Sugar & Spice (15 page)

“She's gotta go!” Terry said, and continued cleaning a rifle. “You know the rules. It's her turn!”

“No!” Jerry said. “If we kill an FBI agent, we'll bring all kinds of heat on ourselves. We can't afford that. Not right now.”

“Sooner or later, we're going to have to deal with her,” Terry said, and started reassembling the rifle.

Jerry said, “Rather than kill her, let's discourage her. Or better yet, let's hire some guys to put her outta commission.”

“Yeah, but who, Jerry?” Terry asked while aiming the silenced rifle at a red and white target over a hundred yards away. “Alex says she's Bruce Lee reincarnated. Whoever we get had better be good.”

Jerry, looking at the target through binoculars, said, “We'd better be there just in case. If it goes the other way, and she captures them, they might tell her who sent them.”

Terry squeezed off five rounds, all of them dead center. “Eventually there's going to be a showdown. You know that, don't you? And I'm not going back to prison.”

“I know, Terry.”

“So when do you wanna do this?”

“After tonight, we cool it. Let's see what they come up with. Eventually they'll relax and that's when we'll take her out of the picture. Kelly McPherson, too. But first we gotta get Phoenix.”

I led twenty agents into Norrell prison. Captain Callahan was shocked to see us back, but he didn't resist. When I told him why we were there, he laughed hysterically. I got the feeling that I was barking up the wrong tree. But this was where the emails originated. There was no doubt about that. If Captain Callahan wasn't involved, someone at the prison was. It could have been anybody.

“Do you have a furlough program here, Captain?” I asked.

“No.”

“Are you allowing special privileges?”

“Special privileges?” he repeated with a questioning tone.

“Are you allowing any of the trustees to leave the prison at night for any reason?” I asked.

Captain Callahan doubled over with laughter. “You brought a battalion of men here and you don't even know who you're looking for? I got news for you, Missy; I didn't have anything to do with the warden's murder, and no one here did. Look around all you like. Talk to whomever you want. You don't have nothin' on me, my officers, or on any of my prisoners.”

He was right. We didn't have much, but we were desperate. The strange thing was, I believed him. I got the feeling that the only thing that Captain Callahan was guilty of was running drugs out of the prison. The sad part was, he might even get off for that. Only one guard was talking. And he was the accuser. No one was corroborating his story. The guards
had even gotten rid of the drugs. D.C. Metro didn't have much of a case against him.

“Maybe you didn't. Maybe you did. Where's the library? I wanna see all the computers. Somebody at this prison knows something and I'm not leaving until we find out who it is.”

The truth was we could have been intentionally led here. Everybody knew about the warden's murder. The real killer could have led us here to throw us off his trail, but we had to check the computers out anyway. Captain Callahan could have been lying, but I really didn't think he was. It was frustrating as hell.

We swarmed into the computer lab like a bunch of locusts. One by one, each agent turned on a computer and began examining it. I'm all for educating prisoners, but I questioned the wisdom of allowing prisoners access to the Internet and allowing email addresses. That, to me, was trouble waiting to happen.

After several hours of fruitless searching, I asked, “Are there any more computers?”

“There are a couple in the warden's office,” Captain Callahan said. He was quite calm, showing no evidence of anything to hide. Then, as though it was an afterthought, he said, “The women have computers in their prison, too, if you wanna look.”

“Do you and your officers have access to the women's prison?”

“Yes.”

“Then I wanna see them,” I said.

Kelly assigned a couple of our guys to the warden's office. Then we went to the women's prison.

One of the guards had used a computer in the women's prison so as not to draw suspicion on himself, I thought as we walked through the cages, where women yelled out all kinds of obscenities at us.

“Five minutes is all I need with you, darlin',” one said.

Another said, “I'm all the woman you need, little girl. Come on in here and let Mabel teach you somethin' ‘bout yo'self.”

“Y'all can have little stuff. Gimme the blond,” another said and flicked her tongue in and out like a snake.

“Here, Blondie,” another inmate said, pulling her fingers out of her vagina and offering them to Kelly. “My kitty cat tastes good. Wanna taste?” When Kelly ignored her, she put her fingers in her mouth. “Umm! Umm! Good. Just like Campbell's Soup.”

“Is the library open, Captain Callahan?” I asked, ignoring the catcalls by depraved, incarcerated women.

“Surely there was another way to get there, Captain,” Kelly said.

“Yeah, but I woulda deprived the girls of their fun.” He laughed. “And just to show what a nice guy I am, McPherson, I'll let you have your choice of any one of them.” He laughed again.

Kelly frowned. “That's disgusting.”

“Some of these women have been locked up for twenty years. What do you expect? Girl Scouts?”

“And you let these women prey on each other?” Kelly asked.

“Survival of the fittest. We can't watch ‘em twenty-four hours a day. Besides, all of them were convicted. They weren't kidnapped. They get what they get.”

Kelly shook her head and mumbled something. A few minutes later, we were out of general population and entering the prison library. I saw a young black woman behind the counter reading
A Raisin in the Sun.
She looked like she belonged in a library that didn't have bars. I wondered how old she was and what was her crime. She didn't fit. The other women looked and acted like they belonged behind bars, but not this woman. Had someone molested this delicate-looking woman? I wondered how long it would be before she turned into an animal, too.

I showed the woman my credentials. I'm not sure why. I guess I wanted to show her a measure of respect. “FBI, Ma'am. We need to go through all of the computers.”

“May I ask why?” the young woman asked.

May I? She was educated, I thought. How did an educated black woman end up at Norrell? I stared at her for a few seconds, wondering what the difference was between us.

“Agent Perry,” she said politely, snapping me out of it.

“Uh, yeah. I'm sorry. Someone may have been using these computers to communicate with a suspected murderer.”

The other agents, including Kelly, fanned out, turning on computers. I stood there at the counter, thinking, if her daddy had been like mine, maybe she wouldn't be here.

“May I ask you a question, young lady?”

“Aggravated murder,” she said without hesitation. Her soft eyes hardened as if she was reliving the murder. “I killed the man who stripped me of my dignity. The jury let him off. I was the one he raped and that was good enough for me.”

“Where'd you go to school?”

“Howard University,” she said.

“That's my alma mater,” I said. “What's your name?”

“Dawn McNeil,” she answered and extended her hand, “Sorry to meet you under these circumstances.”

“I'm sorry, too,” I said. “Did you finish school?”

“Actually no, I didn't. Well, yes. I completed my bachelor's and I was working on my master's when I was raped. I had studied criminology and had planned on becoming an FBI agent.” She shook her head. “Life sure is funny, isn't it? Here you are doing what I wanted to do. I was supposed to be arresting criminals and I ended up being one.”

She kinda laughed sardonically. I didn't see any humor in it. Sarcastic or otherwise. In fact, I felt a profound sadness when I looked at her in her prison dungarees.

“When are you getting out?”

“I have about six months left on a two-year stretch.”

“That's good. You'll be out soon.”

“Yes, the judge cut me a lot of slack, given my reasons for killing the bastard. But what do I have to look forward to? My life is over. I'm a felon.”

“You still interested in fighting crime?”

“Yes, but there's no way that's going to happen now.”

“It might. I'm the majority owner in my husband's private investigation firm. Have you been working on your master's while you've been in?”

“No, I didn't see much point to it.”

“I'll tell you what, finish your master's, or at least work on it until you get out, and I'll set you up with a job,” I said. “So how long have you been working in the library, Dawn?”

“Since July fifth. The woman who was running the library at the time thought I'd make a good librarian since I came in every day to read.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don't know. She got out and I haven't heard from her since. Smart girl. Rich, too. At least that's what she told me. She said she had a house out in Malibu.”

“What?” My heart thumped hard and fast.

“Kelly, come and listen to this.”

Kelly came over. “No luck so far, Phoenix. I'm afraid this is another wild-goose chase.”

“No. Dawn. was telling me about the woman who was the librarian before her. She claimed to be rich and guess where she was from?” Kelly frowned. “Malibu.”

“What?” Kelly beamed.

“What was her name, Dawn?” I asked.

“Never knew her first name. Last name was Connelly though.”

“Agent Perry, we found it,” one of the agents said.

Connelly's records were missing. There were no hard copies and the computer records had been erased. According to Captain Callahan, her lawyer had argued that she entered the system as a juvenile and the only reason she had her sentence lengthened was because she had tried to escape, which landed her in Norrell. Therefore, she was a first-class citizen with the same rights and privileges as everybody else. She could even vote.

“What do you make of all of this, Kelly?” I asked.

“I think we're lucky as hell. That's what I think. But luck aside, we don't know jack! So what? A Connelly was in prison here and a Connelly was murdered in Malibu. Maybe they were sisters. Maybe they were the same person. Who knows? The bottom line is, there's still a guy out there killing women—viciously I might add. This is one big mess. We keep running around from place to place and keep coming up short. What little bit of information we get leads right back where we started.”

“Maybe that's the key, Kelly. Maybe we need to start all over. Go back to the beginning and figure this out.”

“Dawn, what was Connelly in for?”

“Same as me. Aggravated murder. But she was a juvenile when she did the deed and her million-dollar lawyer got it plea-bargained down to manslaughter. Don't get me wrong, I liked Connelly. She helped me get this cushy job here in the library. But get this, the word is, she killed her
mother because her mother threatened to expose her father for incest if he didn't give her what she wanted in the divorce settlement.”

I frowned. “I don't mean to sound morbid, but why was she protecting her father? He was the one having sex with his own daughter.”

Dawn laughed. “That's the strange thing, Agent Perry. She told me that she and her father were in love.”

“Kelly,” I said, “What'll you bet these folks are from California?”

Kelly laughed. “Where's the father now?”

“Killed himself a couple of years ago,” Dawn said.

“Was he jackin' off?” I asked.

Kelly laughed.

“I don't get it,” Dawn said frowning.

My cell rang. “Agent Perry.”

“Kortney Malone here. Get over to Season Chambers' house. She's been killed.”

Why Season Chambers? I thought as we walked into the midst of onlookers who didn't seem to mind the ninety-seven-degree temperature. What was the pattern? There had to be one. All these nuts had one. We had to find it. Maybe Season figured something out and the killer had to shut her up. We had to find out who the other killer was and fast. Eleven people were dead and the killings were still mounting.

We walked into Season Chambers' house. The crime lab team was already there collecting what little evidence the killer left. I knew what they'd find. It would be the same as all the others. But still, I needed to see the crime scene for myself. We still hadn't figured out why some of the women's body parts were thrown against the wall and why others weren't. All we knew or rather believed was that the killer was angry with some and not angry with others, which made no sense.

Kelly and I went up to Season Chambers' bedroom. The air conditioning kept the body parts cool. It would be difficult to pinpoint an exact time of death—not that it mattered. I looked down into the blue eyes that stared back at me and shook my head. In the near distance, the photographer snapped off photo after photo. The look on Season Chambers' face was one of painful anguish and horrible fear combined. I was thinking, this young woman had just seen her very first crime scene stiff a day earlier. And now she was dead, too. Again I questioned, why this woman? Surely she wasn't involved with drugs.

“Let's search the house, Kelly,” I said, “Maybe she found something and didn't have a chance to tell us about it.”

“Where do you wanna start, Phoenix?” Kelly asked with resignation. I could tell she was getting tired of the case also.

“The computer. Where else?” I said, knowing we wouldn't find one single solitary clue. But it had to be done. It was procedure. “How long has she been dead?” I asked the coroner just before we left the room.