Sugar & Spice (21 page)

“Let's go!” Alexis yelled. “I've got a plane waiting for us.”

“No! We're going back!” Geraldine screamed. “They killed Jerry! I'm going to kill them!”

“Fine! We'll get them later!” Alexis offered. “We gotta go. Now!”

***

Agent Perry,” I heard someone say on my hand-held radio. “Turn the television on! Your prisoner is escaping!”

“What channel?” I asked.

“Thirteen.”

Kelly turned on the TV and switched to Channel 13. WSDC's helicopter was reporting live from the escape scene. We saw Geraldine and Alexis Connelly having what appeared to be a no-holds-barred argument. They were only a couple of miles from the Temperton house. Just as we were about to run out of the house, Alexis raised her rifle and shot Geraldine point blank in the chest.

Alexis Connelly was still shooting Geraldine Temperton by the time we arrived. As far as I could tell, Geraldine was dead, but Alexis continued to fire into her corpse. Pow! Pow! Pow!

“Freeze, Connelly!” I yelled. Our 9mms were pointed at her.

She looked back at me over her shoulder. “She lied to us. I'm going to kill her.”

Kelly and I looked at each other and frowned. What was she talking about? There was no one else on the scene. We looked around, wondering who was lurking in the shadows.

“Finish her, Alex,” we heard Alexis say.

Kelly and I looked at each other again. It was clear now. Alexis Connelly was a schizophrenic. I lowered my weapon and whispered, “Keep her covered, Kelly. She's wearing a vest. Shoot to kill if you have to,” I said. I wanted to take her alive. After everything that had happened that night, all the murders, somebody had to be taken into custody. Alexis Connelly was the only killer left.

“Alexis,” I called in an even calm voice, “she's dead.”

Pow! She fired into her again. “I know,” Alexis said. “It's not my fault she died before I ran out of bullets.” Pow! Pow! Click! “Now, we're ready to go with you, Agent Perry.”

Back at FBI headquarters, we were about take Alexis Connelly's statement. The camera and tape recorders were on. Files filled with before and after photographs of the victims she and the Temperton twins had killed were sitting right in front of me. I was going to use them if she didn't confess fully and completely. I don't know how much good the pictures would do, but I had them there nevertheless.

Kelly and I sat on one side of the table, Connelly on the other. She looked strangely familiar, but I couldn't place her face anywhere. She seemed calm, almost serene. Connelly was slender with shoulder-length brunette hair and green eyes. There was nothing threatening about her at all. In fact, she looked perfectly normal, like any other citizen. I took a sip of my tea and reminded myself that this woman had raped, whipped, and dismembered a string of women.

“Should we tell them, Sam?” Alexis asked. “Or should we wait for our lawyers?”

Kelly and I looked at each other. I had heard about schizophrenia. I had even seen movies about it. But it's a different story watching it up close and personal.

“Might as well tell ‘em, Alexis,” the other voice said. “Tell her how you sat right across the aisle from her on the plane. Tell her how you only talked to her to keep her from asking too many questions once you recognized her.”

I tried to remember the woman I had talked to, but the memory was hazy. The plane trip home seemed like a lifetime ago. Each time she spoke, she was looking directly into my eyes. Her green eyes were soft, showing no evidence of the homicidal maniac that lived within. I had just witnessed her handiwork. She had killed Geraldine Temperton and continued to shoot her long after she was dead.

“She doesn't want to hear about that, Sam,” Alexis said. “She wants to know how all this began. Don't you? Isn't that what you wanna know? How this began?”

I nodded. I figured it would be best to let her talk if that's what she wanted to do. If I did, she would spill it all without having to trick or threaten her.

“Ever have sex with your father, Agent Perry?”

I tried not to frown. I wanted to appear as though what she had just asked was a normal question. Like asking me if I had eaten.

“No. I haven't,” I said, hiding my absolute disgust. “Is that why you killed your mother, Alexis? She was trying to break you two up for her own selfish reasons?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “My father had outgrown her. He needed me. We were truly in love and she had to go and ruin it.”

“Ruin it how?”

“She was using the relationship to squeeze more money out of my father. I wasn't going to have it. So I did what I had to do.”

I felt my stomach starting to turn. This woman had no moral compass whatsoever. No remorse. No sense of right and wrong.

“Tell us about Heather Connelly, Sandra Rhodes, and Paula Stevens,” Kelly interjected.

“Heather was my girlfriend,” Alexis said. “We were all intimate. But Heather got greedy. We were going to share everything with her when we got out. My father was lonely when we went to jail. And that greedy tart took advantage of him. She started fixing her hair like mine. Bought green contacts. Always hangin' around him. What was he to do? He's a man.” She paused for what appeared to be a moment of reflection. “You
know what? If she had treated him right, we would have let it slide. But she didn't. She started having wild cocaine parties and having drug dealers in the house. Heather was spending money like there was no tomorrow. To make matters worse, we tried to escape and our sentences were lengthened. Nothing our lawyers could do about it either. When our father learned that we wouldn't be home for a total often years, he started to fade away. Eventually blew his brains out.”

I almost felt sorry for Alexis, but as she spoke, her eyes became cold—steel-like. Perhaps if she'd shown some contrition, I could've felt sorry for her loss, such as it was.

Out of nowhere, she started to laugh hysterically. “Tell ‘em about the boyfriend, Alex.”

Alex laughed. It was a totally different kind of laughter than Sam's. “We caught her in bed with some clown. We were going to kill them both until we overheard them talking about a foursome. She had replaced me with him. We girls used to have four-ways occasionally. Sometimes five with Taylor.”

“Taylor Hoffman?” I asked.

“The one and only,” one of them said. I was losing track. “So, anyway we waited in the guesthouse. And when they were into the act, we barged in. Threw her lover over the cliff. We went back to the house and some jeweler and a rent-a-cop show up with a diamond choker and matching earrings that the boyfriend had bought Heather with our money. Would you believe she had the nerve to give that clown a credit card? We sent the jeweler and the rent-a-cop over the cliff, too. Screamed all the way down. It's the kin da thing you look back on and laugh.”

I took a sip of my tea and fought the urge to beat them both within an inch of their miserable lives. But I needed to know what Taylor Hoffman had to do with all of this. She didn't figure in at all.

“Tell us about Taylor Hoffman,” I said.

“Her name used to be Bradshaw. We did her, too. Turned her out. She wanted to be a part of our group so we told her she had to do us. Heather, Paula, and Sandra, too. She thought she could leave our family. She was
right here in Washington. You think she visited us? When we got sent away after we did our mother, she thought she was better than us. Then she met Jack Hoffman and pretended she didn't go both ways when she knew she liked women.”

“So, that's why you killed her?” Kelly asked shaking her head in disbelief. “Because she didn't wanna be a part of your little family?”

Connelly laughed from her belly again. “Can you think of a better reason to off somebody? What do you want? She was a freak.”

Connelly stared at me lustfully. I got the feeling that she wished she could shackle me in a pair of anti-gravity boots and beat me into submission.

“You found her play things, didn't you, Agent Perry? You found her toys in her dresser drawer, didn't you? All kinds of creams and lubricants and candied panties and all sorts of interesting gadgets.”

The Connelly twins went on and on. Switching from one personality to the other. After awhile, they talked to themselves as if we weren't even in the room. I'd never seen anything like it. Alexis Connelly wasn't even aware of the fact that Kelly and I had left the room. We kept the cameras rolling for about three hours and she never stopped talking.

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, an argument broke out. Sam accused Alex of being too soft and said they never would have been caught if Alex had listened to her. As the argument intensified, they started screaming at each other. One of them, and I don't dare guess who, started barking with the ferocity of a Doberman pinscher. That's when I walked out.

Weeks had passed, and Alexis Connelly was safely locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane. She could have gotten away clean if she hadn't tried to save Geraldine Temperton. Fortunately for us, her loyalty was the one thing that brought her out of hiding and into our hands. If it weren't for little idiosyncrasies like that, it would be very difficult to catch criminals who take the time to plan their crimes.

I was lying in our bed while my husband applied cocoa butter to the wounds I had sustained from the whipping I had taken. It was time to reopen my dojo. I told Luther Pleasant that he would be my first student. He was so happy. I'd already ordered his uniform. He was going to be a good student. I could tell about some people right off. He had the desire and there was no telling how far he would go, or how fast.

My husband was telling me about the reunion of Victoria Warren and Sean Bellamy. Apparently, they were going to marry, which I found ironic, considering what his mother had done to prevent it. Love is like that, I guess. No matter what you do, two people will love each other through the best and worst of times.

“I'm thinking of voting for Bellamy,” Keyth said and put the cap back on the cocoa butter.”

I turned over and faced him. “Really? And why is that?”

“For one reason, I'm sick of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
The Democrats laud the Kennedy brothers and Dr. King as their icons; yet, you never hear them say what those men said. For example, John Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' And Dr. King said, ‘Judge by the content of their character.' Do you ever hear democrats say that? No, you don't. It's a different party.

“I thought you liked the Republicans, Keyth. You still believe in self-reliance, don't you?”

“Of course I do. My problem with the Republicans is the same problem I have with a number of white people.”

“And what's that?”

“There aren't enough whistleblowers in the party. One day, one of them is going to slip up and say something racist. Maybe let the word ‘nigga' slip out in the heat of an argument and solidify the strangle hold Democrats have on the black vote. And when it happens, when one of them slips up, people are going to know that he's said the word before or whatever. And that's exactly what I mean. See, if the Republicans know about these kinds of people in their own party, and do absolutely nothing about it, it just makes things worse for blacks. We just cling even tighter to a group of people who don't have our best interest at heart. We are still political footballs, being tossed to and fro, solidifying their power, and making us more dependent on them.

“So you think Sean Bellamy is going to do something different? He's going to change things, huh?”

“Well, he's planning to be a very radical president. One with ideas that would upset many political groups. Because of his revolutionary views on education, the military, the CIA, the 1RS, Israel and the Palestinian situation, foreign policy, multiculturalism, drugs, and a host of other political minefields, he's hired a vast security force, which he plans to keep after he's elected. It's going to be interesting to watch.”

“Keyth,” I said in a relaxed tone.

“Yeah, baby.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“What would you say if I told you I'm late?”

“Late?”

“Late like I haven't had my period. I think you got me pregnant in California.”

“So, you're not sure?”

“No, I'm not.”

He smiled. “Well, let's make sure then,” he said, and pulled my panties down.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Keith Lee Johnson began writing purely
by accident when a literature professor unwittingly challenged
his ability to tell a credible story in class one day. He picked up
a pen that very day and has been writing ever since. Upon graduating
from high school in June, Keith joined the United States Air Force
the following September and attained a Top Secret security clearance.
He served his country in Texas, Mississippi, Nevada, California,
Turkey, and various other places during his four years of service.
Keith has written four books and is currently working on his fifth.
His next release will be
Pretenses
(June 2004).

BY
K
EITH
L
EE
J
OHNSON

C
OMING
J
UNE
2004

An affluent Supreme Court nominee and her husband are skillfully murdered several days before her confirmation hearing. The next day, another high-ranking member of Washington D.C.'s elite circle is murdered. Add to that, a serial rapist is ravaging men! Sixty-seven so far and counting! Phoenix Perry is supposed to be working the rapist case, but is hand-picked by the President to solve the mystery and to stop the blood-thirsty assassin, who seems to know Phoenix's every move. As the mystery unravels, Perry learns more than she cared to know about the case and herself.