Last Girl Dancing

by Kate Aeon

  Say the word, and help would come running... flying... with one word... any word

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jim headed for the crawl space beneath the west wing of Leonard Northwhite’s mansion, where it looked to Hank like half the cops in the city, plus state cops and Feds, had descended.

  Hank followed Charlie inside and upstairs, where one of the cops said Lenny was waiting for them. Hank couldn’t help but notice the yellow-tape border across the door the uniformed cop pointed to.

  Leonard Northwhite sat in a chair at a desk in a bright, sunny home office, with an old manual typewriter in front of him. He had a gun in his lap, and late-aftemoon sunlight streaming through the broken window behind his head that illuminated the streaks and spatters of blood and bits of brain and bone like hell’s version of stained glass.

  Charlie stared at dead Lenny and whistled.

  Hank edged close to the desk, crouched down, and studied a long letter typed and laid out there — three whole pages that detailed the sex-and-murder ring that had met at Lenny’s house, that noted where the bodies were buried, and that confessed that he, Leonard Northwhite, regretted his part in the enslavement, torture, rape, and ritual murder he, Jason Hemly, and Wayne Alton had regularly committed over the years. Lenny’s letter said that he could no longer live with himself. That he was going to end it all.

  Hank read the note without touching anything, noticing especially that Lenny had conveniently remembered to implicate his alleged accomplices.

  Following the apology and guilt-sharing section of the letter, Lenny apologized to his stepsister. He apologized to the families of the dead dancers. He apologized to Hemly and Alton for drawing them into his snuff-dance cabal.

  “For a guy who doesn’t know how to use the shift key or English grammar, he’s a remarkably good speller,” Hank said. “And for a suicide, he sure is a chatty bastard.”

  Charlie looked sidelong at him. “You’re in the wrong line of work.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was thinking the same things myself.”

  “But the bodies are down there under the house, right?” That was the first thing the first diggers had reported when Jim and Charlie arrived. It had taken them all of two minutes to locate thirty-six graves. “All are filled in, but one doesn’t seem to have a body in it. The first one, by date, has a nametag but the guys can’t find any corpse. Name on the empty one is Andromeda Callisto.”

  “Jess’s sister. And Teri told us where he actually buried her body.” Charlie said, “Six rows of six.” Charlie walked around the messy room, keeping to the narrow strip cleared by Forensics, looking at things. “Just like you said.”

  “Not quite,” Hank said. “I thought one grave would still be open.”

  They looked around the room a bit longer. “And for such a neat killer, Northwhite sure is a slob about everything else,” Hank added. “What can I touch, Charlie?”

  Charlie tossed him a pair of thin latex gloves, then pulled a notebook out of his jacket “Start with Northwhite. Only touch one spot on him — I’ll note the spot and anything else that you touch in here so that we can give the list to Forensics.”

  Hank put the gloves on, then reached out and rested two fingers on Lenny’s T-shirt-clad shoulder, bracing himself for the roil of desperate, dark emotions and physical anguish that always surrounded violent death: for the wash of pain, for the fear and guilt and grief and rage. These were the markers of both murder and suicide that twisted his stomach and made his knees weak.

  Yet Hank stood there, his fingers resting on Lenny’s shoulder, and all he got was a guy drinking beer from a long-necked bottle and having a friendly discussion with a dishy brunette.

  “Charlie?”

  Charlie was watching him. “What is it?”

  “This is seriously fucked-up.”

  “How?”

  “Well...” Hank frowned. “First off, he didn’t kill himself.”

  Charlie nodded. “I’m not surprised. That note was a bit too helpful to be real. Wonder which member of their little circle it didn’t mention?”

  Hank said, “That’s not it. Going by what I feel here, he wasn’t murdered, either.”

  Charlie turned and stared at him.

  “He is dead,” Charlie noted. “Brain spattered over the back wall and window, teeth chipped from the muzzle in the mouth. He’s not sleeping there.”

  “Well, yeah. But somehow he seems to have missed the whole pain-and-violence part. The last thing he was here for was a cold beer and a visit from a beautiful woman.”

  “You always get their pain, their fear....”

  “Except for the girl in the parking lot. The last one, who didn’t quite fit. Remember I told you she didn’t know she was being murdered? Or even suspect she was in danger? She felt like this. She was being offered a role in a movie, and death sneaked up on her and she never seemed to notice. And with Lenny-boy, the last thing he was here for was a beer and a girl.”

  Charlie said, “Beer and a girl, huh? Hey, there are worse ways to go. But...” He looked around the crime scene and shook his head. Lenny had clearly not had a “beer and a girl” ending.

  “Yeah,” Hank said. “He managed to sleep through that part of the movie.” And he and Charlie stared at each other, and Charlie said, “The beer,” and Hank looked down at the trash can beside his left foot. It was empty. He looked at the desktop. Hank said, “Not here. Would any of the tech guys have taken a beer bottle from the scene?”

  “Not yet. We’re still photographing and measuring—” And Charlie said, “Fuck. Bet we’ll find Rohypnol in his blood.” And then he was out the door and yelling downstairs, “I gotta have someone get blood on this guy now!” Swearing the air blue as he waited for a Forensics tech to appear. “The girl,” he said. “The girl who was with him for the beer is the one who killed him. Who typed the letter. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck...” When the tech came in, he said, “We’re looking for Rohypnol. But just in case, also screen for ketamine or GHB, any new knockout drugs you folks haven’t had time to give us in-service on yet.”

  She nodded.

  Charlie couldn’t stand still. He shifted from leg to leg like he needed to run. His hands clenched and unclenched. “Where’s the ME? Did he suggest a time of death?”

  She said, “Medical examiner is downstairs looking at dead dancers and talking to Jim. And Jim said to tell you that from the dates on the grave markers, none of the bodies was killed more recently than six years ago, and that the two bodies the ME has already exhumed would seem to confirm that. But the medical examiner said this guy was fresh. No later than four o’clock this morning.”

  Hank, like Charlie, wanted to start running. Because the person who killed Lenny had also killed the dancers. And that person was the woman who’d given him the beer.

  He tried to reframe all the reads he’d done without his initial assumption that the killer was a man. That had been such an easy assumption to make. The killer was a man because there was semen on every scene. Fiber evidence. Trauma, rape, torture.

  Now that he knew to read for a woman, maybe he could get something useful. The killer had touched the typewriter. Had typed a long, long note. So Hank moved beside the desk, careful not to step outside of the marked traffic lanes in the room, and said, “I’m going to touch the letter E key,” he said, and watched Jim write that down in the notebook.

  Charlie walked over to stand beside him. Stood there for a moment, sketching the desk and its contents. And muttered, “Shit, the letter. That proves he didn’t kill himself.”

  Hank didn’t ask for a clarification. Because the murderer was there, right with him, full of rage and glee and giddy amusement and sick, twisted pleasure. Typing while standing over a dead guy, getting a real thrill from the stink of blood and the fact that she had finally killed him — this stepbrother whom she had relentlessly pursued when she was still a teenager, whom she had eventually lured into her bed, and whom she had blackmailed and used for years. She
was thrilled that she didn’t need him anymore, that her exit strategy was perfect.

  And that she would have the last piece of her personal game soon. The killer saw herself as the goddess with the golden eyes, untouchable and magnificent, and she had only one act remaining in this drama of hers.

  Jess.

  “Charlie,” Hank said, “Jess is with Ekaterina Thomas right now. And I think Thomas is the killer.”

  “Jess is in a building full of cops, and with the undercover team listening in on everything she says.” Charlie looked worried. But he said, “She’ll be okay. Still...” He ran down the stairs, yelling for Jim.

  Jim shouted, “Over here. You know what? The deed to this house is in Lori Wedder’s name. Also known as Teri Thomas.” He paused, looking from Charlie to Hank. “What’s wrong?”

  Charlie said, “Unless Lenny could type after he was dead, he didn’t kill himself.”

  Jim’s expression didn’t change at all. “Explain.”

  “There are no blood spatters on the letter. Not a drop. But there are blood spatters on everything else.”

  “Shit.”

  “Hank got a read on the person who killed Northwhite,” Charlie continued.

  Jim turned to Hank. “Talk to me.”

  “Teri Thomas.”

  “Christ. Northwhite’s stepsister. That makes a sick sort of sense, I guess. But only if Thomas was sleeping with Hemly, Alton... and maybe Northwhite while she was killing dancers. At least the last handful.” He frowned. “Can’t check with Northwhite, but Alton and Hemly would be easy enough to ask.”

  Charlie said, “You suggesting she obtained semen, fiber, skin, and hair samples from each of them, planted evidence where they lived, and came over here to bury her bodies without Northwhite catching on? Seems like a hell of a stretch.”

  Jim said, “Try this on. She owned this house first, buried thirty-five women here, with a thirty-sixth grave commemorating Ginny. And then she gave this place to Lenny, and bought herself a new place. With a new crawl space.”

  Hank nodded. “Which is where we’ll find thirty-five more bodies. And one open grave.”

  Jim said, “Fits what Hank has been saying all along. That none of those three men felt like the killer to him.”

  Charlie turned and stared at Hank. “You have been saying that. But how would it work? She’d have to use... what... unlubricated condoms for her semen samples; liquid nitrogen to store them; have some way of collecting body hair and skin — say epithelial tissue from the inside of a cheek. And considering how much she and Lenny despised each other, I don’t see her getting anything fresh from him.”

  “But if she had a way, the rest of it sort of fits. Alton told Jess that he and Teri were close. We have that on one of the transcripts. Remember?” Jim chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  “She could have gotten the samples the same way she got Lenny to fall asleep while she killed him. She could have drugged them. In the middle of sex, or after. ‘Hey, honey, want a beer?’ They wake up later, they’re none the wiser.”

  “What about Hemly?” Charlie said. “We have anything that would indicate she was seeing him?”

  “Screw Hemly. What about Jess?” Hank’s mouth dried and his bowels clenched. He unhooked his cell phone from his belt and one-punch dialed the surveillance team. “How’s Jess doing?” he asked the guy who answered.

  “She’s been reading in there for about half an hour.” A pause. “Lump says more like forty-five minutes. I can hear Thomas rustling around in the background. But neither of them is talking.”

  Hank handed the phone to Charlie. “Something’s wrong. Tell them to go check on her,” he said. “Now. They say they can hear both of them in there, but nobody has said anything for about forty-five minutes.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Charlie said, and identified himself, and told the guy who’d answered the phone to go check on her. Hank started toward Charlie’s cruiser, with Charlie sidling along behind, and Jim bring up the rear, the cell phone pressed to his head.

  Hank felt a wash of cold run through him. “I don’t think we have much time. We need to get over there. Fast.”

  And then Charlie said, “The room is empty. A recorded loop on Thomas’s computer was feeding the bug in the room the background noises.”

  All three men turned and ran out of the building.

  Hank was the fastest. He reached Charlie’s car first, dove into the backseat, and strapped on his belt.

  He could still feel the killer’s touch on his fingertips. He could feel her hunger, her desire, her rage. And the laughter. That was what scared him most. He could still feel her laughing inside his head.

  “Where does Ekaterina Thomas live?”

  Jim, riding shotgun, said, “We’ll have that in a minute. I’m calling now.”

  Charlie was driving, and that, Hank thought, was a good thing. Charlie might be a guy with a job that didn’t require a lot of hard driving, but even on good days he raced like a low-flying fighter pilot. He would get them there much faster than the more prudent Jim.

  HSCU came back with Teri’s address, but the traffic gods weren’t with them. Teri lived in Buckhead, which was close enough that the three of them would be first responders, but the lunch rush hour was on. Charlie put on the lights and sirens.

  “You’re going to have to turn them off before we get to her house,” Hank said. They rocketed down the long drive and out into traffic, with Jim feeding directions to Teri’s house into his ear. “This bitch has a ritual she does with her victims, and she doesn’t kill them until late in the ritual. She thinks Jess is just another victim right now — she doesn’t have any reason to hurry. But if she hears sirens coming or hears her address called over a scanner, she’s going to kill Jess first, then run. She won’t hesitate, and she won’t take chances.”

  “That a hunch?” Jim asked.

  “I’ve been soaking in her fucked-up mind since you brought me into this case. I’d bet everything I own on it.”

  They stayed off I-85 because at that hour it was a long parking lot, but surface roads, business traffic, and construction were all working against them, too.

  The sense Hank had of all the other murders Teri committed told him that they had time.

  But his gut kept insisting that they didn’t.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You’re awake, sweetheart,” a sultry voice murmured in Jess’s ear.

  Jess lay facedown on glossy wood flooring, her head pounding, her stomach churning, her mouth burning with bile. She groaned and tried to move, but her arms, stretched over her head, wouldn’t respond. She turned her head to look up, and a hazy face swam into view.

  Female. Long black hair. Pale whiskey-brown eyes.

  “Teri?” Jess shook her head, trying to clear it. Trying to make sense of where she was, of what was going on. “What’s... where are we?”

  Her tongue slurred and stumbled over the words. She didn’t remember drinking — had she and Teri gone drinking? Barhopping? Jess hadn’t been drunk in years, but this felt like a bad hangover. And she couldn’t think.

  “Help me up, would you?” she managed to say.

  Teri laughed. “After all the trouble I went to getting you there, Jess? I don’t think so.”

  That was wrong. Teri should have helped her, but something about what Teri had said was wrong, too.

  Name.

  Yes, name.

  Teri should have called her Grace. Or Gracie.

  And then Jess remembered that she was in trouble. From Teri. Teri wasn’t a friend.

  But why not?

  “You’re going to dance for me,” Teri said.

  And Jess remembered the coffee. And the costume trunk.

  Teri continued, “I so wanted to fuck you. Like I did your sister, she was my first. I was thirty, and she was twenty-one, and I was so excited. But she slept through it all because I gave her too much stuff. She died before I could kill her. I was so disappointed. But, see, I didn’t know wha
t I was doing then. I know now.”

  Teri’s hand was stroking in little circles around the small of Jess’s back. “Andi was my friend. And I fell in love with her. And then she went and fell in love with Lenny. Lenny. That pig. He really did fuck me when I was fifteen, but only because I lured him into it. I couldn’t stand his dad, and I wanted them out of our house.” Teri’s hands ran up and down the backs of Jess’s legs, and she could hear Teri’s breath quickening. “And then poor old Lenny woke up after a night he couldn’t remember, and there was his beloved Andromeda, dead underneath him. Where I put her when I was done with her, when his party boys were gone. And me standing over him with lots of photographs of him on a naked dead girl. I owned Lenny after that.”

  She laughed softly. “Know when I fell in love with you? When I saw you standing in my office in that tan silk skirt.” Teri made a little sound in the back of her throat, and her hands began kneading Jess’s buttocks. “Oh, God, you feel good,” she whispered.

  Jess became uncomfortably aware that she was naked. She didn’t say anything. She tried to figure out how to get her hands out of the padded leather handcuffs and away from whatever it was that was keeping her arms stretched over her head. That was forcing her facedown onto the polished wood floor.

  “You were sisters, weren’t you? You and Andi? You dance alike, you move alike, you sound alike. And God, you look alike. But I could never be sure. It doesn’t matter to me, you know. It won’t change the way this ends. But... if you are sisters, it would be so perfect.”

  She was dizzy and woozy and queasy, and having the killer fondling her was not helping anything.

  So Jess compartmentalized. Let one part of herself listen to Teri while pretending she couldn’t feel anything Teri was doing. She put the bulk of her attention on figuring out an escape.

  Jess didn’t answer Teri’s question about Ginny. Teri said, “If you don’t talk to me now, you will later. I’ll make you tell me.” And she laughed. She kept touching, and kept talking. “When I met you, I’d already started getting ready to move on. Dropped my first few public kills. But I hadn’t found my perfect finale yet.