She opened the file folder, brought out two still photographs. Holding them to her chest, she said, “We’ve made some discoveries this afternoon, Mr. Wolff. I’d like to talk to you about your movie studio.”
Wolff raised his hands and used a fingernail to scratch his eyebrow. His finger trailed off to his temple, and Taylor could see him massaging it slowly. He didn’t answer.
“Do you have a headache?”
Wolff snickered. “Wouldn’t you?”
Taylor nodded. “Probably. Answer my questions and I’ll make sure you get some aspirin before you go in for the night.”
“Whatever.” He looked away, already disengaged.
“As I was saying, the movie studio.”
“What about it?”
She laid the pictures on the table. Wolff barely glanced at them. Miles, on the other hand, dropped his pen on the floor. The photos were stills from the first video Taylor had seen, the two girls and Wolff. She held back one photo.
“I’d like to know who these fine ladies are, Mr. Wolff.”
He grinned at her then, a lupine smile that tore away the handsome, collegian jock and made him look dangerous. “No.”
Taylor glanced at Miles, who was leaning over the table looking at the stills. Getting his rocks off, probably. His face was alight with something akin to joy. Men and porn. What was the attraction? She tried again.
“Mr. Wolff, be reasonable. We need to talk to the women you videoed. At the very least, we need to make sure they did it of their own volition. Surely you can understand that.”
“Trust me, they did it of their own volition.” He was mocking her openly now.
“Then let me talk to them and find out for myself. Satisfy my curiosity.”
“No. I’m done here, Miles. I’d like to go back to my cell now.” Slight emphasis on the word cell. This was a man who’d suddenly made peace with the fact that he was going to be incarcerated, and Taylor wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t completely convinced that he’d killed his wife. Yes, circumstance and evidence told her otherwise, but he just didn’t feel right for it. Couple that with the sex room in the basement, the fact that Corinne participated in the movies, and Wolff’s slightly mordant pride, and something felt off.
“Mr. Wolff, we’ve found your wife’s blood in your truck. I think it’s time you start telling us the truth about what happened.”
She laid a still of Corinne Wolff on the table. It was one of the early crime scene photos. Todd stared at it for a moment, then started to cry. Rose held up both hands.
“That’s it, Lieutenant. We’re done here.”
She grabbed Rose’s arm as they left the room.
“Talk to him, Miles. This will all go easier if he cooperates. You know that. Have him name the actresses and let’s be done with this. Have him explain the blood in his truck. If he hasn’t done anything illegal, this will go away.”
Miles nodded. “I’ll do what I can. You know that you’ll have to get me copies of those tapes during discovery.” The tone made Taylor’s skin crawl.
“You can talk to the D.A. about that.” She left him standing there, ignoring the smile on his thin lips.
Taylor went back to her office and sat at her desk. She turned on her computer, waited for it to boot up. She let her fingers drum a staccato rhythm against her temple. Tap, tap, tap. Names, names, names. Where could she find the names of the women in Todd Wolff’s films?
Jasmine.
Taylor flipped open her cell and scrolled for the number to Castle Salon and Day Spa.
Twenty-Three
“T aylor Jackson, it has been too long!”
“Hi, Jasmine.” Taylor greeted her friend with a smile, was enveloped in a lilac-scented hug and left in a dark room to strip. She did, then nestled herself under a luxuriously soft sheet, lying on her stomach, face haloed in a round sheepskin pillow with a hole in the middle. Her nose poked out, which left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Something in the air, the cacophony of floral scents mingling with cocoa butter and antiseptic that marked the murky interior of the spa, made her feel like she was hallucinating.
Like her name, Jasmine Allons was dusky and exotic. The woman bled sensuality, as if she were in a constant state of karmic sexuality-a living, breathing kama sutra pose. She made Taylor feel frumpy and prudish, things she certainly wasn’t. At least they were the same height. Taylor liked being able to look in Jasmine’s sloe eyes while she lied.
Now, Taylor, she chided herself. Jasmine didn’t need to lie any more.
Taylor was one of the few people who knew that Jasmine Allons used to be called Jazz and spent her days and nights sliding up and down a silver pole for a living. Underage when she went to work for an unscrupulous club owner, Jazz became a headliner almost immediately. Taylor had busted Jasmine for solicitation when she was fifteen, turning her hard-earned dance lessons into a profit in the back seat of her car. Not a story that was terribly unknown in Nashville. Jasmine’s tale just had a different genesis.
Jasmine’s parents were immigrants who’d lost their downtown store in a racist firebombing. A block of businesses and their home went up in the conflagration too-they lived above their 2nd Avenue poster store-leaving them homeless and a vulnerable target of derision and hate. Jasmine’s Iranian mother had a degree in molecular biology from the American University in Baghdad, her Iraqi father was a former nuclear physicist who sought and received asylum during the first Iraq war in the early nineties. Which qualified them to open a poster store and drive a cab through the streets of Nashville, respectively. They were both taking the necessary classes to become American citizens when they lost the store. It was the last straw for an impressionable teenage girl who’d been uprooted time and again over the course of her tender years.
Jasmine had always been too radical for her parents’ taste. She hated that her parents weren’t allowed to follow their academic pursuits in their new country. She fought with them constantly. She forsook their surname and adopted Allons; her new American friends accepted the name at face value, simply believing Jasmine when she claimed she was French. Foreign was foreign in the south, especially for people of European origin. Unless marked heavily by discernible accent or specific, predisposed-for-recognition features like head scarves for Muslims, not too many locals had the international experience to argue a nationality declaration.
When the store was gone and her family’s future uncertain, Jasmine had lashed out, ultimately committing the cardinal sin. She fell in love with a white boy. She left her parents to deal with their newfound problems and ran away with her brand-new boyfriend.
Of course, like her parents warned, the young man turned her on to things she shouldn’t have had access to-sex and drugs, mostly. It was an age-old story, a cliche of teenage want and wantonness. She became addicted to crack, started listening when her boyfriend said she could make some money to buy more drugs if she plied her wares on the street. Too smart to become a whore, she’d gotten an “interview” at a strip club, lied about her age and her drug problem, and was hired on as a featured dancer at the Deja Vu on Demonbreun Street. She shook what God gave her five nights a week and one weekend matinee mere blocks from her parents’ gutted life.
Jasmine’s quick and slippery slope ended when Taylor caught her blowing both a crack pipe and a patrol officer who knew better on his lunch break in the parking lot behind Deja Vu.
There was something about Jasmine’s eyes that haunted Taylor. She’d ended up vouching for the girl when it came time for her sentencing, managed to get her supervised probation. She helped Jasmine get back into school, got her a job washing dishes at a restaurant, and watched the girl get off the drugs. Applauded her when she graduated college with a degree in kinesiology. Jasmine was her success story. She didn’t have many.
Jazz used to make three thousand dollars a night bending herself around the stage in Lucite platform sandals. Now, Jasmine cost one hundred fifty dollars an hour as a massage therapist. She did Taylor for free.
And she had her slender finger on a spiderweb of silk back into her old life. Taylor knew Jasmine did very
