Quintic (11 page)

“
Yes
, Bridget, everyone includes
Patricia.” Time to see how the damn woman was recuperating from her
hangover.

Lemieux in the
Past

“Y
ou can do it,
Pattycake,” Lemieux coaxed.

She sobbed once. “Ask one of the
guys.”

“
You can do it, Doll,” Lemieux
repeated softly.

So she did. It was always like that
with her. Once she put her mind to it, she could do anything.

Lemieux loved her but believed Joshua
was better for her. They were both crazy. They were all crazy, but
those two’s craziness was alike. They lived in their own world.
Hers seemed sweet, full of fairies and knights. Knights was their
name in the game. They were going to win, that crazy fishing trip
was only the preparation, laying out the battle plan. They were
just fucking around, Joshua mostly for he had her. Joshua was
better for her.

Correction. Joshua had been better for
her, but Lemieux was not so sure anymore.

Lemieux still remembered the taste of
her. On his skin, in his mouth. He had tasted the inside of her. He
remembered all the women he tasted; there weren’t that many. Of the
five, Pattycake was the last.

Ordinary females he just played with,
dozens and dozens of common cunts, but only five women he had truly
tasted. Savoured. He liked playing. He thought about playing all
the time. Except those times when he was working. He was playing
then too, except more seriously. Strange. He was crazy, no doubt
about it. Bleeding like a pig and he still wanted to play.

That stupid hook hurt like hell. The
kid was an idiot, the most stupid of them five, them six counting
her. Them six since the other women did not count. Of them six, the
kid was the stupidest.

Of them five, Joshua and the king both
thought they were the smartest. Mario was not so confident, but he
was probably the smartest. Of them six, she was, no contest. Rick
knew. He was convinced Mario knew too. She hid it well. Since Mario
and he knew, did that make them smarter than Joshua and the king?
Either way, the kid was the stupidest. An idiot savant.

She had her hands on his crotch. She
did not realise she had her hands on his crotch. It drove him crazy
how she could be so provocative without trying. The females he did
were provoking and flaunted it. They sold it, some cheaply, others
not so. He played with them. No strings attached. Bondages weren’t
strings.

How could anyone fall for the Cake’s
silly costumes? She looked different just now. She was not wearing
a disguise with him. He had made sure she would not need to wear
any camouflage with him.

When her left hand gripped his thigh,
Lemieux felt it in his balls. Her left hand dug into the flesh his
inner thigh, opening his thighs, making room for her right hand to
manoeuvre. She was brushed and sobbed and kneaded and unknowingly
teased. He remembered her touch from before. Before Joshua.

The others feared the sight of blood,
so they left them alone.

“
What you doing down there, Cake?”
He groaned. “I’m not complaining about your hands, though. Take all
the time you want.”

“
Stop laughing! I’m trying to pull
the damn hook out without hurting you!”

She braced herself with a hand on his
thigh, against his crotch. One hand steady and soft while she tore
his flesh.

He climaxed while she tore him.

She cried when she saw the cut the hook
had made. She had not seen him come. His shorts were already wet
from the fishing; she did not notice.

He hid his climax from her.

He kissed her hair softly. He liked the
smell of her hair, a mass of long, brown and blue waves. Like the
sea. She was so thin now. She had not been this thin before. Before
Joshua. He knew she did not love Joshua. He had listened to her
breathing when they had sex before Joshua; she did not pant the
same with Joshua.

He had watched her with Joshua. Last
night, in their cabin, he had watched them. Her thin and pale
against Joshua’s slim but muscular, bulkier, white and hairy frame.
Her orgasm had hurt him. Lemieux had not wanted to come on the
fishing trip, but it was her idea. She was crazy. She had too much
vitality for their world; she belonged in a world of her own. A
queen.

This was Lemieux’s last game. She was
to be his last queen. Joshua was taking her sanity, taking her life
from her.

Excerpt
from
The J-man
, by Trica C. Line

Her Old
Friend

P
atricia caught sight of LeRoy as
she entered the conference room. He sat in his usual spot at the
end of the table, looking pretty relaxed. Lucky guy. He smiled up
at her. She forced a smile in response.

The terrible
duo,
Hamilton and DesForges (as usual
DesForges had sneaked into the office without her noticing him),
sat side by side on their usual window-side of the table. The pair
nodded and kept on sipping coffee. She could really go for a latte
right about now, preferably somewhere else.

Reid
motioned her to the seat next to hers at the opposite end of the
table from the guys. Not in a good mood
,
was she? For whatever reason, Frankke had also been summoned for
Christopher’s grand jury, for that was what this meeting was. A
damn inquisition!

Frankke
saluted her very formally. “Good morning, Miss Patricia. May I
say you look beautiful today? Blue is most certainly your colour.”
The guy had a weird sense of humour this morning; she would have
preferred his habitual silent nod.

He stood up
to let her sit between Reid and himself. He had taken Frédéric’s
usual spot; the poor kid would have had a fit had he been cited.
Odd humour, she thought of Frankke’s seat choice. She should have
fallen for a guy like him: polite, discreet, usually silent,
classy, big and strong like a barrel. Uncommitted.

Chris walked
in. He too was polite, discreet, silent and classy at
times
. Delightful moments. She sighed.
Delirious moments in a sea of stubbornness, overprotectiveness and
arrogance. Charles walked in on Christopher’s heels and took a
chair close to the door while Christopher just remained standing
like always. Today he picked a spot between Charles and LeRoy.
Please let this not be what I think it is, she prayed
silently.

“
OK
, guys, listen up,” Christopher
said as he motioned them to quiet down. “You all remember
Charles?”

Of course they do
,
the team met the guy just yesterday! What are you doing, Big
guy?

“
Effective
immediately, the motel murders are ours. Ham’s the officer in
charge. Temporarily working for us
,
Charles will partner with Hamilton. The two will work full time on
the motel case with DesForges as the backup guy. Only the motel
case. Any questions?”

And with
that her pra
yers were shot to hell; she
dreaded where this was going. Christopher took his damn time
looking around the table to study everyone. None of the team looked
surprised. Was he waiting to see how they would react toward
her
?
Hamilton was smiling at the table top. She caught Reid and LeRoy
studying her discreetly while Frankke, DesForges and Charles
glanced blankly between Christopher and her. Impossible
man.

They were
all going to keep her on a close watch and for what? She had
already told them
Lemieux’s name. She
didn’t consider she knew him anymore. After all, she had not seen
the guy in almost two years, damn it! A different time, a different
life. Besides, she had only slept with him three or four times at
the most. Well, less than a dozen times. Twenty, not one more for
sure. Apart from the writing, everything was different now. Most
infuriating.

“
No
questions?” The infuriating man insisted before moving on. “OK
then, let’s start. Charles will go over all the info he has so
far.” Some tried to protest. “Yes, again. Then Ham will take over
and fill us in on the rest.”

So Charles
droned on with all the details he had already given them the night
before. He went on and on, through every damn detail, all the
insignificant, trivial facts that cops find
sooo
fascinating. She
stopped listening and started thinking. What if she hadn’t seen the
pictures? Perhaps she had made a mistake, and it wasn’t him? After
they had checked the corpse’s fingerprints, dental, DNA, retina
scan and whatnot, someone somewhere was going to refute his
(
its
?) identity as Lemieux.
Oui. Bien sûr
.

Damn it, she
couldn’t fool herself into believing her own delusional wishful
thinking. No way. She had seen Lemieux naked often enough. Which
raised another question: why hadn’t she recognised him in the dirt?
He had lost weight since their time together. Unless she counted
the small scar left by the hook, souvenir from their fishing trip
(but she had not looked at his thigh that closely), Lemieux didn’t
have any memorable scars. No distinctive tattoo like the kid.
Nothing to tell his body apart from another (strikingly
good-looking) guy. Tall, lean, well-defined muscles. He sure had
not looked like a hacker. Not that he was one really.

Lemieux had
been
the tool guy, the one that got them
in and out of places. Even dead, his face remained handsome; in the
photo, his face had been peaceful, as if he had been sleeping. He
had sexy features, pretty without being feminine, soft, almost
youthful. A surprisingly innocent
visage
when one considered his
sexual tastes and the dumps he hung around to satisfy
them.

Charles
marched on to the autopsy report. How much was there to say, the
guy was dead
?
Vraiment
. Strangled with a
piece of lacy black lingerie. She knew Lemieux −
not that it was him. If it was
him...? No, it couldn’t be him
− he would
have appreciated the irony. It would make a hell of a story line if
she ever decided to write such a book.

The
a
utopsy report said the woman had been as
high as a kite, but the man had been clean. Lemieux had never been
into illegal substances. The ME unofficially stated the cause of
death as strangulation for the man, but, drum roll for the big
change from yesterday, the woman had overdosed.
Duh
.

“
So,
technically, she wasn’t murdered,” someone mumbled, DesForges
perhaps. The guys had the annoying habit of all speaking with
similar gravelly voices. Damn annoying. “Strangled after dead
then?” Sick.

Was it one
of Lemieux
’s kinky games or was the
strangulation connected to Lemieux’s killing? ‘Oops,’ the killer
might have said. ‘I hadn’t noticed she was already dead.’
I am so
not
writing that
story.

Charles
finished up with a review
of yesterday’s review meeting, with Lemieux’s name as the grand
finale.

“Any questions?” No answer.

Everybody
appeared to have listened carefully. Unless they had spaced-out as
she had. She sensed Christopher casually lingering on her as he
glanced around the table. So he knew she had not listened. Surely
he realised she was not going to get involved.

I can spell it out for you if you want. No lecture
necessary, Big guy, I got the message
.
She intended to stay well out of the way of this case. Never
getting personally or emotionally involved in his investigations
was one of Christopher’s rules. It was about time she listened to
him. From now on, she swore to herself to only work on cold cases.
They were just fiction-like stories.

When nobody
spoke, she took it as a cue the meeting was over.
Very
glad
it was, she started to get up. Nobody else moved.

“
Not done
yet, Princess.” Calling her Princess in public was a sure way to
get her attention albeit not in a good way. Most infuriating.
“Hamilton will take over now.” Christopher smiled, that sexy
crooked grin of his. The man played dirty. “Would you like us to
take a break before?”

Yes!
No
. What could Hamilton add
anyway? Charles had talked for nearly an hour, and they had already
gone over it all less than twelve hours ago. She really should have
stayed in bed. That was what she got for falling for a workaholic
who never let it go, whatever the
it
was. She sat back
down.

Couldn’t
he say, just once,
‘Let’s you forget about it,
ma chérie
.’ She should be dating
a Frenchman. Or an Italian
uomo
. Anything but a cop. She
sighed.

“
Let’s start
by the guy’s name,”
Hamilton began. “Rick
Lemieux.” It was such a shame hearing wasn’t like smelling or
seeing. She could stop herself from smelling or seeing (when she
really,
really
put her mind to it), but couldn’t stop herself
from hearing, not in a damn meeting at least. She should have
brought her phone’s earplugs.

“
Fred and I
went through two dozen insurance companies.” For sure the guys’
patience impressed Christopher. “We found the one making payments
to a Rick Lemieux−” Lemieux had enough to live on for the rest of
his life if he had had a life left “−According to the insurance
company’s records, Lemieux has no next of kin. And check this. The
Insurance’s address for the guy is a postal box. Domicile unknown.
Fred is still checking through the databases, but so far, we
haven’t found anything on him.”