Waking Nightmare (37 page)
“Is there a problem, Sergeant Foster?” Abbie asked pleasantly.
“Not at all.” The officer replied with remarkable composure. “I was just trying to explain to this . . . lady . . .”
“
Mistress
Chan, you miserable worm,” the woman snarled.
Mistress
Chan, you miserable worm,” the woman snarled.
“. . . that Detective McElroy isn’t here and may not be back for hours. She was about to leave a message.”
“I was about to do no such thing. Get him on the phone.” She slammed a hand on the policeman’s desk and leaned forward threateningly.
Foster’s tone was still even, but his face had reddened. “You’ll want to step back, ma’am, before I have you cuffed and put behind bars again.”
Mistress Chan. Abbie flipped through her mental Rolodex until she recalled where she’d heard the name before. The dominatrix that Cantrell and McElroy had interviewed. She observed the woman with renewed interest. Nothing in the detectives’ notes had jumped out at her when she’d reviewed them, which in itself had seemed curious. It was hard to believe that a woman who made her living as this one did had never run across an S&M client who had come to her with bizarre demands.
She raked the woman’s form with her gaze and smiled inwardly.
Bizarre
, of course, was in the eye of the beholder.
Bizarre
, of course, was in the eye of the beholder.
“Perhaps I can help you, Mistress Chan,” she put in smoothly, edging her body between the woman and the desk sergeant. “If you want to step over here with me, we can talk about it.”
Chan straightened, stared at her suspiciously. “The only way you can help is to get that bastard McElroy here so I can take him apart.”
“A tempting prospect,” Abbie muttered under her breath. From the corner of her eye she saw the sergeant smother a smile. She took the woman’s elbow gingerly in her hand and steered her toward her desk, saying in a louder voice, “I think I can give you an idea of when to expect Detective McElroy.”
On the way to the desk, however, Abbie noted the avid interest in the detectives and officers around her, and abruptly veered off course, showing Chan to the conference room where Ryne conducted the task force meetings.
“Have a seat.”
“I prefer to stand.” Chan clutched the back of a chair and shot Abbie a narrowed glare. “Are you a detective, too?”
She dodged an explanation by saying merely, “I’m with the task force Detective McElroy is working on. That’s how I can be fairly certain that Sergeant Foster was correct. The detective isn’t expected back here for hours.” She prepared herself for another outburst from the woman but Chan had an arrested expression on her face.
“You’re looking for that guy, too. Whattaya call him. The Nightmare Rapist.”
Abbie inclined her head. “I believe you answered some questions from Detectives McElroy and Cantrell a couple days ago, but I wonder if you’d mind if I asked you a few.”
“Not Cantrell.” Visibly calmed, Chan released the back of the chair to prowl the room. “I don’t know him. Only Nick.”
“Detective McElroy”—Abbie gave the words faint emphasis—“asked you about any clients of yours that might have had unusual tastes.”
The woman turned and smiled over her shoulder, real amusement on her face. For a moment Abbie felt like she was glimpsing the real person behind the S&M persona she cultivated. “Honey, in my line of work, they all have unusual tastes, y’know?”
“Can you think of anyone in the last several months who seemed to take it a bit more seriously than others? Maybe got too rough, or wanted you to do things even you weren’t comfortable with?”
“Most of my visitors want the fantasy.” Chan had lost interest and was on the move again. She rounded the corner of the table, picked up the carafe of day-old coffee, and sniffed it, before grimacing and putting it down again. “And I’m usually the dominant. That’s the way I like it.”
“You said you’re
usually
the dominant.” Abbie kept her voice steady even as she seized on the woman’s words. “What about your visitors who have other demands?”
usually
the dominant.” Abbie kept her voice steady even as she seized on the woman’s words. “What about your visitors who have other demands?”
“There is one I can think of. Likes to inflict pain, sometimes with what he penetrates me with.” She sent a sidelong look at Abbie, as if to assess whether she’d shocked her. “It excites him that I fight. That I give as good as I get. Occasionally he gets carried away.” She lifted a shoulder, continued around the table, trailing her fingers sporting long scarlet nails over the tops of the chairs. “I never really thought about it until I started hearing all the news about that guy you’re looking for. What he does to those women. Got me to thinking . . .”
“Thinking what?”
“About this client of mine. And that’s when I started to get a little afraid of him. I’ve seen him lose his temper, and it isn’t pretty.”
Abbie threw a longing glance at the door, wishing she had her tape recorder. Or her notebook. “You’d better tell me the name of this client, ma’am. We’re going to want to talk to him.”
When she glanced back at Chan, the woman’s sly smile had caution rearing. “You already know him. It’s Nick. I’m really afraid that Detective McElroy might be the Nightmare Rapist.”
Chapter 17
“You stupid son of a bitch.” Ryne tried to control the fury seething through him, but it was a losing battle. Every time he looked at Nick McElroy’s face, he wanted to plant his fist in it.
“Robel, you’ve got to talk to Dixon, get me reinstated. Tell him I’m necessary to the progress of the case.” The big detective swallowed, his usually ruddy complexion pale. “I need this job. It’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.”
“Necessary?” Ryne barked out a humorless laugh. “You’ve compromised the entire investigation. Every lead you followed is tainted, don’t you get that? It’s all suspect.” His gaze narrowed as a thought struck him. “Did Cantrell know about you and the prostitute?”
Miserably, McElroy shook his head. “The bitch is just trying to stick it to me because I didn’t bail her out when she got picked up in a vice sweep last night. She wanted me to get the charges dropped and I blew her off. That should show I haven’t let my relationship with her affect my job. I didn’t use my position to get special favors for her.”
Incredulous, Ryne stared at the man. “Yeah, that proves you’re a prince, all right. You really don’t see the jam you put us in here?” Driven to move, he rose to pace. “You let your dick do your thinking, screwing a prostitute for months. Chan suggested you were the rapist, you know that?”
McElroy glowered. “She’s just trying to get back at me. Anyone can see that.”
Ryne strove for a modicum of patience. It was a reach, when he wanted nothing more than to swing at the man. “That may be, but we have to waste valuable time disproving it, the same way we follow every tip that comes in. Besides which, we’re shorthanded. It’ll take at least a week to bring the new guy up to speed on the case.”
“I’ve been replaced already?” McElroy surged to his feet, his expression ugly. “That didn’t take you long, did it? Must have had someone all picked out. You never wanted me on this investigation anyway. That’s been clear all along.”
The other man took a step forward, and Ryne braced himself. With the fury churning inside him, he’d almost welcomed the opportunity for a brawl.
The strength of that urge had him drawing in a breath, releasing it slowly. “We shouldn’t be talking,” he said, somehow managing an even tone. “Anything you have to say should go through Captain Brown.”
McElroy deflated, the anger streaming out of him as quickly as it had come. “I figured you’d understand better. I need to keep busy. My wife . . . she left six months ago and took my little girl with her. She hasn’t let me see the kid in twelve weeks. Sometimes the job is the only thing I got, you know? I’ll go crazy sitting at home.”
Ryne remained silent, but a stab of pity pierced him. He hadn’t realized McElroy had a child. Before he’d been placed on the task force, Ryne had only known him from seeing him around the gym.
“For what it’s worth, I agree that it sounds like Chan is just jerking us around by fingering you. You’ll be off the hook for that as soon as we check out your alibis for the nights of the assaults. The rest of it . . .” He shook his head. “You’re going to have to wade through the disciplinary process.” And no matter how much he disliked McElroy right now, he could sympathize with what the man had ahead of him. “You have a meeting with your rep lined up?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Listen to what he has to say. Find something to fill your days so you’re not sitting around brooding over this.” He’d become something of an expert on brooding himself, not that long ago. It solved nothing, merely paving the way to a deeper, darker, emotional hole.
He went to the conference room door, pulled it open. “Once we double-check your schedule with the nights in question, you’ll be alibied. At least that will be one less thing for you to worry about.”
The other man nodded morosely, headed through the door without saying another word. Ryne watched him go for a moment, noted the studied busyness of the others at their desks, and swung the door shut. Sinking into a chair, he rubbed the back of his neck wearily.
News of Han’s findings and the possible pharmaceutical lead had defused a great deal of Dixon’s ire—at least until he’d learned of the development with McElroy. The man had gone ballistic, and Captain Brown hadn’t been any too happy either. What had started out as a promising day in the investigation had abruptly turned to shit.
Bleakly, Ryne wondered if he was inviting trouble by figuring the day couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Abbie gave another insistent ring of the bell. Karen Larsen’s car was still parked in the drive, so she was guessing the woman was in there. The results from the database inquiries she’d made on Cordray and Larsen had been waiting when she returned from talking to Mistress Chan.
The memory had her grimacing. Talk about a dropping a bombshell. The woman had known it, too, and Abbie would bet a week’s salary that she had leveled the accusation at McElroy to get just this sort of reaction. Unfortunately, they had to treat it as a legitimate accusation until it was proven otherwise.
It was almost enough to make her feel sorry for the detective. Almost.
After another ring of the doorbell, the door finally cracked open a few inches and Larsen stared out unenthusiastically. “This really isn’t a good time.”
Abbie pinned on her cheeriest smile. “I’m sorry to bother you again, Ms. Larsen. But we had some follow-up questions for you. When you didn’t answer the phone, I decided to take a chance and drive over.”
“Anything you need to know should be in the report I filed with the fire investigator,” she said firmly, inching the door shut again. “I have to work third shift tonight and I need to get some sleep before then.”
“Actually, Jim Cordray isn’t mentioned in the fire report, although he probably should be.” A sliver of satisfaction traced through her as the name of the Loose Goose bartender had Larsen freezing in the act of closing the door. “We wondered why you didn’t mention to the investigator, or to Officer O’Hare, that you were expecting company on the night of the fire.”
There was a tremble to Larsen’s mouth, before she firmed it. Stepping back, she opened the door wordlessly, and Abbie stepped through it.
The place was as neat as the last time she and Ryne had been there, but dark, with the shades drawn. A pillow and a comforter were lying on the couch, and there were creases in the oversized T-shirt and yoga pants the woman wore. It was obvious Abbie had wakened her.
“So.” Larsen swept the blanket aside and sat cross-legged on the couch. “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”
“We followed up on the places you said you’d been that night. Cordray was the only one who recognized you.”
Larsen’s mouth twisted, her gaze cast downward. “Always nice to be remembered, I guess.” She swallowed hard, then lifted her chin and looked squarely at Abbie. “You may as well tell me what else he said.”
“I think you can guess.” Their gazes met, held, until Larsen’s dropped away. She clasped her hands in her lap tightly.
“I don’t do this. That. I mean, whatever he told you . . .” She pursed her lips tightly and looked away. “That’s just not me. I’m not a slut.”
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