Dark Illusion: A Psychological Thriller Novel (5 page)

E
ven after two
days of hard thinking, which seemed like forever, Sharon was having a hard time
letting go of the idea that just maybe, somehow, the successful magazine editor
had something to do with the horrifying series of murders.

Suspecting Kelly as the killer
seemed quite ridiculous, even for Sharon, but she had a gut feeling that there
was a connection, at least if not directly, then indirectly. Of course the
shortage of actual physical evidence was a huge setback, but she knew she had
to find a way to figure out what was linking the two worlds that seemed so
opposing: the ideal illusion of the beauty industry versus the ugly reality she
had to deal with on a daily basis.

Sharon picked up the editor’s
business card and twiddled it. She knew that right now she could not put forth
even the slightest suspicion about Kelly. Her unsuccessful record thus far in
trying to solve this series of crimes did not give her the right to offer Rob
such an unsubstantiated suggestion. She just might find herself being thrown
off the case. In spite of this, Sharon knew that if she ignored her hunch, it
would weigh on her conscience. She had to make a decision and fast. She took a
deep breath and dialed. 

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Sharon Davis
speaking, New York police department.”

“Is this about that fine I
neglected to pay?” Kelly giggled, but her heartbeat accelerated.

“Not really, I’m a homicide
detective.” Sharon stopped before she continued in an attempt to gauge Kelly’s
reaction. All she could hear was silence.

“Yes . . .” Kelly could barely
overcome the dryness that engulfed her throat.

“I was hoping that you might be
able to help us. It’s about the series of murders that you may have heard of,
The Sleeping Beauties.”

“And how can
I
help
exactly?” Kelly tried to feign surprise in her voice.

“It’s possible that you have a
connection to some of the victims.” Sharon stopped and waited for a response.

Oh no, the bitter end had come.
The hand that held the phone was not so steady anymore. Kelly wasn't sure how
she should act. Any word could give her away. But she would not let the
pressure get to her. Now, more than ever, Kelly needed to stay in control.

She pressed the receiver closer
to her ear and listened.

“They were beautiful girls who
may have had a connection to the modeling world. One of them even showed up for
a job interview at your magazine and left with your business card.”

Bloody Mandy Sheldon
,
Kelly resented her on the inside. Her pulse began to stabilize. It was merely a
coincidence. The cops needed her help due to her position, not because of some
kind of suspicion. Otherwise, they would not have settled for just a phone
call.

“Perhaps you remember something
of the sort?”

“Well, in my field of work I am
in touch with many young women, all beautiful. Handing out my business card is
really nothing special,” Kelly calmly replied.

“True, but it’s not every day
that one of those girls gets murdered,” Sharon commented.

“No doubt,” Kelly tried to appear
cooperative. “Remind me of the name of the poor girl and I will try to recall
any detail about her that might be of help to you.” Kelly hated the feminine
voice on the other end of the line; she did not speak to her with the respect
she deserved.

“Mandy Sheldon,” the familiar
name rang in Kelly’s ear.

When speaking, Sharon emphasized
each syllable in the name of the deceased.

“Truthfully, I don’t remember
anything specific, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I had liked her and had given
her my business card.” Kelly tried to sound casual in order to put the
detective’s mind at ease, but in reality she was yearning to end this
overbearing conversation.

“In what circumstances, exactly,
do you give your card to these young ladies?” Sharon was curious. Something
didn't add up. This had been the hottest story dominating the media outlets. It
didn’t make sense that a public figure such as Kelly would not remember a
person whose picture had appeared all over the papers and news channels for
weeks, especially when she had met this young woman just a short time before
her death. Sharon had no doubt that Kelly
had
to remember Mandy.

After all, she had had an
unforgettable appearance.

I could never forget her name.

“Usually I give my card to girls
I want to connect with agencies that work with the magazine. After that, my job
is done. After all, I’m not a fairy godmother who can make them into stars
overnight,” explained Kelly.

That’s not what Mandy told her
sister
, Sharon thought. She had no doubt that there was more at play than
what was meeting the eye. Kelly was revealing a lot less than she knew, but why
was she doing this? At this stage Sharon decided not to correct Kelly’s
mistake. This conversation had reached a dead end anyway. She needed to
calculate her next steps carefully.

However, Sharon’s passion tended
to take precedence over her common sense.

“Miss Danes,” Sharon knew very
well that the rest of the sentence would not go quietly. “We would really
appreciate it if you could come down to the station and give us your statement.
It would be highly appreciated by the New York Police Department.”

“
Excuse me?
” Kelly’s
composure broke for the first time in the conversation. “Are you accusing me of
something?”

“Of course not,” Sharon forced
herself to let the lie flow from her lips. “Like I said, it would be a gesture
of good faith that might help us move forward with the investigation.” Although
there was nothing insulting or hostile in her words, Sharon knew that her tone
of voice was sending an entirely different message.

“Do you even understand who you are
dealing with?” Kelly snapped. “I’m not some mobster you can twirl around your
little finger so you can try and impress your boss. Do you think I have time to
help you do your
dirty work
?”

That was the final straw that
broke the proud detective’s back.

“Well, if you don’t come
willingly to help us with our ‘dirty work’ . . .” The anger erupted from her
throat, “it would give me great pleasure to officially bring you in for
interrogation.”

“That’s absurd. Given my personal
acquaintance with the commissioner, I doubt I’ll ever step foot in your
office.”

“Your highness,”
Sharon
enunciated venomously, “an official invitation will arrive by tomorrow. I’ll be
happy to see you then!” She hung up without waiting for a response.

Sharon knew
that she had crossed the line and was going to get
hell
from Rob. There was no way he was going to authorize her to summon Miss
Kelly
Danes
for questioning and damage the editor’s reputation without any
substantiating evidence. Sharon knew she was in trouble, but she didn’t care.
She now had no doubt this woman was connected to the murders, one way or
another.

Sharon felt like she was back on
the horse, having finally found the lead she had been seeking for so long, even
if to everyone else it looked like she had lost her mind.

                       
           * * *

Anyone who had been in the vicinity of Kelly Danes’
townhouse moments after her conversation with Detective Davis would have heard
the screams of rage coming out from her home.

Who the hell does she think she
is?
And to even suspect a dignified woman such as myself?
Kelly
could not stand the degradation that had been oozing from the detective’s tone
of voice, but worse, she could not stand the fact that someone had succeeded in
linking her to her sweet, sinful secret.

How could it be that a miserable
cop, who was just trying to cover her own ass, had succeeded in connecting her
with her own monstrosity? Kelly figured that right now it only appeared to be
purely circumstantial, otherwise the detective would have already arrested her,
but if, God forbid, another slip were revealed, there could be severe
consequences.

She had to nip this in the bud.
Kelly opened her phone book and looked for the police commissioner’s number.

“D
avis, are you
out of your
mind
?” Rob’s enraged voice jarred on Sharon’s ears.

She knew she was doomed.

“What were you thinking,
confronting a respected woman like Kelly Danes as a murder suspect? And making
it seem as if it were being backed up by the department? Why should I have to
catch hell from the commissioner and look like an idiot just because I was not
aware that my head detective has gone nuts?!” Rob did not even wait for a
response. “This is the first time the commissioner has actually called me by
the right name, and he did it to imply, not so subtlety, that if I keep making
the wrong decisions I will be transferred to the traffic division!”

“Rob, I really am sorry that you
were in the line of fire because of me.”

“It was more like a firing squad,”
he ranted. “It’s hard for me to believe that you don’t understand how your
actions can get us all in trouble. So congratulations, you’ve proved you have
balls, but for what?”

Sharon could not bear the
disappointed look on Rob’s face. She began to have doubts about her audacious
decision to go after Kelly. She had never imagined that her actions might cause
the whole department to look bad.

But damn it, she knew she was
right. She felt it in her bones.

“Listen, you’ve known me for a long
time. I know that sometimes I’m a little bit hasty, and I tend to forget that
I’m not a bounty hunter who answers to no one. But have I ever performed in a
way that has hurt the progress of an investigation?”

She managed to silence him, but
only for a moment.

“Davis, we both know that you’re
good at what you do. That’s not the problem here.” He took a deep breath. “This
case might be too much for one investigator. Maybe I should add someone to
balance you, like Bryant.”

Rob knew she wouldn’t accept this
suggestion amicably, to say the least.

“What?”
Her cheeks turned
red. “Mark Bryant is a chauvinistic idiot who has managed to get ahead only
because he is his father’s son. We both know he is useless and that’s why he
has never been in charge of a case on his own. And now you want to assign him
to
me
?”

Rob knew that Sharon was right,
but he had to mediate between the pressures from above and what was going on in
the field. And, unfortunately, the sexist idiot’s father had been the deputy
commissioner for years. But that wasn’t something he was about to share with a
subordinate.

“If you don’t want this case to
be reassigned to someone else . . .” Rob stressed slowly, “you’ll have to learn
to restrain yourself. You can’t just do whatever you want. From now on you need
to answer to me and get my approval for every single move you plan to make. And
no more shenanigans.”

Anyone else would have heard in
those words a warning or a reprimand, but Sharon identified the final lifeline
her boss had tossed her.

“Thanks, Rob,” she said quietly,
almost whispering.

“And that means that your special
interest in the editor, who is also the commissioner’s friend, ends now.”

“That’s impossible,” Sharon
stated.

“For God’s sake, I’m an inch away
from the point where this case is taken off my hands, and that means your hands
as well. We both know there’s no way Kelly Danes is a legitimate murder
suspect, so just look for another way to find the information that you thought
you could get from her.”

As highly as he valued Sharon,
Rob found it extremely difficult to understand how she could have connected the
respectable editor to the heinous series of murders.

Sharon couldn’t give up so
easily; she decided to present her findings to Rob. She couldn’t keep on doing
this alone.

“Okay, but first, I want to
explain to you why we
should
keep investigating Miss Danes.”

“I didn’t think otherwise. Be in
my office in two minutes on the dot.”

The truth was he had already
begun to wonder what this whole thing was about. Sharon was too professional to
make false accusations. He was intrigued.

T
his woman
absolutely intrigued him.

Andy was sitting in the passenger
seat with the road map spread across his knees, just in case the GPS system
stopped working due to reception difficulties in the remote area. They were
getting closer to their destination, and Andy had moved to the front of the car
in order to direct the driver exactly where he wanted to go. Now he had to look
at the road and concentrate on the route, though he would have preferred
returning to the back seat, where Gloria sat, her laughter echoing in the
background.

A smile crept to his face as he
remembered their first kiss in the gas station’s minimart. He still wondered
why Gloria had lingered in front of the chocolate bars without buying anything,
but he was glad she had. In any case, he thought to himself, she could not have
found anything sweeter than the taste of her lips.

The famous model remained an
enigma in his eyes. Andy had always been attracted to mysterious women, but
Gloria was in a league of her own. For years she had been, due to her
profession, flaunted in public, but hadn’t actually revealed anything. The
media, like a hungry vulture, had tried sinking its claws into her, but she
refused to surrender.

He had noticed that even now,
when they were so far away from all the commotion, somewhere in the wilds of
New Zealand, she did not let her guard down. Force of habit, he guessed. He,
too, would probably have longed for his privacy if he were confronted by the
flash of paparazzi cameras every time he left his front door.

Andy held a renewed appreciation
for Gloria for having to endure his presence. She was constantly surrounded by
photographers, whether at work, where they demanded her to pose for them, or
outside of work, where she was chased by them relentlessly as they hoped to
catch a photo worthy of the next tabloid cover. One might say they belonged to
two different camps, photographers and the photographed – at times against
their will.

He toyed with the idea that they
were a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, but hoped their story would have a
different ending. He had a feeling that something good had the potential to
grow between them, even if it were just for a few short days until reality hit
them when they get back to civilization.

But why was he getting ahead of
himself? Before worrying that their affair might end, he first needed to make
sure it actually started. Andy had no idea if Gloria felt the same way. They
hadn’t had a chance to be alone after that magical moment at the minimart, and
he surely didn’t intend to have the
relationship talk
in front of the
whole crew. It wouldn’t be very professional of him.

Andy had to clear his mind. He
decided that for now, it would be better to focus solely on work – which was an
immensely difficult mission considering the fact that he was being paid to
shoot Gloria.

Whoever said that the life of
a model photographer was easy?