Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  “Have you ever wondered if you use your work as a way to avoid having to be close to people? Help them, yes. But when they don’t need help, it’s as though you don’t know what to do for them.”

  Windy opened her mouth to object, then slowly closed it. Bill had a point. It was what her relationship with Evan had been like. Helping, him depending on her to make his life run, pay the bills, do the laundry, run the house, the grown-up stuff. With Evan being needed and being loved had been synonymous.

  But not with Bill. Bill who was upset because he wanted to spend more time with her, because he loved her that much. Bill who traveled a lot but always came back. Bill not needing her, just wanting her.

  He was right, she didn’t know what to do with that. It was too precious. It overwhelmed her.

  She said, “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you’re too well adjusted and I’m trying to give you a complex so I can take care of you.” Her tone, light, almost joking, made Bill look at her.

  “You’re doing a good job,” he said, trying to sound gruff. But a slight dimple in his left cheek gave away the unwilling smile lurking there. He took a deep breath and reached for her, pulling her onto his lap. “Babe, I love you so much. I just want to take care of you. Protect you. I’m so afraid of losing you.”

  “You won’t. You can’t. And my job for the rest of the weekend is to make you forget any of this happened.”

  “That won’t be easy,” he said with mock gravity.

  She untangled herself from his arms, stood up with her back to him, said, “I’ll just have to work very very hard,” and let her dress fall to the ground with what she hoped was a suggestive shimmy.

  “Yes you—Oh.”

  She had spent twenty minutes earlier that night rummaging through the silk and lace lingerie she liked to find the underwear he preferred, plain white Jockey for Her panties, white, unadorned Maidenform bra. By the time she found them they had almost missed their reservation, but no dinner in the world could have compared with the expression on Bill’s face as she turned toward him now. The look he gave her was one of naked, almost desperate desire, the kind most women never glimpsed past the age of sixteen. He would not remember the mistake she had made, not remember her distraction.

  Any woman in her right mind would be thrilled that her boyfriend found her sexy in the plainest things, her therapist in Virginia had told her when she brought it up at one session. It showed he loved her for who she was.

  Evan had liked her best naked.

  “Oh, Windy,” Bill said, more of a sigh than a breath as he dragged her to him, sending them tumbling onto the bed. “Oh babe, you are amazing.”

  She closed her eyes and willed herself not to think of that other bed, soaked in blood. Not to think of that other family, of what she thought she’d discovered about their killer. Just think of Bill, who loved her for who she was. Which was more than she deserved.

  CHAPTER 10

  At 2:30 A.M. Windy couldn’t stand it any more. She slipped on the pale green Chinese silk robe with the embroidered cherry blossoms on it that Cate had picked out for her last Mother’s Day—“So you can be like a queen and I can be a princess”—went across the hall to check on Her Sleeping Highness, and then padded downstairs to her desk in the corner of the living room. She picked up Ash’s message and dialed his work number, expecting his voice mail.

  He answered on the first ring. “Ash Laughton.”

  “Ash, it’s Windy.” There was a pause so she added, “Windy Thomas. You know, in criminalistics.”

  “I know who you are,” Ash’s voice told her, amused. “I was just surprised to hear your voice. It’s not exactly business hours.”

  “What are you doing at your desk?”

  “What are you doing calling in? It’s Saturday night. You are supposed to be off having fun.”

  “I am. Was,” she stuttered. Paused. “I think I have difficulty letting go of work.”

  “I hear that’s terrible problem. I wouldn’t know personally.”

  “I’m sure. Are you planning to spend the entire weekend at the department?”

  “No way,” Ash said, insulted. “I’ll go home for, oh, maybe forty-five minutes. But even when I’m here, it’s not all work. Right now, for example, I’m making a sculpture out of the paperclips and Jujubes on my desk.”

  “I’m sorry to be interrupting such an important task. I can call back tomorrow.”

  “That’s okay, it was time for me to take a break. What can I do for you? Do you always return calls around three A.M.?”

  “Sorry. I thought I would just leave a message. I woke up with an idea.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No, you first. What’s your question?”

  “Is there any way a man and woman could have sex in a bed and have one of them not leave any trace evidence behind, no hair, no skin, no semen?”

  Windy wondered what her mother would say if she knew the conversations her daughter considered normal. She asked, “Were the sheets washed?”

  “No.”

  “That would be nearly impossible. Why?”

  “That’s what our exterminator, Tony, claims happened. He’s got this long story about Mrs. Johnson being scared because a green car had been parked across the street and was watching the house so she turned to him for comfort. One thing led to another, the comforting turned to a tumble in the master bedroom, and afterwards she gave him the pearls as thanks or blackmail, you choose. Either way there’s no evidence to support it.”

  “Why would he lie about that?”

  “To cover up something. Stealing maybe. Now he’s playing mute.”

  “Do you think he’s the one?”

  “I don’t know. He’s got a rap sheet about as tall as me under another alias, but it’s all petty stuff, theft, fencing, a little drugs. Nothing like murder. We’re holding him over the weekend to see if we can get something out of him, but I’m not counting on it. I’m still going to have a bunch of photographers covering the memorial service.”

  “When is it?”

  “Monday morning.”

  “You think the killer would show up at the Johnsons’ funeral?”

  “Possibly, to see how much interest there is.”

  “I see. So you’re pretty much giving up on the exterminator’s story? The whole thing?”

  “Not one hundred percent. Why?”

  “Well, a suspect like that, who’s dealt with the cops before, wouldn’t he usually mix truth with his lies when he is embellishing? To make it easier to keep straight? Maybe, given that, we could follow up at least the part about the green car.”

  “Is there something in particular about that?”

  “No, I don’t—no. It just seems like a strange thing for him to have made up.”

  “I’ll have my men canvass the neighbors again. What was your idea?”

  “Do you have the lab reports and crime scene photos from the bedroom there in front of you?”

  “The photos, yes. I can get the reports. Why?”

  “I keep thinking that there had to be a reason he put all the bodies in one room, beyond simply shocking Doug Johnson Senior. At first their placement looks haphazard, mostly because the daughter and one of the sons are leaning forward. But that could have happened after he left, before rigor set in. If you imagine them sitting up instead, the way Mrs. Johnson and Doug Junior are, then you get a sort of tableau.”

  “Like a family picture,” Ash said. “You think he was posing them.”

  “More than posing them. I have this feeling that he might have put himself in the picture too. I don’t have the files here, so this is really only a hunch. Before using it, you should check about indentations on the comforter between Doug, Junior and Norman. That’s where I think he went because there is a gap there. And also check for hair on the wall behind that place.”

  “How would he see himself?”

  “In the mirror attached to Mrs. Johnson’s dressing table. I couldn’t quite
tell from the crime scene photos, but I think the table had been slightly moved. It looked like there might be two sets of indentations in the carpet. I caught a shadow of them when you first showed me the pictures and couldn’t make anything of it but it started me thinking.”

  “I’ll take a look at the lab results and call you if we find anything. It would suggest that the reason he cut off their heads wasn’t just pragmatic, so he could enjoy their company at breakfast, but also because it allowed him to depersonalize the victims when he posed them. So he could picture any faces he wanted on top of their bodies.”

  “True. And scary. I feel more and more like this is just the beginning. As though it’s only a matter of time before this head case kills again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said, sounding like he was choking. “Did you say head case?”

  Windy’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, brother. My mind must have—I didn’t mean—”

  But it was too late. They were both laughing, the only antidote to the sickness of what they were working with. “That was awful,” Windy said, trying unsuccessfully to stop giggling. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Want to share the joke?” a voice asked from the door and Windy looked up, saw Bill there, and froze. The urge to laugh vanished. “I’ve got to go, bye,” she said, hanging up fast.

  “What was so funny?” Bill asked again, coming into the room.

  Windy held her robe tight around her, not wanting to meet his eyes. She had let him down and she knew it and she hated it—hated the feeling, hated herself for doing it. “Nothing. It was about the case we are working on. I just said something stupid.”

  “I doubt that. You are not stupid.”

  Windy felt like someone was squeezing her heart. “It was an accident. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

  “It was your absence that woke me up. And then I heard you laughing. It’s been a long time since I heard you laugh like that.” Bill’s tone was more wistful than angry.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep and I had an idea and—” She didn’t know what words should come next so she looked up at him.

  Relief washed over her as his face broke into a bemused smile. “There is no stopping you, is there?”

  She shook her head, one time, hard. Then got her lips apart enough to say, “I—I’m sorry, Bill. I’m incredibly sorry. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Windy,” he said, holding her against him. “I think you’re just so used to turning to work for all your fulfillment, that it doesn’t occur to you there could be another way.”

  She burrowed against his chest, wanting to be as close to him as possible, as close to the security, the solidness, he offered.

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with you,” he repeated, stroking her head. “At least, nothing that a little supportive attention from the man who loves you can’t fix. Just—can we try not to do this tomorrow? Try to make Sunday a real day of rest? A whole day with no work? Just you being a mom and me being a dad and Cate being Cate?”

  “Yes. Of course. The bad guys are just going to have to live without me until after your flight leaves on Monday.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The desk clerk in the ER at Sunrise Hospital did not have time for this kind of shit.

  “We just want to be sure he’ll be able to be there,” the voice on the other end of the phone was saying through the static.

  “Fine.”

  “You know, it’ll be their third child and—”

  “Okay, that’s just great.” Who cared if some resident he’d never heard of was having another child? A baby shower. Not his problem. His problem was the guy bleeding all over the waiting room. The desk clerk said, “Whose schedule did you say you were looking for again?”

  “Maximillian Waters’s. When does he work this weekend?”

  “He just got off. That means he’s . . .” The clerk flipped back and forth between the pages of the schedule. Someone had screwed them up again. “He’ll be back on starting at eight P.M. Sunday night.”

  “And when does he finish?”

  “He pulled the long shift. He’s on all day Monday straight through to four A.M. Tuesday morning.”

  “Home at four A.M. Tuesday. Thanks. Don’t tell him, though. You know, keep it a secret. Will you? It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  The clerk laughed at that. As if he’d even remember the call in another ten minutes.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sunday passed into Monday for Ash in a blur of crumpled coffee cups, stale M&Ms, Pedro’s Special Tacos from the place down the street, and “I’m not talking until my lawyer shows” declarations from Anthony Solomon. The exterminator looked better than he did, Ash had to admit when he finally went home Monday morning to shower and change for the memorial service.

  It was an almost excruciatingly beautiful day, the kind that happened in Las Vegas maybe four times a year. Blue sky, light wind carrying the scent of desert sage, the mountains crystal clear around the valley. Ash wore sunglasses and tried not to walk stooped over and sideways like an underground creature seeing sun for the first time. The crowds at the funeral were enormous, including, inevitably, a half dozen camera crews. He was scanning the trees for his own photographers when someone brushed against him and he looked down to see a familiar face.

  “Hi, Mr. Policeman,” the woman said. “I thought I might see you here.” She reached up and took the platinum toothpick from his mouth to give him a fast kiss on the lips. The toothpick had been a gift from her when they were involved a year earlier, to replace the wood one he’d always had before that.

  He and Bobbie Casio had remained friends after their affair ended and he was still a firm admirer of hers. “Hi, Bobbie. How is my favorite member of the Mafia?”

  “Wife of a member of the Mafia. And you tell me. How do I look?”

  “Beautiful as always,” Ash said, meaning it.

  “Really?”

  “You know how stunning you are, Bobbie.”

  She gazed up at him with a look that was probably more vulnerable than she meant it to be. “You are the only man I know who can look sexy and taste like gummy bears at the same time. I miss you, Ash. I didn’t realize how much until now. Have you missed me?”

  “It’s good to see you, Bobbie.”

  “Flatter me some more.”

  “What are you doing here? How did you know the Johnsons?”

  “Carol and I played tennis together. Don’t look so surprised, I can do ‘suburban housewife’ with the best of them. And Carol was one of the best of them. A neat woman. This is terrible. Just awful. I hope you get the man.”

  “We will.” He paused, said, “Do you think Carol ever had any affairs?”

  “I hardly think this is the place to discuss it, Ash.”

  “Come on, Bobbie. It could be important for my investigation.”

  Bobbie gazed over Ash’s shoulder, squinting into the distance as she thought about it. “I think she was fascinated by the idea, but I doubt she ever did. She might flirt a little with the tennis pro or the pool man, but that was all. She was very timid. And, deep down, I think she was also romantic, you know, believed in marriage, happily ever after. So I’d have to vote no.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She scrutinized his face for a moment with her smart eyes then said lightly, “Don’t believe what I said before. Funerals have a lousy effect on me. I don’t miss you at all.”

  “I know.”

  Bobbie gave him a long look and headed back into the crowd, to her husband, Ash imagined, and then stopped thinking about her at all. He shaded his eyes with the program of the memorial service that had been shoved into his hands, eight pages of poems and letters and prayers, raking his gaze over heads of the three hundred people there. He caught sight of three of the four police photographers, sought the fourth, and found him up a tree. Good, all angles.
Their photos would be scanned through a computer running the face recognition software he had invented to see if they got any matches to any known felons. He spotted at least two well connected mobsters, one of them Bobbie’s husband, and kept his eyes moving. The only person he did not look at was Doug Johnson, the father of the dead family. He had glimpsed the man earlier and was horrified by what he had seen. His face was set like a mask that kept slipping, and beneath it Ash saw raw pain.

  Ash dropped his eyes instead to the program. The front was a photo of the Johnson family on vacation, sitting on a rock outcropping, all smiling. In this context it was horrible to look at, a testimonial to loss. He remembered one of his first collars, a guy named Moochie Lopez, defending himself from a murder charge saying, “Why am I going to kill a guy that’s got nothing worth dying for, man? It’s like robbing an empty house.” Moochie knew what he was talking about, Ash thought, his eyes uncontrollably returning to the crumpled figure of Doug Senior, a man who’d had everything worth dying for. With all those cameras and press vans around, the guy looked like a spokesmodel for grief and guilt together.

  Around Ash, three hundred voices began to intone the Lord’s prayer, a chilling sound against the silence of the day. Our Father, who art in heaven. His brain stuck on the first two words, repeating them over and over until they formed themselves into the question that had been nagging at him all morning: Did Doug Senior get left alive by accident or on purpose?

  Ash took a longer look at the picture on the program and saw something he’d missed. Something crucial. With a sinking feeling in his stomach he realized he’d found the answer to his question.

  CHAPTER 13

  Windy dropped Cate at school, Bill at the airport, then broke a few laws speeding to work. She drove with all the windows open, amazed at how warm it was in October, thinking that Las Vegas was a pretty nice town. For a few minutes, she felt a degree of contentment and control that she had not experienced in a long time—so long she hadn’t even realized she had been missing it. Moving here was a good idea. It would work out. Everything was going to be fine.