“Thank you.”
He handed her his business card. “Do you have any questions for me?”
Patricia clutched the card, looked down at it for a moment, thinking. Then she shook her head. “No, I think that the officer…that Gio already answered them.”
“All right. And he gave you a card with some resources available to you? Counselors and such?”
She dipped her chin again.
“Okay. Is Sally driving you home?”
Sally nodded. Patricia looked up at Gio. “Sorry,” she said in an apologetic tone.
“Don’t be sorry,” Gio told her kindly. “I can see you’re in good hands.”
“Well, you’ve been so nice and you’ve been waiting here so long just to give me a ride…”
Gio smiled. “Patricia, I have to write this report and it doesn’t matter where I am when I do it. You haven’t put me out at all. Sally can take you home and help you settle in, if that’s what you want. It’s no problem.”
“Thank you,” she said again, looking at each of them.
“I’ll be in touch,” Tower said as they left the small room.
Gio pulled the door shut carefully.
“Nice woman,” Tower observed as the two men turned and walked down the hall.
Gio nodded. When they reached the break room, he gathered up his belongings. “It’s too bad nothing will ever happen on this.”
Tower fought off a sigh. Gio was probably right. Without something more, this investigation was most likely a dead end.
“Maybe something will turn up,” Tower said, not really believing it. “Forensics might get lucky.”
“Maybe,” Gio said, half sighing. “And maybe I’ll cure cancer on my way back to the station.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Tower said.
As they walked out into the rain together, one thought kept bothering Tower. It was a thought he hated to acknowledge, even though his impatient gut told him it was the truth.
This isn’t done. He isn’t finished.
1633 hours
She comes to him.
She wants him.
He is so strong. Such a man.
“I want you deep inside me with your hugeness,” she coos at him, crossing her arms under her breasts and pushing them up at him. “Only you can satisfy me, baby. No one else ever has.”
He is so strong. Such a man.
She is dancing now, though there is no music. Swaying lightly, her small black panties shifting on her hips as she moves from side to side. “Do you want me?” she asks him seductively.
“I want you,” he breathes.
“Not as bad as I want you, you big, glorious man,” she answers and drops down onto him, her lips searching for his, her tongue alive with warm action. Her hands find his erect member and stroke it gently in counterpoint to her hard, deep kisses. He can feel her breasts press firmly against his chest. He squeezes her buttock, hard. She moans in pleasure.
He is such a man.
“Rip them off,” she gushes hotly in his ear, biting the lobe.
He tears the panties from her. She cries out, part pain, part pleasure. She guides him into her hot wetness. “Deep inside me with your beautiful self,” she whispers, her hands running all over his back.
He thrusts deep. Each thrust is met with a yelp of pleasure from the buxom blonde.
Over her shoulder, he can see his father’s face, with an approving leer.
“Fuck her hard, son. And if she doesn’t want it, lay the whammo on her!”
“Fuck me hard!” she squeals.
He is truly a man.
He reaches for the white towel.
He knows that she is unaware…
“Unnnnnnhhh, Unnnnnnh,” he grunted, arching his hips into the air, his hand moving feverishly up and down. Semen spurted, arching in the air onto his stomach and chest. He let a small moan escape his lips. A few more strokes, then he stopped, collapsing back onto the mattress.
He lay on the bed, bare except for a sheet and a thin blanket. His girlfriend had taken the comforter when she moved out. He pushed thoughts of her away. Instead, he tried to enjoy the afterglow, which always gave him the sense of honey dripping from a broken jar. The constant patter of rainfall outside added to the experience.
After a few moments, though, his thoughts turned to more practical matters.
He had been a fool to attempt two rapes so close to his home. He needed to move farther away for the next one. Police weren’t brilliant, but they weren’t all stupid, either. Every true crime book he’d read told him that. If rapes kept happening in the same park or the same neighborhood, the police would get a clue. Especially when the victims could tell them that the rapist left on foot.
He needed to stay more random, vary his methods. Don’t want to make it too easy for the cops.
Slowly, he roused himself and walked into the bathroom, where he wiped himself off. His thoughts strayed to his ex-girlfriend. He tried to tell himself that he was glad she was gone, but he knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t love her, nor had he hated her. For a while, she’d been a good woman, but some time after she’d moved in, things started to go south. She became demanding. She wanted this, she wanted that. Most importantly, she started to make him feel like he was small and insignificant.
Just like all the others, he thought.
Just like my mother.
They’re all sisters, he figured. Some hid it better than others, but they were all sisters in the end.
Another thing that bothered him was inconsistency. It was simply another form of hypocrisy, really. If a person can’t be counted on to behave a certain way for a reasonable percentage of the time, what was that? An integrity issue? An insanity issue?
An old, hard face flashed before his mind’s eye.
No! He threw the tissue into the toilet and clenched his fist. She was dead and that was fine with him. The only regret he had was that he hadn’t shown her who was stronger in the end. Simply outliving the bitch wasn’t good enough. He’d have preferred more.
Much more.
He flushed the toilet.
Truth was, he realized, that bitches ruin everything.
He smiled slightly.
“Yes, they do,” he whispered. Then, more powerfully, he repeated, “Bitches ruin everything.”
That sentiment calmed him. He unclenched his fists and turned on the shower. As he stepped under the hot water, his thoughts strayed to his next victim. He had come up with a good idea. An excellent variation on his plan. It just had a few things that needed working on, that was all. As the soap cleansed him, his mind buffed out those rough edges.
THREE
Monday, April 15th
Graveyard Shift
2101 hours
The clock on the wall in the roll-call room read 2101 hrs when Lieutenant Robert Saylor stepped up to the lectern and said, “Okay, listen up.”
Katie MacLeod had been making notes in her notebook from the crime analysis daily flyer. She finished scrawling the last bit of information on a wanted burglar before closing the flyer.
“Psssttt,” Connor O’Sullivan said to her and pointed at the flyer. He mouthed “gimmee.” Katie played confused for a few seconds, then smiled and slid it to him.
“Several stolen vehicles,” Saylor said, reading off a half-dozen license plates with descriptions. Katie made notes, as did most of the officers in the room.
“Detective Finch has probable cause to arrest Kelly Carepi on first degree assault charges,” Saylor said. “He’ll have a warrant sometime tomorrow, but if you come across him before then, book him on Finch’s probable cause.” He read for a moment, then continued, “I guess this stems from the incident up on Dalke about a few nights ago. Who had that?”
“I wrote the report,” said Officer Westboard from his seat next to Katie. “Just about everybody in Adam sector did additional reports, though.”