by Kate Aeon
“It is, surprisingly. He has a big wrought-iron fence, some landscaping. But those big houses are all on small lots, and we figure any of the inhabitants in any of three separate houses could have had a clear view of him hauling our dancer out his back door, and two others might have had a view from one or two windows. It could have even been someone driving down the street. We have people going door to door right now, but so far we haven’t found anyone who will admit to placing the call.”
“How would they even have seen anything? Stuff isn’t too well lit at four a.m.”
“Hemly’s place is. He has motion sensor lights. Everybody around there has motion-sensor lights.” Jim sounded happy. “Plus, his landscaping includes a fair number of solar-powered lighting fixtures along walkways and fountains. He might as well have dragged her out the back door right in front of Candid Camera.”
“His security tapes give you anything?’
“He doesn’t have a security system that includes video.”
Now Jess smiled. “Really? Big, rich star like him, and he has no videotapes of potential stalkers or thieves or disgruntled nutcases? That’s oddly suspicious.”
“It’s good, Jess. It’s solid. Our two tips were shaky, but they’re panning out pure gold.”
Jess pulled into the parking lot of Goldcastle and sighed. “Speaking of gold. I’m now in the parking lot at Goldcastle. It’s mobbed at this hour of the day, incidentally. I see the guys in the van across the street, so I’m guessing you still want me here.”
“Yes. Hemly may give us the other two guys. But if he and his lawyer are going to push the innocent plea, he’ll hold out as long as he can. The other two might lie low, but we can’t count on that. And you might be able to get us some corroborative evidence on Hemly. Girls who had contact with him, how he behaved, where he took them... you know the drill.”
“I know the drill,” Jess said. And stopped. “Hey. How is it nobody was watching the park? Hank thought it was covered.”
“Yeah — that was a bad miss on our part. The girl we were watching never left the house, so we never activated the park team. We’re short on man-hours, but long on cases.” Silence on the other end. Then, “Who knew, huh?”
“Hank, I guess. Signing off for now, Jim. I’ll get you what I can.”
She checked in with the surveillance team, did a mike test, talking into her belly button. She had the portable test transmitter hidden in her trunk. That way she didn’t have to worry about carrying it around so she could test, but no one would see it lying on her seat.
The guys in the van were good to go. So she hauled her kit bag off the passenger seat and swung into the side door of the club, feeling almost elated.
Until she saw the first little cluster of dancers. They were standing along one wall, whispering. Crying. Talking about River, and whether anyone knew whether her little girl, Dani, was going to be able to live with the grandmother.
Everything snapped back into sharp focus for Jess. If they had one of the guys, fine. But she and her colleagues weren’t finished. A young mother was dead, two killers still roamed free and unidentified, and none of these girls could consider themselves safe.
When Jess got to the dressing room, Ginger Rose was already there. “You heard?”
Jess nodded. “Nothing but on TV this morning.”
“I know. I can’t believe it. I can’t imagine Jason wanting to hurt River. They’d gone out a couple of times, you know? River said he was a perfect gentleman. Took her out to nice restaurants, got along great with her daughter. She’d been so thrilled to be dating... well, you know. A star.”
Jess nodded again. The guys in the surveillance van parked outside had to be doing a hula dance right about then. Previous repeated contacts with the victim, a relationship of trust built up. Yes.
“Were they still dating?” she asked.
“No. Jason never dated anyone for very long. He claimed he was actually deeply in love, and was trying to get over a broken heart after the woman he loved dumped him. So for the girls he dated from here, he was good for maybe two or three dates.”
“And after he slept with them, he moved on?” Jess asked.
“No. He really was a gentleman. He never had sex with any of the girls he dated — at least not that I know of.”
Because that wasn’t what got Jason Hemly off. Right. He sounded like a lust killer. Most common sort of serial killer, for whom the combination of sex and torture and murder was the big thing. And if he was into a steady diet of perversion and blood, straight sex with his intended victims beforehand would probably not do much for him at all.
In two or three dates, he could find out what he needed to know about his victims. How to get them to go where he wanted them to go, say what he wanted them to say to make sure that no one would suspect they were meeting with him.
“Are you up to going out?” Ginger Rose asked. “Teri has been back here twice trying to get more girls out on the floor, but...” She waved a hand at the empty room, then blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “We can’t go out like this.”
“I can do it,” Jess said. “I... yes. I’ll go out.”
She changed quickly into a thong, miniskirt, sequined bra, and see-through blouse, and went out to work the floor until time came for her to do sets on the stage.
The place was even more crowded on the inside than it had looked on the outside, and the floor managers with their little laser penlights had their hands full with grabby customers. Jess did table dances, focusing on men with brown or blond hair.
She drifted by Hank from time to time, brushing against him and touching one of his hands casually. He kept giving her the all clear signal that she hadn’t run up against the killer yet.
And then Jess heard raised voices out in the foyer. She drifted toward the door without being too obvious about it, and got a good look at Teri arguing with Lenny. Teri had both hands full of Lenny’s shirt, Lenny was pulling at her wrists, and they were snarling at each other, oblivious to the stares of employees and customers alike.
“You stay out of the dancers’ area, you pervert. You have no business back there. Not now. Not ever.”
“I wasn’t back there.”
“You’re leaving things in the dressing room again and I’m not supposed to figure out it was you? How stupid do you think I am?”
Teri pushed him away, breaking her wrists free from his grip in the same sharp movement. “You go back there again, I’ll make sure you’re gone from here, Lenny.”
Jess slipped out of sight, worked her way over to the deejay, and said, “How about something a little faster and more upbeat? The girls backstage are just wrecked, and it isn’t too easy for us up front, either.”
He nodded.
The next instant, she felt two hands grab her ass and slide around front under her skirt.
“Still love the deejays, hey, Andi?”
Lenny’s voice. Her first instinct was to back up under him and flip him on top of the table in front of her.
But — for the moment, at least — she was a stripper. Not a cop. She was playing sweet and mostly helpless and maybe a little... scared. She broke his hold without seeming to expend any effort, turned, and said, keeping her voice low, “I’m Gracie. Not Andi. I don’t even know anybody named Andi.”
And Lenny gave her a creepy sort of I-know-your-secret smile, and whispered, “Right. And back when I was a deejay, you weren’t sliding down my fireman’s pole every goddamned night.” He was staring at her. “I loved you. Loved you. And you loved me. I don’t know what happened that night, Andromeda, or why you let me think you were dead for so long, or... I don’t understand anything. Not even what I thought I understood. But I know you. And if you’ve come back here now, I figure it can only be because you love me, too. Because we were meant to be together after all.”
Jess had to rest a hand on the table beside her. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room; suddenly everyone and everything around her looked fuzzy
and her legs wobbled and her mouth dried out so that she had to fight to form words.
“Andromeda?” she whispered.
“He’s so cute, Jess,” Ginny said over the phone. Jess couldn’t help but smile at the happiness in her sister’s voice. “Tall and blond and handsome. He was a football player in high school until he broke a leg. Oh, God, he’s such a bad boy, too. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but he talked me out of my clothes the first time we went out together.”
And Jess asked, “You guys... did it?”
“We did. We do. Oh, Jess, you won’t believe it. Sex is better than anything you can imagine. And he’s so... Wow. He talks about us in five years, and what our kids will look like, and he’s so... romantic. A romantic bad boy. Imagine.”
Jess was trying to get her mind around the fact that Ginny was having sex with someone. They’d promised each other they weren’t going to, that they were going to stay focused on dance until they made it. But Ginny’s plans had derailed. “Has Mama met him?"
“You are crazy. He thinks my name is Andromeda, and that I’m an orphan. There’s no way I’m taking him home to meet Mama. She’d explode.”
Which had not sounded terribly promising to Jess. “What does he do? What’s his name? Tell me everything.”
“He’s a deejay at the club where I’m dancing. His name is Mitch. Mitch Devon, but it ought to be Mitch Divine.”
Chapter Twelve
Mitch Devon. The most romantic guy in the universe. Versus Lenny Northwhite, red-faced, middle-aged thug.
Jess had never met him, but she knew Devon had fallen off the face of the earth not long after he had established an airtight alibi for the time frame in which Ginny had disappeared. He’d never resurfaced anywhere. Jess had checked. She’d been watching.
She tipped her head and made her eyes go wide and tentatively whispered, “Mitch?”
He smiled. It wasn’t the dead-eyed smile of the shark she’d met upstairs. This was a tender smile. Sweet. Gentle. “You really didn’t recognize me?” he asked.
When Ginny first started dancing, she told Jess she’d gotten a cheap fake ID identifying her as Andromeda Callisto. The ID probably wouldn’t have been good enough to fool a state trooper, but it had been good enough for the club where she’d wanted to dance. Ginny had been old enough to work at the club; that wasn’t the problem. She’d obtained the ID because she never wanted anything about the stripping to get back to her mother.
And this... this monster had known Ginny as Andi, had told her he loved her, had won her trust.
I don’t know what happened that night, Andromeda, or why you let me think you were dead for so long, or... I don’t understand anything. Not even what I thought I understood.
His words. Mitch Devon had provided a very solid alibi for his whereabouts for the entire day and night between when Ginny was last seen, and when Jess and her mother realized she was missing. That alibi had included being publicly visible, both to friends and to detractors, for the entire time in which Ginny could have gone missing.
And yet... he’d said, I don’t know what happened that night. Jess had to find out which night.
He’d said, Why you let me think you were dead. What the hell was that about? Was that her worst nightmare come true?
And now he was looking at her like a long-lost love come back to him.
“I... can’t talk to you right now... Mitch. Lenny.” Jess put a little stammer into her voice and a little confusion on her face. “I have to work right now. I... need the money.”
He nodded. An understanding nod, but confident, too. Like he’d been sure all along that she was going to give him what he wanted. “We’ll get together later to talk.”
She nodded.
“My place,” he said, and Jess shook her head. Much as she wanted an opportunity to look around inside his home, she didn’t want to end up dead in the process. If Lenny got crazy, backup that was stuck outside a locked door might not be able to get to her in time. She’d meet with him in a public place first, judge the level of danger, maybe get enough info to get a judge to issue a search warrant. If that didn’t work out, she would think about accepting his invitation to his home.
So she said, “At dinner, maybe.”
“We can have dinner at my place.” He smiled. She caught an edge of Lenny in with all that sincere, sweet Mitch, and felt a shiver slide down her spine.
“I’m not ready for that yet. You and I need to talk about a few things first, and... No. Fast food will be fine.”
His face told her he was hurt. She needed to get away from him. “I have to get back to work now,” she said, and flirted her way back over to Hank as quickly as she dared.
She leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Find a way to brush your hand against my ass without getting caught by the floor managers. I have a bad suspicion I got grabbed by one of the killers.”
Hank stared at her. He stood up slowly, moved behind her, saying, “No, thanks — I’m going to pass on a lap dance right now,” and as he brushed past her, ran his fingertips lightly across the curves of her butt, beneath her skirt.
She shivered again, turned on by his touch in spite of herself.
She pivoted to say something to him, and found him one step past her, bent double with his hands around his gut, his skin gone so gray and sweaty she thought for a moment he might be having a heart attack.
She grabbed one arm and tried to help him stand up straight. “Should I call nine-one-one?”
“Bathroom,” he said through clenched jaws.
The combination of Hank’s skin color and Jess helping him along cleared a path through the crowd. She couldn’t ask him what she wanted to know — if this reaction was caused by touching her, or if maybe he’d gotten something from the shrimp he’d been eating.
Sick. He’d told her that sometimes what he felt with that sixth sense of his made him sick. She’d figured he was exaggerating, the way she would exaggerate by saying she was starving, or that a headache was killing her.
From the look of him, she had to confess that if this was what he’d meant by sick, he’d severely understated his reaction.
Hank managed to drag himself to the sink, where he threw up so severely that the bathroom attendant fled the room. Hank retched, and heaved, and sagged against the cool marble of the bathroom counter, and since the attendant wasn’t there, grabbed one of those hand towels the guy usually passed out to patrons. He soaked it and rinsed his face. Rinsed out his mouth.
The killer had touched Jess. But it was more than that. He’d chosen her as his next victim. She was the one he wanted, she was the one he intended to have. He’d finished digging her grave already; Hank could see the long, shallow rectangle, smell the dirt, almost feel the shovel in his leather-gloved hands. Six by six. Graves filled over years. That was six by six, and Jess would fill the last one.
The perversion, the hunger, the rage. They pulsed through Hank’s blood and tainted the air he breathed and scared Hank worse than he had ever been scared in his life. He’d read edges of the killer before. Side glimpses. That one nearly direct connection through the costume. But this touch — it was still hot. Fresh.
Directed at someone he loved.
The attendant came running back in, accompanied by a floor manager.
“Sir, do you need an ambulance?” the floor manager asked.
Hank, still leaning on the counter with water washing the last vestiges of puke out of the sink, said, “No.”
“If you’ve had too much to drink...” the manager started, but Hank held up a hand to stop him.
“I haven’t. I thought I got hold of some bad food in here yesterday,” he said. Talking was hard; the images, the visuals, the clear pictures of Jess already dead, being tossed naked into a hole and buried. “Now I’m not sure what it is about this place.”
He cupped his hands in the running water, rinsed and spit, and stood up. His legs felt weak, he was shaky, and his skin alternated between being
too hot and too cold. All of his scars felt like they were on fire.
“Shall I have someone bring your car around for you, sir?” the manager said. “Or will you need to have a cab take you home?”
Implied in those questions was the clear but polite notice that Hank would be leaving.
Well, if he left, the surveillance team would pull Jess out, too.
At the moment, he could only think that was a good thing.
“I... I’m well enough to drive,” he said. “Give me a minute to get cleaned up.”
The floor manager seemed relieved that Hank wasn’t going to give him a problem. Hank handed the man his car claim tag, and the manager left to see that it would be waiting for him.
Jess was waiting outside the door for him, clearly worried.
“I’m sorry to scare you like that, Gracie,” he said. He leaned against the wall for support. “I’ll be sure to come back and see you again soon. You take care, now.”
He gave her the “trouble” signal that they’d worked out. She nodded and said, “I hope you’re feeling better soon. We’ll miss you.”
She headed back to the floor, to sit down and start talking to another customer. Hank left, frantic that he was letting Jess out of his sight for even an instant.
“So what do you enjoy?” she asked the brown-haired executive sitting across from her at one of the little tables.
He grinned a little. “Making money, mostly. I go skiing in Aspen a couple times a winter. I have a place in Nassau where I go to get away from it all. Another out on the coast.”
Every word out of his mouth made her think he was a dull jerk, and a pretentious one at that. But Jess responded with a big-eyed, dewy, “Wow. That must be wonderful. What do you do?”
“I own a software company. We have a video-games division and a business division — and frankly, the games are currently out-earning the productivity software about twenty to one. We have a huge hit on our hands right now with Attila, Lord of Chaos, where you play as Attila the Hun, and your goal is to conquer and pillage the known world.”
