James Conway - In Cold Blonde

“Feel better?”

He could clearly make out the half-hearted, but still muffled, “Fuck you.”

Then Alice took in her surroundings. She was on the floor of an office placed in front of a big screen TV. There was also a video camera pointed at her. What the hell?

“You’re wondering what I’ve got up my sleeve, aren’t you? Well, promise not to scream, I’ll take your gag off and we can talk about it.”

Alice realized yelling wasn’t going to get her anywhere so she nodded. Blake untied the bandana and removed the washcloth. “My head hurts,” she said.

“I’m not surprised, you’ve got a lump the size of a softball on your scalp.”

“Asshole.” She didn’t yell, just a quiet statement of fact. Then she asked, “What’d you hit me with?”

“The bottle of wine.”

“Prick.”

“Wait a minute, you came here to kill me, right? A man’s got a right to self-defense.”

“Cocksucker.”

“Funny you should say that,” Blake said. “Because I’ve got a tape here of someone sucking cock, but it’s not me, Alice, it’s you.” Blake hit a remote control and the video began to play.

A hand held camera sweeps across Colin Wood’s game room and comes to rest on an unconscious Alice Waterman. Adam and Colin kneel next to her. “Fuck, that shit works fast,” Colin says. “Help me get her on the pool table, Adam.”

They pick her off the floor and lay her on the pool table. Colin holds her neck but he lets go too soon and her head thuds on the table.

“Careful,” Adam says, looking very uncomfortable. He looks directly into the lens. “You sure taping this is a good idea, Blake?”

“It’s a brilliant idea, bro. When we’re old and gray and snorting Viagra, we’re going to cherish the chance to relive our glory days.”

Blake froze the image and looked at Alice. “How much of that night do you remember?”

Alice stared at the screen. At last. The tape. Answers.

“How much?” Blake repeated.

Alice knew she’d have to pretend to cooperate to see the tape, so she said, “After I passed out, nothing. Did you record everything that happened to me that night?”

“Yes.”

The Lady in Red turned back to the frozen image. “Let me see it. I want to know.”

Blake went over to the video camera aimed at Alice and turned it on.

Alice eyed the camera suspiciously. “What’re you doing?”

“How would you like a chance to tell the whole world why you murdered Colin Wood, Adam Devlin and Zachary Stone? How would you like the whole world to watch your reaction as you watch your own rape?”

“But you’re on that tape. You’d be implicating yourself.”

“Actually, there is a ten year statute of limitations on rape in California. Our… party was shot eleven years ago. So while this tape confirms I was a sleazebag in high school, I won’t be putting myself into any legal jeopardy.”

“You want to tape me watching myself get raped? You are one sick fuck.”

“No argument there, Alice. But I’m also a filmmaker, and we’ve got a chance here for a mind-blowing documentary. Wouldn’t you like a chance to set the record straight, tell the world in your own words why you decided to kill those men. Show the world what happened to you eleven years ago.”

Yes, she thought. “What happens after I watch the tape?”

“I interview you. You walk us through each murder, the more detail the better.”

“And then?”

Blake shrugged. “I call the cops.”

“Kind of sucks for me.”

“I can’t let you go, Alice. You’re a murderer. Hell, you came here to kill me, right?”

She nodded.

“And if I let you go, you’ll try again.”

“I see your point,” she said.

“So, do we have a deal?”

Alice pretended to think about it. She didn’t mind him turning her over to the police. Getting arrested had always been her plan, but only after killing all four of the bastards. So she needed time to figure a way out of the handcuffs. And, more than anything, she wanted to see that video.

She looked at Blake watching her expectantly. God he looked desperate. She milked the suspense for a few more seconds and then said, “Okay, you scumbag. Deal.”

What a fucking coup! This film was going to resurrect his movie career. Blake could hardly contain his glee. He hit Play on the remote.

Detective Syd Curtis was one interesting woman, Travis Taylor decided. The private detective sat in his Century City office surrounded by an array of computers screens linking him to mainframes and databases across the planet. But even in the wired age, good old fashion police work and instincts were needed to crack a case. And that meant personal relationships with people who had personal relationships with people who had personal relationships with people. And it was that network, the human network that had helped Travis crack open Syd Curtis.

And his investigation only confirmed an old axiom he believed in, you never know what you’re going to find.

He’d started with the Department of Motor Vehicles. The only real paper trail he had. When you apply for a driver’s license you are required to provide proof of a birth date and social security number and, if you have a valid driver’s license from another state, the driving portion of the test can be waived.

Travis spent the last two years of his FBI career on loan to Homeland Security and he spent a lot of time interfacing with DMVs all across the country. Valid driver’s licenses were prized possessions for illegal aliens and potential terrorists so tough new measures were instituted to make the licenses themselves much harder to forge.

And he became quite friendly with Deputy Director Warren Welch of the California Department of Transportation. He called Warren who called his friend, Joyce, who called her sister-in-law, Bella, and got Syd’s application file pulled. Elapsed time from Travis’s first call to Warren’s call back with the goods, eighteen minutes.

Syd Curtis’s Social Security Number was 492-43-7490. The number alone told Travis something. The first three numbers of a Social Security Number are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address of the application. And these three numbers, 492, indicated a Missouri address. That was confirmed by the birth certificate, issued by Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The birth certificate listed the birth mother as Amanda Curtis and the father as Todd Curtis.

The date of birth matched her LAPD application. But on the application she’s claimed to be from Riverside, California. Now it was certainly possible that she was born in Kansas City and her parents moved to Riverside, but since she lied about attending Arlington High School, there was a good chance she’d never moved at all.

Judging by her age, Travis figured Syd had to be in high school ten to fifteen years ago. Syd was a very uncommon name so he was hoping to get lucky. He accessed the Kansas City School District database and searched for Syd Curtis. There were three students named Syd Curtis in the district but two were male. The only female, Syd Curtis, attended Lincoln High School but dropped out her junior year.

Her home address was 1876 Tracy Avenue. He checked the tax records. The property was owned in joint tenancy by Amanda and Jay Stevens, M.D.

A wrinkle. The last name was Stevens, not Curtis. If the mother divorced and remarried, that would explain the different last name, or there was a chance the Curtis family moved. Maybe they moved Syd’s junior year, which would mean she actually transferred, not dropped out.

Travis logged into the Missouri Vital Records marriage certificate database for the name Jay Stevens in Kansas City. Travis had to set broad parameters; Syd’s mother could have remarried as early as the year Syd was born until last year. That’s twenty-seven years and he was afraid he’d get too many hits. But only thirty matches came up and it took Travis less than a minute to find the only Jay Stevens that married an Amanda Curtis. They were married on June 3, 1986.