“The victim from the apartment fire on Corcoran,” I said. “I was there when they brought her out.”
“You saw the cuffs?” Shuttles asked.
I nodded. “Find anything out?”
Logan interrupted. “We found out she looked better as bread than toast.”
He flipped open a file folder, pulled out another photo, spun it my way. A good-looking woman wearing a theatrical pout, fishnet hose, spike heels, a leather G-string, and little else. She held a riding crop. A superimposed URL suggested the photo had been pulled from a Web site. I hope my mouth didn’t drop open like a cartoon character’s, but I think it did.
“I know her,” I said, as Harry walked up. He looked at the picture, muttered an expletive, shook his head.
“I know her, too,” he said. “Carole Ann Hibney.”
“I found out she went by the name of Mistress Sonia,” Logan smirked. “You guys clients of hers?”
In less time than a finger snap, Harry was in the cubicle, his hand pulling Logan upward by his shirtfront.
“Harry!” I barked, jumping between them, dodging Logan’s hands as he tried to get them around my partner’s neck. There was thumping around, files tumbling from a desk, a chair skittering into the wall, but between Shuttles and me, we separated Harry and Logan.
“You’re a head case, Nautilus,” Logan snarled over Shuttles’s shoulder.
“And you’re the world’s shittiest detective, Logan,” Harry returned over mine. “You got no respect for anything.”
“I got no respect for you. You were a decent street cop, but ever since you got the gold you act like Mister Stinkless Shit.”
“Shut up, Logan,” I said. “Harry and I seem to have some connections with the victim. How about acting like a detective and making your next question along those lines?”
I heard Shuttles whispering to Logan, telling him to sit, relax, it was all over. Across the room I saw Trent look our way with moderate interest, then go back to his calls. Personality clashes weren’t unknown in a detectives’ room. Larry Barnes was oblivious, squeezing his tennis ball, studying the ceiling tiles.
Harry and Logan shot each other knife eyes until Logan returned to his chair and Harry retreated to the opening of the cubicle.
Shuttles took the lead. “She was a call girl, is what Pace is saying. A dominatrix type. You really know her, Carson?”
“Bad choice of words,” I said. “I saw her at a party at the Shrine Temple last Saturday night, a business banquet sponsored by Channel 14. We spoke maybe four words.”
I replayed the memory. The woman in the cobalt dress arriving via the kitchen, asking me to get her a drink, then standing beside a column and scoping the room while banging down the liquor. I recalled her practicing a big, bright smile, like preparing to play a role. Then the lights went dark and I lost track of her.
“Who was she with?” Shuttles asked.
“No one. Now that I know her occupation, I think she was sneaking into the party.”
Shuttles said, “How about you, Harry? How did you know Ms. Hibney?”
“Or Mistress Sonia,” Logan said, his standard sneer back in place.
Harry ignored Logan, spoke to Shuttles and me.
“I met her about ten years back. Carole Ann was maybe twenty-three, showed up in Mobile after leaving an abusive boyfriend. She was from some hick town in Mississippi. She was basically bright, y’know? But ignorant, a dropout in eighth grade. She landed in the Greyhound station with a black eye and a suitcase.”
“Bad news,” I said. Pimps and perverts cruised bus stations like sharks, salivating for the Carole Ann Hibneys of the world.
“One guy got his meat hooks into her, pimp named Sleet Bemis. Nicknamed Sleet because he was so slick. He turned her out three weeks later. Bemis beat her, too. Carole Ann and I met in the hospital after one of these beatings. I had a talk with Bemis, who vacated town shortly thereafter. Then I convinced Carole Ann she was bright enough to go back to school, get her GED, maybe go to a juco, but…”
Harry shook his head.
“But she was lazy,” Logan said, clapping his hands and leaning into the conversation. “Right, Nautilus? I seen it a dozen times. Girl grew up in some white-trash trailer park, never saw anyone get up and go to work. When she found out she could make easy money from the old jelly jar, all that studying and school stuff was just too much work.”
Harry glared. Logan shrugged, held his hands palms up.
“Am I right here?”
Harry looked away, sighed. “You’re right, Logan. She bagged the school bit. Last I’d heard, Carole Ann was in New Orleans. Guess she got washed back here.”
“I wonder what she was doing at the Shrine,” I said.
Shuttles said, “I remember a case from a class I took-”
“Oh, Jesus, here we go with the class crap,” Logan said, rolling his eyes.
Shuttles continued. “There was a ring of prostitutes, good-looking, expensive. They kept hotel workers on their payrolls. The workers told the prostitutes when a convention was coming up, or a corporate wingding. The girls would put on party clothes and show up, spread the good word, so to speak.”
“You think that’s what happened?” I asked.
“It makes good sense,” Shuttles said. “From what you said about her sneaking in the place.”
“Horseshit,” Logan said, rolling his chair forward so fast Shuttles had to jump back to keep from getting his toes run over. “Look at the fuckin’ picture. The woman was a beater, a fem dom. Tying up johns and whipping them, snapping clothespins on their nips, pissing in their mouths while they jerk off. ‘Excuse me, Mistress Sonia, could I have a some more ginger ale?’”
Logan laughed at his little joke. I heard Harry growl. It was about time to git.
“Your point, Logan?” I asked.
“Beaters don’t solicit at conventions. They use the Net these days. That’s where we got the picture. Why go door-to-door, so to speak, when you can put up a Web site with pictures of titties in leather, get the submissive trade beating a path to your door?”
I turned to Shuttles. “I’d talk to the kitchen folks at the Shrine. See if anyone there knows how she got let in and why.”
“There you go, Tyree,” Logan chuckled, clasping his fingers behind his head and leaning back in his chair. “Ryder’s figured out your chore for the afternoon.”
Harry and I slumped back to our cube to lash together notes on Dinkins and the Hooleys. I started scratching an outline. Harry stared at the ceiling, as though following Barnes’s lead.
“Can I get you some earplugs?” I said. “A tennis ball?”
“What? Oh, sorry. I was zoning out.”
“You thinking about Carole Ann Hibney?”
He nodded, sadness in his eyes. “She was basically pathetic, Cars. Born lost in the woods and nowhere to go but deeper in the forest. But there was a spark in her, a brightness. In her world, strange as it was, she felt she had things figured out. Logical, in a way. She decided she wasn’t going to be whipped on by men anymore, that it was her turn to do the whipping. She’d had a couple johns who wanted it that way, and realized they were the easiest to deal with and paid the most. That’s when she came up with the Mistress Sonia act. She once told me she picked her johns carefully, thought she was safe.”
“It’s a job of illusions,” I said. “Safety is just one of them.”
CHAPTER 21
Taneesha Franklin’s visitation arrived the next morning. Harry and I were going because perps sometimes attended the services of victims, a compulsion seeming to border on the erotic.
The day was wide and bright, the sky a blue mirror. The funeral parlor was large, with a wide front lawn, a large primary and smaller secondary parking lot to the side. The parlor was bordered on both sides by small shops, the nearest a small grocery. Knowing Dani would be at the service, I hadn’t looked forward to attending, but it was part of my job and my promise to Taneesha. The events with Dani hurt like hell, but every time the sun came up, I was a day farther down the road.