Shield of Justice (16 page)

Catherine raised an eyebrow as she considered this new information. “Well, I could theorize, of course, but I doubt that it would help you much.”

“Go ahead. You never know what may help.”

“It could be that the rapist is potent only that way. Fear of vaginal intercourse, of losing one’s penis, is not that uncommon with sexually maladjusted men. There is also the possibility that he is acting out a fantasy in which the victim’s femaleness is a detractor.”

Rebecca stopped writing and looked up. “You mean a homosexual fantasy?”

“Possibly.”

“Terrific,” Rebecca said with disgust. “That would definitely help public opinion of gays.”

“No, no. It’s not likely that he
is
gay. It would be much more likely that he is suppressing homosexual ideation, ideation that would be perfectly normal were it not for the fact that homophobia is so ingrained in our society. If he
is
sexually inadequate with women, such ideation would be even more unwelcome. As I said, I’m only theorizing.”

Rebecca snapped her notebook shut and rubbed her face in frustration. “I can’t do anything but wait for his next move, and that means waiting for him to attack another woman.”

“What about staking out the area?”

“We try,” Rebecca said derisively, “but it’s pretty difficult with only a few people to cover twenty miles of riverfront.”

“I wish I could help you more.”

“You can. You can help me find out what Janet Ryan saw that night.”

Catherine remained silent, torn between conflicting emotions. There was nothing she could say to change the circumstances and nothing to add to what she had already said. At length, she stood up, not wanting to leave but knowing she had to.

“I want to see you again, Rebecca,” she said at last. “Not here, and not about police business. I want to be somewhere where we can just be together. And I want to be able to touch you.”

Rebecca rose quickly and, in one motion, pulled her close and kissed her firmly on the mouth. Her hands traveled the length of Catherine’s back, caressing each curve with trembling hands. When she stepped back, her heart was racing.

“And I’ve been wanting to do that since you walked into the room,” Rebecca said, her voice low and thick. She touched Catherine’s cheek softly, and then she was gone.

Watching the door close behind the detective’s retreating back, Catherine took a deep breath and tried to get her bearings. It was the middle of the day, and sexual arousal tended to interfere with her concentration. It didn’t escape her notice that Rebecca had deftly avoided mentioning when they might see one another again. She almost wished that Rebecca’s hands on her hadn’t felt so good. Almost.

Rebecca’s beeper sounded as she rode the hospital elevator to the ground floor. She was grateful for the interruption, because she had been replaying the way Catherine had felt in her arms. Good. So good.
Too good
. Her nerve endings were jangling from just one kiss. Threading her way through the logjam of wheelchairs, elderly patients shuffling behind steel-framed walkers, and clumps of disoriented visitors, she reached a public phone and called the station.

“Frye here,” she announced when the switchboard operator answered. She edged her way out of the path of a speeding adolescent who raced between slower visitors and waited impatiently for her call to be put through.

“This is Watts,” the heavy male voice intoned in a bored voice.

“What do you want, Watts?” Rebecca snapped, unable to hide her dislike. She had managed not to think about him for almost half a day.

“I got a courtesy call from one of the Homicide guys, a just-letting-you-know kinda thing.”

“Yeah, sure,” Rebecca said dismissively, watching through the large windows fronting the lobby as a line of ambulances rolled around the corner. “That usually means they’re trying to pawn a case off on us. What is it?”

“They rolled on a dead body call late last night. A desk clerk down on Filbert found a very cold hooker in one of the upstairs rooms that rents by the hour.”

Rebecca waited for more and was rewarded with the faint background buzz of the phone line. “Watts,” she said in exasperation, “we don’t have time to track down some faceless john who got too rough with a hooker. Tell Homicide we don’t want it.”

“Yeah,” Watts said. “You’re probably right. The whore was just a kid…thirteen, they said.”

“Fuck!” Rebecca expelled a ragged breath. “I was hoping we had quieted down that action.”

“Funny thing about it. The
ME
called in a preliminary report—seems the kid was beaten to death first, then sodomized. The semen analysis showed up blood type
A
.”

“Jesus,” Rebecca exclaimed. “Same as with all of ours. Why didn’t you just say it might be our perp? Give me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

She knew the place. The Viceroy Hotel. It had once been a respectable hotel, housing long-term tenants and the occasional tourist. With the decline of the surrounding neighborhood and the gravitation of junkies, prostitutes, and drug dealers into the area, anyone who could afford to had moved out. Now the hotel was a stopover for hookers and their clients, junkies waiting for their next fix, and the lonely wino who had scrounged the price of a thin mattress for the night.

Rebecca made the cross-town trip easily, despite the rush of late lunch hour traffic. Watts was waiting in front of the four-story building, looking apathetic and bored. His crumpled suit, too tight across his bulging middle, had once been expensive but now reflected the neglect and disinterest that was evident in the man himself. She knew that he had once been considered a sharp detective, but apparently, something had changed. He looked every inch the burnt-out veteran, just putting in time until his pension came up. Even if she didn’t resent him for taking Jeff’s place, she wouldn’t want to be saddled with him; he was clearly a loser.

She joined him wordlessly, and they pushed through the hotel’s double entry doors into a dank, dimly lit foyer. The high-ceilinged room, once elegant with its ornate moldings and stately tiled floors, was now shabby and tawdry. Threadbare chairs sat haphazardly on scattered, worn rugs of indeterminate color. Piles of old magazines lay strewn randomly over the surface of a few scarred end tables.

Beyond the sitting area was the reception counter where the desk clerk, a thin, graying man of obscure age, leaned on his elbow, watching them impassively. The room was empty except for an old woman who reclined on a sofa against one wall, snoring softly. The clerk clearly read them as cops and continued to stare at them without speaking as they approached.

Watts flipped his badge open and leaned against the cigarette-scarred counter. “You Bailey?” he asked without preamble.

“That’s right,” the man said. His breath smelled of liquor, and he looked as if his face hadn’t seen a razor in days. His soiled shirt and shiny trousers were in no better shape.

“You find the body?” Watts continued, making no effort to introduce Rebecca. She was irritated but saw no benefit in making a show out of it. She let Watts carry the ball.

“Yeah, I found it.”

Watts nodded slightly. “Says in the report that you called it in at 3:42 a.m.”

“Probably. Didn’t look at no clock.”

“How come you’re on the desk now? Where’s the day shift?”

The man looked at Watts blankly. “I work the day shift.”

Watts paused for a moment, a befuddled frown on his face. “That so? Then how come you were here in the middle of the night? You work the night shift, too? Pretty dedicated fellow.”

The desk clerk’s face registered dismay, and he looked quickly around the room. Rebecca had the sense that he was looking for an exit, and she stepped slightly to the left, blocking the hinged section of counter that led out from the narrow space between the mailboxes and the registration desk. She slowly moved her hand to unbutton her jacket, allowing her access to her automatic. She wasn’t sure what Watts had in mind, but he was certainly after something. It would have helped if he had briefed her first, but they were in it now.

Watts studied the clerk, his face still creased with confusion. “You got other work here, maybe?”

“Like what?” he asked uneasily. He seemed to be developing a twitch in the corner of one eye.

“Like maybe you run a few of the girls yourself?”

At Watts’s suggestion, the man gave a frightened snort and backed away from the counter. “Uh-uh. No way, no way at all. I never pimped…I swear. I just…” he stammered into silence.

“You just
what
?” Watts asked.

“Nothing.”

Watts turned to Rebecca and raised a questioning eyebrow. “What do you think, Detective Sergeant Frye? Isn’t soliciting clients for prostitutes a felony in this state? Maybe we should take Mr. Bailey here for a ride downtown.”

Following his lead, Rebecca nodded agreement. “You’re right, Detective Watts. Mr. Bailey does seem in clear violation of the law.”

Bailey squeaked in protest, words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush. “Wait a minute! I didn’t solicit for nobody. The girl was up there a long time, and I just went to see. There she was—spread out on the bed, naked except for those shorts around her ankles. She was cold already…I could tell that from the door. So’s I called the cops…that’s what a citizen is supposed to do, ain’t it?” He glanced from one to the other, hoping for a sign of approval.

They returned his gaze impassively. Then Rebecca stepped a little closer to the counter and said softly, “Why were you watching her, Mr. Bailey?”

He looked uncomfortable and shifted from one foot to the other. He seemed to come to some decision, speaking slowly. “They pay me a little to keep an eye on the girls. You know, to see how many tricks they turn, see if they’re holding back on what they give their pimps. I don’t do nothing but keep an eye on traffic, so to speak.”

“Who pays you, Mr. Bailey?” Rebecca asked, keeping her body between Bailey and Watts. They were playing good cop/bad cop all right. She only wished that Watts had given her some notice.

“You can’t arrest me for watching hookers. That ain’t no crime!”

Watts moved closer to Rebecca. “It is if you’re an accomplice to the act—which you are, Bailey.”

Bailey blanched but remained silent.

“Who went up there with her, Mr. Bailey?” Rebecca asked suddenly.

“Didn’t see him,” he answered quickly. Too quickly.

Rebecca turned to Watts. “Maybe Mr. Bailey would remember if we took him downtown. What do you say, Watts?”

Watts appeared to be thinking, his brow knit in consternation. “Yeah…you might be right, Sarge. But then we’d have to fill out all those reports and probably run Bailey through the computer. You know how long those computer checks take.” He sighed as if the idea didn’t appeal to him much. “And then if we find paper on him, we have to look at every place he’s been and every little thing he’s been doing here. It will take forever.”

Bailey watched them, scarcely taking a breath. Finally, their silence drove him to speak. “Look. I don’t pay much attention to the johns…they’re in and out of here all the time. Dozens of ’em. This girl Patty…she was popular, you know? Young stuff like that attracts a lot of action. She’d be up and down those stairs ten times a night.”

Rebecca suppressed a shudder, pushing from her mind the image of a young girl laboring under the bodies of countless men. She kept her gaze noncommittally on Bailey’s pale face.

“The last guy—I just glanced up when they went by—he was white. Young, I remember that. Made me wonder for a second why such a young dude would have to pay for it.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he was a virgin.”

“You never saw him before?” Rebecca asked, hoping to encourage Bailey to continue his musings.

“Nah. I probably would have remembered if he was a regular.”

“Is there anything that struck you as unusual about the guy?” Watts asked.

Bailey appeared to be considering the question, but his face remained blank. Chances were he had become too inured to the decadence around him to notice specifics.

“Don’t think so,” he said slowly. Suddenly, his face brightened, as if he had had a revelation. “I do remember he had a bag with him…one of them gym bags.” He chuckled absently to himself. “Maybe he kept those shorts in there.”

“What shorts?” Rebecca prompted, looking at Watts. Watts shook his head slightly, signaling he had no idea what Bailey was talking about.

“You know,” Bailey said, “those little shorts she had on, like I said before. She wasn’t wearing them when she went upstairs.”

Rebecca felt a surge of excitement. “What was she wearing when she came in?”

“One of those little leather skirts and a—what do they call ’em—tank top?”

“Were her clothes in the room when you found her?” Watts asked.

Bailey shook his head. “Didn’t see ’em, but I didn’t look too close.”

“You didn’t lift anything for a little souvenir?” Watts probed.

“Uh-uh. No way. Didn’t touch a thing. I looked, I saw her…that was it.”

Rebecca knew they could check that out in the report filed by the uniform who responded to the call. She thought they had enough from Bailey for now, and she explained to him that they would need him to meet with the police artist to sketch a composite of the man who had accompanied Patty Harris on her last trick. Despite his protest that he didn’t really see the guy, he agreed to meet them at the station later that day. He seemed more willing to cooperate now that they had conveniently forgotten about his role in the prostitution business.