Quintic (4 page)

The second
message on her machine was from that Charles officer.

“
Yes, good afternoon Ms Patricia. If you could, please
return my call at your earliest convenience. It regards your
deposition as an eye witness
.” A witness
of what? The guy had been by her side; he had seen the same damn
thing she had.

She
called
Charles back nonetheless. As it
was late, she counted on the rookie officer to have left for the
night already. Talking to answering machines was way easier than
talking to real people, especially about cadavers. Unfortunately
for her, Charles had not left.

“
Hello,
Officer. How is your first case going?” After they had exchanged
the usual politeness, she gave him a brief description of what she
recalled while he typed away. They agreed to meet the next morning
in her hotel lobby so she could sign the paperwork.

The next
morning, Charles showed up right on time. S
he signed and declared herself officially off the
hook.

Her writing
kept her busy the following days. It had been a while since she had
written so intensely, and she loved every damn moment of
it.

On the
following Sunday
, Christopher got back
from his meetings, beaten and not up to his usual teasing. He
didn’t even bring up the motel episode. Since the quarter disaster
and the murder accusation, he had not been quite his usual
controlled self. Not with her, never with her. If anything, his
overprotective nonsense was worse than before. But the job seemed
to get to him now. She detected an underlying impatience in him
even if he denied it. As she had foreseen, he kept himself busy
with work.

Ingrid
organised an impromptu cocktail party at her office staff the next
weekend. Hence, Patricia left on Thursday and did not get back
until late Monday. Then later that week, three homeless bums
discovered two bodies in an old warehouse. Since it looked like a
murder ritual, Christopher took the case himself, looking for a
distraction maybe. He brought in specialists and kept the entire
team even busier.

Maybe she
needed t
ime apart from him without her
taking off or breaking up with him? Just damn quality time apart to
concentrate on her writing. With her serial killer book character
now under arrest, her PI woman-slash-cop story was coming along
nicely.

PI Unlimited: The
Job

T
he smell was
nauseating. The stiff must have been soaking for a while; a couple
of days at least, Jeremy guessed. Surprisingly, for there was so
much of it, the blood barely covered the body to the waist. Maybe
it was deceptive; maybe the dead guy had very skinny
legs.

The flies were fucking annoying. The
last week had been unseasonably warm. Lucky for the stiff for no
one might not have found him until spring if not for the stink.
Unlucky for Je, though, for he had to wait until the tech guys had
done their things before he could open a window. He had already
made a quick survey of the place, a more thorough search would
follow the tech job.

Procedures clearly stated that the
homicide investigation team had to wait for the forensic team to
declare the dead a homicide before he could take over the scene.
Forensic or not, when his team got called, it was usually obvious.
This one sure was pretty fucking ‘obvious’ since multiple stab
wounds deep enough for the blood to ooze out crisscrossed the
stiff’s body. That the stiff sat in the bathtub only made the
murder cleaner. Even if both wrists had been slit, no way could
this be suicide. With the wrists plus the chest plus the femoral
arteries, no way could this be accidental.

Was there water in the tub mixed with
the blood? Forensic will tell although, from the smell, colour and
thickness of the broth, Je doubt it. Which wound had the killer
made first? Had the victim fought back? When had this taken place?
Forensic.

In this instance, the
how
of the kill was evident; his job
was about the
who
and the
why
. Who had done the guy in and why.
Je would settle for just the
who
,
the
why
being, from the look of
things: crazy and angry. What else made one stab someone repeatedly
until the blood all but emptied out.

He didn’t mind so much the crazy and
angry, all part of the job. The smell and look of the crime scene
didn’t bother him either. He was not very sensitive, never had
been. Climbing the stairs to the stiff’s place, he had crossed a
rookie green as can be running down. He didn’t have that problem.
He had other problems, though. Parts of his team he needed to sack.
And elements in Central he was pissed at. And an element, just one,
in his personal life he wanted to add.

Almost two months after and he still
couldn’t forget the woman. Damn woman. He had tried to track her
down. She had given him a fake name, so he’d taken to refer to her
as Princess Jane, a pretty name for a pretty lady, much prettier in
any case than Jane Doe.

Jane’s hospital file (one of his guys
had swindled a copy from a friendly nurse) hadn’t helped. Without
even being sure it was hers, he had run fucking DNA tests with
samples taken at the apartment but hadn’t got a hit. To be sure, he
should have taken a lock of her hair at the hospital, but he had
not. Illegal. Yah right.

The real reason was, Je hadn’t
thought of taking a sample then. She had looked damn helpless in
the white hospital bed; he hadn’t thought she would run then. He
knew better now.
Next time, Princess, you’re
mine.

Twice he had underestimated her. More
than twice actually. A couple of times at the bar, then at the
apartment, in the living room and later, in the bedroom. Amazing
woman. No signs of her and so many questions left unanswered. Why
was she with the killer?

Je had interrogated the killer woman,
but the bitch kept changing her version of the events every two
days until the Court lawyers pulled him off the case. Abuse of
power my ass, the murderess had been going at it all over the
country. They might never know just how many she had killed. From
what he had seen when she had tried to do him, she enjoyed killing
a hell of a lot.

Fucking Central had sent him to therapy
after. Post-traumatic shock they called it. Assholes. It wasn’t his
close encounter with the serial killer that unnerved him, not his
first, not his last, all part of the job. No, it was the woman, his
Jane. He had wanted her that night and the fuck if he didn’t want
her still.

The killer wouldn’t give him a straight
answer, but he was not a fucking detective for nothing. From what
he had gathered at the apartment and at the bar where she had
killed her last two victims, then at the hotel where she had killed
the two before, the murderess worked alone.

He talked to the shrinks like Central
had asked. Not therapy, screw them, but investigation. Could a
nymphomaniac serial killer switch from men to women? Some said yes,
most said no.

He had seen how much the killer was
aroused on that night, but by what, or by whom? Her impending kill?
Him as a male? Because her female companion Jane had so obviously
aroused him? By Jane herself? By the presence of a female witness?
A female participant? A potential female victim? What? He also knew
without a doubt Princess Jane had not enjoyed any of the bedroom
play, far from it. Looking back, he had the feeling he had been the
bait but for whom?

He didn’t have much to go on, only her
physical description. Tallish. Lithe. Stunning. Even with those
ridiculous glasses she had put on. Shy. Damn he liked when she
blushed. Smart. Delicate. Strong. Damn sexy.

The bathtub hacker dude was a welcome
distraction; the case would help keep his mind off Princess
Jane.

Excerpt
from
PI Unlimited
, by Trica C. Line

A
new file awaited her
when she
returned to the precinct: a
two-year-old murder case of a twenty-three-year-old student
waitress. Depressing.

Cold
case
research was the primary albeit
unofficial reason of her presence in Christopher’s office, although
her personal file stated she was a filing clerk. And why wouldn’t
it? The HR guys had no imagination, and they wouldn’t have known
what to do with her had she said she was doing research for
possible female PI-slash-cop stories.

At the time
of her death
, the student-waitress was
down to her last year of economics at the University and worked at
a diner part-time. The murderer had knocked her dead in the back
alley of the diner on a Sunday night. Since the place was closed on
Mondays, the victim was found only the following Tuesday morning,
in a dumpster. It had rained for days; the police had found no
useful evidence. No clues. No enemies.

H
er family loved her; her school
friends and her co-workers appreciated her. Except for the killing
strike, the police did not find any signs of fight or violence.
Either the blow had taken the girl by surprise or she had known her
killer.

The file was
not that thick
, but Patricia took days to
read it, re-reading some of the interviews and taking notes.
Nothing stood out and yet something felt odd. With the team busy
with the ritual murders, as the press was calling them, no one had
any free time to spend with her. Hence, she had no one to contact
the detectives initially involved with the case, no one to
accompany her to talk to the family. An official position on the
team might have made her research easier, but she did the next best
thing. She had lunch at the diner.

The place
looked pretty ordinary. Service was average, the food was average,
but that didn’t explain why she couldn’t eat a bite. She took a
stroll down the back alley. As she walked, she called Christopher
just to hear his voice.

“
Hi, Big
guy, are you busy? How about I take you out for a coffee or
something?”

“
No can do;
I have a meeting coming up.”

As if she
hadn’t known that already. “So how’s your day going so far?” Just
from the sound of his voice, he was not having a fun day. Too many
meetings with the Brass lately. “Do you have plans for the weekend?
If you want, we could go shopping.” Anything to keep him on the
phone while she walked up and down that dark alley. For sure he
knew she was up to something but hearing his voice was reassuring,
whatever he was saying. Silly.

She hung up
only when she returned to the street. She had not seen anything
peculiar, had felt no zingy light-bulb moment of insight. Her
imagination was at a stop. This visit was a big zero.

She went for
a drink with Reid that night, her nursing the boondoggle of a diner
tour with too much red wine, Reid forgetting yet another lousy date
with too much cognac.

“Life sucks,” Reid commented.
Reid was a woman of few words.

“It totally does,” a tipsy
Patricia agreed. “I’m in the mood for some Tai Chi. Are you in?
Let’s go tonight.”

Spur-of-the-moment decisions were the best. They headed for
a weekend at the Yoga Tai Chi resort Patricia sometimes went to for
a break from police work and the policemen that came with it.
Seeing as Patricia was already drunk, they flew to the
place.

Strangely,
she missed Christopher that weekend. Tai Chi was the thing she did
when she felt overwhelmed. Tai Chi, Yoga and red wine. Young and
not-so-young trainers worked at the retreat. She liked the sight,
but Reid totally loved it as only an exercise addict could. Going
out with jerks was definitely easier than dating Christopher,
Patricia mused. At least back then, she had enough detachment to
sample the trainers, almost mandatory since the Yogi strictly
forbade wines and other alcoholic beverages on resort grounds. Her
samples remained mostly fingertips-and-lips-brushing affairs,
though. It was a wonder she kept coming.

Then again,
it wa
s a wonder they kept accepting her.
Granted when (if?) she practised, her Tai Chi was close to master
level, but her Yoga was barely average from lack of patience, go
figure. Worse, she jumped the wall to the neighbouring town every
other night to hit the ice-cream parlour. The Yogi master did like
her, though. Wise old man. He looked worried about her this
weekend. Yet again. How did he know the last months had been
hellish?

After half a
dozen solved crimes, a couple of fights, some misdemeanours and two
or three suspensions, she had reached a mutually satisfactory
agreement with Christopher. She worked at the precinct three days
every other week (meaning she basically went to the precinct
whenever she wanted). In return, the Big guy granted her access to
one cold case at a time, just one. He made damn sure to control the
information she could access too, by giving her files the team had
not worked on, for example.

Where he got
those, he
never said, and she didn’t ask.
She wasn’t to interfere with ongoing investigations,
never
,
unless someone specifically invited her. Luckily, she had ways of
eliciting requests. Not by Christopher, of course, she could give
the man a hard-on just by walking into a room (or so he said), but
he wouldn’t let her help. Infuriating. Not that she resented
Christopher for not inviting her. She might not be ready to admit
it, not to him at least, but lately (understatement of the year),
she was getting sick of dead people.