Rage Factor (34 page)

She heard his pipe clink against an ashtray just before he cradled the phone.

Two women. Even dropping Carrera out of the equation, one of those women had to be Brenda. She was the only one connected to both cases. Unless…

Clarissa Thomas was one of the more unbridled, more headstrong of the Victims Advocates, and the Ramirez case had been all over the news right after it happened—two victims, an elderly man and a pretty young woman. Anyone following the story knew the beating and rape were particularly brutal. Clarissa would’ve followed the case. When Ingles and Carlson were released, she’d have been outraged.

And Clarissa was always the fire behind Regan. The person who’d convinced Regan to testify. Had she also convinced Regan to get even?

As Sarina finished her sketch and started walking back along the path, Dixie dialed the number she’d jotted down for Donald Thomas listed in Southwest Houston. No answer.

“That munchkin who was here.” Sarina tucked her pad and markers into a leather portfolio she’d brought along. “Is it you or me she’s following?”

“I’m not sure Casey cares, as long as one of us leads her to a sensational story.”

“Will we?

“I hope not.”

While Sarina purchased the stationery she’d spotted for Joanna, Dixie stopped at a pay phone that miraculously still had its Yellow Pages tucked into a niche. She opened to hair salons, and started calling all the numbers in the Post Oak/Memorial area, where Brenda had mentioned Regan worked. On the fifth call, she hit a home run.

The receptionist said Regan could probably work Dixie in if she wanted to stop by the salon after two o’clock. That would allow time for her and Sarina to grab lunch after the self-defense class at Ryan’s school. Dixie had told Parker she might get a sexy new hairstyle. Now was her big chance.

Dixie couldn’t help feeling apprehensive every time she saw the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders bunched together, boys feigning karate kicks, girls stealing glances and giggling. The skills they learned in this class, which the private school had agreed to try on an experimental basis, could be used as easily for violence as for self-defense.

Krav Maga, the Israeli technique, was brutal but effective. It took months to learn instead of years. But as in any martial art, mental discipline mattered most. And despite Dixie’s insistence that gender didn’t count, the raging hormones of puberty proved otherwise. Young males slapped and punched, young females posed and flirted.

They were old enough that she’d laid out the grim statistics in the first class: Every fifteen seconds, a woman is assaulted and beaten. Every 1.3 minutes, a woman is raped. Sixty-one percent of all rapes involve females under seventeen. The part she didn’t tell them was that twenty-nine percent are females yet to reach their eleventh birthday. And
sixteen percent of all
males
are sexually molested as children. She did talk about muggings, kidnappings, and assaults that might happen outside the family. She talked about drug pushers and peer pressure. And about weapons. She had issued every kid in the room a police whistle for emergencies and a leather thong for carrying it.

Twenty-three kids in the room, all from upper-middle-class homes. How many were already statistics? Dixie hoped what she taught them would someday change the dismal figures.

She looked at her twelve-year-old nephew and was glad she was only an aunt. How could any parent be sure of doing the right thing at the right time?

After the kids all signed her cast, and while they waited for Brenda Benson to arrive, Dixie wrote on the white board, as she did every session:

Her intention was to show kids of both genders they had all the strength and ability needed to escape an attacker. They had only to practice using those abilities.

At five minutes past the time for class to start, Brenda had not arrived. Dixie introduced Sarina, who drew instant approving looks from the boys and awe from the girls.

“Who’s the fox?” Ryan whispered, cutting his eyes at Sarina.

“My new assistant. Now get back there with your classmates.” She turned to Sarina. “Do you mind? Nothing you can’t handle, I promise.”

Sarina grinned. “No sweat.”

“Let’s review briefly,” Dixie told the class. “What’s the best form of self-defense?”

“Escape!” they shouted in unison.

“Good. What else have you learned?”

“Use your whole body as a unit!” Ryan yelled.

“Right. Let’s look at something new.” Setting her cane aside, she positioned Sarina and told her to take her best punch. Dixie demonstrated how to deflect the blow and use the attackers’ own force against her. “The next step is to keep moving and get to safety.”

She paired the kids up and let them practice.

“You did pretty good there,” she told Sarina. “I take it this is not all new to you.”

“I got out of ballet by agreeing to take tai chi.”

“Good choice. Although ballet is a terrific workout for defensive arts.”

When the kids had practiced the exercise long enough to get restless, she held up her hand for quiet.

“What are the three skills to practice daily?”

“Run!”

“Dodge, deflect, and turn fast!”

“Thrust and twist!”

Brenda entered the gym just as Dixie and Sarina had demonstrated body-twisting to dislodge a hold. The prosecutor nodded brusquely at Dixie and stepped in to handle the next move. Dark circles under her amber eyes suggested she hadn’t slept much the night before. Her makeup had been applied hastily. Her usual easy banter with the kids was replaced with a sharp command to take the moves seriously.

“Concentrate on watching your opponent,” Brenda insisted. “When you move, your whole body, including the eyes, must move as a unit.” She made the kids practice a hold-breaking thrust over and over.

“Your friend sure knows how to bum out a room,” Sarina whispered to Dixie. “Totally uncheery in here all of a sudden.”

The kids were feeling it, too. They’d stiffened up and gone quiet. Ryan shot a puzzled look at Dixie. She looked at her watch, waited a second, and stepped in, ignoring Brenda’s sharp glance.

“Nice job!” Dixie put enough enthusiasm in her words, she hoped, to offset the gloomy atmosphere that had descended. “Now what are we going to practice this week?”

“Running,” someone mumbled.

“Whoa, what was that wimpy answer?” Dixie grinned at them.
“What
are we going to practice this week?”

“Running.”

“Dodge, deflect, and turn fast!”

“Thrust and twist!”

They were smiling again, at least. “And what’s the best form of self-defense?”

“Escape!”

Dixie dismissed the class. But when she looked around for Brenda, the prosecutor had disappeared.

When Regan Salles smiled, she did it with her whole being, and suddenly the pouty sexpot became girl-next-door gorgeous. Discovering Sarina was the daughter of actress Joanna Francis elicited a wide-eyed, elated smile.

“Joanna Francis?
Jeez! She’s my favorite actress of all time. All time! I can’t believe I’m actually talking to her daughter. Let me touch you!” She touched Sarina’s arm with a glossy red fingernail that matched the red skirt peeking from beneath her black smock. “Sarina, you are going to walk out of here with the best hair
ever—best ever!
And you’ll tell all your friends in Hollywood that you have ‘Hair by Regan.’ You will, won’t you?”

Sarina slid a look at Dixie, who nodded her encouragement. When making the appointment, Dixie had impulsively given Sarina’s name, recalling what the girl herself had said about having righteous connections and using them. Now it seemed to be paying off.

“I don’t want my hair changed,” Sarina clarified.
“Just
trimmed.”

“Oh, I agree totally. Totally.” But the eagerness in Regan’s face suggested she would do more than a mere trim.

Dixie followed the pair to a shampoo room, twenty red basins lining two walls, a red reclining plastic chair snugged up to each basin. In three of the stations, hairdressers worked over customers of both genders. The other chairs were empty. Once Sarina was positioned for sudsing, Dixie sat on a vacant chair to watch.

“When Sarina’s mother suggested she get her hair styled while they’re in town,” Dixie said, “I knew you’d be perfect for it. I saw what a change you made in Clarissa Thomas.” This last was a guess, but a safe one, Dixie felt, considering how close the two women had become during the Coombs trial.

“Oh.” Regan caught her full, glossy lower lip between her teeth. “You know Clarissa?”

“She’s a member of Victims Advocates,” Dixie hedged. “I’ve been trying to catch up with her for two days, but her maid keeps telling me she’s ‘shopping.’ Got any idea where I might find her?”

Regan had soaped Sarina’s hair and was now rinsing it.

“Why did you want to talk to Clarissa? Are you a reporter?”

The spin on that last word suggested being a reporter was right up there with being a movie star. Dixie decided to go with it.

“No, but I have a friend who wants to do a follow-up piece on the Coombs trial.” Not entirely untrue. Casey James would love to do a follow-up, if it was juicy enough.

“Why
Clarissa?
I was the one—I—” Regan’s voice suddenly went screechy. She shut the water off and poured conditioner on Sarina’s hair. More than enough, Dixie thought. “I’m the one he—he attacked and—and—”

Regan rubbed hard at Sarina’s hair. The girl grimaced, but didn’t complain.

“Where would the follow-up piece be published?” Regan asked.

Dixie shrugged. “My reporter friend’s a stringer. She works for several publications.”

“Business was really good all during the trial,” Regan said. “I was, like, almost a celebrity.”

Dixie searched for the right bait to put on her hook. Apparently, Regan thrived on attention. Dixie pointedly glanced at the few occupied stations, then lowered her voice conspiratorially.

“How do you feel about what happened to Coombs after the trial?”

Regan’s lips thinned. She finished rinsing the conditioner from Sarina’s hair and wrapped a towel around it.

“Lawrence made me believe he really cared about me. Sent me flowers, candy—Lady Godiva, my favorite—even bought me this pin.” She touched a gold heart pinned to her smock. “Real gold.”

Dixie wondered how she could bear to wear it. But then, the hairdresser had paid dearly for that pin—why not wear it?

Regan released the lever that raised Sarina’s chair from the reclining position.

“You have beautiful eyes,” she told the girl. “Let me put a few highlights in your hair, and those eyes will brighten up till there’s not a man alive could resist them.”

“Red highlights?” Sarina seemed to like the idea.

Dixie wondered what Joanna would say, then decided to hell with it, Joanna
had
criticized the girl’s hair, and Sarina would look terrific with red highlights. Anyway, didn’t Hollywood types change their hair color every week?

“Or we could do platinum …”

“Red.” Sarina was emphatic.

“All right!” Regan squeaked. “Have to dry you a bit first.”

While she positioned the kid under the dryer, Dixie flipped open the cell phone and dialed Clarissa’s number again. Just as the maid started to say, “No, Mrs. Thomas shopping,” Dixie held the phone for Regan to hear.

“I suppose Clarissa will have to miss out on the interview,” Dixie said, snapping the phone shut. “But I’m sure my friend would like to talk to you—find out how
you
feel about vigilante justice.”

Regan’s lips thinned again, but her eyes were bright and defiant. “The jury didn’t do their job. They’d have acted differently if Lawrence had raped one of
them
… or one of
their
daughters.”

“So you believe Lawrence Coombs got what he deserved—later?”

“What he deserves is to be locked up, locked up until his puny little thing withers with old age. But that wasn’t going to happen, was it?” Her face flushed with anger and indignation.

Dixie couldn’t decide whether she’d been involved in the brutal assault on Coombs or only wished she’d been.

“What about the recent vengeance killing of Gary Ingles? Do you think he got what he deserved?”

Regan stiffened. “I … I don’t know anything about that. I don’t!”

But the fact that she did, indeed, know something about it was written in every rigid muscle of her face.

Regan skipped up the steps of the tiny garage apartment Clarissa had rented for her, thinking about the wonderful job she’d done on Sarina Page’s hair. When her mother saw what a change Regan had made, taming that girl’s shaggy mess and putting some zing in it, why, Joanna would want the same person to work on her own hair, wouldn’t she? And wouldn’t she want that person to move right out to Hollywood, do her hair every single day?

Regan had always known deep in her heart that a truly wonderful moment would come along one day, and she’d have to be quick enough to grab that moment before it passed. Today she’d reached out and grabbed!

A siren whooped, and Regan froze, listening, until it faded into the distance. Whew! She sure was jumpy.

Maybe she should go right in and pack her things.
Hollywood.
Regan had never been there, but she’d seen the giant letters on television and always knew she could be cutting hair for Meryl Streep or Demi Moore. Ever since
Lawrence … beat her up so bad … why, she still didn’t understand what had gotten him so mean, she’d
told
him he could park his shoes under her bed any night he wanted … anyhow, ever since then, Regan had come to hate Houston.

Now was the moment she’d waited for all her life. Sarina had said to come by the movie set and she’d introduce Regan to her mother. Regan’s whole body had quivered with anticipation. She just hoped she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.