Quintic (40 page)

Her
contribution to Lemieux’s case might have initiated an
impressive improvement, though. Ham had confided
early on during his pairing with Charles that the rookie kept
staring at the floor at every fucking stripper joints they
investigated. Chris hoped the damn woman had taken care of his
shyness when she had dragged the kid the other night. Not that she
wasn’t as coy with the nakedness of strangers, be they strippers or
stiffs.

“
It was my
idea
, Sir,” the rookie kept
repeating.

Yah right, kid. You might think it was, but that’s just how
good she is.
“Tell me, Charles. Did she
try to stop you at all?” No answer from the kid. “How hard did you
have to work to convince her?”

“
She’s
always so, I don’t know. She wanted to help.”

“
I think the
word you we
re looking for, Charles,
is
supportive
. And why wouldn’t the
damn woman be? It was her fucking idea!”

Having your
girlfriend take one of your officers to a strip joint was
something. Outrageous, even for her. Reckless, two visits, two
fights. Puzzling, there again, even for her. What was it with that
club? The place had changed a lot in the last three years. No male
strippers were on display now, not one pretty (or nearly cute)
strippers either.

The night
she had dragged him there, she certainly had not enjoyed herself,
of that much he was sure. And that was fucking fine with him. He
had caught the jerks in the dump checking her up and hadn’t liked
the feeling.

She was
a
fine-looking woman, downright stunning
when she wasn’t in disguise. That night, she had not gone for
beautiful, she had gone for racy and way too sensual. He had wanted
to cover her up with his jacket and drag her home. What the hell
had possessed Lemieux to bring her there in the first place? Chris
wouldn’t get an answer to that question in this lifetime. He hated
those guys. What the fuck had she seen in Lemieux? In Joshua and
Lemieux?

As far as he
remembered, not one character in her books resembled Lemieux, in
tastes at least. Chris had read her books, some more than once. He
had read
The J-man
before learning about Joshua. A fucking good
thing too, or he would have dug the jerk up just to put a few
bullets in his bones. Had he been so focused on the female
character (her) and that loser jerk J-man that he had missed vital
information on a secondary character addicted to hookers? He had to
read that story over again; he’d lock his guns in his safe during
that quality time with the dastardly ghosts.

Very early
on in their relationship, Chris
had
figured out her primary source of inspiration. Real life. Her way
of dealing with life was changing it and twisting it into words,
and as a result, except for details such as names, actions and
locations, her works of fiction were often staggeringly real. She
based her characters on people she’d met, however briefly. Maybe if
he could get her to talk about Lemieux, he could understand her
attraction to the jerk, but, Chris’s problem was that he wasn’t
sure he wanted to get it.

And
what if his probing made her want to know how
the case was going? Getting her involved would be bad; her
participation
always was. To make her sad was even worse. She sure was
trying hard not to think about the jerk, wasn’t she?

The drive to
work at this early hour took less than a half hour. By the
time
he arrived, his smile had
vanished.

“
Ham, so
that you know, I’m gonna follow you guys around for the next couple
of days to get a feel on the kid.” Official reason. Unofficial? To
get a feel on Lemieux. “I’ll split my time between you guys, and
Frankke and Shapiro on the waitress cases.” Officially again. And
unofficially, way off the record, he’d do some digging on the bath
tub gamers. “You still lead. Just pretend I’m not
there.”

“Roger lead, Boss.”

Patricia
suddenly decided
to spend the next few
days at Ingrid’s, her publisher-friend-critic-father
figure-drinking buddy-hawk mother, leaving Chris to his work
days
and
nights. Hence, in the evenings, he worked on the cases,
went for drinks with the guys, watched sports games, all things he
did with or without her but enjoyed immensely more when she was
around.

He barely
had time to miss her
. The smell of her.
The feel of her. Her hair like silk on his skin. The softness of
her lips. Her smiles. Her sassy remarks. He barely yearned for her,
only mornings and nights. And times in between. It pissed him off.
She sure damn well better be
craving
for him.

The
investigations were going slowly. The life and death of Lemieux
made
for a screwed-up story. Here was a
guy with money to spare, time to spare but who had lived in his
fucking car for the last two years and dedicated all of his free
time to hookers and stripper girls.

The
few
working women the team had managed to
link to Lemieux − because of the amount of money the loser had
spent, and the things he had asked for in exchange − all looked the
same. Curly brown hair. Tallish. Slender like Patricia.

“
The jerk’s
pissing me off big time,” Chris grumbled to Ham as they reviewed
the case. Fuck, he hated the whole bunch of them. And she
said
he
was arrogant. Of course, he was, but he deserved to be,
didn’t he? He was doing something with his life, keeping the place
safer, keeping
her
safe and happy. Not like those five hackers
assholes.

The dead
waitress was Lemieux’s opposite. A good girl that one was, clean
and straight, enrolled in college, earning good grades. She had not
abused drugs and hadn’t fucked or dated anyone sleazy. Hell, she
didn’t even drink. A near perfect girl, with near-perfect family
and friends. As a rule, Chris didn’t talk bad about dead girls, but
all this perfection was pissing him off. Boring as hell. No lead,
all washed away by the rain. A random kill?

Random
murders were the toughest to solve, the killer almost impossible to
catch. Statistically speaking, a vast majority of victims knew
their killer. During their acquaintance with their prey, or after
the deed, the killers remained near. Thus, they made mistakes,
however small, left clues, confided or bragged to
someone.

Chris was
patient
, and he was thorough. Eventually,
if there were clues to find, something to lead back to the killer,
he found it. But if it were random, that little something would
lead nowhere. The first diner kill had appeared random; the second
didn’t. The MOs were too similar for the second kill to be
fortuitous.

Chris didn’t
like coincidences. He would even go as far as to say he didn’t
believe in them, not in his work, at least, no way.

“
Again guys.
Common thread?” He
asked as he was
reviewing the cases with Ham, Charles, Shapiro and Frankke over
lunch. After a morning with the first two, he was going to tag
along with the latter for the afternoon. Shapiro was just there for
the food.

“
The rain,
obviously.” Frankke.

“
Could be
coincidental,” Charles offered.

The others sniggered.

“
Time of the
murders, end of the shift.” Shapiro.

“
Location’s
different, blocks apart, but the diners are similar.”
Frankke.

“
The victims
too are different but similar. College girls, young and sweet.”
Ham.

“
The more I
think about it, the more I feel we should be looking at the two
cases together.”

“
Same for
me,” Frankke agreed. “After all, wasn’t Patricia on her way to the
old diner when she stumbled on the fresh kill?”

“
Right now,
Boss, the Puss in herself is a common thread between the two
cases.”

“
Thanks for
pointing that out, Ham. Fucking depressing.”

“
Roger
gloomy.”

He and
Frankke
went back to both diners,
repeating the same questions all over again. Lists of contacts,
friends, neighbours, to cross check and see what came of it.
Strenuous work. He was good at it; so were Frankke and Shapiro and
the rest of his team. By Saturday, they had updated lists of a
hundred and seventeen names from the first diner and ninety-eight
names from the second. All names worth checking in more closely for
all that seemed perfect might not be. Sometimes, small feuds,
jealousies, old grudges went unresolved and festered into something
bigger.

Out of those
names, twenty-six were on both lists. Six degrees of separation
they said. With years of experience on the job
, Chris had found that, in a megalopolis like his, when one
searched for it, the six degrees were overestimated. Friends and
family had been most helpful, maybe too much. Suspicious. The diner
staff of both places hadn’t. Suspicious too. Then again, Chris
always assumed the worse until proven otherwise.

“
We’ll see,”
he mused out loud. “At least now, we have something to go
on.”

Maybe he
should crosscheck those lists with names from
Lemieux
’s case for, after all, those
deaths all had one thing in common. Patricia. Nah. It seemed like a
long shot, even for her. And he wasn’t
that
cynical, was
he?

Patricia Comes Back
Home

P
atricia got back that Sunday. As
always, she returned from Ingrid fatigued. Too much work. True to
form, Ingrid acted like a dragon lady and questioned every single
phrase she’d written and every character’s motives. The dragon
rarely asked for changes, but her cross-examination made Patricia
rewrite passages, clarify characters’ motives, add details, remove
redundancies.

On top of
work, they
had indulged in girly
activities. Ingrid was a party animal. While most nights Patricia
contented herself with a single glass of red wine − on other nights
when she wasn’t, she rarely had more than three glasses, no need,
half into the second she was already tipsy − she was an amateur
compared to Ingrid. If the woman didn’t have such a high tolerance
to booze, she would be drunk.

They had
dr
unk nearly two bottles a night. In
Patricia’s defence, they had eaten out every night, lavish meals,
had begun the drinking early (five o’clock sharp), and concluded it
late (never before eleven).

Mercifully,
for Patricia at least, the wine and dine had come without any
men-chasing on Ingrid’s part. This month, her dragon friend was
enjoying some young executive guy she had met awhile back. Luckily
for Christopher too, since Ingrid had the bad habit of using
Patricia on her hunting spree, as a
faire-valoir
. A bait. What were
friends for, right?

Ingrid was
very disciplined;
she had Patricia up and
about at six every damn morning.

“
This is
indecent. I can’t think this early.”

At her protest, Ingrid only
rushed her more.

“
And to
think I don’t even get up for Christopher at this hour.” Well, not
every morning.

Ingrid
had
warned her from the start she
wouldn’t take any bullshit. “I know how good you’re at lying and
pretending. And it’s fine for writing,
fillette
,” Ingrid had said
when they had started the publishing house together. “But I want
you raw and naked when we’re working. Figuratively speaking, of
course,
ma
chérie
.”

From time to
time, a fleeting doubt would cross Patricia’s mind about the
figurative part.
Moving
on
. Having her sleep-deprived was an
effective way to ensure she was raw and figuratively naked.
Christopher frequently used the same technique (although, he was
big on both figurative and
tangible
nakedness). Infuriating,
both of them.

She
spent half the week arguing with Ingrid and the
other half editing her book with her. They also worked on
themselves, her friend’s idea. Patricia was not the sharing type,
but Ingrid had mastered the art of weaselling personal details out
of her. But, since Ingrid, contrary to Patricia, was not shy with
her affairs, Patricia learned more than she told.

Ingrid did
not only share but she also over-divulged. This week’s confessions
could have been titled: a fifty-something’s amorous and kinky
sexual lifestyle. Patricia learned that women over fifty liked
toys, from the oversized silicone models to lively young
ones.

“
Ah. Hum.
Something to look forward to, then. Can we get back to my book
now?”

All in all,
as us
ual, the week had been great. She
loved that woman.

She got back
to her hotel suite around supper time.
Should I call Christopher?
If he came over, she wouldn’t be able to sleep until
midnight, not if he realised her shoulder didn’t hurt
anymore.
It’s safer if I
don’t call him. Safer.
A bowl of soup
from the downstairs restaurant was wiser. She was happy with a
simple vegetable soup, hearty, healthy, with a piece of bread and
some butter and cheese, and
without
wine. She dropped little
cubes of cheese in her soup and ate them as they melted. Comfort
food.