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  She didn’t answer him. Not by choice but because she wasn’t sure she could and at the same time keep her job.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The vanilla scented candles presented themselves in gentle competition of light and dark, flickering back and forth across the playscape of Misty’s bare skin. She was a fantasy revealed, from the sculpted tuft of blond hair floating above the sweet juncture of her youthful thighs, to the soft round breasts full of promise.

  She lay stilled on the bed, her body damp from exertion, her legs splayed, her heat radiating outward and conjoining that of her lover in an amalgamation of symbiotic lusts — money and flesh.

  Nolan St. Claire rolled off the bed and stood, hands at his sides, jaw slack, staring, with his heart thudding heavy as a grave digger’s pick. Sweat dripped from under his arms, rolled down his ribs, and accumulated along the roll of fat around his belly.

  He took two steps towards the bathroom, a half step more, and then crumbled to his knees, head down with one hand covering his eyes, the other gripping his thigh to steady its shaking. He was then swept-over by a series of deep breaths that got shorter and faster as they progressed until he became so light headed he almost passed out.

  “No,” he whispered. A second later, he dropped the hand covering his eyes, looked up at the ceiling, and shouted, “Nooo!”

  With great effort, he regained his feet and turned back toward the bed.

  As he stood looking at her, he once again began shaking, first just his hands, then his knees, then in full-out, all over panic.

  “Jesus, what am I going to do? I’m ruined. My life is over.”

  He reached out and grabbed Misty’s wrist and pulled her upper body to the edge of the bed. Maybe it wasn’t too late, he thought. Maybe there was still a chance he could bring her back.

  He slapped her face twice. “Hey …hey, wake-up. Wake-up. God damn it, wake up, you hear me?”

  When she didn’t respond, he grabbed her shoulders and shook them hard, causing her head to flop like a sock monkey. Not yet ready to give up, he covered her mouth with his own and blew. He felt his first breath come right back at him through her nose. He remembered then that he had to pinch her nostrils. His next breath was more successful, and he saw her breasts rise, ten, twelve, fifteen times. It was working, he thought. Hope reigned king.

  He stopped his breaths and placed his fingers in the groove below her Adam’s apple to get a pulse. That’s when he saw the red, swollen skin on her throat, and the dark blotching beneath. He yanked his hand away.

  “Oh, God. Oh, God. Did I do that? No. No way. I didn’t squeeze that hard. I couldn’t have done that. It’s impossible.”

  He made a fist and hit her with it one, two, three times fast right over her sternum and watched the fatty tissue ripple out.

  “You stupid whore. This is your fault. You did this, not me.”

  St. Claire then placed the heel of one hand between her nipples and push sharply down. The bed gave under the pressure, but he continued with the compressions anyway.

  “Come on. …Come on. …Breathe. …Please breathe. …Come on.”

  Perspiration dripped off the end of his nose and onto her skin. His own breathing deepened with the exertion. Eventually, his arms, shoulders, and back ached so badly he couldn’t continue anymore.

  He bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. When his breathing slowed, he took up Misty’s arm and felt her wrist for a pulse. Nothing. He repositioned his fingers and felt again. Still nothing. He found his own pulse, on his own wrist, and tried the same spot on her for a third time. She was as dead then as she had been when he took his hands from her throat.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

  St. Claire turned around and slid to the floor with his back against the bed. Misty’s limp hand dangled over the top of his right shoulder.

  “I’m screwed. What am I going to do?”

  He gave brief consideration to calling 911 but quickly recognized the idea was a stupid one. Nobody could do anything to revive her and, well, he’d be giving up any chance he had to get out of this situation whole. Even if he left and called anonymously, his chance of escape would be seriously compromised. The longer the whore’s death went undiscovered, the better for him. It was too late for her. He still had a chance. He still had a life.

  The logic of his thoughts gave him a boost of confidence. He was starting to think rationally. He was starting to problem solve. Now, he just needed a plan.

  “”Think. Think,” he said out loud.

  His thoughts remained jumbled, though. The sense of hopelessness persisted. He turned his head over his right shoulder and said, “Why? Why? This didn’t have to happen. It was just a little bite, that’s all. You were paid for it. You were paid enough to take a beating …several beatings.”

  He fell silent as his eyes drifted around the room before finally coming to a stop on his Ostrich skin boots. He’d left them side by side near his clothes. He now wished he hadn’t worn them. Somehow, in this setting, they seemed gaudy and out of place.

  St. Claire shook his head to get his brain back on track. The motion loosened a bead of sweat that rolled down from his hairline, over his temple, and onto his cheek where it burned as if he’d been sliced with a razorblade.

  He gently probed the spot with a fingertip and was rewarded with more pain. When he inspected the tip of his finger, he saw blood.

  He turned his head again and said, “You stupid bitch. Look what you’ve done.”

  He got to his feet and almost ran to the bathroom. When he saw the damage to his face he said, “Oh, sweet Jesus. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead. I’ll never be able to explain this.”

  One side of his face had two deep claw marks running from his cheekbone to his jaw. They were so deep he thought he could actually see little white deposits of fat mixed in with all the red gunk and gore. There was also a third gouge that ran parallel to the others, but it wasn’t as long or as deep.

  On the other side of his face he’d suffered only welts; two of them. They hadn’t broken the skin. He had been able to grab that hand in time. It was still obvious what they were, though.

  He turned the water on and let it warm while he continued to examine the damage. Almost without thinking about it, he recognized that the first thing he needed to do was to get-away from her and back to his own hotel room. He couldn’t be found with her or even any place near her considering the way his face looked. But he asked himself, “How the hell am I going to do that?”

  He tested the water and gently wet his face. Once that was done, he soaped his hands, took a series of deep breaths, and washed his injury. The pain nearly caused him to fall to his knees. He closed his eyes tight, gripped the edge of the sink, bent forward at the waist, and rested his forehead on the countertop. Once the pain passed, he rinsed, which sent another wave through his head, neck, and shoulders.

  After that, he took a washcloth and pressed it to the worst damage, trying to get the bleeding and weeping to stop. As he held it there, he looked down and saw that he was still wearing the condom she had insisted on. He told himself he should have known right then and there that she wasn’t going to go along with the program. He stripped it off and flushed it down the toilet.

  Back at the mirror he rechecked the wound and found that it actually looked a little better. While examining it, an idea came to him.

  St. Claire walked back out to the room where Misty’s body lay, granting her a nervous glance, hoping for a miracle that was not to be. He took up her overnight-bag, which was nothing more than a large purse, and dumped its contents out on the carpet. Moving the items around with a big toe, he eventually saw what he wanted plus two more things he thought he could use. He picked-up a bottle of a skin-colored liquid, a large can of hairspray, and Misty’s cell phone.

  He dressed at this point, doing the best he could to maintain pressure on his wound. He purposely kept his back to Misty’s body, so he wouldn’t have
to look at her. He wanted to get as far away from her, or what was left of her, as he could. The urge to do so was so strong that if it wasn’t for the great likelihood of being seen and caught, he would have already run from the room.

  Once finished dressing, he opened the “Guest Services” binder on the table and turned to the page showing the evacuation diagram. He could quickly see that the exit stairs were four doors down to the left. The stairs would be much safer than the elevator. It was only just past midnight. Any conventioneers out for a late dinner and drink would still be returning to their rooms. The stairs would also take him directly to the garage without having to go through the lobby.

  Still holding the cloth to his cheek, he began wiping down everything in the room he’d even come close to, with a wet towel. As he moved about, he shot Misty a series of sideways glances. He really didn’t want to go back over there. He didn’t want to even acknowledge her existence. But he knew he had to. He knew the police would zero-in on her and the bed.

  Could they get his fingerprints off her throat? They couldn’t do that, could they?

  He walked to the bed. As much as he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes from her face. Her head was turned his way, her eyelids half closed, her lips parted just as he’d left them. A clump of hair, the color of harvest wheat, swept down across her forehead, the rest of it was spread out around her head in tangles. One arm was still extended out over the edge of the mattress, her hand palm-up with fingers slightly curled.

  He stood over her, looking down. As the seconds ticked by, his earlier want to dismiss her very existence morphed to one of embracing it. Standing over her like that, he felt a strange mixture of power and of fear. His body seemed to literally hum with it.

  He reached out and took her jaw between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand and flipped her head from side to side, inspecting the damage he had done to her neck.

  “I guess you’ll never do that again,” he said.

  He bent closer, much closer, and worked his way down her body, looking for any of his hair he may have left behind. He found three mixed in with hers, between her legs. He picked them up and put them in his pants pocket. He repeated the procedure with one he found on her left thigh and another two he found on the sheet.

  He still wasn’t convinced he’d gotten them all, so he took the wet towel and wiped it over her body, paying particular attention to her throat. He did the same for the sheets and then sprayed everything down, including Misty, with hairspray. He didn’t know if it would help but reasoned that the alcohol and other chemicals would make it much more difficult for the police to collect their evidence. The remaining hairspray he used over any surface he was likely to have touched.

  Finally it was time. He returned to the mirror in the bathroom and used the make-up he’d found in Misty’s belongings to half-way camouflage his injury. It would be good only for a passing glance at best. For one thing, his skin color was darker than the contents of the bottle. For the other, the symmetry of the surface of his cheek was ruined by the deep divots that were carved there.

  It crossed his mind at this point that he might actually have to have plastic surgery because of what the girl did. There was definitely going to be a scar if he didn’t do something. Maybe he’d leave the country and have it taken care of, he thought. There’d be no records in that case. Could he do that without anyone knowing? He’d have to think about that one; possibly Mexico or even Brazil. They must have good plastic surgeons in Brazil, he thought. Then he wondered if what they say about Brazilian women was true; that they were less uptight than Americans and that sex was a recreational pastime for them. Weren’t the beaches all topless there? But there were other more immediate problems to deal with now. Damn her. Damn her anyway. This was all her fault.

  St. Claire finished by pocketing the make-up, the bloody washcloth, and the girl’s cell phone. He wiped the hairspray can down with the wet towel he’d used on the girl and the room. After a quick look through the peephole in the door, to make sure the hallway was empty, he left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mikolaj (Nick) Zajac parked his blue 88 Chevy, step-side pick-up in a taxi zone, put his business card on the dash, and badged his way past the spiky haired valet, without saying a word. He went through the big double doors of the Claremont Regency, crossed the lobby, and took the elevator up. Stepping out onto the sixth floor, he saw the profile of Aloysius Rosewell Splaine halfway down the hall, writing in his notepad.

  Al was one of those guys you always caught yourself staring at whenever he came around. He was six four and maybe three hundred pounds. Definitely overweight, well, fat to be accurate, but not sloppy fat; a solid fat, if such a thing could be said of fat. He had jet black hair that was as straight and thick as bundled straw, and started from a ruler’s edge, low down on his forehead, and combed back. The otherwise soft features of his face were overwhelmed by a pair of clunky prescription glasses that looked to be framed out of an old two by four, painted black. He was also what you might call fashionably challenged, from his ten year old, brown checked, Big and Tall Man’s sports coat, right on down to his black, rubber soled lace-ups and white socks.

  “What took you so long?” Al asked, glancing up and then returning to his note-taking.

  “I was running when they paged me.”

  “On duty?”

  “Sure. It’s job related.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “One of us has to be able to chase bad guys. I think by elimination that means me.”

  Al looked up from his note writing. “Says who? If God intended cops to run, he wouldn’t have invented prowl cars.”

  “Prowl cars?” What the hell is a prowl car?”

  “See, there you have it.”

  “Oh, here we go.”

  “You need to expand your horizons. You won’t be a cop forever, you know. Prowl car is an east coast term. I picked it up in my writing class. It reads better than just plain old police car.”

  “Writing class? Reads better? You surprise me.”

  “There’re a lot of things about me you don’t know.”

  There’re a lot of things about you I don’t want to know.”

  Al smiled. “So, you want the story, or what?” Al nodded his head towards one of the rooms.

  “Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

  “Looks like somebody throttled a hooker.”

  “And we know she’s a hooker because …”

  “Because she checked-in with a phony name, has no ID or luggage, and there’s a jumbo pack of rubbers on the nightstand. …Hey, you know why Polish women don’t use vibrators?”

  “I’m not answering.”

  “It chips their teeth.”

  “Jeeze. Nick shook his head and approached room 618.

  Behind him he heard Al say, “I’ll hang-out here. Room service is bringing me a nice big piece of pie — banana cream with a scoop of coconut ice cream. On the house, of course.” He was smiling.

  The door to the room was slightly ajar, so Nick toed it open.

  Fran Decker, one of the Crime Scene Techs, stopped him before he could cross the threshold. “If you’re going to come in here, you got to put on gloves and bootees,” she said, pointing to the boxes on the floor.

  Unlike Al, Fran was someone your eye would probably pass right over if you saw her on the street. She was thin, pale, wore no make-up, had medium brown hair to the shoulder that hadn’t seen a stylist since last year’s Christmas party, and dressed in a manner that bordered on boring — except for the 9 mm Sig on her belt that, because of her diminutive size, looked like a horse riding a jockey.

  The room was a standard layout, nothing special. You entered into a small hallway. To the left of the door was a closet and bathroom. Straight ahead was the main room containing a king bed, desk, armoire with TV, and two stuffed chairs backed by a floor lamp.

  Nick checked the bathroom first. Someone had left the light on, the toilet seat up, and a wet towel on the fl
oor. There were swirl marks on the mirror and counter as if it had been wiped down, probably with the wet towel. One half of the closet next to the bathroom was standing open. A simple black dress hung from a hanger and spiked shoes were on the floor beneath.

  The victim herself was lying naked and face-up on the bed in the main room. It appeared as if she had died just about where she lay because the blankets were bunched and wrinkled under her feet as if she had struggled and kicked while she was being killed. There were marks on her neck indicating strangulation was probably the cause of death. There was also a bite mark on her right breast, covering the nipple. And as Al had stated, there were a variety of condoms spread-out on one of the nightstands.

  Over the back of an upholstered chair, a pair of pantyhose was draped. On the cushion below were a black bra and panties. An unopened bottle of champagne, resting in a bucket of melted ice, was positioned on a table next to the chair along with two clean, long stemmed glasses.

  On the floor at the foot of the bed was what Nick guessed to be a nightgown, also black, made of a silky, shiny material. Also on the floor, but several feet away, he saw a number of items that apparently had been dumped there from a large purse, which lay next to them.

  Nick watched as Fran photographed the victim’s hands, first from a few paces back and then up close.

  “Looks like she fought back,” Fran said, setting her camera aside. “The nails on her left hand have blood and skin under them. There’s a good chance we’ll get something useful out of it. But that also means we’ll likely have to wait until the doc scrapes the nails before we go for fingerprints.”

  As she talked, Fran began placing paper bags over the dead woman’s hands and securing them in place.

  “How’d we get the call?” Nick asked.

  “Housekeeping. At 9:34 AM. The beat officer got here about seven minutes later.”