“Patrol responded. Took her to Mount Sinai. Say she’s fine. We logged it as an attempted sodomy and an assault.
Shook her up pretty good but she was tough as nails.
Doctors gave her a head-to-toe exam, and the rape crisis counselors spent time with her and took her home. She told them she didn’t need counseling about nothing if the late Anthony Zalina didn’t ever make her do “that disgusting thing” in forty-two years of marriage, she wasn’t about to do it for some drunken garage mechanic.“
“Good for her. I take it we know who the guy is, right?”
“Yeah. We found a lot of papers in his room with his name on it. Worked in a body shop in the Bronx, only he didn’t show up this morning. It’s just a matter of time, Alex we’ll drop him.”
“Okay. I’ll assign it to someone in the unit on Monday, so we’ll be ready when you pick him up.”
“You’ll like Mrs. Zalina. She wants to go all the way with this. Says she could recognize his penis anywhere – ”looks just like a teeny-weeny, crooked little sausage.“
Cops put that right in the original report with the rest of the description.
“Ought to be an interesting line-up, Frank. Maybe we should hold it in a butcher shop instead of the precinct.
If that’s it on the bad news, what’s the good news?“
“This could be a new one for you, Alex. I had a call today from a young lady who wants to remain anonymous for now. She was raped a week ago by her ex-boyfriend.
They both work at Merrill Lynch, went out for drinks, reminisced, and then she brought him home with her.
Wants to know how long she can wait before she reports it and still has a case. But her big question was about the evidence. Seems she kept a washcloth that he wiped himself off with, put it in a baggie, and then stuck it in her freezer so she’ll have his semen to prove he did it. Wants to know how long she can keep it and still have the police lab be able to use it.“
“Are you serious? What did you tell her?”
“I told her it depended on whether she had it stored with the frozen peas or with the ice cream…”
“Frank, that’s revolting.”
“And I told her that I absolutely refused to go to her house for dinner until she got that stuff to the lab. Anyway, what I really told her was to call your office next week and one of the lawyers could answer all her questions about prosecuting.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“For the moment, that’s all we’ve got, Alex. You’ll be the first to know if we need you.”
I hung up and decided to busy myself in getting ready for Jed’s arrivaclass="underline" setting the table, straightening up the apartment, and removing the tags from Isabella’s slinky birthday present to dress up for the occasion. The Four Tops were singing to me as I tried to lighten my mood for the night ahead, urging me to reach out for them if my life was filled with confusion. I put the list of people with motives to kill Isabella, which I had started to scratch out during the funeral, in a drawer, closed the file which contained the motion and bill of particulars that I had to respond to by Thursday for the Vargas case, and finally settled down unable to concentrate on anything else with a two-month-old copy of Architectural Digest.
“Mr. Segal on the way up, ma’am,” the doorman announced on the house phone when Jed finally arrived from the airport.
I checked myself again in the bathroom mirror and got to the front door just as I heard the elevator opening. Jed stepped out, carrying his suitcase, and did a double-take when he saw me in the doorway of my apartment at the end of the hallway wearing my sexy silk outfit. It was a radical departure from my usual lounging uniform: an oversized man-tailored shirt and a pair of leggings.
“You’re in the right place, darling. Welcome home.”
“You may have found the perfect antidote for my jet lag, Alexandra,” he said with a smile as he pinned me against the wall and reached down to find my mouth.
We kissed for several minutes, hard and deep, our tongues exploring each other’s mouths. Jed ran his hand down the smooth surface of the pajama top and found my nipple waiting at attention for him.
“Are you okay?” he whispered to me as he started to work at the buttons of my shirt.
My eyes were closed now and I nodded my head in answer to his question.
“Tell me what happened, Alex. Tell me how you’ve been involved and what they’ve put you through all week.”
I pushed away from the wall, looked at Jed, and pressed my finger to his lips to silence him as I led him by the hand into the bedroom. ‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know later, but for now, I have other plans.“ ”But did they actually think the killer was after you and not Isabella? Do they think they know who did it?“
“Really, Jed, you’re the one who’s always telling me not to talk about my cases all the time, and when I finally want to leave it behind me, you become the Grand Inquisitor.”
“I’m sorry, darling. I’ve just felt so useless being in Paris while all this was going on, worried about your safety, and…”
“If you want me to prove to you that I’m absolutely fine, you’re going to have to take off all your clothes right now and save the conversation for dinner.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Jed responded, starting to undress.
“I’ve been traveling for hours you’ll be much happier with your suggestion if you give me a few minutes for a shower.”
I watched him undress and smiled at the familiar sight of his lean body. It had only been three months since we’d met in June, but the attraction had been immediate and intense, and I was relieved to know he would hold me and tether me to reality as the circumstances of Isabella’s death continued to unravel.
“I didn’t have any time for shopping, but I just want you to know that I thought of you wherever I was,” Jed said, smiling as he tossed bottles of Chanel 22 perfume and body lotion onto the bed and headed for the bathroom.
“Thank God for airport duty-free shops,” I laughed and unwrapped the cellophane from the sharp black-and-white packages. Nothing could distract Jed from his deal-making when the numbers were on the table and the stakes were climbing so I was delighted that he had thought of me at an odd moment during his trip. As he knew, shopping was a passion of mine, and there weren’t many things other than crime scenes that could dull my interest in a good sale.
I was pleased that he had remembered my brand and that he had tried to cheer me up with these luxurious tokens.
I heard the shower water running, so I slipped out of Isabella’s satiny garment, dropping the pajamas onto the floor, and opened the bathroom door. Steam had filled the tiny room and clouded the mirror completely. I held apart the white eyelet curtain and stepped in with Jed, whose head was arched back so that the hot water was spraying in his face and running down the length of his frame. I took the bar of soap from its niche in the tile wall and began to lather his shoulders and back. He sighed approval and shifted his body, so that his hands leaned against the front of the shower and his head dropped forward between his arms. My hands gently rubbed every inch of his torso, then down each leg and back up to the top of his thighs, like a slow wet massage on a very compliant subject.
I stood as Jed let go of the wall against which he had braced himself and turned to face me, his penis fully erect, but his eyes barely able to see through their water-soaked lids. I reached up to kiss him and again we embraced, tasting each other and letting the shower rinse me free of any thoughts except the man and the moment. He entered me and all my fantasies of a slow and languorous reunion on my comfortable bed yielded to the reality of our eager bodies finding each other and mating against the slick tile wall.
When we released each other a minute later, I turned off the water and we stepped out to wrap ourselves in heavy bath sheets. I left Jed to shave and change and went back to my bedroom to put on my more familiar costume of leggings and a shirt.