Disconnection (6 page)

Dean nodded, closing the light latch. “Scared of fire, huh? That’s a new one. Why? Sorry,” he added, “I’m nosy.”

Sela walked over to the windows and opened the shades, allowing more moonlight into the room. She then sat on the couch and gathered the strength to discuss the topic that she hated talking about more than anything else in the world.

Finally she answered, “It’s all right. People always want to know. My parents died in a house fire when I was a kid.” She sighed, not wanting to continue. “Well, it’s better than agoraphobia or something like that, I guess. Keeps me from smoking.” Sela slapped the cushion beside her and motioned for Dean. “Come here. I have the wine coolers.”

Dean sat down beside her. He took his wine cooler from her hands. Even in the darkness, she could see that he smiled at her the same way every other person smiled after they knew the story. The Oh-That’s-Sad-But-It’s-More-Shit-Than-I-Can-Handle smile. Sela knew it like she knew the mole on the back of her arm.

“You’re right. There are worse phobias. My cat back in New York is afraid of vacuum cleaners,” he said.

She laughed. At least he used another approach. At least he didn’t say sorry for something that he had no control over. People liked to say
sorry
a lot. Sorry. Sela especially hated that reaction. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry for what? The house had faulty wiring (so the fire department had said) and now she was an orphan. Sela and her parents were in the house, her parents died, and Sela lived. Case closed.

Sela shook her head rapidly, warding off bad memories. If she was going to enjoy her time with Dean, than she had to get her mind off her parents’ death. “Here’s to Grand Theft Auto,” she said, raising her bottle.

Dean took her cue and raised his drink. “Here, here!” They clicked bottles. “Wanna scull it?” Dean suggested.

Sela shrugged, her smile mischievous. “If you think you’re man enough,” she joked.

“Don’t worry about me. I come from a long line of tropical wine cooler scullers.”

“Really? Well, that’s something to be proud of, I guess.”

Dean leaned closer and said, “Okay, here we go. On the count of three. One, two, three.”

Sela had no problem sculling her drink. When she was finished, she looked over at Dean to see if he’d had the same success. The bottle was empty, but Dean’s eyes were squinted, and his nose was flared.

She laughed, asking, “You don’t like it?” Knowing damn well he didn’t.

“It’s very tropical,” he answered.

“I promise I will have beer next time,” Sela said, and then wanted to kick herself.
What if there was no next time? What if this was a one-night thing?

A one-night thing?
Yikes
, Sela thought. She wasn’t good at one-nighters.
Sex & the City’s
Samantha Jones she was not. Sela couldn’t help but become attached to whoever came in contact with her intimately. Case in point was Rufus. Sure, he hadn’t been the most well-endowed man on the planet, and God knows he couldn’t give her an orgasm to save his life, and he was much more into getting oral sex than giving—but he had been her first, and for this reason Sela felt it was her role
(well, I wouldn’t call it a role…more like a duty really)
to stay with him until she could not take it anymore. Luckily for her,
anymore
came sooner in her life than later.

So there was the emotional aspect of sex, but there were also diseases to think about—syphilis and gonorrhea and herpes and the all-time slap in the face to sexual freedom, AIDS.

And babies
, Sela thought. There was always the threat of fertility.

And Heaven knows I need a baby like Charles Manson needs his own radio talk show
.

Sela was in the midst of imagining how she would cram a baby stroller into her Volkswagen Beetle
(Could I get it in sideways?)
when she felt Dean’s mouth on her lips. In her deep contemplation she had almost forgotten where she was and why her thoughts had led to babies and gonorrhea.

Dean. The cute guy in her apartment. The possibilities. Could she accept this event as a one-nighter if that was all it was meant to be?

What the hell, might as well take a chance
, Sela thought as she relaxed and let the kiss consume her.

And (wow oh wow oh wow) could he kiss!

No tongue digging the fillings out of her teeth. No excess amount of saliva. No hard lips pressed so forcefully that blood left for smoother pastures. Not too soft either. A perfect kiss. Like the one Robert Redford gave Natalie Wood in
This Building Has Been Condemned
(one of Sela’s favorite movies)—the scene where she’s meeting him outside his office and it’s raining and he locks the door and turns around and she’s there and his eyes fill with passion and he walks over and takes her in his arms.

“This might sound cheesy, but I’m glad my date didn’t show,” Dean whispered in her ear. His arms curled around Sela’s neck. Somehow her little white shirt had come up above her navel.

“Me, too,” Sela agreed. She pulled him closer to her again.

Oh God, what am I doing? Let this be right. I need this now, I really need this
.

Lost in the moment, Sela did not hear the sound coming from the bottom of her purse at the end of the couch.

The sound of a phone ringing.

S
he was Swedish, for Christ’s sake. Her last name was Nilsson. Sweden has the highest suicide rate per capita in the whole world. They also have the most daylight per year. Coincidence, maybe.”

“But they also have the largest national health care system in the world. Coincidence, maybe. Doubtful. And take into account, most people just want to die. So I don’t see why it’s so impossible for you to believe that Dee committed suicide.”

His name was Stuart Reed, and if Lewis spent one more minute in the interrogation room with him, he could guarantee when and where the next New Orleans homicide would take place, and it wouldn’t be a Fishhook casualty either.

Lewis cleared his throat and said with as much calm as he could muster, “Mr. Reed, you are getting on my last nerve. I have gone over and over why we suspect this to be a homicide. And I have also gone over why you are the prime suspect.”

Lewis shoved a folder of pictures across the table at Stuart. The cocky mortgage broker opened the folder and studied the gruesome photos that had captured every limb and orifice of Dee Nilsson’s discarded dead body—her face with horrified eyes locking in the events of her own murder, the cracked lips, her neck and shoulders purple and blue from old bruises, the unabashed frankness of her ass and sexual organs, her pubic hair molded below her hips like seaweed on an ocean’s surface. Every frame spelled torture, every picture spelled a thousand screams.

Stuart looked up with an emotionless face. Finally the suspect shoved the folder back at Lewis and said, “I don’t know why you’re showing me this. Pics like this ain’t gonna break me down hootin’ and hollerin’. I knew her for one week, detective. It ain’t like I was gonna marry her. Hell, I’ve already been married three times.”

Lewis folded his arms over his chest. “You were the last person with her.”

“So?”

“You were the last one to see her alive.”

“That don’t amount to a hill of beans, does it? People see people all the time before they buy the farm. It don’t mean they killed ’em.”

“Your fingerprints are all over her.”

“I told you, we fucked.”

Lewis leaned back in his chair. Stuart Reed reminded him of a hemorrhoid. A big, fat hemorrhoid that inflated and deflated and could never be cured or removed. A penetration to the ass that stayed long after its incurable rub.

He would love to charge the man with first degree murder.

But there were problems. Oh sure, on paper the hick looked good. Three arrests in the last five years—one for possession of narcotics, one for battery, one for driving under the influence. A restraining order from his second—or was it third?—ex-wife. A sealed juvenile record. Time in rehab. All the good makings of a future murderer.

Problem was, Lewis couldn’t connect him to the other two girls.

The first victim, Sara Lee Prescott, twenty-one, was a violinist from Boston who had just received the honor of playing first chair with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra before ending up at the bottom of the Mississippi River. She was described by her fellow musicians as quiet and clandestine, and an obvious lesbian, proven by the caliber of butch-like women who appeared after each practice to take her to dinner.

The second victim, Alicia Scott, twenty-five, worked at the MAC make-up counter at Saks and had lived with the same man for four years with no sign of infidelity. She was described by her family and friends as having a zest for life and a passion for fishing.

Victim Three, Dee Nilsson, was a Californian mortgage broker in her early thirties. She carried a picture of her Maltese in her wallet, along with American Express and Victoria Secret credit cards. Family and friends described her as happily single and honest in business. Fellow mortgage brokers had seen Nilsson and Reed together throughout the convention, but it seemed to them that it was harmless fun and both agents were enjoying their time together. “She said it was the first time she had ever met him,” quoted one agent.

“No motive,” Sawicki acknowledged at the coffee machine.

Lewis poured three spoon’s worth of sugar in his mug. “Since when did a serial killer need a motive?”

“He says he was at deer camp the last week of October. That would make him incapable of the first two, Lewis. I’ve got statements from the guys he said were with him. They back up his story one hundred percent.”

“Rednecks stick together. They’re all related anyway.”

Sawicki smirked. “You got something against good ole boys?”

“Only that they enslaved my ancestors for two hundred years.” Lewis tasted his coffee and scowled. “This stuff tastes like ass. Can’t the state afford decent coffee?”

“All the money’s gone to healthcare these days,” Sawicki replied, rolling his shoulders in indignation.

Lewis huffed and pursed his lips, his thoughts returning to the Mississippian in the interrogation room. “What was Reed saying earlier, about the penal system?” he asked his partner.

“He said he thought we could do away with prisons entirely if we just gave inmates guns when they enter. That way they kill each other and the taxpayers save money on appeals and prison upkeep.”

A nerve in Lewis’s jaw twitched. “Crazy mother-fucker.”

“Yep. But that doesn’t make him a killer.”

Lewis walked back to the interrogation room. Reed stared at him with bored eyes as he entered. He asked, “When can I get back to Yazoo City?”

“When I say you can, Mr. Reed.”

“I ain’t your murderer. Fred and Hiram told you that I was at deer camp, didn’t they? If you don’t believe them, believe the taxidermist that skinned my buck for me. He told me it was biggest damn deer he’d seen all season. He’d remember me.”

Serial killers were prone to murdering and torturing animals before they took out their rage on humans. Lewis was absolutely positive, however, that the legal hobby of deer hunting was not considered animal torture in Mississippi, or the South even. And no one could arrest a redneck for just doing what rednecks do.

“You know what the fuckin’ problem is?” Reed asked. “You black people can’t organize worth shit. This whole damn police station is like a monkey hole. Hell, I’ve seen better postin’ of tasks at my niece’s tea party. It’s like my Pop said—blacks can run and jump and damn, these days play golf, but when it comes to managin’ business, you might as well be back in Africa.”

Lewis reached over and grabbed Reed’s collar and yanked him up from the chair. “I don’t think I heard you right,” he said through clenched teeth.

A shit-eating grin crossed Reed’s face. “You heard me,” he said.

Lewis tightened his hold. “No, I don’t believe I did. Say it again, cracker!”

The door opened. “Lew?” It was Sawicki. “Lewis, put him down.”

Lewis’s eyes never left Reed’s. “Give me one damn reason why I should.”

“News from the river authority. They found another body.”

S
omewhere in the abyss of Sela’s sleep, a phone rang, stirring her from dreams (peaceful dreams—no images of Mommy and Daddy in the inferno this time). She blindly reached over to pick up the phone. But instead, she grabbed flesh.

Sela opened one eye. The New Yorker—Dean, he had said his name was—was lying next to her, as naked as the day he was born. Sela studied him. He was one of the lucky ones who looked good no matter what the lighting situation was.

Sela admired people like him. She couldn’t say she looked good in the morning. She couldn’t say she looked good any other time of the day either, but the morning was especially harsh.

A sudden thought occurred to her…

I slept with him, didn’t I?

Yup
, was her internal answer. Memories of last night began to surface, and Sela placed her hand over her face, somewhat embarrassed, but mostly ashamed of her actions. It wasn’t like her to just jump in bed with anybody.

But, wow, what a ride. Sela glanced over at Dean again and smiled to herself. She couldn’t quite remember their conversations, or if she and Dean had compatible personalities. She did remember, though, the boy was an expert in the art of lovemaking.

The phone continued ringing, punching a hole in Sela’s recollections. She sat up and took the phone into her hallway, closing her bedroom door so only a crack showed. She picked up the receiver, already knowing who would be on the other line. Mandy, who was most likely feeling bad about last night

“Hello?”

Mandy yelled, “Helloooo there, girlfriend! Gooood morning!”

Sela grimaced. Mandy’s voice was too loud for the morning hours. “I knew it was you,” Sela said.

“Oh, yeah? How’s that?”