Skin (2 page)

She would stick to well-off customers.

Finishing her soda, she left the glass on an empty table and checked out the manager who stood near the entrance, demanding a kid’s ID. Sal Ruscio was trying to coax back a full head of dark hair with strategically placed hair plugs. And to further his youthful image, he wore his trademark flowered shirt with a thousand-buck suit.

Hannah entered the dressing room that reeked with the smell of weed. The counter below the lit mirror was littered with open cases, a jumble of loose makeup, cheap hair fasteners and equally cheap jewelry spilling from their guts. A dusting of white powder on a hand mirror sat in the midst of it all. Most of the girls were on drugs. Maybe that’s how they got through the night. Not her, though. She wasn’t going to throw away good money on bullshit.
On the opposite wall stood several lockers and a rack of scanty costumes.
Only two other dancers primped before the mirrors.

A dark-haired girl who looked young enough to be illegal was applying an extra coat of deep red to her bee-stung lips.

“Hey, Melinda.”

“Hannah. So is Paulie out there tonight?”

“Isn’t he out there every night?”

Paul Ensdorf came to watch his sister dance. Melinda laughed about it, thought it was funny,
her
big brother lathering himself up over her. Hannah thought it was creepy how he kept tabs on his sibling like that.

“It isn’t bad enough that our harridan of a grandmother was on my back when I lived with her,” Melinda complained.
“Now Paulie has to follow me around, trying to reform me.”

“Have Sal keep him out.”

“Right.
Like Sal’s going to boot a customer who doesn’t mind spreading the wealth.”

Hannah shrugged. “You have a point.”

“Thanks for the thought, though. Later.”

Melinda left, leaving Hannah alone with the other new girl who called herself Caresse.

Sitting before the mirror and applying blush to her dusky face, Caresse looked up. A small frown creased the skin between her dark, almost black eyes. “You look whipped, child.”

Hannah dumped herself in a nearby chair. “Yeah, I’m splitting early.”

She picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes and tried not to let Caresse’s steady gaze disturb her. The exotic-looking woman was as tough as they came. Tall and raw-boned, she exuded
a
don’t
mess with me
kind of attitude. Lighting her cigarette, Hannah took a long drag and tried to blank her mind.

“Something wrong, child?”

Caresse hadn’t worked at Club Paradise long, but she seemed concerned about the other dancers. Though Hannah usually appreciated the caring, tonight she wasn’t in the mood.

“If there was something wrong, could you give me a prescription to make it all better, Doctor Caresse?”

The other dancer gave her one of those looks that made some of the girls shrink. “You got a problem with your life, you fix it.”

Like it was so easy.

The last time, she’d ended up back on the street as she had when she’d first run away. She’d do anything to make certain that never happened again. She was safe now. Money did that for a girl. Besides, she liked having a good time, liked buying herself things. Most of all, she liked having the upper hand for once.

“You got options,” Caresse was saying. “What about a family? You weren’t born in
no
cabbage patch.”

“There’s nothing for me there.”

“Not even a brother or sister?”

An image burned into her memory, haunted her for a moment. “A sister... who wouldn’t understand,” Hannah said quickly, thinking that if they ever caught up with each other, Lilith might wish that she’d stayed missing forever.

“Maybe not,” Caresse said, “but that don’t mean she can’t love you anyhow.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’ll talk about your sister later,” Caresse threatened. After swiping a lip gloss across her full mouth, she rose and headed for the door. “Right now, I better get my butt out on the floor before Sal
comes
gunning for it.”

Hannah didn’t answer, merely stared at herself in the mirror and removed her makeup. After changing into a blazing red miniskirt and white T-shirt, she clamped a thick black leather belt around her waist. From her bag, she pulled out a fine
chain,
the clasp secured by a tiny gold safety pin, and put it on. A glance at the mirror reflected the transformation that amazed even her. The fantasy creature had been replaced by an almost plain-looking woman who appeared young.
Innocent, even.

The eyes told the truth about her.

Hannah touched the heart-half that dangled against her T-shirt and thought about doing something daring, like calling Lilith. That’s why she’d moved to Chicago, right? Because she’d seen that article about all the good works Lilith had been doing for teenagers with her boss here in Chicago? That’s what Caresse would tell her to do.

But that, too, was just a fantasy.

oOo

DETECTIVE JOHN PUCINSKI drank his Pepto-Bismol cocktail straight from the bottle. Thick pink liquid oozing down his throat to coat his gut, he tore the bottle from his lips and capped it.

“Planning on eating raw onions for lunch?” A grinning Gabriel O’Malley stood in the doorway to Pucinski’s glass-enclosed office, file folders in hand.

“Nah, The Hunter Case is starting to get to me.”

“Gotta stop taking it personal,” O’Malley warned.

“I always take it personal when a repeater gives me the finger.” He motioned to the younger detective, one of those virile types with thick black hair and a trim waist that made a more seasoned cop feel plain old. “What you got for me?”

“The computer check on the hooker,” O’Malley said of the latest victim.
“Seems she was a cash-only consumer.”

Imagine her filling out a credit application. What would she put under employment history – personal service?
Yeah, probably.

“No credit,” Pucinski muttered. “Just like the waitress.”

Another thing the two victims had in common that would make it harder to nail the killer. No families, no real close friends, no credit.

And a connection to a gentlemen’s club.

“So, you have any leads other than Club Paradise?” O’Malley asked.

Pucinski shrugged. The waitress worked there. Seemed the hooker worked it, too, if on a less formal and regular basis.

“Hey, it’s something,” O’Malley said, leaving the glass-encased office and returning to his own desk.

“Yeah, something.”

Something he hadn’t been able to ignore. The connection, no matter how slight, told him the killer had been to the strip bar at least twice. Instinct told him the guy was a regular, the reason for placing a plant at the joint. An undercover cop could scope things out from the inside pretty fast, Pucinski figured, reviewing the victims’ folders. Both had been tall and well-built with long, dark hair.

He wondered how many other women working the club would fit that description.

oOo

“WANT TO CATCH A MOVIE?” Elena asked at break time the next day, the newspaper spread on the table in front of her. Short and compact, Elena was a powerhouse whether at the gym or working on some client’s case

“So what’s playing?”

Elena didn’t respond for a minute. Then she looked up from the paper and with a smirk curling her full lips, said, “Man, this chick could almost be you.”

“You mean I look like some movie star?”

“Not exactly.”
Snorting, Elena immediately handed over the paper. “Give it a look.” She rose and grabbed her coffee cup before heading for the door. “Check out the movies and call me if there’s anything you want to see.”

Lilith obediently gazed down at the entertainment section. But rather than a movie, the photograph on the opposite page immediately caught her attention. The skimpily clad woman in the ad for Club Paradise did kind of look like her. Realizing that was the gentlemen’s club where those women who’d been killed had worked, she shivered.

Long dark hair, big dark eyes,
distinctive
features. The woman could be her twin.

Or her kid sister.

Staring at the photo made her stomach knot. Lilith fingered the heart-half she still faithfully wore and remembered the last time she’d seen Hannah...

“You’ll come back to see me, right?” Hannah sounds every bit the frightened little girl. “Swear to God?”

Lilith splits the gold heart Daddy bought into its two halves. Her real father was nothing like the horror in the holier-than-thou trappings her mother remarried. She places one half of the heart on a length of chain held together with a tiny gold safety pin.

“Turn around.”

Lilith hooks the chain around her sister’s neck, replaces
her own,
then nestles her bruised cheek against her sister’s. Lilith stares at their dark-haired images, so similar. But inside, Hannah is like Mama.
Quiet and afraid and obedient.

“We’re like this heart,” Lilith says softly, stroking her little sister’s hair.
“Two halves of a whole.
No one and nothing will keep us apart for long.”

But of course something had.

Lilith took another look at the ad. No, it simply couldn’t be Hannah, not right here in Chicago, not practically under her nose. She chucked the newspaper into the recycle bin, and yet, she couldn’t rid herself of the notion.

What if it was?

Shaking the thought away, she left the break room.

By the time Lilith got back to her desk, the phone was ringing. And then her boss had a rush job for her. She forgot all about the possibility of going to a movie with Elena until the last minute.
Back to the break room.
The newspaper was still in the recycle bin.

Her pulse picking up a beat, she stared down at it. How ridiculous was she being? She grabbed up the paper, but rather than the movie section, her gaze went straight back to that photograph.

Hannah?

It couldn’t be. Just couldn’t.

After tossing the paper again, all thoughts of movies quashed, she rushed out of the building and raced to her bus stop like her life depended on it. A buzz went through her and her head went light. What if that was Hannah?
A girl on the streets – how many work opportunities did someone like that have?

oOo

A HALF HOUR LATER, Lilith was glad to rush up the stairs to her third floor apartment in a greystone six-flat, even happier to be greeted at the door by a loud, “Me-e-ow!”

She picked up the cat and took comfort in the big ball of warmth. “You’ve been neglected, haven’t you?”

Claws hooked in the front of her sweatshirt, and Valkyrie purred contentedly. Lilith crossed the first floor living area filled with more plants than furniture and opened the door to the small balcony with its pots of flowers and herbs. Their light fresh scent welcomed her. The cat’s ears twitched, and she made funny little noises deep in her throat, but she was content to be held and cuddled. Animals never forgot a kindness, and no doubt this one still remembered being lost and Lilith rescuing her.

Lilith knew the feeling of being lost on her own all too well. She’d given the cat a second chance at a full and happy life. Now if only she could do the same for herself. Everything had changed for her when Hannah ran.

During those first months when she was in college, determined to make a new life for them all, she’d called her little sister at least once a week. And every time, Hannah had cried and begged her to come get her. As if Lilith could have. Even if she quit school and got a job, no way would child services let her have custody. Mama had always protected the bastard she’d married, had never filed a complaint against him. Having to leave her little sister in that situation, even temporarily, had broken her heart. And when Hannah finally ran, she’d blamed herself.

Over the years, she’d done everything she could to find her sister. She’d checked shelters, called runaway hotlines, checked the Internet for some mention of a Hannah Mitchell. And ever since she’d gotten stable work, Lilith had spent thousands of dollars on private investigators. Finding her younger sister had been her private obsession for more than a decade.

None of that assuaged her guilt.

Going inside, Lilith tried to eat, but Valkyrie got the best part of the meal. She tried to watch television, but her mind kept wandering from the program. She tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, there was her sister, the last time she’d seen her, the chain and heart dangling from her neck.

She had to know for sure.
Had to see this woman up close and personal.
Had to look into her eyes and see for herself if she recognized anything in them.

Getting out of bed, Lilith dressed and set off for Broadway, where she waved down a taxi. Sick with excitement and dread, she wondered what she would say to a sister she hadn’t seen in more than a decade.

It was nearly midnight before she stood outside of Club Paradise with its neon sign and billboard of featured dancers. She quickly scanned the black and white glossies and found one of an overly made-up young woman who looked like Hannah, but who was billed as Anna Youngheart.

Who was she kidding by trying to deny it?
Youngheart?
Young was her mother’s maiden name. Heart could represent the heart-half each them had worn.
And Anna?
Hannah minus a whisper.

It took her a minute to work up the nerve to go inside.

“No tables left,” the guy behind the window told her, giving her
a
once-over and a surprised expression. “You’ll have to sit at the bar.”

Lilith paid and entered the noisy arena. At first glance, the place almost looked respectable.
Tuxedoed bouncers, vests and trousers on the waitresses.
Then Lilith became aware of the skimpily-clad black woman on stage and several sparsely-clothed dancers sitting at tables where they fawned over the customers. Lilith felt overdressed, no doubt the reason she was getting unwanted attention. From every direction, glassy-eyed men seemed to be staring at
her
.