Last Girl Dancing

by Kate Aeon

  He was glad he couldn’t feel her there.

  Charlie was looking at him. “You okay?”

  “No,” Hank said. “This is... hell. This is the worst of these things we’ve ever done together. The girls’ deaths are terrible. But the killer is... I don’t know, Charlie. He feels like he’s digging into my brain. He isn’t crazy. Isn’t confused. Isn’t out of control. He’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing, and he’s enjoying it. And enjoying us not being able to catch him.”

  Charlie said, “We’ve had a lot like that.”

  Hank shook his head. “No, this is a whole new level of evil. I keep catching images of the killer deciding to do a set of public murders, to give himself a little excitement before he moves on. Some amusement.” Hank searched through the sensations and images he’d been getting, trying to find the way to shape them into words. “He isn’t afraid of getting caught, because the police have never even looked at him. Aren’t looking at him now. He sees himself as so smart, so well insulated — so bulletproof — that no one will ever get close to him. He wasn’t even afraid when he dumped the last girl, when Hemly was already in jail without bond.”

  “He’s someone important. Powerful? Connections, maybe?” Charlie sighed. “But that doesn’t make sense. You said he used the last girl as a diversion to draw us away from Goldcastle. That had to have been because he thought we were getting close to him.”

  Hank stood up and paced. “She was a diversion. But not the way we’ve been thinking. I think the last girl was actually bait to drag Wayne Alton into this mess.”

  “Doesn’t work. We have hair and fiber evidence that matches Alton on every one of our bodies. He’s our nonsecretor, incidentally. It’ll take a while, but we’re going to have DNA evidence. He left a fingerprint on Bethany Hertz’s shoe. He has trophies in his house. He has no alibi for his whereabouts during the murder. We don’t have to drag him into anything when he’s running into it at full speed.” Charlie stared at the line of photographs in their numbered evidence bags. “We’re as solid on him as we are on Jason Hemly.”

  Hank sat back dawn, fists clenching and unclenching in frustration. “I don’t know. I know what you have. But I know what I’m reading, too. It’s like the fucker knows he’s invisible, like no matter how hard we look he knows we aren’t going to be able to see him.”

  Charlie’s voice was mild. “We have means, motive, and opportunity for both of our suspects. We have previous behavior that suggests both of our probable killers are capable of committing these crimes. We have a likely suspect for the third leg in our killer triad, if we could talk to him or get a damned warrant to search his house. Or get one of his buddies to turn state’s evidence on him, and let me tell you, Alton’s and Hemly’s lawyers are each pushing their clients to be the guy who gets the deal right now.” Charlie was studying Hank with that basset-hound expression of his. “Plus Jess is hot to see Lenny hang. She thinks he killed her sister thirteen years ago, and I’ve gone over the transcript of that conversation she had with him, and I’m betting she’s right.” And he cleared his throat. “These photos you’re touching come from our suspect’s houses, and you’re telling me that the killer touched them.”

  “I know,” Hank said. “But all I can do is give you what I get and let you see if you can make sense of it. Give me another photo.”

  He closed his eyes, and Charlie put a second Polaroid in his hand.

  “New picture. Killer present; I can still feel the girl’s death on his hands. This picture was taken after he killed her, before he buried her. He’s thinking she should have lasted a little longer.”

  “I don’t see how she could have,” Charlie said, his voice tight.

  Hank opened his eyes, turned over the picture. A girl, her jugular veins intact, stared out of the photo from eyes gone dull and heading toward milky. Bruised, torn, sprawled, her expression panicked, she didn’t look anything like the posed and composed, prettily dressed corpses the killer dumped in public. Her body had been through hell — Hank could see blistered burns, tiny knife cuts, fresh brands. Though nothing that would constitute a fatal wound.

  “How did she die?” he asked.

  Charlie said, “We don’t know. We have to find the buried bodies before we’ll be able to find out. The biggest surprise we got when we found the photographs, though, was how completely the killer’s MO has changed. No dress-up, no bleeding out, no bath and makeup and fancy hair. The ones he buried go into the ground naked except for their shoes. He doesn’t do anything with their faces; usually their eyes are still open.”

  Hank shoved the photo back at Charlie and dropped his head onto his arms.

  “What?”

  “I have a sharp image of Jess in the hands of this monster. Eyes open, going into the ground. Dirt falling on her face. It isn’t Jess I’m seeing, though. It’s her twin sister. And the killer wants to finish with Jess, because it makes everything round and tidy and complete.” He felt sick. He was fighting nausea, the shakes, cold gut-check fear.

  He heard Charlie say, “You’re taking this pretty hard, man. You and Jess have something going on?”

  Face still against his arms, Hank muttered, “Not anymore.” He wasn’t sure if Charlie heard him or not.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jess wished she’d stayed in bed. Hank wasn’t home. Nobody at the dojo knew where he was, or when he might be back. She was determined not to talk to him over the phone, because she needed for him to be able to see her face-to-face, to realize that she was genuinely sorry about the way she’d acted — and it was hard to convey that over the phone. For her, at least.

  She called the surveillance team and asked them if they were available to head in early, but they weren’t.

  She considered going in without backup, just to have some time to talk to Teri, but she decided this wasn’t the day to be that stupid. She needed to get anything Teri said on tape, just in case. And she didn’t feel like running into Lenny without backup and becoming the next dead dancer because she had decided not to follow protocol.

  So she ended up back in that dismal yellow hole in the wall she was inhabiting. With enough cold breakfast for two people, and not enough appetite for one. If she’d needed to have her nose rubbed in everything that was wrong with her life, the day seemed to be more than willing to provide.

  Jim called. “Checking in,” he said. “I spent most of last night awake, running back through Northwhite’s record and history. From Northwhite’s extensive rap sheet, I discovered that his first adult offense was statutory rape of his stepsister, whose name was Lori Wedder. Wedder’s mother filed charges against Northwhite shortly before she and Lenny’s father split up, but then dropped them. Northwhite, still going by his birth name of Mitchell Devon Leonard, would have been eighteen at the time, Wedder fifteen. We don’t have anything on why the charges were dropped. The mother has vanished since then, so we can’t ask her. According to the notes on your sister’s missing-persons file, Lori Wedder is also the name of the girl who took her to the bus station.”

  Jess felt a sharp thrill of connection. Jim added, “I thought it was interesting that by the time Wedder was twenty-three and Northwhite, by then going as Mitch Devon, was twenty-six, the two of them were working in the same strip club. And that Wedder formed a significant part of Northwhite’s alibi when your sister went missing.”

  “How so?’

  Jim said, “If no one saw your sister get on the bus, then the time of Virginia’s disappearance could have been days earlier.”

  “No, it couldn’t have,” Jess said. “Because I talked to Ginny on the phone only a few hours before Wedder said she took Ginny to the bus station. Much as I don’t want to be, I’m part of Northwhite’s alibi. Ginny could only have gone missing during the twenty-four hours between when I called her to talk, and when she didn’t show up at my mother’s the next day as she’d promised.”

  “Shit. I was hoping this meant that Northwhite and Wedder were working in
collusion.”

  Jess said, “They still might have been. And I may be onto something valuable regarding Wedder.”

  “Since she disappeared not long after your sister did, anything would be useful.”

  “I think a photo in Teri Thomas’s office is made out to Lori Wedder. The photo was old, the writing was bad, and the ink and everything else were faded. And I might also be misremembering what I think I saw. But if the photo is of Teri, and I’m sure it must be, and if it’s made out to Lori Wedder, we might have found our missing girl.”

  “So go in and talk to Teri Thomas.”

  “I will,” Jess said. “As soon as the surveillance team is ready.”

  “Thomas going to be there today?”

  “She’s always there,” Jess said.

  “Then they’ll be ready,” Jim told her.

  Hank decided to get to Jess’s a little before she was scheduled to leave. Technically, he didn’t have to have any contact with her until he walked into the club, and then only if either he or she needed to exchange information. But he wanted to see her. He didn’t know what he could say that would make things better. I’m sorry I’m trying to save your life? I’m sorry I’m afraid for you? He didn’t see where either of those were going to go over well. He wasn’t sorry, either. He was just sorry she was so upset with him. But he wanted to say something.

  Only she wasn’t there. Her car wasn’t in the parking space, and when he went upstairs, he could feel her touch on the doorknob, leaving. On her way to the club.

  So he drove in, feeling more frustrated and angry with every passing minute.

  Jess was right in front of him as he walked through the doors, talking to the greeter, an earnest expression on her face. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and the front of her blouse, honey gold and straight, swinging with every gesture. Her gold blouse was see-through, her bra beneath it black and sparkling, her short-short skirt metallic gold with black trim. Her legs were bare, and he could remember what they felt like draped over his shoulders and shoved apart by his thighs, and his mouth went dry.

  Jess glanced in his direction. Gave him the same professional-friendly smile she would have given any other customer walking through the door, then returned her attention to the greeter.

  He’d wanted something special. Some little acknowledgment that he wasn’t just anybody. That she wasn’t angry with him, that the two of them were still the two of them. But he didn’t get it. He could tell himself she was undercover, that he couldn’t expect her to break cover for him. But that didn’t change what he wanted.

  He handed his money to the greeter, then walked past Jess into the ballroom, wanting her and beginning to despise himself for wanting her.

  “I need to talk to Teri right away,” Jess was saying. “It’s an emergency, Kate.”

  Hank found an excuse to lean against a pillar in the ballroom but out of sight.

  “Gracie, she’s out today,” the greeter said. “She called in this morning, said she’d gone out to eat last night with friends and this morning she can’t get away from the toilet. She said she’s sure she’ll be feeling well enough to be here tomorrow. Maybe even later today. But Louella is taking care of everything right now.”

  He could hear Jess’s exasperated sigh. “Today of all days,” she said.

  “To tell you the truth, though, I don’t think she’ll be in tomorrow, either,” Kate said. “I don’t think any of us will be.”

  And Jess said, “Oh?”

  “Not because of her. Because of him.”

  “Lenny?”

  “The police were already here this morning, wanting to talk to him. He told them if they didn’t have a warrant, they couldn’t look through his office or his home, and if they had any other questions, they could talk to his lawyer.”

  “Then he’s taken care of it,” Jess said.

  “The cops are going to be back. Some of the girls are saying Lenny’s the third killer. I bet the police end up shutting us down today.”

  “You think?”

  “Cops in and out of here, Lenny with lawyers practically living in his office, Teri in a panic over the number of dancers quitting. I think so.” A blast of music drowned out what she said next. Hank moved closer and heard, “...too, because this is the only place I’ve ever worked where anybody gave a shit about the dancers. You go to other clubs, there’s nobody like Teri or Louella to take care of you.”

  “I like them.”

  “They’re special. Both of them. As sleazy as this place can get, it would be a million times worse without them.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Jess said. “I need to get to work.”

  “Yeah. I have another week before I can even start physical therapy on my leg — I really miss the dancing money. Being a greeter pays nothing.”

  “Hang in,” Jess said. “You’ll get through this.”

  “You, too. Give your brother a hug from me.” Hank heard Jess’s footsteps start toward him. “Oh! Gracie! I almost forgot. Someone sent you a little stuffed bear. It’s backstage, waiting.”

  “A stuffed bear?” She laughed. “Well, that’s better than candy, I guess.”

  Hank stepped in front of her as she came around the corner, and said, “We need to talk.”

  And she smiled at him, a sad, worried smile that was nothing like what he’d expected. “I need to talk,” she said, her voice low and hurried, “and you need to let me. I owe you an apology. But... we can’t right now. I have to get in touch with Teri — I think she could give us the info we need to get a search warrant for Lenny.” She backed away, flashed him a dancer’s smile, and said, “I haven’t forgotten I owe you that lap dance, sweetie. I’m going on stage in a few minutes, but I’ll catch you when I get back. Wait for me, okay?”

  “Forever,” he said. That was supposed to have been in character — a drooling promise from Hank the Stripper Groupie. But when he said it, Hank the Guy in Love with Jess was the one who spoke.

  Jess danced. Most of the regulars had cleared out early on. The ghouls who’d taken their places for a few days, hoping for another murder so they’d be able to tell the neighbors the next day that they’d talked to that dead girl the night before, had thinned out as well. The place felt empty, and that made dancing harder. Fewer eyes watching her made each pair that remained more personal somehow. More invasive, hungrier and more desperate. The empty seats spilled shadows across the floor; the missing dancers had taken most of the air in the place with them when they left. A ghost storm rumbled in between the drumbeats, a falling barometer of fear that left everyone in the place slicked with cold sweat.

  No one was pretending any longer. The noise and the greed and the frantic laughter and the desperate reaching out couldn’t cover over the ghosts anymore. Jess could almost feel them watching her — dead girls crying out for vengeance, for justice. Ginny was among them. Maybe Ginny was first among them.

  And that, too, drained her, left her weak and shaky when she needed to be strong. The hole in her life that was Ginny, that had been Ginny for so long, ached in every breath she drew, in every step she took.

  She couldn’t think about her sister often, because Ginny was half of Jess, but gone. All her childhood dreams and hopes, all her shared tribulations and memories could never be shared again with the one other person to whom they had meant so much.

  Jess had prayed for so long that she would find her way to Ginny, that Ginny would be okay, that they could somehow put back together the friendship that some siblings were lucky enough to share. She had prayed that whatever had gone wrong between them, it would not turn out to be irreparable.

  Now believing herself close at last to the truth behind Ginny’s disappearance, she could no longer hold out hope that she would find her sister alive. The truth would hurt. The pain would go on, the emptiness that by the end of this was going to last forever.

  But the storm was about to break. Something big was about to happen. And maybe, even if it didn’t take away the p
ain, the truth would clean the wounds. Maybe, just maybe, Jess would be able to return her mother’s other child to her, and that aching, grieving, hollow hope would leave behind something that resembled peace.

  Jess talked. She circulated. She watched. She kept checking backstage, hoping that Teri would show up. Lenny apparently left sometime after Jess arrived.

  She watched Hank watching her, too. She could see pain in his eyes — pain that she’d put there. They had to talk. Had to work things out between them.

  She wasn’t sure if he’d forgive her for being so impossible. She’d had her points — she couldn’t quit doing her job because it was dangerous, and she couldn’t walk away from this chance to find her sister now that she might finally have it. But she hadn’t even tried to understand what he’d been saying. Or how what she was doing might look to him.

  She had to believe he’d forgive her. She loved him. She shouldn’t have let herself fall for him, but she felt like she’d had as much choice in the matter as she’d had in the color of her eyes. She had been made for him, he had been made for her, and the two of them not working out would be an inconceivable cosmic injustice.

  She stopped by his table once and sat with him. “I’m going to have to get rid of an anonymous gift someone left for me backstage,” she said. “Need to make sure it lands in the dumpster out back, nicely wrapped in a brown paper bag. I want to get it to the forensics team. I suspect it’s from Lenny, which might make it useful.”

  “You up for supper and company tonight?”

  “I am.” She rested her hand atop his. “I’m sorry about last night. Really sorry.”

  He said, “Me, too. I shouldn’t have stormed out the way I did.”

  “Yes, you should have. I earned it. We’ll talk. We’ll get this worked out, Hank. You... I...” She felt like she was going to choke up if she said anything more. This wasn’t the time or the place.