a man.

  “Did she ever mention being stalked by someone, not a bar patron, but someone else? Maybe a teacher at the dental school or a patient, ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend kind of thing?” Jack suggested.

  She shook her head.

  Lorena wandered over to a closed door. “This her room?”

  She went in, and Jack followed. The room was sparsely appointed as he would’ve expected. A bare mattress was on the floor, a rickety stand next to it with a single lamp and an alarm clock. Instead of a closet, she had a clothing rack with two wire shelves and a single bar for hanging clothing. There wasn’t a lot hanging from the rack.

  “When she left, she took some of her clothes because she was leaving after work to head north,” Olivia said from the doorway. “She doesn’t have much.”

  There were photographs tacked to the walls, so Jack perused them. Most of them seemed normal, just a young woman hanging out with her friends. She looked very different from Olivia. She didn’t appear strung out or drunk or high in any of the pictures, even though her roommate told them that she’d gotten clean. Maybe she just hid it better. She was dressed conservatively in most of the photos, too. There were a few pictures of her with what Jack could only assume were romantic connections, different women. Most were taken while out on dates at restaurants, two from park-like scenery, and one instant polaroid from the very bed he stood next to. There was a specific woman in four photos, someone who must’ve meant more to Stephanie than the others.

  “This one here,” he said, pointing to a photo of doctors and nurses in scrubs. “What’s th
is one about?”

  Olivia came closer and said, “Oh, that’s the school where she was studying the dental stuff. And that one…those were co-workers and other staff on the free clinic day.”

  He nodded and speculated about the picture. Could she have gained a stalker there during their free clinic days? Was Trix, aka the Tooth Fairy, who liked to pull one tooth as a souvenir from each victim, fixated on a dental assistant in training who’d treated him at this clinic? There would be hundreds of suspects to go through, and he wasn’t sure with it being a free clinic, charity case-work kind of thing how great their record-keeping was on the patients. He figured some of them had to be homeless people going in there for free dental care when they just couldn’t take the pain of cavities or abscesses any longer. There were medical clinics and doctors and volunteers who offered similar services in low-income neighborhoods around the country, as well. It seemed like they could be looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Beside him, Lorena coughed. Then she sniffed. The damp, cold weather was getting to her. Also, eating the way she did wasn’t going to bolster her immune system anytime soon, either.

  Jack looked under the bed but didn’t find anything. She wasn’t a slob, either. Her things were neat and tidy, her meager possessions organized.

  From the doorway again, Olivia said, “She was gonna move out soon. Supposedly she was promised a job and was plannin’ on moving when she got settled into her new job.”

  “Working in the dentistry field,” Lorena asked.

  “Yeah, some doctor offered her a job. She was real proud, too, gettin’ a legit job like that. We were gonna go out and celebrate.”

  “Then she disappeared,” Lorena said.

  In the outer room, there was a commotion. Jack rushed toward it to find Craig arguing with a man.

  “I live here, that’s why!” the man was shouting.

  After some persuasive mediating, Jack was able to get the man to calm down. Then they questioned him.

  Lorena led with, “How long did you know the deceased?”

  “Just a couple months, since I moved in here,” Troy said.

  His name was Troy Bennington, and he had a long rap sheet according to Craig, although none of it could link him to kidnapping or murder. It was more along the lines of petty theft, larceny, and multiple drug convictions.

  “What was the nature of your relationship with Stephanie?” Lorena asked as he and Craig hung back and let her work.

  “I don’t know. She was nice, I guess. I didn’t see her a lot. She worked and went to school or something, veterinary stuff.”

  It was clear they weren’t dealing with Trix. The punk could barely string together a single coherent thought.

  “Did she ever complain to you about anyone stalking her or harassing her that she would’ve wanted your help with?”

  “Nah, not to me. She works at the titty bar, though. Comes with the territory.”

  Although he wasn’t complaining much when his own girlfriend brought home a wad of singles every night she worked. Jack wanted to take him over to the window and push him out.

  They left the apartment as the forensics team pulled up out front. Craig went over and spoke with them, and then they left for the topless bar. It was surprisingly upscale, or at least it was putting up a front of being a nice place. It wasn’t even in the bad end of town, and they’d spent a lot of money building the place. It was what polite society would consider a gentlemen’s club. To Jack, gentlemen didn’t watch women dance around naked for a dollar placed in their underwear. The place even advertised a lunch buffet.

  “Hey, Evans,” he said, nudging her arm. Craig was riding in the back seat this time and was on his phone non-stop. “You can get some lunch here. Bet they’ve got your kind of food.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” she said as they got out.

  Craig waved them on. He was stuck on a call, and it sounded like it was going to be a while. Jack opened the door for her, and they were immediately met by a bouncer who was also taking money for the fee to get in. They both flashed their badges.

  “What’s going on, officers?” the very large and extremely muscular African-American man asked.

  “We need to speak with a few of the girls and the owner,” Jack told him.

  “Boss is at the last booth on the right. The girls, well, some are workin’ and some are in the back.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  The place looked like a typical strip club, dark, dotted with neon lights in some areas, smelled like a lot of perfumes mixed together and combined with hot wings and beer. There were even red velvet draperies that were drawn back at the end of the building that likely led to private rooms for a more one-on-one experience. Mirrors lined most of the walls, and music, loud and thumping pumped through the speakers. Girls gyrated on the multiple stages as men drank cold beers and ogled them. There was a particularly loud and rowdy group of college students at one table with beers, wings and bawdy laughter. Although it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, Jack averted his eyes. He always felt like he was exploiting them by going to establishments like this. He had too many sisters to frequent places that used women for financial gain.

  He looked at Lorena and could tell that she was uncomfortable. Ushering her around the stage, he led Lorena to the back where the owner was sitting in a booth. One of the dancers was sitting across from him talking. Jack introduced himself and Lorena and the reason for their visit. They were both shocked. The woman held her hand over her mouth in horror.

  “I knew Steph. She was a good kid,” she said with sad eyes. “What happened to her? Who did this?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lorena said. “Do either of you know anyone who would’ve done something to hurt her?”

  “No, but I always work day shift, and Steph always worked nights,” she said. “Actually, she was just working nights lately because she was going through school to work in a dentist’s office.”

  “Did she complain about any of the men, maybe a regular, who made her feel uncomfortable?”

  “A few. We all have a few freaks who come in, and, yeah, they’re usually regulars.”

  “Do you know who they are, have information on them?”

  The owner said, “Hey, wait a minute. I think that’s a violation of their privacy.”

  “There’s no privacy in a murder investigation, sir,” Lorena informed him. “We can get warrants and dig deep, or we can just look into a few of your patrons.”

  “Get them the names, Bunny,” he said, using her stage name.

  “We’d like to speak with whoever’s here that would’ve known Stephanie,” Jack added and received a nod and a frown as if the owner was upset about the potential of a few lost customers for the afternoon with police milling about. He had news for the guy. If the FBI arrived wanting a full search and to question every single employee, it was going to go a lot worse.

  They were shown to a room in the back where women were in various states of undress. Jack didn’t go in but waited outside.

  “If you could have them put on some clothing or a robe,” Jack told Bunny. “We’ll talk with them one at a time in another room, please.”

  “Sure,” she replied and went in to gather the dancers.

  She came back out a moment later and showed Jack and Lorena to a small break room with a dining table and two chairs. Jack leaned against the counter behind him and gave Lorena the seat.

  “Kyle…Kyle Archibald,” Bunny told them. “He’s basically the only one I would actually be worried about.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said, noting it in his little book.

  The first girl came in right as Lorena was pulling out her notepad.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’,” the young woman announced with hostility and stood with her hands on her hips.

  “Have a seat,” Lorena said with impatience.

  “I ain’t talkin’ to the police.”

  Lorena c
ame back with, “Then we’ll do this at the FBI headquarters instead.”

  “Fine!” she pouted and dropped into the plastic chair. “What do you wanna’ know?”

  “How well did you know Stephanie Pearson?”

  “As well as I know any of these women. She was a co-worker, that’s all.”

  “Did she ever tell you about problems with men, men that were bothering her outside of work?”

  “We weren’t BFF’s,” she said snidely.

  Lorena dismissed her and three more girls who didn’t know enough about Stephanie to be helpful. Most admitted to being stalked by men at one time or another who were customers.

  The last girl came in looking as if she’d just come off the stage. She wore a skimpy lace bra, matching thong and sheer, thigh-length robe. She was visibly shaken by the news that Stephanie was killed and was smoking a cigarette with unsteady, nervous fingers

  “I just heard what happened to Steph,” she said with anxiety. “I can’t believe this. Who could’ve done this?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us,” Lorena said. “Tell me what you knew of Steph and any men who might’ve been bothering her, anyone that stood out in your mind as someone dangerous.”

  “There was a man,” she stated and took a deep breath. “He came in a few times, older, like sixty or something.”

  She paused a long time, so Lorena prompted her, “Was he stalking her, fixating on her?”

  “Yeah, he had it bad for Steph. Came to the club about a dozen times. He was pretty bad about it. He even followed her to her car one day. The bouncers were pissed about it, too.”

  “Video surveillance,” Lorena said over her shoulder to him.

  Jack left the room and found the owner again. There weren’t any cameras outside. The only cameras were in the rear hallway that led to his office where his safe was kept. It wasn’t going to help them with their investigation. She was able to give them a good physical description, and when they checked it with the two men that Bunny tipped them off to, one was a pretty good match.

  They left the strip club to the same pulsating music and lithe young women gyrating and selling false fantasies to the men in their audience. Craig was still on his phone when they got back out to the parking lot, but Jack believed it to be with a different person this time. Detective work wasn’t always as glamorous as they portrayed it on television shows. Most of the time they chased down worthless leads, dealt with the scum of the earth to get tips, and did mountains of paperwork to cover their asses on procedure. He joked with some of his wealthy friends that he was just in police work for the money.