'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.
