Shaken (30 page)

I didn’t think I had a
take me now
look.

“Don’t you have enough shots?” I asked. “You went through three rolls.”

“I’ve got some good ones. Some great ones. But I don’t have the
knock a man on his ass
shot yet. Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know.” I tried for a laugh, but it came out more like a nervous squeak.

“Just keep your eyes on the camera and listen to my words.” Shell raised it to his face. “We’ve just had a terrific dinner and are eating dessert. Strawberries and fresh cream. I dip a strawberry in the cream and feed it to you. But I don’t give it to you right away. I just dab the berry on your bottom lip, teasing you. I run it along your teeth, gently, before pushing the tip of it inside. Then you feel my hand caress your thigh under the table.”

Rather than sounding creepy, Shell’s voice was oddly hypnotic. I could see the scene. Feel the cold cream in my mouth. The tart sweetness of the fruit. A warm hand on my leg.

“You reach out to bite the strawberry, but I pull it away.”

My lips parted, just a bit.

“Imagine you want the berry in your mouth. How would you tell me that with your eyes?”

I felt my eyes smolder a bit. He snapped some pictures.

“Now my fingers are moving slowly up your thigh. I touch the edge of your panties. I keep them there, rubbing them back and forth, back and forth, waiting for your signal to put them inside. Show me you want me to.”

It was easier than I thought it would be, because I was getting turned on. I tried to remember the last time I’d had sex. It had been a few weeks. Alan and I were having a dry spell, worsened by him traveling a lot and my long hours. I’d also been too busy to take care of myself lately, and having a man—an attractive man with a camera—talk in deep, dulcet tones about rubbing my thigh was more than enough to get me going.

“That’s it,” Shell said. “That’s the look.” He set down the camera and stared at me.

“But I haven’t knocked you on your ass,” I breathed.

I walked up to him, taking my time, liking the way his eyes were on my body. Then I touched his camera lens, running my finger along it, feeling deliciously wicked.

Shell grabbed me abruptly, cupping my ass in his hand, pulling me close, so close I could feel he was just as turned on as I was.

I realized it was wrong, but I tilted up my head to be kissed anyway. He lowered his lips to mine but stopped short, only a few millimeters away. Shell gently kissed one side of my mouth, and the other. Then he softly chewed on my lower lip, tasting like vodka and heat.

Shell’s tongue sought mine, met it, and I moaned in my throat.

That’s when my front door opened and my boyfriend, Alan, walked in.

Chapter 8

“J
ack?”

“Alan!” I quickly pulled away from Shell, wondering if my boyfriend had seen us kissing. “Hi!”

Alan’s face screwed up in confusion. He wore the standard Alan outfit: acid-washed jeans, a blue iZod shirt, the pennies in his loafers nice and coppery bright. His thick, wavy blond hair was long in the back, the bangs short and hugging his tan forehead. In his hand he had a dozen roses, which made me feel positively awful.

“Did I…come at…a bad time?” Alan said, sizing up Shell.

“Is this your boyfriend?” Shell asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Shell put on a big smile and stuck out his hand, walking over to Alan. “Pleased to meet you, Alan. Shell Compton. Officer Streng is going to be working undercover in my business.”

Alan shook Shell’s hand, but he looked somewhere between wary and angry. “And by undercover, you mean she has to have her shirt off?”

I looked down at my blouse. I’d undone the first three buttons, and somehow Shell had managed to remove the last few. I buttoned up, wondering how in the hell I was going to explain this.

“I run an escort service,” Shell said. “Someone is murdering my girls. Officer Streng is going to pretend to work for me, to try to find the killer. I needed to take some sexy pics of her for her portfolio. That’s how my clients pick their dates.”

“Three women have died so far,” I quickly added. “The files are on the kitchen counter.”

“I see,” Alan said, though he didn’t sound very convinced.

“Are we done?” I asked Shell, though it was more a statement than a question.

“Yeah. Let me pack up my lights and—”

“I can do it and bring them tomorrow morning.”

Shell nodded. “Sure thing. See you later. Good meeting you, Alan.” Shell stepped around him, then let himself out.

“That was weird,” Alan said. “Nothing like walking in on your girlfriend with another guy and her shirt off.”

“My shirt was on,” I said. “It was just open. Are those for me?”

Alan held out the flowers. I took the bouquet, gave it the perfunctory sniff, and engaged in an awkward hug with my boyfriend. I still was jittery from the shock of him showing up and surprising me, and wasn’t sure what I was actually feeling. After all, Alan had never said
I love you
, and he’d completely forgotten my birthday.

“Happy birthday,” Alan said. “I love you.”

Whoa. He loved me? How was I supposed to respond to that? Say it back? Did I even want to?

Instead of responding in kind, I held Alan at an arm’s length and searched his eyes. “My, uh, birthday was yesterday.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Alan said. “I wrote it down. It was this Tuesday.”

“Today is Wednesday.”

His face pinched. “Oh, geez, Jacqueline. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, even though it really wasn’t. “At least now I know why you didn’t call.”

“Did you do anything special at least?”

“I did a prostitution sting and found a dismembered woman in a Dumpster.”

“Fun. Was there birthday cake?”

I smiled, relaxing a notch. “No, there wasn’t.”

“I missed you.”

“Missed you, too.”

But did I? If I really did miss Alan, why was I playing tonsil tennis with some other guy?

“I know I’ve been kind of…distant…lately,” he said, hooding his eyes. “The fact is, I’ve been thinking a lot. About us.”

“And what have you been thinking about?”

Alan crouched down, like he was tying his shoe.

But he wasn’t tying his shoe.

He was kneeling.

And he had a small, black box in his hand.

“I’ve been looking a long time for a woman like you, Jacqueline. I love being with you, and when we’re apart, I think about you.”

Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God. He was—

“Jacqueline Streng.” Alan opened up the tiny box and took out the gold ring with the diamond in it. “Would you make me the happiest guy in the world and marry me?”

Chapter 9

I
looked at Alan, on one knee. Looked at the ring, a nice-size, round diamond. Looked back at Alan. Then at the ring. Then Alan. Then the ring.

“You’re supposed to answer yes or no,” Alan said. His eyes were bright, his face earnest and hopeful.

“Alan…I…well, I’m kind of blown away right now.”

Alan waited.

“I mean, we’ve only been dating for a few months,” I went on. “We haven’t even lived together.”

“I’m an old-fashioned guy. The time to live together is when we’re engaged.”

“Shouldn’t living together come first? What if we can’t stand being around each other all the time?”

Alan lost a bit of his sparkle. He closed the ring box and stood up. “You’re going to be thirty next year. If we want to start a family, it has to be soon.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to have kids, Alan. That can happen later. My career—”

“Your career? A guy was just in your living room, taking pictures of you with your shirt off. That’s the career you want?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “This is what I’ve been working for, Alan. You know it’s my goal to be a lieutenant—”

“—before you’re forty. I know that, Jacqueline. But whenever you talk about your job, all I hear is how little respect you get, how they’re holding you back, how no men want to work with you except that shithead Henry—”

“Harry.”

“—because it’s all a big, sexist old boys’ network.”

I put my hands on my hips. “This is my dream, Alan.”

“And what about kids? Let’s say you do get your dream job. Are you going to quit, at the height of your career, and drop everything to have babies?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m not saying I don’t want to have a family. I’m saying I don’t think I’m ready for one right now.”

Alan shook his head, giving me one of his patented looks of disapproval. “You want to be forty-five and pregnant? By the time the kid is in college, you’ll be in a nursing home.”

“Of course not. I don’t want children when I’m that old.”

“Yesterday was your birthday. In three hundred and sixty-four days you’ll have another one. You can be married and maybe pregnant by then, or working some other hooker sting for a bunch of chauvinists who don’t respect you.”

Alan stuck the ring in his pocket and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m not going to start an argument trying to convince you to marry me. Either you want to, or you don’t. I love you, and I respect that you need some time to think. You’re a fantastic, wonderful woman, and I know you’ll make a terrific wife, and mother. But only if you’re ready.”

I didn’t know if I was ready.

“Stay,” I said. What I left unsaid was,
convince me this is the right thing to do.

“I can’t make this decision for you, Jacqueline. I know I’m ready. Most people our age are ready. Every single one of my friends is married.”

“So you want to get married because all of your friends are?”

“I want to get married because I love you. But the clock is ticking. For both of us.”

Alan reached the door, paused for a moment, then left. I considered going after him, but he was right. I did need to think about this.

I always assumed I’d get married and have children someday, but never really stopped to think how that would fit with my career. How could I rise up in the ranks if I needed to take a year off for maternity leave? How seriously would I be taken by the brass if I had to interrupt a high-profile murder investigation so I could stay home with my kid who had the chicken pox?

But, by the same token, I was almost thirty. I needed to make this decision, and soon. The fact was, if I didn’t take this chance with Alan, I might never have another one.

Alan was right. The clock was ticking.

And boy, did I hate ticking clocks.

Chapter 10

1989, August 17

E
veryone kept staring at me when I got to the office that morning. No one said anything to my face, or even made direct eye contact. But I kept catching sideways glances and seeing whispered exchanges, to the point where I was feeling sort of paranoid. I wondered if I had my Armani suit on backwards, or toilet paper stuck to my shoe. A quick mirror check in the restroom didn’t answer any questions for me; I thought I looked fine.

I’d been to the third floor, Homicide, only a few times. It was a large area, the desks all out in the open. After weaving through a few aisles, I found Detective Herb Benedict pecking away at a keyboard and squinting into a green monochrome monitor. Next to him was a box of a dozen donuts, half of them missing. Like Shell, I had no idea where Herb put those extra calories. But I was more impressed by his computer. That he had his own, rather than had to share it, meant he must have been more important than I’d guessed. Those things cost more than my car.

Herb looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “May I help you, ma’am?”

I set the files I was holding—the prior victims—on his desk. “Reporting for duty, Detective.”

He seemed puzzled, and then his eyes went wide.

“Jacqueline? Uh…wow. I actually didn’t recognize you. That’s some suit.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t mention Shell bought it, having no idea if that violated some sort of ethics code or rule. “Nice computer.”

Herb smiled. “Thanks. Can you believe it has twenty megabytes of memory?”

“That’s insane,” I said, shaking my head. “Who would ever need that much?”

“The world is changing so fast I can’t even keep up. Do you know what a cellular radio phone is?”

“Those big, clunky portable things that look like bricks with huge antennas? Like Michael Douglas used in
Wall Street
?”

Herb nodded. “They sell for a cool four grand. But I heard they’re working on making them more affordable. Technology experts predict one out of a thousand people will have a cell phone by the year twenty-ten.”

“In just twenty years? No way. I can’t even imagine needing one. And it’s not like I could fit that giant thing in my purse.”

“Maybe they’ll get smaller,” Herb said. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Did you review the vics’ files?”

I nodded. I’d been up late last night, poring over the files. The three victims had all died in similar fashions, of internal bleeding. All had been drugged, and dismembered. All had been found in Dumpsters, without heads. Alongside one of the bodies was a bloody ball gag. That last detail popped out at me. I remembered that lecture from the police academy, about Unknown Subject K.

“Have you ever encountered a victim where a ball gag was used?” I asked.

Herb’s eyes twinkled. “You’re thinking about Mr. K, aren’t you?”

“It’s one of his signatures.”

“Possible. It’s also possible all the unsolveds that involved gags are being incorrectly lumped together and attributed to some imaginary boogeyman.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I like keeping an open mind. I find that if I pursue an investigation with a bias, I might miss something important because it doesn’t fit with my theory. Ready to visit Shell’s office?”

“Yeah.”

Herb let me drive, which blew my mind. In my time on patrol, and being partners with McGlade, I never drove. Perhaps Herb was confident enough that it didn’t bother him to let a woman take control. Or perhaps he was just lazy.