I don't respect you at all.
At which pointGod, she couldn't help itJill started giggling. The poem was so sophomoric and Donald was such a melodramatic ass that Jill just assumed everybody else, even all these self-proclaimed Maoists, would find it equally funny. But then she started looking around. The poem wasn't over. In all, there must have been forty stanzas, each worse than the previous one. But everybody here seemed mesmerized. Absolutely downright mesmerized. Everybody in the little auditorium was on his feet except her. And they weren't giggling, they were cryingsilver tears streaming down their cheeks as they repeated in a kind of Gregorian Chant, 'Screw America, I say!' every time Donald said it first. She had never forgotten that night, but she sure tried to.
There was even a second act to this farce. She stayed with him a second year. True, the rants were getting longer and crazier but she could abide it because he gave her plenty of time to studyhe was always off somewhere marching in demonstrationsand because she didn't love him. He was an amusing companion and no more, perfect for somebody who didn't want any serious involvementuntil he quit taking showers.
'So that night I went to this singles bar,' Jill went on, 'and there was this great-looking older guy there and this absolutely ridiculous thing happened to me.'
'What was that?'
'I fell in love with him.'
'God.'
'I couldn't believe it. He really was gorgeous.'
'That happened to me once, too. A gorgeous guy like that. God.'
Every few minutes, Jill would study Marcy. It was still difficult to believe that this slender, attractive young woman could possibly have been Biker Mama.
'So then what happened?' Marcy said.
'As soon as I got out of college that summer, he took me to the family manse where I met his mother and sister. The sister was greator as great as she could be, anyway, in those circumstancesbut the mother… Well, to be fair, she didn't like me any better than I liked her. She thought I was an evil woman, out to take all her little boy's money and pride.'
'But you got married, anyway?'
Jill nodded. 'Got married and was promptly locked behind bars for the rest of my life.'
'The family manse.'
'Mmm-hmm. Mother had come around to letting me be one of her honorary children. You know, stay behind the prison walls and do everything Mother told you to. But I couldn't do it. Not for any long stretch of time, anyway. I always had excuses to get out of theremy parents to visit, things like that. Then I sent in one of my photographs to the Trib photography contest and won first prize. People started offering me work and I took it. Over three years, I must have done a hundred assignments and really built a name for myself.'
'I'll bet Mother wasn't happy about that.'
'Mother,' Jill said, 'was furious.'
'How about Peter?'
'He was furious, too. He comes from a family where the women are blindly obedient. Whatever the husband says is the law. I told him we should move to Chicago and get our own placehis mother would send him on various business trips to make him feel that he actually had a career, but it was mostly makework thingsand for a while there, I think he was actually considering it. But then the letters started coming.'
'Letters?'
'His mother paid somebody to write them and send them to me, I'm convinced of it.'
'What kind of letters were they?'
'Love lettersfrom this man who claimed to have slept with me several times while I was in Chicago working on photo shoots. Mother showed them to Peter, of course. Any idea he had of breaking away from her… Well, he wasn't going to move away with a woman who was a 'harlot' as Mother liked to call 'easy women.' I think that's when he started killing those girls. He may very well have been using them as surrogates. He probably wanted to kill me.'
'Or Mother.'
Jill nodded. 'Or both of us. By that time in his life, he didn't like women very much.'
From there she detailed the sad years that followed soon after, Peter's arrest, the trial, the appeals, the execution. She finished by talking about the assault of Hard Facts on her privacy and life.
'God, that sounds terrible,' Marcy sympathized.
'That's why I want to find out who's been watching my place.'
'How'd you come to notice him?'
Jill shrugged. 'Ever since 'Hard Facts' I look around at my surroundings: I try to notice everything. I started seeing this blue Volvo and got suspicious, so today I snuck down and took some photos of him.'
She handed Marcy an envelope and smiled. 'You won't find anything in there with great artistic merit.'
Marcy looked through the photos. 'No artistic merit, maybe, but these will be very helpful.'
'When I called you earlier, you said you hoped you could get to it right away.'
'Turns out I can. I have an industrial client who wanted me to handle something for him but now he needs to put it on hold for a little while.'
'So you can start today?'
'Soon as you leave here, I'll call my old buddy in the Driver's License Bureau.'
'Great.' Jill stood up, remembering her appointment with Eric Brooks. 'I'd better get going.'
She put forth her hand. Marcy shook it.
'I sure hope that Biker Mama gets Hog Face back,' Jill smiled.
'Gee, I'm so pleased you liked what I did. A pro like you, I mean.'
'If your investigation business gets a little thin, there's always dinner theater.'
Marcy walked Jill to the door. 'You'll probably be hearing from me later tonight.'
Jill nodded and left.
CHAPTER 9
Rick Corday had no problem getting into Jill Coffey's place. He owned a number of burglary tools.
Wearing a pair of latex gloves, he spent half an hour searching through her closets and drawers. He didn't need to do this but he enjoyed it. There was something sweetly pornographic about spying on somebody else's life.
A week ago, the range of his spying had increased when he'd let himself in here and installed a bug in her telephone, one he could pick up on an FM receiver from his motel room or, as earlier today, from his car. He'd heard her make her appointment with Eric Brooks.
A lot of dirty fun, spying on people.
The hell of it was, Jill Coffey seemed to be a pretty tame person. One time in New York, searching through the apartment of a highly-regarded female broadcasting executive, he'd come upon some of the most vicious S amp;M appliances his knowing and cynical eyes had ever seen. The belt with the tiny metal thorns had been the really impressive one. God, you could shred a guy's back with two lashes.
The bathroom offered even fewer revelations. Not a single vibrator in sight.
He went back into the bedroom to do what he'd come here for.
Find a skirt and blouse.
He selected a sandwash silk in electric blue for the blouse and a royal blue wraparound for the skirt.
Pantyhosethat would be a nice touch.
He searched through three drawers before he found a pair that had already been worn.
He wrapped these inside the skirt.
