“What?” Palmer’s blue eyes flash at me.
I take a step back, hold my hands up and introduce myself.
She pulls her large purse up to her chest and wraps her hands around it.
“Jane Palmer,” she says.
Kinda pretty up close, she has a plain, natural beauty. She’s lanky, thin with a nice figure and thick, blonde hair streaked with brown and red highlights. She appears to be in her mid-20s, maybe younger.
Behind me, Mrs Sucio hits a high note. Detective Palmer looks around me, so I look too as the woman on the exercise table goes through a loud climax, her ass bouncing on the cushion.
“Damn!” Norm says.
“She sure likes an audience,” Bruce Wayne adds as he asks Detective Palmer if she’d like something to drink.
“Think I’ll go over and introduce myself,” Norm says, climbing gingerly from his stool, heading for Mrs Sucio.
Glancing at my watch, I tell him we don’t have time. “We have to go.”
He waves me away. “One minute, Detective.” Removing his stetson, he approaches Mrs Sucio.
Jane Palmer is already backing away, looking at the pool now. I start to follow, turn and tell Norm we’re leaving. He can catch a cab.
He waves me forwards with his stetson. “This here is Detective John Raven Beau of your own New Orleans Police Department.”
Norm steps aside to give me a clear view of Mrs Sucio, who’s leaning up on her elbows, her legs wide open. I try not to stare at her wet pussy.
She smiles at me and lies back as Yokura pours oil on her feet and begins working her toes.
I walk away with Norm following slowly.
He calls out to Bruce Wayne, “You better let me know when the next woman comes for a finger wave.”
Jane Palmer, sunglasses on now, waits for us outside. I point to the Caprice and lead them across the street. Norm insists on the back seat where he can recline because he can’t bend properly, not with the “stinger” in his pants.
Donning my own dark sunglasses, I drive off. No one talks. When we reach downtown, I ask Jane where is Union Parish, exactly?
She crosses her legs, tugging at her skirt which is only a few inches above her knees.
“It’s up against the Arkansas border,” she says without looking at me. She still looks zoned out. “South of El Dorado. Huttig more precisely.”
Jesus! Huttig? That explains it nicely. I have no fuckin’ clue.
“Any cities in Union Parish?”
“Farmerville. It’s the parish seat.”
Farmerville? Where the fuck is Barney Fife when you need him?
I look in the back seat to see if Rod Serling has hitched a ride.
Norm grins at me. “Hope this stinger wears off ’afore I gotta climb out.”
As I turn on to Poydras, heading towards the river and the Convention Centre, where our seminar is to be held, Jane surprises me.
“Thanks for picking us up,” she says.
“No problem. We take care of the police here.”
No longer blushing, her complexion is peach coloured. She doesn’t seem to wear much make-up and doesn’t need to. She bats those big blue eyes at me.
“Y’all caught a plane down here, I hope.”
She shakes her head and tells me they drove.
Poor thing. All that way with the wonderful Norm Norling.
“Y’all ain’t gonna believe what we saw,” a detective with a Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office badge clipped to his suit coat shouts as we crowd into the large auditorium. “Women up on balconies showing their titties for carnival beads.”
Norm Norling, finding a soul-brother, stops to tell everyone about Mrs Sucio and the finger wave at Dive Inn.
I move past them to sit in the last seat, in the last row. Jane Palmer follows and sits two seats from me. Wish I’d have brought a pillow. I put my dark sunglasses back on.
A dozen neatly dressed FBI special agents pass out folders for everyone. When they reach our row, they pass two to Jane and suggest we move up closer.
“I can’t,” I tell them. “Nose-bleed.”
“My nose bleeds too,” Jane says.
I gleek her, peeking at her over the top of my sunglasses. She doesn’t look back.
Across the outside of my folder, emblazoned in blue is: Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Below, in red, is: Seminar on Sex Crimes. It’s the same class I took in Homicide School last year at the Southern Police Institute. I told my lieutenant. But what the fuck do I know? I’m just a worker.
I recognize the lead lecturer. Interesting guy, for a fed. He starts out with the standard “murder among friends and associates” spiel, how 80 per cent of murders are committed by people who know the victim.
Jane writes furiously. I peek over and see she’s taking shorthand. Nice. Wish I could take notes that fast at a crime scene, or during an interview. She sure is conscientious.
Leaning my head against the wall, I close my eyes and drift back to Philip Street. I envision Priscilla walking, walking everywhere. I can see her approach the ferry on her way to see Pocahontas. Wonder how she was led up those stairs? She wasn’t dragged. There were no drag marks on the dirty stairs.
My steady breathing lulls me and I see Mrs Sucio lying there with her legs open and those soft, silky pubic hairs around her pussy lips.
Ah!
I hear Jane Palmer’s voice. “Wake up.”
My eyes snap open.
She’s leaning over me. “We’re adjourned.”
Everyone’s moving toward the exit.
“Are you the only one from NOPD here?” Jane asks as I stand and stretch.
I point to a motley group of ill-dressed detectives across the aisle and tell her they’re from the Sex Crimes Unit. “We also have a couple Juvenile Detectives here, but I’m the only one from Homicide. I have all the luck.”
On our way out, she tells me how I missed three good lectures. I tell her I took the same classes last year. She’s confused. So am I.
It’s still daylight outside. I look around for Norm and Jane tells me not to.
“You can just bring me back to Dive Inn.” I can see her mind’s made up. I was thinking of maybe a nice supper, but who am I to argue?
As I pull up alongside Dive Inn, she turns to me and says, “Just what the hell was that by the pool, with that woman?”
I try to explain as nicely as I can about Mr Yokura and his client, Mrs Sucio and what Bruce Wayne calls nude body massage. “I’ve never seen anything like it, either.”
“You didn’t set it up as entertainment for the out of towners?” She glares at me.
“Nope.” I climb out and go around to open her door.
She’s out before I get there, slamming the door as she walks away. Watching her, I have to admit she has a nice figure. I start to follow, in case Mr Yokura has another client, but I have a better idea. I head straight for Philip Street. I’ve got work to do.
Bruce Wayne is behind the bar Saturday morning when I walk in. The place smells of cooking – bacon and eggs. Yokura is nowhere to be seen. I almost miss Norm Norling as he lies draped across the church pew. Wearing the same tan suit, his stetson covers his face.
Bruce smiles at me and calls out, “Breakfast?”
I don’t realize I’m hungry until I get close enough to see the bacon sizzling on the gas stove along the backside of the bar.
“This is a bed-and-breakfast,” Bruce says. He nods toward Norm. “He isn’t eating.”
I sit on a stool and watch Bruce flip the eggs in the second skillet.
“Last night that fool brought a shitload of country-ass cops back with him. They got drunk and tried to get me to call Mr Yokura, as if he can get a client over here for a nude massage any time.”
I laugh.
“Yeah. Well, good ole Norm isn’t going anywhere today.”
Jane Palmer, smart looking in a navy blue suit, comes out. Looking cautiously at the exercise table, she seems rel
ieved when she sees it’s empty.
“No suit?” she asks me as she sits in the next stool.
Today I wear a black T-shirt and faded jeans, my gold star-and-crescent badge clipped to the front of my belt, my Beretta in its usual position at the small of my back. I have a dark grey dress shirt in the car that I’ll wear unbuttoned like a coat, to cover my weapon in public.
Bruce puts our plates in front of us, along with icy glasses of orange juice. He serves himself up as I start in on the first breakfast I’ve had in months. Usually coffee’s it for me in the morning.
Saturday at the conference is a re-run of yesterday. I grab the seat next to the wall, Jane sits one seat over and takes notes in shorthand.
Her skirt is higher on her thigh and she doesn’t pull it down. The audience is at least a quarter smaller than yesterday. Friday night’ll do that in New Orleans. Even fewer will be here tomorrow.
I start to doze off before the first lecture is over.
I’d spent a good deal of the night talking with the people along Philip Street between Tchoupitoulas, Annunciation and Jackson Avenue. Of course, I came up with nothing. Two of the men I was looking for couldn’t be found.
As I slip into slumber, a Homicide cliché comes to mind, “Good detective work is in the details, not in broad strokes.”
The dream comes to me in snap-shots at first, as if I’m taking pictures of Mrs Sucio walking out of the gazebo-bathroom. Her full breasts move slowly up and down. I focus on her pink areolae and nipples that grow hard as she moves to the table. My fingers rub the oil into her skin, fondling her ass, rubbing it, sliding into the crack.
She rolls over and I knead her breasts. I’m not massaging, I’m feeling her up, fondling her boobs as she breathes heavier. My hands glide down the sides of her body to her hips. She opens her legs and my fingers move through her soft, silky pubic hair.
She gasps as I lightly brush my fingertips across her clit.
The sound of shuffling feet wakes me.
Jesus! I’m at the seminar!
I stretch and look at my watch. It’s almost one. Jane comes in the back door and sits next to me.
“I was going to wake you for lunch, but you were sleeping so soundly.” She has something wrapped in a paper towel. “I brought a chicken salad croissant for you.”
“Thanks.” I take the croissant on my way past her.
“‘Lecture’s about to start,” she tells me.
“I’ll be back.”
My hard-on slowly fades as I cross the street toward Poydras Street. On my way to Mother’s Restaurant, I give the croissant to a homeless man carrying a black garbage bag. He doesn’t bother to thank me, but eats it on the move.
After a nice, sloppy roast beef po-boy, I finish off my second icy Barq’s root beer then slowly make my way back to the seminar. Jane’s taking furious notes as I plop next to her.
Thankfully, the afternoon goes by quickly. I force myself not to think of naked women on exercise benches. I actually listen to a forensic lecture on toothmarks. It’s interesting, only I’ve read a shitload of books on the Ted Bundy case, not to mention watching investigative specials on cable TV that replay every few months. Famous cases, like Bundy and Richard Speck and The Boston Strangler seem to be favourites of investigative reporters.
Jane is ready to leave as soon as the seminar adjourns. Walking next to me, she thanks me again for driving her around. She’s quiet in the car, her legs and arms crossed.
I take her straight up St Charles Avenue, pointing out the fine mansions of the Garden District to her. She looks but isn’t paying attention, not even as a streetcar rattles by along the neutral ground.
“Damn,” she says, uncrossing her legs. She pulls her skirt up. There’s a run in her hose, from her knee up her thigh. To my surprise, she pulls her skirt up as far as the run goes, almost to her crotch. I get a good view of her pink panties beneath her pantyhose.
My hard-on’s back that fast.
She pushes her skirt down, but not too far. Looking up with those large blue eyes she says, “I’m not a prude, no matter what that asshole says.”
I guess the fuck not.
She uncrosses her arms and looks out at a passing mansion, a Victorian painted sky blue.
“I’ve been thinking about that naked woman,” she says.
I glance in the rear view mirror. Nope, Rod Serling’s not in the back seat.
“Can’t get over a married woman getting finger-fucked like that.”
I try not to run into the car in front of me. Guess I stare too long at Jane, because she squints her eyes at me.
“What?” she snaps.
“You didn’t see Bruce Wayne carrying any big seed pods around Dive Inn last night?”
“Seed pods?” She crinkles her nose.
Looking back at the traffic, I tell her, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re not Detective Jane Palmer. You’ve been body-snatched.”
Her face reddens and she looks away. “Why, because I said the ‘f’ word?”
“Yeah. And you showed me your panties.”
She folds her arms again. “You didn’t see my panties.”
“They’re pink.”
She clams up, but doesn’t pull her skirt down.
Climbing out quickly when we pull up at Dive Inn, she thanks me once again as she hurries inside. I’m about to call out, ask her if she’d like some real New Orleans food for supper, but she’s through the door.
Time for me to head back to Philip Street.
Sunday, the last day of the conference, and I’m wide awake and bored to hell. Two seats away, Jane Palmer sits with her legs crossed. Her black wrap skirt, opened nicely in front, shows almost as much of her sleek legs as I saw yesterday. She wears a white blouse today and barrettes in her hair, pulled up on the sides, giving her a more sophisticated appearance.
I’m all out of leads on Priscilla’s murder. Often, promising clues lead to other clues, not solutions, but these led to nothing. I still hope it’s a neighbourhood thing, someone seeing her, pulling her into that tenement. If it was some douche-bag, cruising around in his car, then it could be anybody. Fuck!
I don’t realize I’m listening to the lecture when my mind reminds me of the homicide cliché again, “Good detective work is in the details, not in broad strokes.”
The lecture’s about “organized” and “disorganized” serial killers. The lecturer, a balding man with black glasses, is discussing the link between victim and murderer.
“Their interaction can be a lone encounter. Or they could know each other, well or slightly. You see, the victim is a complementary partner to the killer . . . the good side of a coin while the killer is the bad side.”
What? I look at Jane and she’s jotting away.
Complementary partner?
As if I’d asked a question the lecturer goes on to explain how the killer selects and interprets communication clues from the victim that the victim may be unaware he or she is giving.
“If a victim is passive, this may provoke the attack. If the victim resists, that may provoke the attack. Certainly, for the brief period it takes for the murder to occur, there is communication between victim and killer. They are partners in death.”
The lecture goes on to explain the two basic behavioural patterns of murders. The first is premeditated, intentional, planned and rational killings. The second is killings in heat of passion or slaying as a result of intent to do harm, without specific intent to kill.
Communication. The word rattles around in my head and I remember something from one of the interviews the night Priscilla died. Someone living nearby. Something about the way Priscilla walked.
Looking at my watch, I see it’s only ten minutes to our lunch break, but I can’t wait. I get up and step past Jane who looks up in confusion. Digging my briefcase from the trunk of the Caprice, I locate the statements taken the night of the murder.
It’s in a statement by a neighbour, one Henry Hyde, white
male, 28. Hyde lives around the corner from Philip St on Jackson Avenue. He claimed he didn’t know the victim, however, he’d seen her strolling around. Strolling. It’s not much, but he didn’t say walking. He said strolling, which means a leisurely walk, as if he’d watched her. It’s a subtle thing, but sometimes that’s all we have to go on. Did she communicate that to him, that it was a leisurely walk?
Jesus, am I reaching or what?
I crank up the Caprice and spot Jane rushing across the street. The wind catches her skirt and it opens, showing her sleek legs and shapely thighs. I roll my window down.
“Where are you going?”
“Work on my case.”
She pulls her hair away from her face. “You’ll miss getting your diploma.”
“They can mail it to me.”
She looks over her shoulder at the mass of cops streaming out for lunch. Turning back, she says, “Mind if I come along?”
I unlock the front passenger door. She climbs in, fastening her seatbelt, but leaves her skirt open.
“You’ll miss your diploma,” I tell her.
“Stuff it. Let’s go.”
No one answers the yellowed door of Henry Hyde’s apartment. Nestled on the side of a three-storey home long ago converted into apartments, Hyde lives a block up from Tchoupitoulas.
A warm breeze filters up from the river as Jane and I walk slowly from Hyde’s house down to Tchoupitoulas. Checking garbage cans and alleys, we look for Priscilla’s missing black shoe.
Passing a particularly smelly lot between two dilapidated buildings, I tell Jane, “Welcome to the inner city.”
“Smells like a cow pasture,” she says, “after a long rain.”
As we turn right on Tchoupitoulas, we almost walk past a blue dumpster in an alley. Half hidden behind an abandoned green Ford with no wheels, the dumpster has no lid.
I climb up on the Ford’s trunk and spot the shoe immediately. My heart races as I lean closer. It’s a left shoe all right. I pull my radio out of the back pocket of my jeans and call headquarters for the crime lab.
“You serious?” Jane says as I climb down.
I rub her arm. “You’re good luck.”
She smiles and bounces on her toes.
It takes the crime lab an hour to arrive and another 40 minutes to photograph, secure the shoe, dust it for prints and lift one print. Turning to leave, I spot a man standing on the sidewalk across Tchoupitoulas. There’s nothing but the grey seawall behind him as he stands leering at us, hands in his pants pockets.
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