Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  Telling her how to raise her daughter when she’d hardly taken time out between Bridge and board meetings to raise her own son. Windy had felt a moment of indignation but it flared and died. Because Mrs. Kirkland was not all wrong. She had let down her defenses for an instant, stopped being watchful, made a bad call. It wouldn’t happen again.

  She would be responsible, think like a grown-up all the time, she decided. She and Bill had been going out for five months when she was stabbed, spending a lot of time together but not yet having what Cate called “slumber parties,” and when he found out what had kept her from their dinner date that night, he was wonderful. He brought her home from the hospital, cooked for her, spoiled Cate rotten, canceled all his work trips so he could stay in town, was impeccably sweet and kind and understanding.

  He pretty much moved in with them after that, it just felt natural, right. For the first time in a long time, Windy felt like everything was under control. It was a new kind of relationship for her, a new way to exist, no crazy oscillations between high points and low ones, just constant stability. A new start with Bill. A new job far from the Virginia farmhouse where she and Evan had spent their married life together. The confidence that she was making good, mature decisions, behaving responsibly.

  “I don’t want you just to layer denial on denial,” her therapist had said. “I want to make sure you’re dealing with Evan’s death and your own trauma.”

  “Of course. I’m dealing great.” She was. She didn’t even cry or have nightmares.

  She was taking precautions, being smart. She knew that from where she was standing right then in the kitchen of her house in Vegas, if she turned her head to the left she’d be able to see the mark on the cabinet she had made twenty-one feet from the back door. Twenty-one feet or less was distance from which the law said it was self-defense to shoot an intruder. Twenty-one feet was the Safe Distance. There was a similar mark twenty-one feet from every door in the house. Only she knew they were there. Only she knew about the gun she kept hidden between her mattress and boxspring.

  She had been tempted to show them to Bill, prove to him that she was being responsible, but she knew he would want to talk about what had happened again. The more she got over it, the more he started to worry. It was only because he loved her more as time went on, he told her, and she believed it. Worrying was only his way of saying “I love you.” How could she explain that every time he questioned her about where she had been, she felt like he was questioning her judgment, her ability. That his concern felt like doubt. That every “I have been so worried about you” and “Where were you, Windy?” transported her back to that room, back to the woman who made a mistake and could not be relied on.

  She knew that her reaction was wrong and unfair, projecting her insecurities onto his words. He had a right to worry. She had been stupid, put her life in danger. And he had a real right to be frustrated with her now: she wasn’t exactly living up to her end of the bargain, where she’d promised no more crime scenes, no more violence if she took the job as head of Vegas criminalistics, making them relocate. She was the one doing the wrong thing. She felt awful about it. Worse because she knew, no matter what she said, she wasn’t going to stop.

  She reached for the phone to dial him again, and stared at her hand, seeing that she’d bitten off all the nails while she was standing there, the first time in over a year. It doesn’t mean that you are falling apart again, she told herself. Picked up the receiver, now punching in the number, determined to leave a message on the answering machine this time, half wanting to talk long enough that he would decide to pick up, half knowing that was only setting herself up for disappointment. In the end she said simply, “I’m sorry, Bill, and I love you,” and hung up.

  She checked the locks on all the doors and windows on the ground floor and went back into the living room. “Brandon, I’m going to bed.”

  “Good idea,” he told her, adding: “Honey, I forget to say before, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that your boss is be-still-my-heart-gorgeous. The man is a hunk. And not just cute either—he is nice. Confident in that quiet way. I really liked him. You can invite him over any time you want.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  An image of Ash out on a date flashed uninvited into her mind. She wondered what they had done. If they had fun.

  She gnawed on her thumbnail as she checked the latch on the sliding glass door before getting into bed.

  CHAPTER 23

  Windy screeched past the DENTAL CENTER sign and into the criminalistics parking lot at ten minutes after eight. She was running late but she sat at the wheel of her car, making herself breathe, holding herself together.

  Usually only the nights were hard, but pulling into the parking lot that morning she’d seen Dr. Waters coming out of the homicide building, immediately being swarmed by waiting reporters. As she watched, he put his hand up to shield his face from the camera lights, and she saw that his eyes were absolutely blank. Without hope. Without anything.

  Windy wondered if this was what the killer wanted, to destroy a man, if he would get off seeing this. Wondered what “worse” would be if she didn’t piece the evidence together fast enough to stop him.

  She had made it out of her car but was still staring into space when a voice behind her said, “Hi there.”

  She turned and saw Ned Blight getting out of his SUV and lumbering toward her. “Don’t tell the boss I’m late,” he joked.

  She tried out a smile. “I won’t if you won’t.”

  Ned looked past her, to the group around Dr. Waters, and ran a hand through his dark curly hair. “Makes my heart bleed.”

  Windy said, “How long have you been at this?”

  “Criminalistics for the past five years, but I was in uniform with the department for twelve years before that.”

  “You must have seen a lot of awful things.”

  “Nothing like this.” He looked at her. “Want to hear a weird coincidence, though? I wasn’t quite sure, but I asked my wife about it last night and she remembered it the same way I did. My very first week on the job, twenty years ago, do you know where I was called to? The Sun-Crest apartments.”

  “The Waters’ apartment building?”

  “I don’t know if it was the same apartment, that would be too much, but definitely the same building. Do you remember your first live case? The first crime scene you really worked, once you were out of training?”

  Boy did she. As if it had happened that morning she could still see the body covered in the ice of the lake. Windy nodded.

  “And this was a weird one. You know how those stay with you. It was these two women, a mother and daughter, screaming at each other. The original call had been domestic disturbance, a husband beating his wife we assumed, but we got there and the guy was just sitting on the couch while the two women fought, called each other liar, each one saying that the other was upsetting the man. I’ve got three girls of my own, but I’d never seen anything like this. Still haven’t. I went home that night and told my wife about it, and she remembered it too. Sylvia, she believes in karma, has all these crystals from Arizona for channeling her energy, stuff like that and I always pooh pooh it, but being back in that building and seeing what happened, it did make me wonder. You know, if maybe things like that can happen, bad energy getting trapped in a place and haunting the people there.” He got a sheepish look as if he just realized what he’d been saying. “I sound like an idiot. I think this case has got me all on edge.”

  “Everyone,” Windy agreed. She ripped her eyes from Dr. Waters and started walking to the criminalistics building, determined to find something to help him, put some expression back into his face.

  Her pager beeped. Looking down she saw A/V Lab, ASAP. Ash.

  “What took you so long?” Ash asked when Windy burst into the audio-visual lab thirty seconds later. “Stop for doughnuts?”

  His tone was excited. She said, “What did you find?”

 
“I want you to see it before I comment.” He turned to a petite woman in her late twenties with purple spiked hair sitting at a computer. “This is Erica Ortiz, our computer guru. She rules this section. Erica Ortiz, Chicago Thomas.”

  The woman gave Windy a big smile, revealing a full set of braces. “Good to meet you. Welcome to our feature presentation.”

  She hit two buttons and a grainy movie appeared on her computer screen, a car parked at the curb in front of the pawn shop.

  “Is that our green car?” Windy asked Ash.

  “Just wait.”

  A shadow moved on the screen and then a man’s profile appeared. He leaned into the car on the passenger side and appeared to speak to whoever was inside. He spent some time by the side of the car chatting, then gestured with his hand, pointing down the street. Like giving directions. After another exchange the car pulled away from the curb, out of the frame of the shot. The man waved and turned to go, giving the security cameras a front view.

  Windy bent closer to the screen. “That man is in uniform. He’s a cop.”

  Ash nodded. “Yep.”

  Windy’s eyes came to Ash. “A cop talked to our suspect.”

  “A cop chased our suspect. Needed the parking place for the official vehicles.”

  “And he did not think to mention it to us? Or notice the APB on a green car?”

  Jonah had joined them and he said, “Not immediately. I just got off the phone with the man, Officer Carp, and he said he didn’t think to mention the green car because, and I’m quoting the good officer now, ‘the operator of the vehicle was a female, and most known serial offenders are male.’ ”

  Windy blinked. “A woman.” Their killer a woman. How had she not thought of this? A woman would be able to get another woman to open the door to her at night.

  “Not just a woman,” Jonah went on. “By his report, a real hot number. Carp asked her out.”

  “You’re kidding,” Ash said. “Did he get her name or phone number?”

  Jonah shook his head. “No, unfortunately the lady said she couldn’t make it. She told him she was sort of involved with someone and very busy these days.”

  “Very busy?” Windy shuddered. “That is absolutely not what I wanted to hear. Did he at least get a license number?”

  “Too busy trying to get her phone number.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ash put in. “Erica’s been working on it. Show her.”

  Windy watched as the image on Erica’s screen zoomed in on the rear of the car.

  “You can get the plate this way?” Windy asked, leaning over the woman’s shoulder.

  “Not with our lousy software. But NASA and the Department of Defense have been developing a program to enhance photos at oblique angles. At first it didn’t work, it still has bugs in it, but we made a few modifications and I think this is going to do it.”

  She hit a button and the screen filled with the white rectangular shape of a license plate. Slowly, darker lines began to appear, dots filling in to become words, until after two minutes the top read CALIFORNIA, and beneath it were the letters B-A-D-G-R-L.

  “Bad Girl,” Windy said aloud.

  Ash turned to Jonah, who said, “I’m already on it,” and disappeared out the door.

  Windy marveled at the image. “Great work, Erica.”

  Erica shook her head and looked at Ash. “I only did the easy part. I’m not the one who hacked the NASA computer for the software and—”

  “What?” Windy asked, staring hard at Ash.

  “I could use some coffee, couldn’t you?” Ash said, trying to push Windy out the door. “What about a Twinkie? I have Twinkies in my desk. We can wait in my office for Jonah.”

  “Were you here all night committing illegal acts?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t do anything illegal here. I did it somewhere else, somewhere they are used to ducking questions from government agencies. Besides, the encryption was so weak it was practically in the public domain.”

  Windy rolled her eyes. “Ah. That makes it better then. Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Can you spell that word? I don’t think I know it.”

  “I’ve never met anyone before who made my work ethic look healthy.”

  “I use it as a crutch to make up for the absence of other distractions in my life.” He smiled to show he was just kidding.

  Before she could say anything, Jonah bolted out of the homicide offices, holding a piece of paper in front of him, and bowed. “You are looking at the goose that laid the golden egg.”

  “What did you get?”

  “Everything. The woman in the green car’s name is Eve Sebastian. Formerly of Los Angeles, moved to Vegas five months ago. To open a restaurant. Feel free to call me your highness and worship at my feet.”

  “She’s a chef?” Ash asked, incredulous.

  “Oh yeah. And that’s not the best part. Her specialty is breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “ ‘Paradise’ comes to paradise.” Windy read aloud from the article by Storm Larke that Jonah had printed from the Las Vegas Review Journal. “Celebrity chef Eve Sebastian’s new restaurant, the Paradise Lost Café, opens today in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Sebastian, one of Gourmet Magazine’s Top Ten to Taste in 2003, has attracted an almost cultlike following among Hollywood’s A-list for her home-style cooking, and a racy reputation for her wild partying, but I’m betting it will be the dining room of her new space that gets tongues wagging this time. The centerpieces of the over-the-top decor are five round beds, where you can enjoy an all-day breakfast-in-bed special menu. Having had a chance to meet Sebastian and taste her Angels-Don’t-Know-a-Thing-About-It Cake, I can tell you that the only thing more mouth-watering than her cuisine is the woman herself. This gourmet will happily volunteer for breakfast duty any time.”

  “She’s a chef who specializes in breakfast,” Ash repeated. They were in Ash’s office now, Ash behind his desk, Windy in a chair facing it.

  “And home-style cooking,” Windy said. She looked up and saw Jonah in the door frame. “Something else for us, your highness?”

  Jonah shook his head. “You already got the good news. The bad news is that she’s not at the restaurant today. I called Clive, our connection in Mandalay Bay Security while I was printing that out and asked him to go over there, low profile. He just reported back that Eve isn’t around. I asked him to keep an eye out anyway.”

  “Let’s take advantage of that and send Nick Lee and Bob Zorzi over to question the staff,” Ash said. “Discreetly. I’m interested in anything they can learn, but tell them especially to try to get a home address for her. In case they can’t, let’s send someone over to records to check for recent home purchases. Oh, and tell them to find out what kind of knives she uses, if any are missing.”

  Jonah said, “Got it,” and left.

  “So,” Windy said, “we have a name, a profession. The beginnings of a profile that fit what we know about our killer. We should be dancing or something. Why don’t I feel more excited?”

  “Because none of that is going to help us stop her if we can’t figure out how she is choosing her victims.”

  “Oh, that’s right. It’s not enough to simply identify the killer. We’ve got to find her too. This looks so much easier on TV.”

  “On TV these families would have something in common. Schools, churches, jobs, restaurants, supermarkets, all dead ends. Aside from having the bad luck to get murdered, these two families have no overlap.” Ash and Windy spent the next half hour reviewing any possible link they might have missed, coming up empty-handed.

  “There has got to be something. Bike repair shops,” Windy was saying, as Jonah knocked on the door.

  “Nick Lee on line one for you.”

  Ash said, “Thanks,” to Jonah, “Waterses had no bikes,” to Windy, hit the speaker phone button and said, “Nick you’re on.”

  “You have got to see this place, it’s a trip. All the waiters and waitresses wearing big angel wings, yo
u know, like in paradise. Anyway, we asked for Eve, were told she wasn’t there, and a guy, the manager, comes over and says ‘Finally. It took you long enough. We filed the complaint more than twenty-four hours ago.’ ”

  Ash said, “What complaint?”

  Nick’s voice explained, “The missing persons complaint. He thought we were there to follow it up. For Eve Sebastian. It seems the head chef failed to show up for work on Tuesday.”

  Windy leaned back in her chair. “The day we found the Waterses’ bodies. It isn’t uncommon for killers to start acting strange when they go on sprees. Often at the beginning they just miss a few hours of work before a murder, but later they’ll take off a whole day or week. To enjoy it more, the planning, the fantasy. It becomes part of a ritual. Ask them if she’s missed any other days, or come in late, recently.”

  “I’ll try. They’re not that cooperative. Bob started talking to the assistant manager, who told him she thought Eve was dating a guy named Barry or Harry, something like that. Sent her flowers every week. But before Bob could get any more, the manager came over and started saying we were there under false pretenses and asked us to leave. I didn’t know if I should tell him yet this is part of a murder investigation.”

  “No, let’s keep that quiet. We don’t need any more leaks to the press. Could he at least give you Eve’s address?”

  “He clammed up, started talking about Eve being a very private person. I could have pressured him but I figured it would be easier just to call a friend I have in Missing Persons and get it from him. The place was handled by a management company that rents furnished houses to executives just moving to town.”

  Ash took down the address, said, “Nice work. See if you can find anything else out about her boyfriend. That could be where she is staying.”

  “On it. And we asked about knives. All the chefs take their knives home with them every night. It’s some chef thing. The assistant manager thought Eve used Japanese knives but she wasn’t sure. I’ve got a connection at another restaurant if you want me to ask about professional brands.”