The Monster Within (5 page)

The Sleaze has finally found my nipples and his other hand is working its way to my pussy, pulling up my skirt. He’s such a gentlemen. Just like all of them. They’re all pigs.

I can hear the man at the urinal’s piss splattering across the porcelain interior. It’s a disgusting sound that makes me wonder how men do it or at least put up with it. I feel The Sleaze’s fingers clawing at my panties and I close my eyes.

I remember confronting Charlie about Laura. I couldn’t believe that he was cheating on me with someone named Laura. God, couldn’t her name be Candy or Cinnamon? I would feel better if she didn’t sound like a friend of my mother’s. But Laura was pretty and Laura was white, so good for him. At least he wouldn’t have to be seen with his Mexican girlfriend any more. I mean, who was I kidding? Two years of dating and no ring. Of course he wasn’t going to propose to me. We fucked nearly every night because that was Charlie’s release and his work was so stressful that he needed to release as often as possible. I just wonder how long it had been going on. Of course I can’t believe Charlie when he said in his cold, flat tone that it had been going on for a little over a month. I knew right off the bat that that was a lie. Those panties had been in my bathroom three months ago. Whatever, I don’t even care.

When I feel The Sleaze’s tongue on my neck, I finally begin to realize that this isn’t a good idea, that I should probably find someone who doesn’t sling ecstasy in the middle of a club. The man at the urinal sniffs, snorts, and spits into the urinal before flushing. I listen to hear if he goes to the sink to wash his hand, but of course, I hear the footsteps moving toward the door before the bass and the roar of voices blows into the bathroom like a hurricane knocking down the whole building. As the door closes, I hear the clicking of heels and I know the sound of those angry footsteps.

She slams against the door of the stall and knocks it open just in time for The Sleaze to catch on. I smile at the sight of Kendall. She’s not so happy to see me here and quickly grabs ahold of me and pulls me off of The Sleaze, who is half coherently trying to put up a fight and say something witty at the same time. Kendall pulls me behind her and stands at the doorway of the stall and looks at the creep inside that I was totally willing to fuck a few minutes ago. Looking at him now, I wonder who told him navy cargo shorts were something you wore to a club.

“Hey, Limp Dick,” Kendall says with the fury of the gods behind her tone. She’s probably my closest friend right now and I can’t help but smile at the anger in her voice. She’s got the kind of wrath in her tone that comes with a well-educated, rich girl. “You got a fucking STD?”

“What? Bitch, you want to join in?” The Sleaze asks with a faded smile on his pale face.

“Answer the question,” Kendall snaps, kicking at him in a pump stiletto that would put a hole through one of his balls if she’d connected with his crotch like she wanted to. Luckily for him, he flinched like a pussy and fell off the toilet.

“No, bitch! I ain’t got no STD!” he snaps back angrily. “Fucking bitch.”

“Come on.” Kendall grabs my wrist and storms out of the bathroom with me in tow. I giggle to myself at the way The Sleaze had looked at Kendall, like she’d stolen his favorite toy.

Kendall looks like she stepped out of a Victoria’s Secret ad and someone painted a short, black dress on her perfectly sculpted body. When I met Kendall at the gym, she was working with Robby and when she saw me, she told Robby to take a hike and that she wanted me as her trainer. I had happily taken her on and wasn’t looking back. Kendall and I were fast friends and since that day, we had been inseparable. She looked like a goddess and hardly had to work for it. Her parents had set up a trust fund for her before she was even a sperm squirming inside of an egg. She was the kind of woman who believed that men had the upper hand in life and that was the only excuse she needed to strangle that advantage free from their upper hand. She was everything that I wanted to aspire to in life, and my God she had a way of working men over without ever touching them.

“Jenny, what the hell?” she snaps at me and I smile.

“I had a good thing going,” I giggle.

“How many would that have been this week?” She shakes her head. Clearly she isn’t nearly as happy with me as I would like her to be. She stops shaking her head and she looks out on the dance floor where Mason is already dancing. Mason works as a freelance graphic designer and makes annually what she makes in a week, but she doesn’t care. She loves him for who he is and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. Her parents hate Mason, but who gives a fuck. I want the way they look at each other and how they never really argue or get angry with one another. I want the way they banter and bicker, but always end up in each other’s arms. I want that. Why didn’t Charlie want that with me? “Jenny, fuck Charlie. Okay?” It’s like she’s reading my mind. “Fuck that piece of shit. You’re better than that little, shriveled cock and I’m going to set you up with someone that will take you to the moon. Hear me? No more of this fucking around with club trash. You got it?”

It’s too late. There’s a guy at the bar in a charcoal suit that fits him like a glove. God, it’s so hard to find a guy that knows how to get a suit that actually fits. I don’t know how many times I have to stress this to guys I’m training at the gym. Three-piece suits tell a woman that you’re classy, that you have style, and that you know what the fuck you’re doing. Save the blazers and slacks for casual Friday or dinner with your in-laws. The guy at the bar has a short beard like Charlie’s but his is blond and his hair is slicked back. He’s handsome. I don’t have a clue how old he is but I peg him at twenty five, but it’s hard to tell. He’s around my age, so why not? He’s got a good build, the kind where he cares enough to work out, but not to go overboard like so many club rats.

“Well at least he’s wearing a three-piece,” Kendall says to me with those enormous, engaging eyes. They have the power to suck in your soul and I’ve often wondered how lucky Kendall must have been to get eyes like those. Her long, straight black hair is perfectly arranged every time I see her and she’s one of those obnoxious beauties that goes to the gym and ends up looking amazing after a super hard work out. If I could, I would trade lives with Kendall with the snap of a genie’s fingers. “Sweetheart.” Kendall grabs my face and makes me look her in the eyes. “Make sure he’s clean before you let him touch you and you better make him fucking wrap it.”

“Got it,” I giggle. “See you at ten tomorrow.”

“Don’t be late,” Kendall says as she gets up and heads for the dance floor where Mason is waiting for her. “You better not be hung over. I want you to work my ass off.”

I’m sure that Mason is going to be working her ass off tonight. When I asked her once she said that they had sex at least five times a week and she doesn’t see that letting up any time soon. God, I want that back. But so far this week I’m beating her record. I fucked a client at the gym this morning in the bathroom, but he hadn’t been as great as I had hoped. I’m guessing that he was taking something a little illegal to get as big as he was. Looking back at the charcoal man at the bar, I decide that I’m not going to push it. I’m high, tipsy, and I have to be at work by ten tomorrow. I’ll stop at the bar, get a single drink and if he comes over and talks to me, I’ll see where it goes, but I’m not going to push for him to take me home.

Leaving the small table near the dance floor, the myriad lights change all around me and the strobes nearly blind me, but I pass the tables of men with their opened buttons and their strong arms, their hungry eyes. There’s something about this place that makes me want to run out and touch everyone, to feel their arms all over me, to consume them. That sounds weird, but I can’t help it. I feel hungry. I feel a need. God, I need to get laid. I literally need to fuck Charlie out of my brain, no matter how unhealthy that sounds. Maybe it’s the ecstasy?

At the bar, I order a Cosmo and sit down on the warm stool that was just recently abandoned. The bartender is cute, but I’m certain that he fucks anyone who throws it at him, so I’m certain that he’s dealing with the clap. I lean on my elbow, putting my chin in my hand and sneak a glance down the bar to where Mr. Charcoal is taking a sip from his martini. I watch him like spy watching a target as he pulls out his olive and eats it. God, I hate it when guys eat olives. Their breath stinks. But then again, alcohol makes their breath stink anyways. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him step away from the bar and I feel my heart sink.

He’s not coming to see me. But hey, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe he has a wife or maybe he has the clap too. Maybe I just saved myself from getting raped with a knife and at least I’ll be able to walk home and save some money on the cab fare in the morning. Looking at the bartender, he winks at me as he slides my Cosmo to me. I feel sick inside. I feel depressed. I ignore the person taking up the post next to me at the bar. It isn’t even midnight and I’m drinking at the bar alone. God, I’m going to be one of those women, aren’t I?

“Hi,” the man next to me says with a charming enough sounding voice that it makes me want to pass. I’m not interested in the grafter types. I don’t want to feel like I’m a card game that needs to be played.

“Hi,” I say back before taking the straw between my lips and sucking down a fruity mouthful of Cosmo.

“My name’s Ted,” the man next to me says.

“Cool,” I answer.

“I’m sorry, did I disturb you?” the man asks me. God, I don’t need this right now. I’m not going to go home with him. I’m not that kind of girl. I have some standards and some class, thank you very much. “Because, I could have sworn that you were checking me out from down the bar.”

I turn and excitedly prepare to tell him that I was actually checking out someone much more attractive than him when I realize that I’m about to tell off Mr. Charcoal. He smiles at me with a pearly smile that makes me want to swoon like some Victorian broad. He holds out his hand and I instantly see that there’s no wedding ring on his left hand. He’s single. I feel my heart fluttering with joy.

“Jenny,” I introduce myself, reaching out to take his hand.

I can’t stand sitting at this desk any longer. I should have went home last night instead of back to HQ. In years past I’ve spent too much time sitting here looking at this blank computer screen, wondering when my next assignment will arrive, but that time is up. Now I’m here to just whittle away the time. I grab my mug and lift it to my lips, taking a sip of my coffee, laced with Jameson. It’s the only way to keep me sitting right now, thinking about what it was I spent the entire night looking at. I blink, my eyelids feel heavy, thick. Everything about today makes me feel unwell. What the fuck did I stumble into with this case? I sign one of the reports, letting the DA’s office send the files and the evidence back to the storage lock up. I’m not interested in any of this any longer. What I want to do is go back home where my kitchen counters, my tables, my furniture is all covered with pictures of dead bodies with bland reports underneath them, claiming that all this carnage was committed in the name of depression, loss, or disappointment. No. I was firmly one of Owens’s acolytes now.

“King, I heard about the deal Mendez gave you,” a voice draws me from the ether while I stare at the computer.

Detective Vance Redman is probably the epitome of everything that I see as wrong in the department now. He is the antithesis of what I think a good detective should be. His shirts are so tight that they look like the seams are going to rip open like a fault line over his inflated, bloated muscles. He’s got a fat caterpillar on his lip and the same haircut on his head that he’s had since he went into basic. He’s got a short temper with people, no patience to learn the city, and looking to climb the ladder all the way to the top. I wouldn’t be surprised if Redman thinks he’ll make mayor one day. His ambition exceeds his social skills. He’s one of the many who think they’re a good guy, so that means they’re owed something by the world. The joke is on him, the world owes you nothing.

“Sounds like a pretty sweet ride.” Redman looks at me with a glare on his freckled face that shows that he doesn’t give a shit about me, because I never gave a shit about him. I’ve given up caring about people in this department. I’ve gotten tired of all of them. “Just sitting around, collecting a paycheck. A wonder they didn’t set you up with that earlier. You might have retired back when all the others like you did.”

Others like me? Sure, true detectives. Before they were teaching the ideals and importance of networking and having contacts in the criminal flow that floods the city, we called it doing the job right. Knowing people on every corner, having a mole on every street, getting people out of the life, that was what others like me did with this job. We didn’t just clean up for the killers. We didn’t just write the reports and present the perpetrators to the DA’s office like cold beef. Redman lives to serve the DA’s office and the department. He doesn’t give a damn about the city and that’s the kind of mentality that makes people hate the police, with good reason.

“Fuck off, Jarhead,” I snap, picking up the phone.

“What did you say to me?” Redman makes the classic mistake of acting like he’s hurt, and no one’s buying that shit. No one ever buys that shit. This is schoolyard bullshit that no one cares about in the adult world.

“I told you to fuck off.” I look up at him, holding the phone in my hand, waiting for him to move on. “And then I called you a military slur. Because you’re an annoying little prick who thinks he’s better than everyone else because he’s closed four cases in the last two months. Congratulations, Redman. Real bang up work. Did you want some babies to kiss while you go sit in the corner and stroke your ego? Just make sure to clean up afterwards.”

“Fuck you, King,” Redman leans in and snarls at me.

“Maybe later.” I wave him to get out of here while I dial in the number of Owens’s latest victim’s parents. She didn’t have many friends, which means that I’m stuck with the family route, it’s not the most promising route, but it’s something. From what I could see last night, Owens has tossed me a grenade and a time bomb and right now, I’m juggling both of them, waiting for them to explode. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that this killer is on the move. Killing people is more of a lifestyle than a hobby for him. He’s killing more and more. He’s picking up momentum and he’s using miscommunication to throw off the departments and precincts of the city. Whoever this killer is, he knows that no one gives a shit about suicides once they’re declared.