Sugar & Spice (16 page)

“About seventeen hours, I'd say,” the coroner said.

I looked at my watch. It was six p.m. If the coroner was right, that would mean that she was killed sometime after she finished the nightly broadcast. Kelly and I donned surgical gloves and went into the room where she'd kept her computer.

I said, “You think someone followed her home from work last night?”

“That's what it looks like to me.”

“How are they getting in?”

Kelly interrupted a couple of D.C. cops laughing in the hallway. “Guys, was the alarm turned off on this one, too?”

“She didn't have an alarm!” an officer yelled back.

Kelly looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. I shook my head. It amazed me how callous we've become. There was a cut-up young woman not far from where the officers told jokes and laughed. But they weren't bothered at all. Truth be told, if I didn't know Season Chambers, their laughing and joking wouldn't have bothered me. I've done the same thing. It's different when you know the victim.

After an hour of searching, we found exactly what we expected—nothing. I removed my cell from its holder and called home. I wanted to let my family know I wasn't going to make dinner. Keyth answered.

“Hi, sweetheart,” I said.

“Hi, yourself.”

“I won't be home for dinner tonight. I'm sorry.”

“I figured as much. I saw the six o'clock news. Season Chambers wasn't involved with the prison, right?”

“I don't believe so. No.”

“Do you guys have anything yet?”

“Not really. Just bits and pieces. Nothing concrete yet. We need a motive. And I'm starting to believe that the warden's murder didn't have anything to do with drugs. Anyway, I'll see you when I get home. Bye.”

Next, I called Detective Thompson. I asked him about the Connelly victim. He told me her name was Heather and that she had married John Connelly a few years ago. When I asked him about the daughter, he said that John and his first wife, Caroline, had filed for divorce. She'd moved to Washington and taken the daughter with her.

“What was her name?”

“Alexis Connelly. She's doing time for manslaughter in your neck of the woods.”

“No. She was released in early July,” I told him. “Has anyone claimed the Malibu property?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Hmmmm. This is way out there. But do you think Alexis Connelly could have hired someone to kill her stepmother?”

“I suppose it's possible, but I doubt it, Agent Perry. They were the best of friends in high school.”

“What!” I said, suddenly frowning. “Her father married her best friend?”

“Yep.”

“Fax me the backgrounds on the murdered women. There may be something there, Detective.”

The killings ceased. Two weeks had passed and we hadn't had any new victims that fit the profile of the Lasher. That's what we called him. We had no leads on the other man, if indeed there was another man. Several agents were saying the killings were over because our handwriting expert believed that Rappaport was ambidextrous.

He based his theory on the fact that Dwight Rappaport was masturbating with his left hand. McGregor believed that was his dominate hand and that's why he was using it to pleasure himself. From his suicide note, and the entries in his ledger, our handwriting expert concluded that Rappaport wrote with his right hand. Personally, I think Kortney Malone wanted to wrap up the case so that the bureau would look good—look efficient under her regime.

I thought there was a killer still out there, still choosing victims by some strange formula. It was just a matter of time before the killer resurfaced.

In the meantime, I was on my way to the dojo. Kelly was supposed to meet me there. She had a lot of time on her hands since Sterling Wise left. She reminded me that I had promised to train with her when I called her from Universal City. Now was as good a time as any. Nothing was happening with the Lasher.

I parked the Mustang, picked up a bag that had my tools, and the sword that Coco Nimburu had given me. I was going to hang the sword. This would be the first time that I'd even been to my dojo since my students
were killed a couple of months earlier. It felt strange. I guess I had been avoiding the place. Lots of memories.

I flipped the light switch upwards and illuminated the dojo. I had already decided I was going to hang the sword right under the life-sized photo of a scene from
Enter the Dragon.
There were several scenes from that film and others in the dojo. Most were of Bruce Lee in the basement of the castle fighting Hahn's men. The life-sized one, however, was of Bruce Lee and Bob Wall in their epic showdown on the castle grounds.

I walked over to the stereo and turned it on. Seconds later, I heard Diana Ross and the Supremes' classic hit “I Hear a Symphony.” I liked listening to Motown when I worked out. My father practically weaned me on the Motown sound while we were in China. I grew to love it as much as he did. They had such great singers and songwriters during their heyday. Smoky Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson Five. Too bad Berry Gordy had to sell, I thought.

I hung the sword and began my workout. Kelly wasn't going to show for another hour or so. I began with some stretches to warm up my muscles. As I felt my body starting to warm up, I took off my uniform jacket. Underneath I was wearing a black sleeveless shirt with black and white yin and yang symbols on it.

After that, I put on some gloves and went over to the speed bag. I hit it until I felt myself starting to perspire. Next, I skipped rope for about twenty minutes to “Cloud Nine,” “What's goin' on,” “Fingertips,” and “Psychedelic Shack.” By the time I finished, I had a good sweat going. It was time for the real workout—the wooden dummy.

The wooden dummy helped perfect timing, and striking distance. It also improved endurance and trapping techniques. As I struck the wooden dummy, I found myself thinking about my former students: Earl Johns, Valerie Ryan, Greg Fisher, and Karen Monroe. They had all been killed in this very room. That was another reason I hadn't been back. I didn't want to deal with their passing. As long as I didn't come to the dojo, they were still very much alive—even if it was only in my mind.

An hour had passed and I was sitting cross-legged with my eyes closed in front of the sword that I'd hung underneath the Bruce Lee mural. I could smell the fragrance of a mixture of musk and jasmine incense that I'd lit. “Memories” by the Temptations was playing. As I sank deeper and deeper into my mind, the music became distant, but I was cognizant of it and everything around me.

Like flashes of light, pieces of the evidence that we had collected and the dead women came to my mind out of sequence. One second I'd see Sarah Lawford. The next I'd see melted ice cream in her kitchen. I could see Dwight Rappaport sitting in his chair masturbating, then hearing the sound of a bullet discharging and blowing his brains out. I could see the blood-splattered walls in Taylor Hoffman's bedroom. The look on Bernard Rogers' face when he came to Sarah Lawford's home. The picture of Alexis Connelly that Detective Thompson sent me came to mind. She seemed so familiar, but I couldn't place her anywhere. Then there were the receipts. That was the one piece of evidence that we had all overlooked. They all had receipts from the same place.

Suddenly, I felt a presence in my dojo and it wasn't Kelly. This was a hostile presence. Now there were three more. Four altogether.

I focused on all four men. As they came closer to me, I felt my fear attempt to assert itself. Control and relaxation were the weapons of a true martial artist. If you can control your fear and anger, it's possible to overcome any foe. I inhaled a deep satisfying amount of oxygen and exhaled slowly. I could hear “Dancin' in the Streets” playing now.

“The school is closed, gentlemen,” I said, still sitting cross-legged and facing the mural.

“We're here to see to it that it stays that way,” the man on my right said.

I stood to my feet, my back still facing them. I inhaled deeply again, relaxing every part of my body, preparing for combat. I was ready for anything. I didn't have to see them to know where they were. When I studied under Master Lo, we often used blindfolds, which heightened one's senses. Once I mastered the art, I no longer needed the blindfold to feel antagonism in the air.

With my back still to them, I said, “Is this going to be a fair fight, gentlemen? Or do I have to kick everybody's ass at the same time?”

“We drew straws to see who gets the first crack at the twenty-thousand-dollar bonus,” the man to my right said. “And I won.”

I smiled. “So, you're here to kill me?” I turned around slowly and faced them. They were all rugged-looking men. Barroom brawlers, every one. The man who had done all of the talking so far looked Spanish. He had dark skin and long black hair, which he wore in a ponytail. They all looked like refugees from a rodeo.

“Not kill, little lady,” said the one wearing a black cowboy hat and a black leather vest, no shirt, which showed off his powerfully built arms. He and two others had whips in their hands. “Five-thousand dollars a limb.” He went on.

“Let me ask you somethin', cowboy,” I began in my best Southern drawl. “Did y'all get y'alls' money upfront? Or do y'all have to complete the job first?”

“What difference does it make?” said the only black cowboy of the bunch.

“What difference does it make? If'n y'all didn't get paid upfront, y'all not gon' collect none of it.” I looked at the first man. “Come and get some, tough guy.” I stood perfectly still as he stepped within range. I needed to distract him. “So y'all fell for the longest straw trick, huh, sweet pea? Don't y'all know they just wanna see what I'm capable of doing before they approach me? What an idiot.”

“Well, I'm gonna…”

Smack! Smack! Smack! Each blow of the three-punch combination sounded off in a fraction of a second. The Spaniard was stunned by the sheer speed of the blows. Blood trickled down both nostrils and out the corner of his mouth. I smiled. He didn't even see it coming.

“You little bit…”

Smack! Smack! Smack! I hit him three more times in rapid succession. His head snapped back with each blow. Every time he opened his mouth to say something, I was going to close it. “I don't like that word.” I smiled.

“Damn, Tony,” the black cowboy said. “She fuckin' you up. Get that bitch, man.”

“Yeah, Tony,” I joked. “I'm fuckin' you up. You'd better do something. This is about to get real embarrassin'.”

Tony was on the verge of losing control. I could see the frustration in his face. After taking six quick humiliating punches to the face, I knew he was going to go on the offensive, which was exactly what I wanted him to do. I was one beat ahead of him when he attempted to hit me with his right. Just before he brought the hand up, I intercepted it, and moved in
closer, He was about to throw the left. I was already intercepting it, moving closer still. Before he knew it, Smack! Smack! Smack! He dropped to one knee and I kicked him in the face.

While my foot was still in the air, I could hear the howl of a bullwhip coming at me. Woo, woo, woo. I turned and grabbed it just before the tail broke the sound barrier and crackled.

My plan was to snatch the whip out of his hand before he knew what had happened, but the howl of another whip and another was coming too fast for me to react. They both hit me in the back one right after the other. Right then, at that pivotal moment, I was transported back to the seventeenth century.

“Shhhhhhit!” I yelled, sucking in air through clenched teeth. I never felt anything like that in my life. The pain of the lash was penetrating. I felt the power of it in the marrow of my bones. My back arched all by itself. The rage of four hundred years began to swell within me. For the first time, I could really identify with Kunta Kinte. I was so enraged at that moment that I wanted to kill every last one of them.

Woo, woo, woo. Someone was about to hit me again and I was in too much pain to get out of the way. The tail of the whip broke the sound barrier and cracked loudly against my back. Woo, woo, woo. Another one had unleashed his. Crack! I had been hit yet again. I felt like the helpless sheriff in the movie
High Plains Drifter
who was being beaten mercilessly by three men with bullwhips.

I took off running. They were going to beat me to death. Luckily for me they were having fun. Otherwise, I would end up in anti-gravity boots just like Sarah Lawford and Taylor Hoffman.

“Y'all can run, but y'all can't hide!” one of the men yelled out.

I could hear them laughing at me. It wasn't surface laughter either. It
was deep belly laughing. The kind of laughter that made you double over and hold your stomach. These men were sadistic maniacs, I thought.

“Y'all know what we oughta do,” Tony said between laughs. “We oughta get some of that pussy.”

“Yeah! Let's pull a train on the bitch,” one of the others said.

“Choo-choo!” another man yelled. “Ya hear that little lady? That's the train getting' ready to pull into yo' station.”

“Yeah. There's four of ‘em gettin' ready to pull in,” Tony said, still laughing.

I grabbed Coco Nimburu's sword from its rack and faced my would-be rapists. Warm tears filled my eyes and dropped. I was more than angry. I had finally felt the humiliation that many other blacks talk about. Having grown up in China, my experiences were different.

I wasn't around during the civil rights era. I only read about it. And not because I wanted to, but because my father insisted that I read about Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., H. Rapp Brown, and so many others. Now, over a decade later, I understood the quizzical looks of my Howard University classmates when I had said, “I haven't been discriminated against.” Even though I knew the whipping wasn't racially motivated, the sting of the lash got my attention pretty damn quick.