Brenda Novak - The Perfect Murder

“I can stay here with Kate,” he said.

Her frown dissolved into a grateful smile. “Thanks. Let me respond to her e-mail-then I’ll be done, too.”

He massaged her shoulders while she typed. “How long does it take Kate to fall asleep?” he asked as she sent it.

She twisted around to look up at him. “I don’t know. Why?”

Jerking his head toward the hall, he grinned. “How’d you like to make up in the shower?”

She didn’t answer with words. She stood and turned to face him, and her hands tugged his shirt from his pants as they kissed.

There weren’t a lot of girls out tonight. It was too cold. And the ones Malcolm saw looked nothing like Latisha. Mostly, they were fat white girls with a few Asians and Mexicans thrown in. He couldn’t even pretend they were like Latisha. Not once they opened their mouths, anyway. The profanity made them seem so…hardened. Odd that he hadn’t ever noticed that before. Or cared.

Being reduced to searching for a look-alike made him feel like hurting somebody. But even with the sparse pickings, he wasn’t worried that he’d be able to get a girl into the van. All it took was money.

He pulled to a stop at the corner of Stockton and 65th Street and lowered his window. When he made eye contact with a Mexican hooker, she smiled and sauntered closer. “Hey, you lookin’ for a date?” she said.

It couldn’t be more than fifty degrees outside but her skirt came up as high as her ass and her blouse plunged down to her belly button. She wasn’t wearing a bra, no doubt to show off the nipple piercings that could easily be seen through her thin shirt. She wasn’t black, but her skin was almost the same golden color as Latisha’s.

Would she do? He wasn’t particularly excited about her, but he couldn’t afford to be picky on a night like this…

“How much?” he asked.

“Depends on what you want.”

“It’s too cold to be standing on a street corner,” he said.

She straightened, studied her long red fingernails and glanced at the vehicle behind him as if she had a dozen takers lined up. “You ain’t gonna get this for free, but if you want oral sex the likes of which you ain’t never seen, you’ve come to the right place.”

He considered his options. She’d just offered him a blow job. Did that mean she wouldn’t do it in the traditional way? Some of these girls tried to avoid it, or insisted on a condom, so they wouldn’t pick up a disease. If that was the case with this one, he was more interested rather than less-because chances were good she’d kept herself clean. “Will you let me tie you up?”

“For the right price.”

“How much?”

“A hundred bucks.”

She was dreaming. She wasn’t going to get a hundred bucks out of anyone. This was Sacramento, not New York. But he didn’t bother to argue. He didn’t plan on paying, anyway.

Popping the locks, he reached across to open the door. “Climb in.”

“Circle around,” she said. “I gotta get my purse from inside.”

“What do you need your purse for?”

She rolled her eyes. “I always provide the condom. That’s the one rule I won’t break, so take it or leave it, eh?”

He studied her. She wasn’t like Latisha, wasn’t half as sweet. He almost drove off and left her. He wasn’t going to let a woman-least of all a gutter-grade whore-act as if she had even a hint of control. But none of the other girls he’d passed had dark skin. Since Latisha, he needed dark skin to get excited.

When he came around the corner again, she was waiting for him as promised, posing to make the most of her limited assets.

“You gonna be sorry,” he mimicked when he drove up, but he said nothing loudly enough for her to hear. He just opened the door and she got in.

“You mind if I call you Latisha?” he asked.

She chomped her gum. “Say what?”

“Your name during our time together will be Latisha.”

“Whatever gets you hard, baby. For the right price you can call me Mother Mary. So where we goin’?”

“You know of a hotel close by?”

Taking out her gum, she stuck it on a Styrofoam cup that’d been in his van for weeks. “You got a van. Can’t we park behind a building for a few minutes?”

“It’ll take a bit longer than that.” Pulling out the bag of meth he’d purchased on the way over, he tossed it in her lap.

A gleam of anticipation lit her eyes. “So this is gonna be a party.”

“All night long, baby. And the dope’s free.”

On Monday, Jane made herself go to the office after driving Kate to school. So many things had piled up while she’d been focused on finding Latisha. There was mail that needed to be sorted, calls waiting to be returned, projects she was overseeing that the volunteers still had to finish, banking to do. Normally, she stayed on top of the clerical stuff, but last week she’d been too busy.

With Skye and Ava coming in this afternoon, she wanted to get caught up. They’d be more likely to let her take on her own cases if she was able to maintain her usual workflow until they could hire a part-timer to replace her.

She managed to get a few things done, but she was having trouble concentrating, moving at only half-speed. Every now and then, she’d find herself staring off into space, thinking about Sebastian and the way they’d made love last night. Had she ever been this happy? She couldn’t have been. This relationship was so different from any of her others, so unexpected and yet…fulfilling. It could go bad; it could always go bad. But for now, it was perfect.

Thoughts of Wendy occasionally crept in. Jane wondered if Sebastian’s words had made any difference-besides escalating her sister-in-law’s hatred.

By the time the staff meeting came around, Jane was eager to see Skye, Ava and Sheridan but even more eager to see Sebastian. The day already seemed long. She preferred to be out looking for Malcolm, as David was doing, watching the casinos or calling his ex-wife and former friends to see if anyone had heard from him. She wanted to tell his family that he was alive, to enlist their support in the search. Although the DNA at the ranch house had yet to be analyzed, which would take a while, there was proof that he was still living, in the form of that handwriting expert’s report-at least, enough proof that the authorities should listen.

Sebastian had sent her text messages throughout the day. He’d spent the morning calling every hotel and motel in town, asking for a Wesley Boss as well as a Malcolm Turner-but had found nothing. This afternoon, with David’s permission, he was out interviewing people who lived in the general vicinity of the ranch house where Malcolm had kept the girls. Sebastian thought he might find someone who’d spoken to Malcolm or befriended him in some way, someone who might have let him move in. But for all they knew, Malcolm was sleeping in his van. Once again, he seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

She heard someone unlock the back door. “Jane?”

It was Skye. She’d arrived before Ava and Sheridan.

Excited to see the person who’d saved her life and then helped her through the darkest period of it, Jane went to the reception area to greet her. Most of the volunteers had already left for the day, but there were two in Sheridan’s office, finishing up a big fundraising mailer. They poked their heads out to say hi, but when they went back to work, Jane and Skye stepped into the conference room for a few minutes alone.

“It’s about time you came back,” Jane said. “It’s so great to see you.”

“It’s good to be here.” After a tight hug, Skye held Jane at arm’s length. “You look fabulous.”

“Stop it,” Jane said, laughing. “It’s only been a couple of weeks since you saw me. I look the same.”