“You don’t seem to like a lot of people,” I say.
“I think you’re okay,” he says. I smile.
“That has to be the kindest compliment you’ve told anyone all year,” I say. I follow him to his living room and he sits down on his black couch. He gestures for me to sit too, so I do. He opens one of the beers and hands it to me. I take a sip. He opens his own beer and drinks from it. He rubs the rim of the beer against his bottom lip.
“Do you want to hear about my first homicide case?” he asks. I rest my elbow on the back of the couch and lean my head against my hand.
“Definitely,” I say.
“So, I had just been promoted to detective. The crime scene is in an alleyway, and it’s a woman. She had been shot twice in the chest,” he says. “Rather upsetting, but not rare. Everyone around me is telling me that it was a robbery gone wrong and I’ll never solve it because…how do you figure out who the murderer is when it’s a random robber? But something about the scene seemed off to me. Later I realized what it was: she had a cross around her neck, earrings shaped like crosses, and a Bible in her purse, but it was Sunday morning and she had died around 9 a.m. She hadn’t died anywhere near a church, so why was she in that alley?”
“Why was she?” I ask him. He takes another sip of his beer, thoroughly enjoying divulging this story.
“I went to her church to ask why she wasn’t there that morning. It had to be something important for her to miss church. Almost nobody knew why she wasn’t there that morning…except when I mentioned what road was close to where she died, this one woman told me that the murdered woman volunteered for an abused women’s shelter, and one of the women she helped lived on that street. We went to see the abused woman…we found out her husband had the same gun that killed the murdered woman…we matched the gun to the bullets and he was arrested.”
“You solved your first case,” I say, smiling. “That’s awesome.”
He nods. “Her name was Cheryl Burke.”
“Cheryl Burke,” I echo. I raise my beer and we clink our bottles. We talk through the rest of the night. I forget about eating dinner, I forget about the PVP killer, I forget that I’m in an apartment that is the exact opposite of mine. We talk about past cases, about teenage embarrassments, about Detroit. We talk until we’re both fighting to keep our eyes open and we’re both weaving toward being drunk. We talk until Tobias is lying on his back on the couch and I lean forward until I’m lying beside him.
I can only imagine that it feels as good as solving your first case.
~~~~~
When I wake up, my head feels full and the space beside me feels cold. I open my eyes to realize Tobias is gone. I stand up, thinking that the PVP killer has gotten to him, before I see him standing in the entrance between the kitchen and the living room, watching me.
“Sorry that you had to fall asleep like that,” he says. “I guess we were just worn out.”
“I guess,” I say.
“You can take the bed next time,” he says. “I’ll be on the couch, so I’ll know first if someone tries to break in. The window in the bedroom is sealed shut, so there’s no way he’s getting in there, but I’ll get curtains, so he can’t look inside here.”
“Thanks,” I say. I rub my face. “What time is it?”
“Six,” he says. “You should get ready for work.”
I sit back down on the couch. “Should we go to work in separate cars, so nobody knows we’re staying in the same apartment or should we just not care what the other policemen think?”
“We’re not going back to the station,” he says. “I can’t think with the FBI up my ass. I was thinking about the last box that the killer gave you.”
“You mean the lucky cat?” I ask.
“No, I mean the box,” he says. “Timothy Wood had an envelope, which nobody would think much about if they it saw left somewhere in a train station. But if you saw a box in the train station, what would you think?”
“…I would think, Wow, someone is going to steal that,” I say.
“Exactly,” he says. “I don’t think Jasmine was telling the truth. Plus, we got the box after we talked to her, and I think that comment about luck that the killer made was commenting about how we never found the photographer of the blackmail.”
“Well, he has been watching us the whole time,” I say. “Clearly, from the drawing he made of me. It doesn’t mean that Jasmine was the one who told him about our conversation.”
“You’re the one who said the killer didn’t have to be a man,” he says. “I mean, I kind of doubt it’s her since she’s tiny, but she could have lured all of those victims to the places that they were murdered, by her innocent act. Even you have a soft spot for her.”
“The video that was sent of the killer and me…the killer was a man,” I say.
“It was a silhouette of a person that looked like a man,” he says. “It could have been a woman…it could have been made to throw us off her tracks.”
I shake my head. “She should still be at whatever hotel she chose. I just can’t see her doing that.”
“I looked up hotels that had doorman nearby the police station,” he says. “If she is involved with the murders, she might not have stayed at one, but I figure it’s worth checking out.”
I yawn. “Alright. Just give me thirty minutes to get ready.”
He nods. “Just so you know…I hope I’m wrong. I know you like her.”
“Thank you,” I say. I can hear the sincerity in every syllable he says, and it makes me feel more cared for than I have ever felt.
~~~~~
Tobias
WE DON’T FIND Jasmine in her usual spot near the Greektown Casino. We return to the police station and the FBI uses the station’s surveillance cameras to get a snapshot of Jasmine’s face. They transfer the snapshot onto their computer and it compares the image to driver’s licenses. We watch the laptop’s screen as it shuffles through thousands of photographs and assigns each one a percentage as to how close it matches Jasmine’s image.
I pace back and forth in the break room as Lauren chews on her lip.
“If it turns out that she’s the killer and we let her loose…” she says, voicing my own fears.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, trying to reassure myself as well. “We have her now.”
The air in the room is stifling, but I don’t want to leave Lauren alone with her thoughts. I don’t want to be alone either. It’s like we have assimilated into one mind and share the same emotions. I feel her fear and confusion like a dagger, while she feels my anger and shame.
“I can’t breathe,” she says, standing up. I nod, glad that she said it before I did. We walk out of the building, our movements synchronized. As soon as we’re outside, Lauren kneels on the ground, no longer able to stand.
“I was kind to her, Tobias,” she says. “I gave her money. I felt bad for her. I thought…I thought she was a good person despite her circumstances. I got everything wrong about her.”
“You don’t know that yet,” I say. “There could be other explanations. I could be completely wrong.”
She shakes her head. “It’s Friday night. She would have been at her corner…but she’s not because she knew we were on to her. She knew we were closing in on her, so she ran.”
“She’s been a con artist for a long time, Lauren,” I say. “I’m sure she has convinced a lot of people that she was the victim.”
“I’m a detective,” she says. “And an expert at reading body language. I should have been able to tell when she was lying.”
“We will find her,” I say. “We will get her to confess whatever she knows…if she is even involved.”
“She won’t be where she’s living,” she says. “She’s probably out of the state by now.”
“The FBI will track her down then,” I say. “As much as I hate it, that’s their job. But we can get into her house and apartment, search it over…see if we can find anything that hints at where she
went.”
Before Lauren can respond, an FBI agent rushes out toward us, waving a piece of paper.
“We have her address,” the agent says. “Her name is Nina Wayland.”
Lauren beats me to my car by a second. My heart beats hard in my chest and I can almost feel Lauren’s thrumming right beside it.
~~~~~
The FBI crashes through the apartment door first. I raise my gun and quickly scan the hallway. I see two FBI agents stop in the doorway of another room, their faces changing from confusion to disappointment and then to sadness. I make it to the doorway as the two of them walk into a bedroom.
I spin around and grab Lauren before she can see. I pull her back toward the entrance door.
“What?” she asks. “What’s going on? Did she save body parts of the victims or something? Are there photographs of me?”
“No,” I say. “Jasmine wasn’t the killer.”
“Nina,” she corrects. “Her real name is Nina Wayland. Jasmine was a way for her to disguise herself. What makes you so certain that she’s not the killer? Is the killer here?”
“No,” I repeat. I glance around us—it occurs to me now that I’m not sure if he’s here, but I need to have faith that the FBI is checking because I need to protect Lauren. Her fingers brush against my arm.
“What is it, Tobias?” she asks. “What happened? What’s in there?”
“It’s another body,” I say. Her forehead furrows for a second before realization hits her and grief overtakes her features.
“It’s Jasmine,” she says quietly. “The PVP killer murdered Jasmine.”
I nod. She tries to move past me, but I grab her and push her against the wall. She struggles against my grip.
“You don’t want to go in there, Lauren,” I say. “It’s bad.”
“Tobias, I have seen the other crime scene photos,” she says. “We are investigating this together. I need to see the body. We need to catch this bastard.”
In my grip, her body changes from hard muscle that’s straining against me to something that can barely keep itself standing. She falls against my chest, her nails digging into my arms, and her sobbing shaking her whole body. It’s the same as it had been at the police station—I can feel her grief, her distress, her pain like it’s my own. It weighs down my chest and I know it’s something I won’t ever be able to lift off.
I can hear her thoughts because they are the same thoughts I am having. We thought she was the killer. We put all of this blame on her and in the end…we are likely the ones that led the PVP killer to decide to murder her.
I can sense the FBI agents walking through the hall near us, but all I can take notice of is Lauren pressed against my body, the way her hair smells like cherry blossoms, and the steady beat of her heart against my chest. Her crying slows. My hand slides from her hair down to her arm. Even if she is the one that has been crying, I find the warmth of her body comforting.
“I want…to see her,” Lauren says, her voice balancing between fragile and steady.
“Okay,” I say because there is nothing else I can do. I keep my hand on the small of her back as I lead her to the bedroom. Jasmine is lying on her side on the bed as if she had fallen asleep. I keep my eyes on Lauren as she notices Jasmine’s two broken fingers, the blood trailing down from her nose, the crack in her skull, the blood spatter that’s scattered on the ceiling, and finally to the wide-open, ocean-blue eyes.
“Do you know what game this is from?” I ask her. She shakes her head.
“I don’t think it’s a game,” she says. “All of the other deaths were meticulous. This one seems…like a crime of passion. He was angry…crushed her skull…and then staged her body, so we would think that she was just another part in his serial killing. Do you smell that?”
I nod. “Bleach. I noticed it when we first walked in. He cleaned up.”
“Except he was in enough of a hurry that he forgot the ceiling. Which he has never done before,” she says. “Which means he was messy this time. I’m guessing he washed up everything, wiped his fingerprints off anything he touched…but this was still a big mistake for him.”
“It was,” I agree. “And he will live to regret it.”
She glances up at me. Her eyes are outlined in pink from crying, but there are no longer any tears in her eyes.
“This guy is an animal,” she says. “We need to put him down.”
I’ve always tried to keep my emotions out of my work because I don’t want my emotions to affect my actions, but now I feel a primal rage bubble inside me. I would put him down—for every victim, for every victim’s family, for causing Lauren one more loss in her life. I would pull the trigger for every one of them.
~~~~~
Lauren
TOBIAS AND I buy enough alcohol at the liquor store that I’m sure the cashier would have thought we were supplying a fraternity, if Tobias hadn’t flashed his badge as he took out his wallet. We settle in his living room with vodka and whiskey. We line up shots like teenagers and drink like college students.
“So…who is your favorite serial killer?” he asks.
“Really?” I laugh. “You think I look at serial killers like young girls look at boy bands?”
“Yes, I do,” he says. I laugh again. I can’t help it. The alcohol is making everything seem so carefree.
“Well, the obvious answer would be Aileen Wuornos, Michigan-born serial killer who had a troubled past and killed the men who were paying her for sex,” I say. “But I want to impress you, so for lesser-known serial killers, I’ll go with Delfina and María de Jesús González. They were sisters who killed their prostitutes and their johns. Their kill count went up to ninety-one. What about you?”
“I always found the Zodiac Killer interesting,” he says. “Because he had the ciphers and the police never figured it out. I thought that it was intriguing that the killer seemed so completely unaffected by his murders, the fact that he killed even though he had a high IQ, and he saw his murders and ciphers as more of a way to taunt the whole world. But now that the PVP killer is doing the same thing, it just irritates me. If a person thinks they can take someone else’s life, they shouldn’t hide behind notes and secret messages.”
“It is terrible,” I agree. “How does a person justify killing strangers?”
“They don’t,” he says. “They don’t feel the need to answer to anybody. They just do it.”
He leans forward and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” he asks, the alcohol on our breath mixing as he stays leaning toward me.
“Who’s this annoying shrink that’s taking over my case?” I joke. He chuckles.
“Well, that was my second thought,” he says. “My first thought was coffee.”
“Coffee?” I ask.
“Lattes to be specific,” he says. He twirls a strand of my hair around his finger. “I thought it was your hair that made me think of that, but I think…it’s you. Sweet and warm…invigorating.”
“I think you’re a little drunk,” I tease.
“So are you.”
When his lips touch mine, all of my senses feel like they awaken. The whiskey tastes better in my mouth, his fingertips are rough and insistent on my waist, and his body heat seems to wrap around my skin and pull me on top of him.
As I pull my pale pink dress over my head and Tobias looks at me with rapture, I know that this is the kind of thrill that serial killers look for their whole lives. They believe that they want to feel power and control, but what they are really missing is a person who makes them feel human.
~~~~~
Tobias
WHEN I WAKE UP, my head feels too heavy to lift and my tongue feels like sandpaper. Lauren is asleep with her head on my chest and her thighs intertwined around one of my legs. She looks so beautiful that it doesn’t seem fair. I slide my leg out from under her as slowly as I can and carefully slide her onto the couch. She snuggles into the kitchen, m
umbling about flour and dingoes.
I get to my bathroom and check myself in the mirror. Even at thirty-three years old, I’ve begun to feel old. The stress of being a cop in Detroit can add decades onto your life. But now, here with Lauren, I feel renewed. I feel like I am in my mid-twenties, except with all of the knowledge that life brings. This is what I’ve needed. I thought I didn’t need a woman to complicate my life, but Lauren has made everything simple. Protect her. Take care of her. Love her. Let her love me.
I close my eyes, remembering the feeling of her body on top of mine and her long legs smooth against my skin. It’s almost enough to make me feel short of breath again.
I grab my toothbrush and squirt some toothpaste onto it. As I begin to brush, I hear Lauren beginning to move in the other room. She wanders to the bathroom doorframe as I rinse my mouth. She smiles, hiding half of herself behind the wall.
“So…” she says. “Is this…something?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean…were we both drunk…so did that happen because—”
I grab her by both sides of her face and kiss her. She still tastes sweet, with the faintest hint of alcohol. I lower my hands to her waist and take a step back.
“You need to stop analyzing everything,” I say. Her fingertips press against her lips. “Remember? You told me that it was hard for you to be happy because you’re always analyzing everything. Just be happy.”
“Maybe I should stop overthinking everything,” she says. She grabs a white towel off a hook near the door and wraps it around her body. She suddenly freezes.
“What?” I ask.
“Jasmine…did you notice at her house what she was wearing?” she asks.
“….Clothes?” I guess.
“She was wearing a man’s shirt,” she says. “It was way too big for her to be wearing and it didn’t have the right form to be for a woman.”
Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance Page 7
