Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 01 - The Sex Club (17 page)

“Do you think it’s a bomb?” Roselyn whispered.

Deep breath. Friendly smile. “Probably not. We’re just playing it safe.”

Kera moved quickly to exam room two. She knocked, and before Julie could respond, Kera said, “This is important. I must speak to Eva right away.”

In a moment, Julie opened the door a few inches. “What’s going on?”

“Suspicious package in the lobby. I need to know if it belongs to Eva.”

The nurse’s eyes widened in alarm, and she turned back to her client, whom Kera could not see, and said quietly, “Did you leave anything in the lobby?”

Kera heard a young woman say “No.” She reached through the open door, grabbed Julie’s arm, and squeezed. “Get out of the building as quickly as you can. Take your client and go out the back door.”

Kera raced toward the lab area. Two staff members—both female college students—were hunched over some paperwork.

“Leave the building immediately. Go out the back door.” Kera did not stay to explain, and the women, responding to her tone, did not hesitate or call after her with questions.

She made a hurried sweep of the clinic, finding only two other staff members. Both Andrea and Sheila were gone for the day, so there was no one to report to, no one else to manage the emergency.

Charging back up the hall to the front of the building, Kera hoped like hell she was handling this correctly. Roselyn was still on the phone, as she had directed. Kera took it from her and spoke quickly. “The package does not belong to anyone who is currently in the building. I’m getting everyone out now.”

“Good. A bomb squad is already on the way.”

Kera hung up and turned to Roselyn. “Please tell the woman in the lobby, in Spanish, that she has to leave. Tell her Eva is already outside.”

Roselyn started to move around the counter, but Kera stopped her. “Tell her from here, then go out the back door. I don’t want you anywhere near that package.”

Roselyn spoke loudly in Spanish. The woman didn’t move. Finally, the receptionist yelled, “Vamos.”

The client grabbed her child and swore softly.

Just then a loud boom reverberated through the lobby.

Kera jumped, and Roselyn screamed. But it was only thunder. The lobby, still intact, soon flashed with lightning. A moment later rain pounded the roof. The storm was in full velocity.

The women looked at each other, then ran for the back door. They would take their chances with the weather.

Kera waited in her car for the police, rain pounding the roof and keeping her on edge. She had sent everyone else home and moved her car to the street. It was a small package, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t blow the whole building. The police bomb unit arrived and told her she should leave. After they went inside, she drove to KFC, picked up some chicken, and came back.

The squad members were now in the parking lot, and the rain had let up some. From her spot on the street, Kera watched them blast the package with a water canon. Nothing happened. Relief washed over her. It had not been a bomb. For a few minutes, she watched the officers examine the debris. Curiosity drove her out of her car and into the rain. She jogged up to an officer, still wearing his protective gear, and asked him, “So what was it?”

He smiled. “We think it contained Girl Scout cookies.”

Kera laughed out loud for the first time in days.

When she got home, Kera did fifty minutes on her elliptical cross trainer to burn off the stress and the fried chicken. After a shower, she settled into her daily online routine. She checked her e-mail: nothing from Daniel, but one from her mother, who had forwarded a petition for the federal legalization of medical marijuana. It made Kera smile.

She’d spent the first twelve years of her life in a commune fifty miles north of Redding, California. Her parents—Mariah and Keith Demaris—had been hippies before it was popular to be hippies. In the early sixties, they’d left college in San Francisco and joined a group living off the land upstate. Her mother wrote political essays while her father made handcrafted cedar chests. They each earned a little money for their efforts, but otherwise lived off the vegetables, goats, and chickens raised in the commune.

Kera had been born at home a few years later. At the age of three, her family had made a hurried, worried trip to the hospital in Redding for the birth of her sister Janine. It was the first time Kera had seen the city. She was happy to leave it and return home. Her childhood had been simple, quiet, and happy, and she hadn’t known what she was missing until her parents left the commune when she was twelve. They never talked about it, but Kera suspected her father had had an affair that caused a lot of turmoil in the community and in their family. But the marriage had survived, and her mother had become an activist for every hungry child, mistreated woman, and abused animal. And Mariah Demaris was still going strong.

Kera added her name to the petition, forwarded it to a few like-minded friends, and went back to her browser in search of her favorite breaking news site. More explosions in Iraq, but no new hostages.

The news could not hold her attention. Too much was happening in her own little corner of the world, and Kera couldn’t pull her mind away from it. Today’s episode only served to remind her that the clinic bomber was still out there, probably plotting his next attack. Jessie’s killer had not been apprehended either. For a moment, Kera wondered if they were the same person. But that seemed unlikely. In law enforcement terms, they probably had very different profiles, very different motives and methods.

Surfing mindlessly without really absorbing what was on the screen in front of her, Kera soon found herself at girlsjustwanttohavefun.com where last night she’d read the chat room exchange between
blowgirl_jd, perfectass,
and
freakjob37
. Before logging in, Kera gave some thought to her reasons for coming back to the site. To a certain extent, it was research for her teen outreach program. On another level, it was personal. Both Jessie and Nicole had contacted her outside of the clinic. Kera took that as a sign that both girls had wanted or needed something from her personally.

On the surface, they had sought her advice. But did they also want her permission? Forgiveness? Maybe they didn’t even know. But they had drawn her in, and now she felt compelled to follow through. And, she admitted to herself, she was very curious about this group of girls.

Logging in as
blowgirl_jd
gave Kera a twinge of the creeps. But she believed she was acting in Jessie’s best interest. It was very possible that Jessie’s sexual activity—particularly, her “guy on the side”—was connected to her death and that some of the information on the website might help find the killer.

Kera wanted to tell Detective Jackson about the website, but she couldn’t decide where exactly the boundaries of client confidentiality fell in this strange case. She had discovered the website on her own, independent of her job at Planned Parenthood. But some—maybe all—of these girls were clinic clients, and ultimately, their visits to the clinic had led Kera to this site. Yet, she countered, it was Jessie’s personal e-mail to her that had given Kera the screen name to get in.

Kera made up her mind. She would read through some more message boards, then call the detective.

First, she skimmed through a Dirty Gossip session. These chatters had different user names than those on the Sex Talk page, and the conversation was only dirty in the sense of mud slinging rather than sex. Kera didn’t remember her junior high classmates ever being that cruel—to anyone. Sure, they had talked about each other behind each other’s backs, but they had said things like “She wears that pink sweater all the time; doesn’t she own anything else?”

But never in any school or work setting—even in the most primitive foreign countries—had she ever heard one female call another female a “donkey sucking whore.” Yet that was how these thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls talked about each other. It was sad.

Kera moved to the Sex Talk page but wasn’t sure how much more she could stomach. Very quickly, she stumbled into a conversation that had taken place yesterday.

freakjob37: I still can’t believe JD is dead. And why was that policeman asking us questions instead of trying to find the killer?

racyG: It sucks. I know. A cop came to our house too. But of course, my mother, paranoid supreme queen, didn’t let him in. When is JD’s funeral? Are we going?

freakjob37: It’s Sunday afternoon, and of course we’re going.

racyG: Should we go out cruising afterward? While our parents are at their monthly sex club meeting? Why are they so obsessed with faggots fucking? And fornication? No wonder we’re all such perverts.

freakjob37: Has anyone talked to NC lately? I saw her after school today with one of the nurses from Planned Parenthood. What is that about?

lipservice: No idea.

racyG: Maybe she’s pregnant.

freakjob37: Don’t say that. Not about one of us. Remember our pact. No one ever tells no matter what.

The phone rang and Kera jumped. She received so few calls now that she was alone in the house—and no longer heard from telemarketers, thanks to the national no-call list. She let it ring again while her nerves settled back down, then picked up. “Hello.” After a moment, she heard a click. The other party had hung up. They must have realized they had a wrong number when they heard her voice.

Kera went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. Then changed her mind and poured a glass of white wine from a bottle that had been in her refrigerator since late summer. Back at the computer desk, she read a few more of the Girl2Girl chat pages but didn’t learn anything new. What she did know for certain was that these girls were horny, uninhibited, critical of outsiders, and careful to only use initials when referring to each other. Based on her list from the clinic, she was pretty sure she knew who most of them were, but they did not seem to know the identity of Jessie’s “guy on the side.”

Kera picked up her cell phone to call Jackson. It was time to point him in the direction of the Kincaid sex club. But that was all she could do. She would not give him any of the names from her list. Then it hit her again. His daughter was probably a member of the club, or at least she had been. Kera set the phone back down, unsure if it was the right thing to do.

Thursday, October 21, 4:12 p.m.

Jackson and Evans rode together in his Impala. Schakowski said he’d meet them at the complex in fifteen minutes. Thunder boomed in the sky, and a sudden rain pounded the car as they drove. Jackson hoped they wouldn’t have to wait long for Slonecker.

After a few minutes on the road, Evans said, “The mayor, wow. Isn’t he campaigning as a moral majority type? Do you really think he killed her?”

“Maybe. But don’t forget about Oscar Grady. McCray will track every move he’s made in the last two weeks.”

“But with Fieldstone, if the working theory is that they had a sexual relationship, why kill her?” Evans asked.

“Maybe she threatened to end it. Or to tell someone. Or blackmail him.”

“I buy that.” Evans nodded. “With his political career at stake, he could be driven to murder. But why take the risk of screwing her in the first place?” She looked at Jackson as if she expected him, as a man, to know.

He shook his head. “I don’t understand the attraction to young girls. I prefer padding and mileage myself.”

Evans laughed. “I hope you never said that to your wife.”

Jackson didn’t respond.

“No offense.”

“None taken.”

He made a right on Hilyard, and they rode in silence for a minute.

“Are you all right? You’ve been pretty quiet during this investigation.”

Jackson wasn’t sure if he should share his concerns. He didn’t want to get pulled off the case. He decided to trust Evans. “I’m worried about my daughter. She used to be friends with Jessie.”

“Maybe that’s why they stopped being friends. Jessie went in a direction Katie didn’t like.”

“Maybe. But why won’t she talk about it?”

“For the same reason cops don’t rat on each other. It’s a code of honor.”

The Oakwood, opposite the Regency Apartments on the next block, was a smaller, newer building with fresh pale-mint paint. Set back from the street and tucked in among a cluster of overgrown maples and firs, it offered its tenants a certain seclusion. Jackson figured privacy was one of reasons the mayor had chosen it. The location was also within walking distance of Kincaid Middle School and a five-minute drive, bus ride, or bike ride from city hall—a convenient place for Jessie and Fieldstone to meet in the afternoons.

Jackson drove around to the back of the building, which was adjacent to the basketball court and dumpster where the body had been found. The lot had driving access to the alley and the dumpster. He parked at the end in the space for unit eight. From that vantage point, they still had a view of the door to unit five, which was on the ground floor on the opposite end. The building had four apartments on two levels, with stairs at each end. A maroon Vanagon kept the Impala mostly out of sight from the driveway.