CHAPTER 20
Lily watched the client as he drove. He was a nice-looking man, clean, nice clothes. His teeth were a bit crooked and could do with some cleaning, but whose weren’t? Bad breath was far from the worst thing this job could inflict. Occasionally, he would glance at her and smile sheepishly. She took care to always look a bit apprehensive.
They always went for the virgin whore.
It was her third year on the street, and she was doing just fine, thank you very much. Always got the best customers, was always tipped. Occasionally, she’d land someone who would tip her an extra hundred or two to “clean up and get off the streets.” All she had to do was cultivate the look of a good girl in the wrong place. That was her, an innocent child falling in with a bad crowd, trying to get out of an impossible situation.
Nate, her boyfriend, said she was a prodigy. A real genius, the hooker version of Einstein. And seriously, there were no drawbacks. She always wore warmer clothing; the whole point was to act shy. She never needed to try hard. She’d just face sideways when a customer showed up, looking afraid, as if she secretly hoped he’d pick someone else. If it was a real nice car, she’d tremble slightly or shed a frightened tear.
Men were so easily manipulated.
By this point she hardly needed to pick up new clients. She had three clients who saw her regularly to “keep her off the streets.” They all assumed they were her sole customer. She gave them her second phone number, the one she kept for work, and when that phone rang, she knew it would be an easy, lucrative night.
Lily looked around her in the clean car. She inhaled deeply. The car’s interior smelled a bit funny, sterile.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
“Formaldehyde,” the client said. “Nasty smell, right? But you get used to it.”
She wasn’t sure what that was. “Are you, like, a doctor or something?”
“Something like that.” He nodded. “Are you okay? You seem cold.”
She wasn’t. But she shivered slightly anyway. “No, I’m fine,” she said. She considered telling him it was her first time, then decided not to. Sometimes it worked really well, and the guy would be turned on. But other times they’d feel guilty and drive her to the bus station, offering to buy her a ticket back to her hometown.
“So, uh . . . is your place a lot further?”
“No, not far. We’ll just stop to buy you the clothes and then go straight there, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Uh . . . but if we’ll be long, I’ll need to explain it to the guy I live with. He gets angry if I take too long and don’t charge extra. I don’t want him to be angry.” A subtle tone of dread, leaving the rest for the client’s imagination.
“Don’t worry. We won’t be too long. And I’ll pay you an extra fifty. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Thanks, mister.” She laid a grateful hand on his wrist. Her dumb knight in shining armor, saving her from her monstrous and imaginary pimp.
“You’re a really sweet girl,” he said. “What are you doing on the street?”
She shrugged. A look of sorrow. The weight of life on her young shoulders, and so on and so forth. “I just had some bad luck.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I thought so.”
She could hear it in his voice. He was falling for her.
She permitted herself a small smile. He had completely entangled himself in her web.
CHAPTER 21
Zoe’s motel room had two beds. One was covered with all her case notes and pictures, divided into three groups, one for each victim. She was lying on the other, staring at the ceiling, hoping the couple in the room next door wouldn’t have the stamina to keep the noise up much longer. On online reviews, people usually talked about the cleanliness of a motel or the service or the price. They never spoke about the thin walls and the distinct feeling that the couple in room 13 were orgasming into the ear of the person in room 12.
She always found it hard to concentrate in adverse situations, and this was absolutely ridiculous. It was their second time that evening, which at least meant they were both still alive. The woman had screamed so loudly the first time Zoe had thought she was being murdered.
Finally, she heard the sound she was embarrassingly happy to hear: a male groan. The bed in room 13 squeaked a bit longer—probably inertia—and the deed was done.
Zoe got up and returned to the case notes.
It was always about fantasy. What was this killer’s fantasy? She looked at the images: a corpse lying on the grass, another standing on a bridge, the third sitting on a beach crying. She had visited the first two crime scenes earlier, trying to get a feel for what had gone through his mind as he positioned the bodies. It was part of her process. She always visited the crime scenes, even if no shred of evidence remained. It helped her picture the crime better, and with that came a better understanding of the killer.
She shifted the picture of Susan Warner aside. She was important, even crucial, since the killer had probably known her, but the way her body had been discarded spoke only of failure. The killer hadn’t gotten it right. The dress had torn when he’d tried to put it on the body, the limbs had been too rigid to move, and the position hadn’t been lifelike, the mouth open. One big failure as far as the killer was concerned. She was sure of it.
She had been found on April 12. Then nearly three months went by. What was the killer doing in that time?
Learning. Experimenting. Trying to figure out how to get a body to have some flexibility even after embalming. Learning how to sew the mouth shut.
And then Monique Silva. Taken from the street, found a week or so later. What had he done with the body during all that time?
She read the autopsy report again, even though she knew it by heart. She’d visited the morgue and gone over the autopsy reports with the medical examiner after spending time at the crime scenes. Ligature marks on the body’s throat indicated a thin, strong, smooth rope of some kind had been used to strangle the woman. There was a round bruise on the back of her neck, and the medical examiner said it was probably because the rope was fitted around her throat and then twisted from behind, constricting the noose. Lacerations on her wrists and ankles indicated she had been bound and that she had struggled against the ropes.
The body had been sexually violated postmortem. However, according to the medical examiner, the embalming would have made future intercourse almost impossible due to the body’s rigidity. He’d seemed distinctly creeped out when she had asked him about it.
She had managed to creep out a man who performed autopsies for a living. Achievement unlocked.
She picked up Monique Silva’s picture from the bed. What had he been doing with her all that time?
Her phone blipped. She picked it up and glanced at the display. It was a message from Andrea:
Miss U. What R U doing?
She typed, Reading an autopsy report.
The reply was instant. U know how to have fun.
Then came the emoticon barrage: a sad face, a dead-looking face, two skulls, a ghost, and a thumbs-down. Messaging with Andrea made Zoe feel like an archaeologist, perplexed by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I’ll be here for a few days, she wrote.
The response was a GIF of Fozzie Bear screaming into the air. Zoe sighed and put down the phone. She was about to get back to her papers when a sound came from room 13.
It was the woman. She was asking who was a dirty little boy.
Zoe prayed that she was simply wondering about a dirty boy she was watching on TV.
But no, the response came quickly. The man was, apparently, the dirty little boy. Zoe considered thumping the wall and suggesting a shower to rectify the situation.
There was laughter. A whoop.
The bed began squeaking again.
Zoe collected all the papers from her bed and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
CHAPTER 22