Intimate Bondage

by John Flynn

  Monroe was right. There was no cosmic significance to incidents that happened in the course of the day, nor were these incidents a collection of random events that just happened. Kate was beginning to realize that reality was transfigured by the choices that people made or failed to make, day by day. Her decision to see Monroe in the first place, to visit his home, and to participate in his plan to capture Crystal Rose had catapulted her from one reality to another. In less than twenty-four hours, she had gone from being a cop chasing a serial killer to the number one suspect in a string of gruesome murders. That’s when it dawned on her what Monroe had been saying all along. Kate had at last come to the knowledge that she alone was responsible for shaping her destiny. Not God or the devil or some random throw of the dice. She just needed to be far more careful with her choices.

  “Are you sure you don’t remember anything about the murder?” asked Lt. Roberts, towering over Kate, looking confused.

  “No, sir. The last thing I remember is being alone in the bar,” she said.

  Roberts took a deep breath and waved his hand back and forth. “From the way you smell, you must have been doing the backstroke through one of those martinis.”

  “I wasn’t drinking, sir.”

  “You’d never convince me of that. Let alone a jury.”

  Kate’s features hardened. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Well, someone did,” he replied, “and conveniently dumped the body in your bed while you were sleeping it off.”

  “This isn’t my room,” she said, hands outstretched like Lady Justice and her two scales. “I don’t even remember how I got here.”

  Detective Clark took a notebook from his jacket pocket, and thumbed to a page in his notes. “According to the front desk clerk, you checked into this room at 8:00 p.m. Put it on your MasterCard. He specifically remembers you checking in because you didn’t have a reservation and you weren’t carrying any luggage. He thought maybe you were meeting someone. Privately.”

  “That’s impossible,” she replied. “Someone pretending to be me checked into this hotel room. They must have used my own credit card.”

  “The hotel’s phone records show that you made one call. To Captain Aguilar. At his home. Around 8:35,” Clark added.

  “No, that can’t be,” Kate responded, unable to help the look of surprise spreading across her face. “Can’t you see this is a set up?”

  Clark glanced back at his notes. “The parking lot attendant remembers him arriving around 9:15. Aguilar tipped him an extra twenty bucks to keep an eye on his Mercedes,” he said. “And now, from what we just learned, Dr. Brogan puts the time of death between 9:30 and 10:00.”

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  “You didn’t like Captain Aguilar, did you, Dawson?” Roberts didn’t look her in the eyes. He just turned away, and resumed his pacing.

  “No, I didn’t,” she replied, honestly. “But then there are a lot of people that I don’t like.”

  “Why would you call a man that you ‘didn’t like,’ and invite him to your hotel room? Late at night.”

  “I didn’t make that phone call—”

  “But the hotel’s records said you did,” Clark reminded her.

  Kate shrugged. “Someone else made that call, or the records are wrong.”

  For a moment, the lieutenant stopped pacing. “So, what happened, Kate?” he asked rhetorically, suggesting the answers to his own question. “Aguilar came up here. You were drunk. The two of you argued. He started pushing you around. You fought back. He fell down and hit his head. C’mon, give me something here that I can sell to the district attorney.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I can’t remember.”

  “That’s not good enough,” he exclaimed. “Talking to you is like talking to an amnesia victim who’s forgotten how to speak English. What the hell were you doing here with the assistant chief of police?”

  Clark tapped Roberts on the shoulder, and pointed at one of the forensics guys. “Lieutenant, you had better get a look at this.”

  “What?”

  A forensics man was holding a briefcase in his gloved hands. “Found it under the bed, sir. It’s got fresh bloodstains on it, and there are lots of official-looking documents inside, including some with the mayor’s seal.”

  Lt. Roberts slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and carried the briefcase over to the sofa.

  “What’s in there?” Kate asked.

  “Papers, official papers.” Carefully, he glanced through each one in turn. “Westmore Real Estate Development Corporation appears on more than a few of them.”

  Ramirez entered the room carrying an arm full of women’s clothes. Kate’s clothes. Clark acknowledged his fellow detective with a nod, and stepped away from Kate for a moment.

  “I went by your apartment and got you a few things to wear,” Ramirez said. “When you’re dressed and ready to go, I’ll drive you to the ER, and I’ll stay with you while they run their tests.”

  “Thanks, Jorge.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he replied with a shrug. “Lieutenant’s orders. He wants them to do a complete physical. You know the drill . . . check for sexual contact, scrape under your nails, blood, urine. He’s not convinced you’ll do it on your own.”

  Reluctantly, Kate bobbed her head.

  “Listen, I feel really bad about this,” Ramirez confessed, “but he also asked me to pull your phone records and to check your answering machine. I’m really sorry, Kate. I hate the idea of cops investigating cops.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Detective Ramirez leaned over to her, and whispered, “Just a heads-up. Some guy named Monroe called you about six or seven times last night. Wanted to know what happened to you. He sounded really worried.”

  Dawson nodded, just as Lt. Roberts, Clark, and the forensics man came back to her with the briefcase.

  “Do you know anything about these?” Roberts asked, holding up a handful of the documents from the case.

  Kate clutched the clothes to her chest. “No, I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

  “Well, I’m afraid these papers establish motive. Blackmail. A history of bribes and kickbacks going back four years or more.”

  “Do you think I’d be stupid enough to fuck someone I was blackmailing, and then kill him? That’d be like killing the golden goose for dinner. I’m not stupid, Lieutenant,” she reminded him. “Someone planted those papers for you to find. That alone should prove someone was trying to set me up.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the two of you were in it together. You were blackmailing some of the other players, and you got greedy—”

  “That’s preposterous. I don’t know anything about it.”

  The lieutenant scratched the stubble of beard that was growing on his face, and said, “Looks like Rutherford, Collins, Aguilar and even the mayor were neck-deep in some scheme to defraud the city of millions of dollars. There’s even some suggestion they were responsible for the fire that burned down the old theater in the Mission District and killed that projectionist who was living out back. This has blackmail written all over it, and you’re the one with the case.”

  “I told you,” she repeated, “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “This is bad. This is really bad,” Roberts said quietly. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain what one of my detectives was doing with evidence of this kind. At a crime scene. IA’s going to have a field day over this. The FBI, shit, they’re going to think we’re a bunch of incompetent morons.”

  “Lieutenant, you’ve got this all wrong,” she replied. “I came here at catch Crystal Rose, not get into bed with Aguilar. I got a tip that she was meeting with this high roller named Monroe, and we set a trap for her. Somehow she must have figured it out, because the last thing I remembe
r was being drugged . . .”

  “Drugged, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. The chloroform should still be in my system.”

  “If I were you, I’d get a good attorney,” he added.

  “Lieutenant . . .”

  Roberts returned the papers to the briefcase, and sealed the case shut then handed it over to Clark. “I’m instructing Detective Clark to lock this up in the Evidence Impound, and not to turn over to anyone except Internal Affairs. They’ll probably take a day or two to claim it,” he said to Kate. “I figure that’s about all the time you’ve got before the IA guys come calling. Don’t waste it.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  “Don’t thank me, Dawson,” he barked. “If I had any sense at all, I’d lock you away for your own good. Put you in the deepest hole that I can find, and keep you there until this thing blows over. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  She was stunned. For an instant, she didn’t know what to say or do. Then, the reality of her precarious situation hit her, and she scrambled to get dressed in her clothes. Ramirez was waiting for her.

  LATER THAT DAY, Kate walked into the Hall of Justice with a cardboard box.

  Roberts glared at her from his glass-enclosed office when Kate entered the Homicide Bureau. The severe, almost agitated look on the lieutenant’s face said it all: What the hell are you doing here?

  “Just came in to clean out my desk,” she replied.

  “You’ve got five minutes, Dawson,” Roberts ordered, “and then I want you out of here for good.”

  “No problem.”

  With her head hung low, Kate walked back to her desk, and started putting things on the desk top into the cardboard box. She then reached into a drawer and pulled out the homemade medal her fellow detectives had presented her. She read the words “Tough Guy,” and started to tear up in the corners of her eyes. She fought back the tears, then shoved the medal into the box. She paused to take one last look around the place. Ramirez was the only one left in the bureau. He was sitting at his desk, typing a report, when she approached him.

  “So, I guess this is it,” Kate said, extending her hand.

  Ramirez extended his hand, and shook hers. “You take care, Kate. We’ll all be thinking about you.”

  “Thanks, Jorge,” she replied. “You know Miller would have been proud of the detective you’ve become.”

  “Thanks for saying that. I really miss him.”

  “Me, too,” she said, putting her box down on his desk. Kate glanced up at the lieutenant’s office, then lowered her voice. “Listen, Ramirez, did you ever get a lead on that dyke’s hair?”

  “You’re on suspension, Dawson,” whispered Ramirez. “I could get into trouble just talking to you.”

  Kate grinned. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all that. I was just hoping you’d bend the rules a bit. You know, for old time’s sake.”

  Ramirez shot a glance at Roberts, then picked up a file from his in-box. He read through the report. “Clark found the shop on Geary. Just where she said it was. The owner didn’t have very good records, but thought she’d sent the hair out to be made into a wig for some unfortunate college kid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Dawson!”

  “I’m just on my way out, Lieutenant,” she shouted, seeing Roberts glaring at her from across the room.

  “I need to see you before you go, Kate.”

  “Sure thing,” Kate replied, without much emotion. She walked into the lieutenant’s office, and closed the door. She stared at the man behind the desk as if he was a stranger to her. “What did you want, sir?”

  “Internal Affairs expects to see you at nine a.m. tomorrow morning. Sharp. They’re handling the investigation now. Not Homicide,” he reported. “They seem to think our ‘serial killer’ was just some smokescreen to hide a bunch of mob hits. I’m inclined to agree with them. At least, for your sake.”

  “These were not professional hits, Lieutenant,” Kate argued. “This was the work of a serial killer. And she’s still out there. Crystal Rose will kill again, if we don’t stop her first.”

  “Forget it. It’s over.” Lt. Roberts shook his head. “There is no Crystal Rose. She’s a phantom you conjured up out of thin air, so it looked like we were doing our job. She doesn’t really exist.”

  Kate folded her arms across her chest. “She exists, all right. I know it. She’s like an itch I can’t scratch, but she’s real enough all right.”

  “You’ve lost all sense of reality, Dawson,” he said bluntly. “Boy, I can’t wait to see your recent psych exam. You sound crazier than a loon. Pretty soon you’re going to be looking in the mirror, and this ‘Angel of Death’ is going to be staring right back at you.”

  “If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from this case,” Kate said, smiling, “reality is what you make of it. The choices we make and the consequences of those choices all shape our reality. You may have taken away my service pistol because I was stupid. You may have taken away my badge because I was reckless. But I know that I’m still a cop. A good cop. A cop who is chasing a serial killer.”

  Roberts looked at her for a moment. “Do you know how crazy you sound? Get out of here before I have you locked up for your own good.”

  Kate picked up her cardboard box, and walked out of the Homicide Bureau without a backward glance.

  Chapter Twelve

  KATE WAS LYING facedown on her twin-sized bed with a pillow propped up under her, watching Law and Order. Her favorite character, Jack McCoy, was about to wrap up another case with a brilliant summation. Crumpled up tissues littered her nightstand, and spilled out onto the floor. She had been crying, and the streaks of tears were all over her face. There was also an open bottle of Wild Turkey.

  The phone rang. Then it rang again. It kept ringing. Finally, Kate picked up the receiver, and listened.

  “I have been trying to reach you all day,” Monroe said. “I heard what happened. I am really sorry.”

  “I’ve had the phone off the hook,” she replied, flatly. “I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I still don’t.”

  “Look, I know how you feel . . .”

  “How could you possibly know what I’m feeling?”

  Monroe was silent on the other end. Finally, he said, “If you still want to catch Crystal Rose, she’s coming here in the next few minutes. I managed to convince her to give me another chance.”

  “Crystal Rose doesn’t exist. She’s just a figment of our imagination,” Kate said, slurring her words as if she was drunk. “At least, that’s what IA thinks.”

  “Well, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I can tell you that she’s very real,” Monroe replied. His voice sounded urgent, sincere. “She’s on her way here right now, as we speak, presumably to kill me.”

  Kate held her phone out, and looked at it. “Why would she want to kill you, John? You’re just a college professor. A nobody . . .”

  “I know who she really is.”

  “Sorry, I’m too drunk and too tired to play one of your games. Call me tomorrow, and maybe we’ll play then . . .”

  Kate reached over to her nightstand to hang up the phone, but heard Monroe screaming on the other end.

  “This is no game. This is real, I’m telling you. Real!”

  “Well, then, hang up, and call 911.”

  “No, only you can stop her,” Monroe said, plainly. “Right now, I need that cop who’s chasing a serial killer to save me.”

  His words, like the ones that she spoken earlier to Lt. Roberts, clicked in her head. She was that cop chasing a serial killer. Determination filled her.

  “Stall her. Keep her there. I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”

  No sooner had she hung up the phone, she ran to her bedroom closet, and pulled down a BioMETR
X gun safe. With SmartTouch technology, she swiped her index finger over the sensor, and opened the box. Removing a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, she checked to ensure it was fully loaded with six cartridges, and tucked the gun into the waist of her jeans.

  Kate hurried to the kitchen for her purse and car keys, then crashed headfirst into an imaginary brick wall as she remembered that her car was still locked up at the impound lot. She paused, and quickly flipped through her options: a taxicab would take too long, public transportation longer. She could call 911, but no guarantees the police would get there on time. She had not ridden a bicycle in years, not that she knew where to borrow one. Kate considered hot-wiring one of her neighbor’s cars, and then stumbled on the answer to her problem . . . Lenny! He was one of the only neighbors in the building that she knew would loan her a car.

  She hit the front door running, leapt over the rail, and bounded down the stairs. She ran down the length of the corridor, and started banging on the windows and door to Lenny’s apartment.

  “Lenny, Lenny, wake up. I need your help. Lenny, c’mon, wake up.”

  “Who is it? What do you want?” he asked from the other side of the closed door, sounding dazed, as if he had been yanked away from the most shameful wet-dream imaginable.

  “This is Kate. Kate Dawson. Open the door. I need your help.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s the matter, Kate?” Lenny replied, cracking the door and cautiously peeking out through the crack.

  With her shoulder, Kate forced the door open, and found Lenny standing there in his underwear. His cotton T-shirt and briefs from Fruit of the Loom looked moth-eaten with numerous gashes and holes, and had turned to a dirty shade of gray from a lack of bleach, but at least he wasn’t naked. That image might have scarred her for life. She fought the urge to break out into hysterical laughter, and just confronted him head-on.