Last Girl Dancing Read online

  “Good God,” Jess murmured.

  “That’s not all. Postmortem, the bodies are washed, hair is done up, makeup is applied, and the victims are raped again by each participant. As a final step, the girls are dressed in stripper costumes and removed from the scene of the crime to various dumping sites.”

  Jess sat there for a moment, staring down at her hands, feeling sick. She took a long, slow breath, looked up at Jim, and said, “All the surviving samples, then, are postmortem.”

  “Right. Same three men every time. So Mr. Fucking FBI assures us we have a three-member serial-killers’ club on our hands.”

  “You don’t like Mr. FBI?” Jess asked, managing a small grin. FBI intervention in his cases had always been a major sore spot with Jim.

  “He’s a pompous ass who keeps waving his doctorate in our faces like it’s a bigger dick. And if he says, ‘That isn’t the way we do things at Quantico’ one more time, we’re going to show the arrogant prick how we do things in Georgia.” Jim paused and glanced over at Charlie, who nodded, assumed an exaggerated, menacing expression, and cracked his knuckles slowly.

  Jess laughed.

  Jim said, “Charlie and I hate the serial-killer-club scenario, for the reasons you mentioned and more. But we haven’t been able to come up with anything else that works.”

  “Here — have a look.” Charlie passed Jess the three murder books, one labeled Petushka, one labeled Chevalier, and one labeled Houseman. Each was a thick ring-bound notebook with a photo of the victim taken when she was still alive on the cover, with pages of daily work on the investigation, lab results, witnesses questioned, and other details inside. Jess skimmed the daily work, then pulled the crime-scene photos.

  They weren’t at all usual for murder victims. All three women were completely dressed, albeit scantily. G-strings, high spike heels, bustiers. Dressed for work, Jess thought.

  Each girl’s features were composed. Eyes open, no sign of distress, anguish, or fear. Makeup was unmussed. So was their hair. None of the girls had visible wounds. No visible blood. The ligature marks on wrists and ankles were almost invisible, as were the small, neat incisions over each jugular. Jess could see where makeup had been applied as a coverup for the injuries, as well as cosmetically.

  Each victim was pretty. Good figure, good face. Each was young. Each had been posed in a magazine-centerfold position.

  Jess looked up and frowned. “What kind of makeup was used on these girls?”

  Charlie sighed. “Your basic drugstore brands. We got lab results and I went out to see where I could find the brands listed. Everybody has them. We had some hope that we’d find something exotic or expensive that we could track, but no chance. If the store has ‘Dollar’ or ‘Mart’ in its name, all this shit is there.”

  “This is a complicated case,” Jess said, looking over the murder books. “But you have everything well in hand. So why do you need me?”

  Jim, who had been staring at the victims’ pictures, turned to Jess. “Because you’ve worked undercover. You were a damned good cop when I worked with you. You’ve maintained an excellent record as a detective since. Your one shooting was righteous; your marksmanship records are top-of-the-line. Your partners and your superiors praise your work without reservation. We’ve been through your packet, looked over your commendations and your background. Plus, you used to dance.” He smiled a little. “Something you never bothered to mention to me.”

  “Never seemed much point,” Jess said. “I was going to make dancing my career. But I ended up doing this instead.”

  “Any chance you’ve kept up with the dance?”

  “I use ballet as part of my daily physical training regimen. Minimum of an hour a night, four nights a week.” She smiled a little, and lied a lot. “One of those inexplicable obsessions, you know?”

  “For us, it turns out to be a good thing. Good obsession. You have the skills we need. I’m hoping you’re still fairly calm about gender issues, because if you aren’t, in about three seconds I’m going to get myself sued for sexual harassment.”

  Jess laughed. “I’m still me, Jim.”

  “That, too, is a good thing. Glad to hear it. Then — and please don’t take this the wrong way — you also have the look we need. You’re pretty. You have a good body. And unless things have changed, you move well in high heels.”

  Jess was putting two and two together. “You want me to go undercover as a... a stripper?”

  Jim and Charlie looked sidelong and shiftily at each other, and Jim said, “Neither the captain nor the department would approve that. The department would like you to go undercover as a drink server at the club. A... you know... waitress.”

  And then there was a long pause.

  A very long pause.

  And Jess looked from Jim to Charlie and back to Jim and said, “The department would... but a stripper would have access to people and places that a waitress wouldn’t.”

  Both of them nodded, saying nothing.

  “And we’re talking about a serial killer, and about a case that looks to get really ugly,” Jess continued.

  Again, the nods.

  Jess got it. Jim trusted her. Trusted her enough to keep her mouth shut about something that needed to be done, and that couldn’t be done officially. Trusted her not to blow the whistle on him and Charlie even if she walked away. And she trusted Jim enough to know that she could turn him down for this assignment — this unspoken request — and he would still be there for her. Because what he and Charlie were asking without asking was big.

  Big enough that she couldn’t sit there and flat-out say, “I’m in,” because she didn’t know if she had what it took to do what they needed her to do.

  She stared at the murder books. At the pictures of the dead dancers.

  “How good would my backup be?” she asked, and she wasn’t asking how quickly help could reach her if she got into trouble dancing on the stage or working out on the floor. She was asking, if the case went bad and she got in trouble for acting outside of department approval, if anyone would be there to act as a safety net. If the captain would cover them, if anyone would stand up for them.

  “Very bad,” Charlie said bluntly. “All three of us would die on this one.”

  “You already have your twenty,” Jess said to Jim. “You’re risking your pension on this?”

  “We’re looking at the tip of an iceberg, Gracie,” he said. “Ugly fucking iceberg. I can feel it. What else am I supposed to do? Be a good boy, dot my Is, cross my Ts, let these girls keep dying?”

  She looked at Charlie.

  “I’m only two shy of my twenty,” he said. “My goal in life is to get my pension in two years, retire, and move to the country so I can get to know my wife and kids again. But I’m with Jim. Some cases, you do what you have to do. Of course, we aren’t the ones who would be flashing our tits in the face of a serial killer, so we have the perspective of the chicken looking at a bacon-and-egg breakfast. All we have in this is eggs. The one who’s being asked to contribute the bacon has the right to decline without prejudice.”

  Jim nodded again. “You’re my first choice. Our best choice, I think. But you are not our only choice.”

  Those pretty, blank, dead faces stared up at her, and, like Jim, she knew they weren’t the only ones. More dead girls were waiting to be found. More live girls were waiting to die.

  “Phew...” Jess said under her breath. Get up on a stage, take off all her clothes, have strangers touch her, even if only to slide money into a G-string or a garter.

  And dance her way right across the part of her life that she’d been hiding from everyone.

  Jim didn’t know. Charlie didn’t know. Jess didn’t talk about Ginny. It hurt too much. But this case...

  “How is this going to run?”

  Charlie started to say something, but Jess saw the captain heading their way again. She gave her head a microscopic shake, and Charlie’s face let her know he’d gotten the warning. “We’re p
utting together a multi-county task force. The captain is coordinating. GBI and FBI will be in the way, no doubt — we’ll work around them as we can and with them as we must. However, the undercover part of the operation is small, because there’s no way we can make it any bigger. We’ve commandeered the personnel in an ongoing Vice undercover sting who were already working inside the club — and they’re pissed, of course, but murder beats vice in the poker game of life. And serial murder is the royal flush of hands.”

  Jim said, “So there will be Vice cops around snagging DNA samples out of trash cans and off sidewalks and anywhere else they can legally get them, ferrying them outside to our pickups. We couldn’t get a bartender or a deejay in place, though we tried. We have you as our inside eyes with the dancers and waitresses. You’ll wear a wire and stay in deep cover. Once you’re in place, you won’t come into the station, and when you’re... working... you’ll have three undercover guys in a surveillance van who will be taping everything you say and anything anyone says to you, and who will also get help if you run into trouble. You’ll only call us when you’re alone or with your partner. The only other people who will know who you are will be our bouncers — you’ll meet the off-duty guys later today. Also, Bill the Tech Guy, who will fit you for your wire.” He cleared his throat. “And your partner, of course.”

  The captain had been listening in. Now he stopped beside them and leaned on the table. He said, “You’re going to help us with this, then, Detective Brubaker?”

  “Pretty sure I will,” she said.

  “Excellent. One less thing to worry about.” And he walked away.

  Jim waited until the captain was out of earshot, then said, “He did not want HSCU to get this case. He deeply resents the likelihood that it’s going to generate negative publicity for the unit. I think he would be happiest if we could prove the three cases were unrelated and send them back to their original departments.”

  “The full resources of the department—” Jess started to ask, and Jim cut her off.

  “—will not be spent,” he said, “on solving the murders of three strippers who, early evidence suggests, may have also been prostitutes. And who are all white, which, since it looks like we’re dealing with serial killings, suggests three white killers killing white women.”

  Jess sighed. “Which, inside the Perimeter, makes it a minority crime of no threat — and therefore no importance — to the majority.”

  “Bingo,” Charlie said.

  “This case is a loser all the way around, then,” Jess said.

  Charlie shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong — if we solve it and generate favorable publicity for HSCU, we’re golden. We solve it, and you’re made as one of the Grand Old Men, Jim’ll get his Detective Three and go on to greater things, and I’ll have a chance to keep my fingers locked on the ledge long enough to get that pension.” Charlie’s weary eyes tracked the path of the captain as he walked into his office and closed the door, and he added, “But we don’t solve this... well, we were chosen for this case because it won’t break Howard’s heart to sacrifice us.”

  Jess sighed. “Inner-Perimeter politics?”

  Jim shrugged. “You know how it is. He’s political, he and the mayor are great friends, he’s new to the department, and we weren’t his picks. He’d be just as happy to have an excuse to replace us with guys who were.”

  “I’d sort of forgotten, actually,” Jess said. “I’ve been outside the Perimeter the last eight years. Different ball game. Well, same ball game, but National League rules, not American League. Go Braves. Rah.”

  Jim and Charlie both laughed.

  “Most serial murders remain unsolved for years before the killer is caught — and they generate bad publicity for the departments working them the whole time. So basically, I’m on a sinking ship,” Jess said. “If I sign on, my best odds are that I’m going to lose my career over this — that we aren’t going to solve it, and that the three of us are going hang as scapegoats.”

  “That’s it.”

  She gave Jim a tiny smile. “And I was your first pick?”

  Jim shrugged. “Figured you’d bring something solid to the team. And, since our only assets on this are us, we’d very much like to solve it. Charlie and I want to still be employed on the other side of this case. We think you can help make that happen.”

  Jess nodded. “You mentioned a partner. Who would be...?"

  “Well, along with putting in a special request for you, Charlie and I have called in a... private consultant,” Jim said. “An old friend of ours. We’ve worked with him before. We’re paying him out of our own pockets. He’s going to be sticking close to you in his role as a customer, and you’re going to get friendly so you can sit and talk to him without raising suspicion. And so you can... um... pass things to him from time to time.”

  Jess studied Jim and Charlie. Their eyes had gone all hinky, and they looked like they were trying to slip something past her. She knew Jim — he had a hell of a poker face, and it had just fallen apart. So this made her all kinds of suspicious. “The bacon is getting a bad feeling about this,” she said. “Well, a worse feeling, anyway. What kind of things?”

  “Notes. Items you pick up — bits of costumes, stuff lying around backstage — nothing that could be useful as evidence. Just... things that belong to the women who work there.”

  This sounded completely wrong to Jess. “Guys... what are you doing here? What kind of consultant is this?”

  Jim’s voice dropped lower. “A psychic. He won’t be contributing in an official capacity, of course. He’s off the record.”

  Jess rolled her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Jee. Zus. Christ. You’re shitting me.” She kept her voice low, but it was an effort. “We’re working a serial killer case, we’re tiptoeing down the wrong side of a very fine line, we already have everything to lose... and we’re going to take a side trip to woo-woo land?”

  “The psychic is solid.”

  “A solid psychic? Who is best friends with the reliable politician, no doubt. So when this turns into a media circus, we’re going to make sure we have the clowns right up front.”

  Charlie said, “I get the feeling you’re not crazy about psychics.”

  Jess looked sidelong at Jim. “You were there the night all of us watched that nutjob destroy our credibility on the Bleeker case. We had a good, solid case, and that monster walked because the defense found out the department had used Madam Whassername, and they dragged her in to testify on their behalf. She killed us with the jury. Shadow of a doubt? She was a whole fucking eclipse.”

  She turned back to Charlie, “ ‘Not crazy about’ is too mild a term. I loathe... I despise... I detest psychics. I like good police work. I like rational thought. I like good science — forensics and DNA evidence and careful note keeping. Preserving the chain of evidence — very big on that. I like using all my senses to put the pieces together into a sharp, coherent picture that a goddamned shitweasel defense lawyer can’t pull apart by floating the case out in front of a jury and discrediting it.”

  Jess heard herself getting loud, and noticed a couple of heads in cubicles turning her way. She took a long breath and lowered her voice. “Pardon me. That should be Mr. Shitweasel Defense Lawyer. Must remember to show proper respect to officers of the court. But the second Mr. Shitweasel Defense Lawyer dangles fucking Madam Griselda communing with the spirits for the benefit of the police in front of our twelve upstandings, all our credibility goes right down the shitter.”

  Charlie laughed and told Jim, “Yon Princess Gracie hath a potty mouth, m’lord.”

  Jim sighed heavily and told Jess, “If it makes you feel any better, Hank is going to hate you, too.”

  “Hank? Your psychic is named Hank? Hank the Psychic?” Jess couldn’t help herself. She snickered, but then shook it off. Because this mattered. Because psychics screwed up cases and discredited detectives and made shit up after everything was over when they were talking to the press. With their h
indsight a hell of a lot clearer than their foresight, they told the goddamned reporters that they’d told the police way back when this started how to solve the case, but that nobody would listen to them. And they got in the way during the case. And they made juries roll their eyes and wonder, if the cops were consulting psychics, why anyone needed cops.

  And psychics were frauds, too — money-grubbing scammers out to wring every last cent out of desperate people who had run out of other options. Yeah, Jess had a chip on her shoulder about psychics. But it was a well-earned, perfectly legitimate chip.

  The psychic, on the other hand...

  “He’s going to hate me? Why? And who the hell would go to a psychic named Hank?”

  “To answer your second question first, only Charlie and me,” Jim said, and Jess didn’t miss the quiet determination in his voice. “Hank doesn’t do psychic work professionally. Right now, he teaches martial arts and self-defense courses. The psychic thing is something he does only for us, by special request.” Jim rolled a pen back and forth over the table with his palm, hesitating. “As for why he’s going to hate you... you’re pretty.” He took a deep breath and said, “You may have good reasons for hating psychics, but I guarantee you Hank has equally good ones for hating pretty women. In spite of which, the two of you are going to have to work together, because we need both of you. Furthermore, we need both of you to pose as friends — platonic friends — because that will give him a reason to be there every time you’re there without raising suspicion, and will still let him circulate around the dancers and waitresses.”

  Friends. Oh, good. Jess understood that she was not in her house, this was not her party, and she was a guest who could be removed for bad behavior and replaced by one to whom this case did not matter so much. And Jim was giving her a shot at getting into HSCU. It wasn’t a good shot, maybe, but sometimes a bad shot was the best shot you got.

  There was more to it than that, of course. She was driven; she had been driven for every day of the thirteen years since her world fell apart. This case had all the earmarks of a loser, a disaster, the reef upon which she could wreck her career. She had a clear, simple out. She could say, “No, thanks,” and walk away, and nobody would think the worse of her. She might not have another shot at HSCU — but she wouldn’t be flushing eleven years with the APD down the tubes, either.