So what's the alternative? Go home, clean myself up, and hit the bars? Sure, I could let myself get picked up, kill the lonelies for a night. But I needed something more substantial than a quick, informal lay.
What I needed, what I've been missing for damn near fifteen years, was to be in love. And I didn't think I'd find it at the bars.
I thought, wistfully, about my ex-husband, Alan.
Alan was something special, that one-in-a-million guy who liked holding hands and sending flowers. He rarely lost his temper, was a whiz in the kitchen, and loved me so completely that I was never cold, even during the brutal Chicago winter.
I take full responsibility for ruining our marriage.
I met him on the job, back in the days when I walked a beat. He came up to me on the street, told me someone had lifted his wallet. I couldn't say he was especially handsome, but he had the kindest eyes I'd ever seen.
We dated for six months before he proposed.
In the beginning, our marriage was great. Alan was a freelance artist, so he was able to make his own schedule, ensuring that we always had time to be together.
Until my promotion to the Violent Crimes Unit.
Prior to this, Alan and I had planned to have children. We were going to have a boy named Jay and a girl named Melody, and buy a house with a big backyard, in a good school district.
But much as I wanted that, I also wanted a career. Maternity leave meant time away from work, and a newly ranked detective third class needed collars to make second grade.
My work week jumped from forty hours to sixty.
Alan was patient. He understood my ambition. He tried to wait until I was ready. Then a major career setback forced me to spend even more time on the job.
Alan left me a week before I made detective second. That was also the week my insomnia started.
I buried the memories. Regret wasn't going to get me anywhere. Only one thing would.
I picked up the phone, put it back down, and picked it up again. Swallowing what little pride I had left was harder than I thought, but I managed. The taxpayers financed a call to Information, and ten seconds later I was dialing Lunch Mates, hoping they'd be closed at this hour.
"Thanks for calling Lunch Mates. This is Sheila, how may I help you?"
Her voice was so buoyantly optimistic that I felt a wee bit better about my decision to call a dating service.
"I guess I wanted to make an appointment, or schedule a visit. I didn't really expect you to still be open."
"We have late hours. After all, human relationships don't just run from nine to five. May I have your name, miss?"
"Jacqueline Daniels. Jack, for short."
She tittered politely. "Wonderful name. Your occupation, please?"
"Police officer."
"We have many clients in the law enforcement field. Were you looking for a match also within the department?"
"Christ, no...I mean..."
"No problem. It's hard to date in the same profession. That's why all those famous actors and actresses are always getting divorced. Sexual orientation?"
"Pardon me?"
"Are you looking to meet a man or a woman?"
"A man."
"Wonderful. We have many good men to choose from."
Her ability to put people at ease probably made all the losers she dealt with feel a lot better about themselves. It was sure working with me.
"Are you free at any time soon to come in for an orientation?"
"Yeah, uh, maybe tomorrow? Lunchtime, if possible?"
"How about twelve o'clock?"
"Fine."
She gave me directions, we made a little more small talk, and she'd bolstered my ego enough to make me feel good about hiring a service to find men because I was too incompetent to find one on my own.
"See you tomorrow at noon, Ms. Daniels. We'll get all of your information then, along with giving you an overview of our company. We'll also be taking a picture of you. You're free to bring in any pictures of yourself, if you'd like."
Other than my driver's license, I didn't think I had any pictures of myself.
"Will there be a videotape?"
More musical laughter. "Oh, no. We don't make videos of our clients. We simply get to know them, then come up with likely matches to meet for lunch. We have thirty-five agents here, and each handles between fifty to a hundred clients. Our agents set up lunch dates within their own client list. If they go through their whole list without a suitable match, the client is given to another agent."
That sounded like being the last kid picked for a backyard football game. I could picture some poor fat girl being traded from agent to agent every month, and the image made me wince.
"Well, I'll see you soon then."
"Good evening, Ms. Daniels."
I hung up, my confidence still high. Then I realized I'd forgotten to ask about the cost of this service. That helped kill the optimism buzz.
I knew an ex-cop who used an expression whenever something bad happened. He was a real creep, but as the years passed I've come to respect the honesty of his words. Whenever he'd failed a test, or gotten a reprimand, he always said, "It's just one more layer on the shit cake."
With all the layers I'd built up over my life, I suppose one more didn't matter too much.
The phone rang, and I slapped the receiver to my face.
"Jack? I was wondering if you'd still be there."
It was the assistant ME, Dr. Phil Blasky. He was one of the best in the business, we used him on practically every high-profile case. In person, he was a thin bald man with an egg-shaped head, but his voice was a rich opera baritone, similar to that of James Earl Jones.
"Hi, Phil. Looks like we're both burning the midnight oil."
"You've gotten the second Jane Doe reports? I messengered them over."
"Just reviewed them. I guess the mayor is pressuring you folks as much as us."
"Jack..." Phil's voice dropped an octave, which made it low enough to rattle teeth. "I've been working late to investigate that lead Bains told me about. Checking the bodies for anything hidden in them. I found something in the stab wound of the second Jane Doe, and then went back to the first one and found the same thing."
"What?"
Phil took a breath. "It's semen, Jack."
"Pardon me?"
"The guy's sperm. I found it in the deepest stab wound on each victim. Got a chemical hit while swabbing them out. I never would have found it if I hadn't been told to look."
I let this sink in. "You mean he raped the stab wounds?"
"The wounds have some tearing along the edges, so that's a good assumption."
"While they were still alive?"
"We're not sure. But there's a possibility of it, yes."
"Where?" I had to ask.
"Both of them in the stomach."
"Can we type him?"
"The lab is trying now. But that's a long shot. It's mixed in with a lot of blood, and has been decomposing for days."
This was the present he said he'd left me. Jesus.
"Thanks, Phil."
"Catch this psycho, Jack."
Phil ended the call.
I gripped the phone until that annoying off-the-hook signal came on and reminded me to hang up. The images swirling around in my brain were almost too horrible to imagine.
I'd been stabbed once, years ago, by a gang-banger with a switch blade. Knife went into my belly. I had minor surgery to stop the bleeding, was off my feet for a month. The pain had been one of the worst I'd ever experienced, a combination of a cramp, an ulcer, and a third-degree burn. The thought of a man violating that wound...
I shuddered. Then I got up and rewound the crime scene tape to watch for the umpteenth time, my determination fiercer than ever.
Chapter 17
HE CALLS FIRST, FROM A PAY phone a block away. A machine answers. Perfect. He drops the receiver, not bothering to hang it up, and walks over to the front door of Jack's apartment building.