Brenda Novak - The Perfect Murder

“Because I’m not some white dude in a suit? Because I don’t have the money to make a donation to the cause?”

Letting her arm slide away from Gloria, Jane stood. “Because your messages were antagonistic and abusive.”

“My messages were abusive?” he scoffed with a laugh. “Bitch, you don’t know what the word means until you’ve lived in my world.”

“Luther, stop.” If Gloria was intimidated by Latisha’s father, she didn’t show it. But, at the moment, she probably didn’t care a whole lot about her own welfare. She sounded fatalistic and just plain exhausted. “She ain’t the problem. Marcie’s dead. You hear what I’m sayin’? Dead. And you come in here cussin’ at the one person tryin’ to help us. What’s the matter with you?”

Luther’s bloodshot eyes had widened at the word dead. Jane was pretty sure his brain hadn’t registered much beyond that. “What’d you say?”

“Marcie’s dead,” she repeated numbly. “They found her body this mornin’.”

His nostrils flared. “What about Latisha?”

“She probably dead, too.” Gloria began to rock back and forth. “They both gone. Oh, God! How could this happen?”

The news seemed to sap his strength as well as his anger. Slumping onto a kitchen chair that looked too small to hold him, he bowed his head. “It’s a bad cop,” he said to the floor. “I know it is. That’s what I been tryin’ to tell ya. It’s a bad cop who done it.”

Because of Luther’s arrival, Jane had been hoping to make a quick exit. She’d been planning to grab her purse and her briefcase and go, but this gave her pause. She’d heard about Malcolm Turner’s background, guessed that he might’ve used a cop light or something similar to pull the girls over, but she hadn’t shared that information with Gloria, so Gloria couldn’t have passed it along to Luther. “How do you know?” she asked.

“Word on the street.”

“Which comes from where exactly?”

“Some of the hos on Stockton Boulevard.”

“Prostitutes?”

He didn’t answer.

“They’re familiar with Wesley Boss?” she persisted. “They’ve seen him?”

“A man’s been comin’ ’round the past few months, flashin’ a badge. Won’t give a full name but says they can call him Officer Boss. Likes to rough ’em up a bit, make a few threats, but if they do him for free, he leaves ’ em alone. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Marcie and Latisha stopped because they thought they were gettin’ pulled over.”

She should’ve provided Luther with a photograph. But she’d avoided him rather than including him. “Has anyone described to you what this man looks like?”

“Short, stocky and white,” he said pointedly.

Ignoring his emphasis on race, Jane pulled Malcolm’s photograph from her briefcase and handed it to him.

Gloria studied it while he did, but it was his rapt attention that held Jane’s focus. She could sense his desire to make Malcolm Turner pay for what he’d done to Marcie. “This him?”

“That’s him,” she said. “Do you know when it was that the cop named Officer Boss was last seen?”

He didn’t bother asking Gloria if she was finished looking before he folded the photograph and put it in his coat pocket. Jane had planned to give it to him but even if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be getting it back. “Been a while, far as I can tell-more’n three weeks.”

“He’s been busy since he took Marcie and Latisha.”

“Strange thing is, the girls on the street, they say he only like white women. He won’t touch nothin’ else.” He pinned her with his angry eyes. “So what’s he want with Latisha and Marcie?”

“Maybe it’s not about sex.”

“It’s always about sex,” he said. “What else a man want with a woman? You think he wants to put up with all that bitchin’ and whinin’ for nothin’?”

Jane was so offended by what he said that she almost told him to go to hell. But Gloria kept the conversation on track. “Then why would he take ’em?” she asked.

“For companionship, to feel powerful, because they were easy marks,” Jane said. “Or maybe he has it in for minorities and is on some sort of power trip, trying to ‘cleanse’ the world of certain races. I can’t say. Some people hate just for the sake of hating.” She shifted her focus to Luther. He was one of those people, but she knew he didn’t see himself that way. To him, it was everyone else who was at fault. “If he comes around again, you have to let me know.”

His large hands dangled between his knees. “What makes you think he’ll be back?”

“There’s always a chance. I’m guessing it’s what he does for entertainment.” When he wasn’t gambling, anyway. “He’ll return when he gets lonely or bored.”

“He come around again, I gonna kill ’em, and that’s a promise.” Luther got up and started for the door, but she grabbed his arm. When he jerked out of her grasp, she realized she should’ve kept her hands to herself, but she refused to cower at the threat he posed.

“If you kill him, we might never find Latisha,” she said. “You have to call me so I can bring the police, or call the police directly, if you prefer.”

“He is the police,” he said and stalked out.

Now that he was thinking clearly, Malcolm wished he’d dumped Marcie’s body somewhere else. He didn’t regret killing her, but he regretted revealing the fact that he knew where Sebastian lived. But when he’d worked his way around to the front and seen Sebastian arrive at Mary’s house, when he’d witnessed the man he hated more than any other sweep her into a hug, he’d grown so livid he could barely breathe. He’d had to strike back, especially when Sebastian disappeared before Malcolm could get close enough to see which condo was his. By then it was so close to daybreak, he couldn’t search without considerably raising the chances of being seen.

Now, because of his own impetuous actions, Sebastian knew he had to keep his guard up. But there’d been no other way for Malcolm to vent his rage. At least he’d taken something for what had been stolen from him. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing how horrified Sebastian must’ve been to find an innocent young woman dead in the backseat of his fancy-ass car. Sebastian had to live with the knowledge that his involvement had cost another life-at any rate, he had to live with it until Malcolm killed him, too.

Malcolm booted up his computer and waited for it to run through its opening sequence. He wasn’t in a bad position. The chance he’d taken hanging around long enough to follow Sebastian home had paid off. He knew where the bastard lived, didn’t he? It was only a matter of finding the right opportunity.

“What do you want for dinner?”

Glancing up, he saw Latisha watching him from over by the sink and shoved away from the table. As eager as he was to check his e-mail-he hoped he’d receive some sort of response from Sebastian or Mary, some hint of Sebastian’s devastation-he needed to give Latisha some attention first. Ever since he’d returned without her sister, she’d been acting more afraid of him than ever. He wasn’t sure she believed he’d let Marcie go…

“I don’t know. What do you want?” he asked.

Her gaze dropped to the floor. “We don’t have a lot of groceries.”

Because of her sister, he hadn’t been able to shop when he needed to. That bitch had deserved to die. She’d been disgusting and vile, and he was glad to be rid of her. But he felt sorry for Latisha, who was sweet and willing to compromise. After putting a combination lock on his bedroom door, he’d pulled her into bed with him and slept for most of the day. When they woke up, she didn’t even try to fight him when he wanted to make love, but she’d gotten sick right afterward. She’d been vomiting in the bathroom ever since. She claimed it was just a flu bug, but she flinched whenever he touched her.