The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

  She paused to take another corn chip. “Totally varied backgrounds. None of them seemed to have lived a lesbian lifestyle. No female roommates, no lesbian erotica lying around—you can be sure the police would’ve noted that.”

  “Huh, yeah.”

  “The fact that there’s no physical resemblance tends to counterindicate a serial killer. Those guys, they look for types.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they’re all really badly fucked up, inadequate guys. Something sends them over the edge: They lose their job, or their girlfriend leaves, or their mother dies, or a waitress insults them. Then they go out and find women who look like their boss or girlfriend or mother or the waitress. It’s wrapped up in sexual inadequacy, which is why there’s often sexual assault postmortem. They kill, then they explore.”

  I shuddered, thinking of the Creighters.

  “Now, this detective Ciesla: He didn’t believe what happened to you over there?”

  “He said he didn’t. I don’t know what he really thinks.”

  “He’s handling this badly. He should be taking you and those two psychos seriously. He should be jumping all over this.”

  “I think so too. But the Creighters don’t fit the serial killer mold, though, huh?”

  “First of all they’re women. Second of all there are two of them. It’s incredibly rare for two serial killers to work in concert. It’s such a classically individual crime. Plus there was no sexual assault on Iris, was there? No. The thing about the teeth, I’m not sure that’s the key. I mean, yes, the mother is twisted. She’s involved in deep sickness with this body-part commerce. But I’m wondering...”

  The waitress delivered our plates. They were piled high around the perimeter with beans and rice, a little shredded lettuce and tomato; then in the center lay the beautifully browned, cheesy flatland of the enchiladas.

  “Oh, mmm, these look good,” Minerva breathed. “Oh, smell them.”

  The waitress smiled. She wore deep-purple lipstick and fluffy hair. “Everything is good here!” she declared, then whirled away, snapping her fingers to “Rich Girl.” Hall and Oates.

  “It’s disgusting how my mind is anticipating the lyrics,” Minerva said, then dug into her enchiladas. “Ohmm. Mmm. Mmm!” Her mmm’s started in her mouth and descended toward her diaphragm.

  “It’s old Mexico on a plate.”

  “Olé.”

  “The gringas eat.” I doused my enchiladas with hot salsa.

  The rest of our conversation occurred between bites of food, sighs of pleasure, and swigs of the tasty beer. A string of weepy ballads accompanied our meal: “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” “Leaving On a Jet Plane,” “Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast,” “All By Myself.”

  “We could spend a lot of time trying to make connections between the first five disappearances, plus Iris,” Minerva said. “That could amount to some pretty interesting work. I’m not sure the police are being as sharing of their information with each other as they could, not because they’re uncooperative, but because there’s so little to go on.”

  “Do you know whether any of the families have hired private investigators?”

  “I don’t, but I bet some have.”

  “I wonder who they are.”

  “Unless they turn up something big, you’ll never know. I’d like to talk to the friends and relatives just to try to get a feel for these women. But like I said, it could take a lot of time. I think that should be our plan B.”

  Our! She said “our”! Then she talked about serials being harder to solve than crimes of passion, the spur-of-the-moment-type crimes.

  “Most murders, they happen, then the murderer has to decide how to cover it up. Or whether to cover it up. It’s usually impossible to accomplish an airtight coverup and alibi after the fact with no advance planning.

  “But serials are usually carefully planned, with fewer screw-ups that lead to arrest. The best way to crack the string is to solve one. And you’re always better off working on the most recent one. So. As fascinating as the Midnight Five are, I think the real paydirt’s going to be found in the case of Iris Macklin.”

  I listened to her avidly, my fork moving slowly. She ate with a steady rhythm, two bites of food, then a paragraph of explication.

  “The way I see it,” she said, “is the Creighters have moved from stage one killing to stage two. Stage one encompasses the original killings, then stage two is the killing to cover up the killings: the killing of witnesses. You represent a stage-two victim for them. Stage two, of course, leads to stage three, and a wider spiral of witnesses to eliminate.

  “Once a killer attracts suspicion, it’s almost impossible to continue killing without getting caught. It’s very likely that if the Creighters get their hands on you again, you’ll be their last victim. Even Ciesla’d be able to solve that one. It’ll all unravel after you. So the trick’s going to be catching them first.”

  “You really think I’m in danger? Ciesla said—”

  “It depends on their plans. If they’re planning to casually get out of town and disappear, maybe try to set up shop somewhere else in the future, then no. They’ll never bother you. But if they want to stay and brazen it out, you could be on their radar screen. The more time that goes by, the safer you’ll be. It could be an uncomfortable wait, though.”

  “It is already. Minerva, I feel terrible, having essentially blown the police investigation. I feel I need to do something for Iris. I have to. Not to mention save my own ass. As much of a craven loser as I might be, I just don’t want to sit around and wait.”

  “Well, I’m willing to work with you on this.”

  “You are?”

  We talked about everything, pondered over everything. I told her about the lonelyhearts ads from the Triangle. How could we find out if the Midnight Five placed or answered ads?

  “There’s no way I’m gonna get access to those files,” I said. “For all I know they don’t even keep records. It’s a more or less shoestring operation.”

  “Where’s the office?”

  “In a storefront on Gratiot somewhere, near downtown.”

  “We’ll pay them a visit, and I’ll show you how to get what you want.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Does Bonnie have a girlfriend?” Minerva wondered.

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s significant. She has this reputation for being a very private person. She lives with her mother. Maybe she’s sexually frustrated.”

  “Maybe.”

  After a while we fell silent and just ate. Eventually Minerva said, “I just don’t get two women acting as a killing team.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe killing isn’t their main goal. Maybe death is a by-product.”

  She looked at me and blinked. “Oh. Now that’s thinking outside the box. Think some more.”

  “I guess I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. I mean, I’m as sure as anything that the Creighters killed Iris. But what if the death was somehow unintended—”

  “A bullet to the back of the head was unintended?”

  “I don’t know, I just mean—I don’t know what I mean. Maybe there was some heavy S/M going on—”

  “And Iris forgot the safe word?”

  It was horrible, I feel horrible telling you this, but we just laughed. We did. We sat there and laughed for about a minute. People looked over, smiling.

  I can’t describe how much better it made me feel. I felt as if a compressed Superball of tension had floated away from inside me. My head felt clearer.

  I thought the Snapdragon could hold a few secrets in its back rooms. “We’ll have to get in there,” Minerva agreed.

  The very thought made my blood run cold, but, well, Minerva would bring her gun and best-selling know-how. What could go wrong? Hah.

  I told her about my subsidiary troubles: Bucky and Lou. She listened with amusement to the Bucky story. “Serves ’im right! Ow! Yes!” she commented. “And what a prick that father was t
o fire you.”

  “The trait’s known to run in families.”

  “So that’s why you’re freelancing now. Well, you’ve picked an interesting way to make a living.”

  “I’ll say.”

  She grew more serious when I recounted my experiences with Lou. She questioned me closely as to what Lou had done and said so far.

  “Lillian, of any of your problems, this is far and away the most perilous.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You could be in real danger from Lou. She escalated from accosting you at the bar to calling you, to coming over and scaring the hell out of you. You haven’t seen the last of her. Has she sent you any letters?”

  “No. This all started—Christ, what? Just a couple weeks ago.”

  “She will. That’ll be next. This might turn into a serious stalking situation.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to do except keep discouraging her. I’m not going to worry about it.”

  The more time I spent in Minerva’s company, the more comfortable I felt. The good honest food helped too. It felt solid in my stomach. We can solve this together, I thought as we finished our meal. We will solve it. Minerva snatched the tab and refused to let me pitch in.

  We stepped back into the night, chased by the nasal tones of Jim Croce singing the class song of at least fifty percent of high school graduates in the 1970s, “Time in a Bottle.”

  I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous stepping back out on the mean streets. Something about just being with Minerva made me feel confident and optimistic. A dog was barking madly a few blocks over; I imagined a cat balancing on a fence just above its nose.

  As we approached the Caprice, though, I noticed something way wrong. Then Minerva noticed it too.

  “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “The Neanderthals have been here.”

  I looked the car over carefully. “No,” I corrected, “just Bucky.”

  25

  If I hadn’t remembered the exact spot where we’d left the Caprice, I wouldn’t have recognized it.

  Red paint had been splashed on it Jackson Pollock style, dribbled and flung as if in an artistic fever. Much of the paint was concentrated on the windshield and driver’s door. I guessed it was supposed to look like blood.

  Then there was a slew of scratched-in messages; it appeared that something like a large screwdriver had been used after the paint was thrown. “Fuck you bitch,” “Fuck,” “Cunt,” “Bitch,” “Suck me bitch.” The scratches went deep, through all the paint layers down to the metal.

  “How do you know Bucky did this?” Minerva asked.

  “I recognize the scrawl.” Bucky had a distinctive way of making his lowercase b’s, with a little tail going to the left. I noticed that in one place he’d first gouged “bith,” then crowded in the c after doing some proofreading. He got it right as he worked around the car.

  “That bastard,” Minerva said, touching my arm. “Your beautiful car.”

  For a moment I fought back tears. To me, it had been a beautiful car. I’d taken such good care of it. But the tears stayed inside when I realized how insignificant this vandalism was in the context of the mayhem I was trying to find my way to the heart of.

  “You know,” I said, “he didn’t even have the wit to write ‘I am a bitch.’ Well, I can get it cleaned up and repaired. I’m glad he didn’t break the windows. While he, on the other hand, will never be able to transform himself into the kind of guy he wants to be.”

  I could imagine somebody coming along and looking quizzically at Bucky while he was at it. “Teaching a bitch a lesson,” he would’ve growled, and the dude would’ve grunted in approval and moved on.

  I went back to the restaurant, bought a beer, and begged some paper towels. Using the beer as a solvent I managed to wipe the worst of the still-tacky paint from the windows and door handles. Minerva tried to help, but I waved her away; I didn’t want to see her fine clothes ruined. I only got a little paint on my jeans.

  Neither of us brought up the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing: the fact that Bucky had to have followed me, then us, since that afternoon. I hadn’t noticed anything suspicious anywhere. I tried to act offhanded with Minerva, but I felt deeply unsettled.

  We drove off. We were silent for a while, then Minerva commented, “He probably feels even with you now.”

  “I hope so. I hope he’s got enough sense not to try anything more. He’s not going to do a serial harassment on me without getting caught.”

  I wondered whether Lou and the Creighters were following me too. Maybe they’d all bump into each other and start up a club.

  People in other cars gaped at the Caprice, some sympathetically, some leeringly. “I’m sorry to put you through this.” I looked sideways at Minerva. She was calm and collected, already refocusing on catching the Creighters.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Looks like the games are over for the night. So which way to the Triangle offices?”

  “You mean right now?” My watch said eight-thirty.

  “Sure, somebody’s got to be working late.”

  She was right about that. The gay-bar lifestyle is an after-dark lifestyle, and its support systems don’t keep regular hours either: There were after-hours hair salons, drag emporia, and, of course, porn shops. It wasn’t unreasonable to imagine some bleary-eyed editor standing there stripping down page after page of classified copy.

  Minerva used her cell phone to call information, then the Triangle. “Hi, can I stop in and place an ad? I know I could, but I’m right in the neighborhood. Thanks, see you.”

  She was poetry itself at the front counter. Tony Corkindale, one of the owners, was on duty, looking tired. Minerva introduced herself; he knew who she was.

  Tony was a moonfaced guy, not handsome, but with a forthright gaze and an aura of common sense. He and one business partner and one full-time employee worked hard to meet the media needs of Detroit’s gay community. I introduced myself and stepped to the side, letting Minerva handle this interview.

  “You don’t want to place an ad, do you?” Tony said, smiling slightly.

  “No. I’m investigating a murder, and so are the police. Only they’re slow and I’m fast.” Her tone was respectful. “And they’re very heavy-handed. And I’m not. How would you feel about the police coming in here and seizing all your records on classified ads from the beginning of time?”

  The implications of that made Tony Corkindale interlace his fingers as if to keep his hands from making fists.

  “Please come around the counter and sit down,” he said.

  I was amazed. All Minerva did was talk straight, offer her help and intelligence, and get what she wanted.

  Tony had been using a PC and spreadsheet software to keep track of his ads, so all he had to do was sort by phone number. The Snap’s number (with Bonnie’s name) came up twice for DJ ads, but her home number came up eight times. The payment name she’d used was R.T. Hayes. The ad copy was the same all eight times:

  Scared? Me too. If you’re interested in loving women, let’s explore together. Your secret’s safe with me. Is mine with you?

  “How perfect,” Minerva commented.

  None of the home numbers of the Midnight Five (Minerva had them in her notebook) came up in Tony’s files.

  So, we got more information, and the Triangle got a heads-up on an impending invasion of privacy. When and if the cops ever came around, Tony would be prepared.

  “Now,” said Minerva as I set the Caprice on a western course from downtown, “we pack it in for the night.” I wanted to keep chattering about the business afoot, but she held up her hand. “No. Stop. We need to turn it off for a while.”

  She was right.

  “I’ll take you back to your hotel, then.”

  “And we’ll have another beer. Or something.”

  “OK, but...” I licked my lips. “Um, see, if I’m going to be gone much longer I need to check Todd’s water and give him something to eat. My rabbit.
Um.”

  She laughed and said she’d love to meet Todd. “We’ll just hang out at your place. And in the morning we’ll plan what’s next.”

  All righty.

  _____

  My neighborhood was quiet. The lower flat was dark; I pictured Mr. McVittie in his bed dreaming of assorted chocolate creams, large-breasted lady lifeguards, and everlasting agility.

  I saw a long white envelope sticking out of my mailbox. I’d taken in my mail before I went out, so someone must have hand delivered it. My name was on the front in block printing.

  Once I’d shown Minerva up the stairs, turned on some lights, and introduced her to Todd, I opened it.

  “I can’t believe it,” I murmured.

  “Lou, right?” She was sitting on the couch with Todd in her lap. They liked each other right away. He was rubbing his chin on her knees; I felt a green stab of envy.

  Leaning against the archway to the dining room, I read the two-page letter silently. It was done in painfully precise printing in black ballpoint on swirly pink paper.

  Dear Lillian,

  I don’t know if you understand how much I love you. I do. I love you wider than my arms can reach!! As much as all the stars in the heavens!! More powerful than a locomotive!! That’s how my heart feels when I think of your heart!! But I am so sad that you have not given me one chance. Yet, anyway!! Here is what happens when we are together.