Women & Murder |

It had been eighteen days since I’d dumped my boyfriend—he whose name is never to be spoken—caught him cheating on me, for the second time. Nine months invested in him and then that, twice. He had no explanation other than, “I fucked up.”

“You sure did,” was my only reply. I did everything, and more, that he wanted—ually and otherwise. I know I’m a beta woman and I’m fine with that. I like to please because I usually get pleasure in return. Maybe I was too easy, too accommodating, I thought for a while.

In talking with some of my girlfriends I realized what I already knew—he viewed as a sport and didn’t, or wouldn’t, understand its underlying importance to a committed relationship. So I decided I was off guys, at least for a time yet to be determined.

I’ve been bi ever since my college roommate had delicately introduced me to the joys of sapphic . Doubling my avenues for pleasure had worked out well for me. I may be a beta but that doesn’t limit my appetite for . My drive is strong, just like the Force, I thought with a giggle.

All that is why I was walking into The Pink Lady bar after work that Friday night. I’d never been there, but knew its reputation as girls only. “Don’t go there if you want to get laid,” some of my male counterparts would occasionally say. That didn’t apply to me—it was on my list for the evening.

After walking in, I paused to take it all in. Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves was playing on the sound system. There was a fairly long oak bar that had reportedly come from some old, long demolished hotel with plenty of somewhat matching, leathercovered stools. A woman sat on the one nearest to me. She had on tight jeans topped by a fitted, abstract patterned blouse and a possibly black bra. It somewhat hid her hard nips.

Twotop tables lined the wall across from it and a number of booths and tables populated the area beyond the bar. The establishment seemed to be at about half capacity. Two waitresses were working the room while two bartenders worked behind the bar. I began to slowly walk as I was considering where to start my evening.

“Hey there,” said the woman on that close stool. “First time here?”

“How did you ever guess?” I replied with a smile. “Did I have a deer in the headlights look?”

She chuckled. “Not exactly, but somewhat. It’s a friendly place. Nobody bites… unless it’s called for of course. I’m Katherine. Buy ya your first, unless you want to mosey around a bit.”

Her smile and friendliness appealed to me. I sat on the stool to her left as her eyes subtly checked me out. “Nice to meet you. I’m Maura. The newbie.”

While her eyes were roving over me, mine were doing the same with her. They met for an awkward moment as our appraisals ended.

Having come directly from work I was nervous. My blazer plus my bra and somewhat piquant panties were in my car. I’d undone the top two buttons of my blouse and my skirt was onethird of the way up my thigh. “So, whaddaya think?” I spouted.

“Quite enchanting… in a provocative way. And me?”

“Much the same. Quite appealing… in an alluring way.”

We both grinned and stifled a giggle.

“Joyce,” she called to the nearest bartender. “This is Maura. Her first time here.”

“Welcome!” she said. “Nice to meet you. Think of The Lady as a second home. One Pink Lady on the house coming up.” She turned quickly and began to gather ingredients.

“Very nice. I’ve never had one. What’s in it?” I asked Katherine.

“Gin and other diverse ingredients that produce an interesting drink. I’ll let you be surprised.”

“Great,” I replied and we went on to talk about our weekend plans. They amounted to neither of us having anything specific so we rattled off various possibilities. Then we wandered off into the hi of The Lady. It had started before Prohibition and then progressed through a string of various owners, attracting various clientele, until eight years ago when it became The Lady.

Then, as she lightly put a hand on my knee, “So, tell me about you and what brought you here tonight.” Just her touch made me tingle in my nether place as I felt a flush run through me and my nips harden.

Not wanting to go into that very deep, I gave her the Cliff Notes version of my ex, plus enough about my past to convey I wasn’t a newbie when it came to other women. As I was talking she was slowly and gently moving her hand a few inches up and down my thigh.

Trying to keep the conversation light, I complimented her outfit and asked what she did.

“I’m a cop. A detective actually, homicide.”

I was taken aback. She was quite attractive and had a natural, sensuous air about her. Not what I’d expect from a female homicide detective. “Really? Wow, that’s a fooler. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that isn’t it. How long have you been one?”

“Well, I’m thirtysix. Started with the Department out of college at twentytwo. Made Detective after five years in uniform. Been in Homicide for six years. Three years in Crimes before that. Was married for three of those years, but he couldn’t handle an alpha female.”

“His loss. Very cool, and impressive job. I’m twentyseven. Never married. Marketing major. Been working at Pfizer for five years.” Then, in a nervous moment, blurted out, “So where’s your gun?”

She laughed and pointed to her purse. “And so are my handcuffs, if they should be needed.” Her right eyebrow raised at that last part. A shiver went down my spine at the thought. If my nips could have gotten any harder, or my pussy any wetter, that comment did it.

“So, solve any murders lately?” I said, trying to be casual. By that time her hand was halfway up my thigh, and I was wishing it was all the way up. I wondered what and how whatever might come next would happen. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Actually, we made an arrest this morning and got a confession. Case closed for our part. Now it’s up to the D.A. Wanna hear about it? We could go to my place and… talk,” she said with a sly grin.

“Oh god, that sounds wonderful.” I think my heart skipped a beat.

“Sounds wonderful to me also.” She leaned close—so did I. We kissed. Her other hand just brushed across one of my nipples. I inhaled quickly. “This will be fun,” she said as our lips parted.

I was delirious with excitement. She gave me her address and phone number, plus directions to her home in case we got separated. She said she’d wait in her car on the street while I got mine and hopefully followed her.

About forty minutes later we pulled into the driveway of a two, endunit, townhouse just inside the city limits. Walking to the door, we held hands. Once inside I was roughly spun, pushed against a wall, and handcuffed behind my back. I was ninety percent sure she was just with me, but my heart was still pounding as she spun me back facing her.

“Now, you’re mine for the weekend!”

Hopefully just playing along I said, “You got me Officer. I confess. I’m your prisoner.”

“It’s Detective and you’re damn right!” she said brusquely, as she pulled my blouse open and began teasing and squeezing both my nips.

My legs went weak. I started to slide down the wall. My nips in her grasp, she held me up. I’d never been so turned on! Then she kissed me. Our mouths opened and our tongues darted and danced with each other.

Pressed together, her right hand found my pussy. “Spread your legs!” I complied as two fingers toyed with those lips, but barely entered me. Then wham! Her hand hit my clit as her fingers repeatedly curled and uncurled in me. She alternated and curling her fingers in me.

“Oh fuck yes,” I moaned. “Make me cum. Please Miss make me cum.” I had no idea why I just blurted that ‘Miss’ part out. My world was swirling.

“That’s good. You know who your Mistress is don’t you?”

“God yes! It’s you Miss. You’re my Mistress.” I’d dreamed of scenes like this but thought they would only be dreams. Now it was happening. I was so close. Only a few more moments… then… nothing. Her fingers withdrew. She released the one nipple she held. “Wha… but I was almost—”

“Ready to cum?”

“Yes,” I gasped out.

“All in good time. I thought you wanted to hear about that murder.”

You bitch, I almost blurted out. But this was in my dreams also. Miss was in charge. I was her sub, she was my Domme. No wonder her marriage didn’t work out I thought. Only special people could live like this. I knew I’d learn about myself this weekend. That’s when the cuffs came off.

Gathering my wits, I said, “Yes, I do want to hear about it. Can I call you Katherine?”

“Do you understand our roles now?”

“Yes.”

“Then Katherine or Miss will be fine. Let’s have some wine and talk. And take off that blouse. I want to enjoy your lovely breasts.”

As I was complying, I said, “I’m quite sweaty and damp in some areas. Maybe I should—”

“You reek of , and I love it. We’ll shower later.”

I smiled at the “we’ll” and its implications as I said, “Yes Miss” and followed her into the kitchen.

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, I came straight from work.”

“Okay, here,” she said as she slid a bottle of Chardonnay to me, along with an opener. “Open that and grab a couple glasses from the rack over there.” She pointed to it on a nearby table as she opened the fridge and retrieved a covered plate of cheeses and a box of crackers from a cabinet.

“I love your boobs by the way. You were blessed. Not too big, not too small, just right. C cups?”

“Yes. I love that you love them, they suit me.” I briefly paused and then went on, “ You know, I’m surprisingly unabashed, at the fact that I’m loving being topless for you,” I said with a smile. “Your figure and strength are amazing. You must work out often.”

“Several times a week. The job calls for it, and I actually enjoy it. Let’s sit over there.” She pointed to a loveseat with a coffee table in front.

We sat close, almost touching. She poured the wine as I picked up a cracker and a piece of Swiss.

Raising her glass, she said, “A toast to new friends, new lovers, and wonderful !”

“Very apropos!” I said as we touched glasses and sipped. “Now you must tell me everything! Your life must be very exciting.”

“The saying ‘ninetynine percent boredom, one percent sheer terror’ is quite accurate. But, I’m still exhilarated by the arrest. So let me tell you the . Do you remember four weeks ago, on Tuesday morning, a woman was found murdered in her condo?”

“Yes. She was rich and famous… Susan Fischer, an author, right?”

“Correct! Well, at 9:06 that morning the 911 call came in from their hysterical housekeeper, Mrs Lydia Lopez. The gist of the call was ‘the missus is lying on her bed in a pool of blood.’ They live in one of two topfloor condos in The ClermontFerrand Tower. Uniforms and EMS were immediately dispatched. Three officers arrived in four minutes and were immediately taken up by building security. EMS got there five minutes later and were also taken up.

“At 9:18 the senior officer called the unit on his cell and advised that Mrs Fischer was dead, apparently from numerous stab wounds to her chest. My partner, Jim Riggs, and I had the duty so we headed out after advising them to secure the scene and people, which, of course, had already been done. Plus we had the staff contact the ME and have them get someone on the scene quickly.”

“Wow. Did you know who she was right away?”

“Yes. Her work is well known and her husband, Eric Fischer, is the senior, managing partner of ChamberlainFischer, one of the top law firms in the city. In fact, Chamberlain is retired and living in Florida, so it really is Fischer and his underlings. The level of wealth and influence should be obvious.”

“Oh quite. The pressure must have been intense.”

“Yes. From the very beginning.” She paused to have more wine and gave me a quick squeeze. I tried to move closer but she stopped me. “Do you want to hear this or fool around?” I pouted and dared to brush my fingers across her closest boob. She responded by pinching my nipple really hard.

“OWW! Damn, that hurt.”

“Lesson learned?”

“Yes Miss. Please tell me more.”

“I’ll try to keep this concise so we can move on. But it is interesting.”

“And I’m interested!” I interjected.

“Okay, good. So, we looked the bedroom over quickly, then searched the condo. Other than the bloody murder weapon, a large carving knife, that was obviously from a set in the kitchen, and now lying on the bed, nothing else that seemed immediately relevant was found. We took all the electronics and several notebooks for review as possible evidence and contacted CSI to come and fully process the apartment. Then we interviewed Mrs Lopez.”

“Was she helpful?”

“Give me a chance,” she said.

“Sorry. It’s just so exciting.”

“I suppose. I was sort of on autopilot and stressed at the same time. So, anyway, Mrs Lopez had worked for Mr Fischer for five years, which was before he married the victim. The wedding was three years ago, two years after her employment. She enjoyed working for both of them and pointed out that she was his second wife and that Mrs Fischer was thirtyeight and Mr Fischer was fiftynine. The previous Mrs Fischer, Laura, was also fiftynine. They divorced a few months after Mrs Lopez started working for them. She didn’t know too many details but did know that Laura, his first wife, was essentially ‘dumped’ to be replaced by the victim. But, they did wait a ‘respectable’ amount of time, two years, before marrying. There was much gossip at the time regarding the whole situation but nothing more than normal relationship gossip, nothing really relevant.”

“I can just picture that scene. It’s thrilling.”

“Yeah, I guess you’d see it that way. It was routine for me. So, the next thing we had to do was notify and interview Mr Fischer. I called his firm, identified myself, and spoke with his ‘personal assistant’ telling her that myself and my partner would be there within the hour to speak with Mr Fischer on a matter of extreme personal importance. At first, she told me that was impossible since his schedule was fully booked for the next week. I told her we were leaving shortly and he needed to make the time. She insisted on knowing the reason ‘the police’ wanted to talk to him. Of course I wasn’t going to tell her and finally said that if she didn’t do as I asked she’d be obstructing justice, could be arrested, and might lose her job. She took my number and said she might get back to me. I told her we were on the way.”

“That’s so cool! Some people think they’re so selfimportant. It must be fun to slap them down.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly do that, but you have to be firm and mean what you say. We got there in twentynine minutes. She did call back as we were en route to say he would see us. She was pretty irritated that she didn’t know what was going on.”

“Did I mention that this is exciting?” I said with a big grin.

“I haven’t gotten to the good parts yet.”

“Wow, okay, I’m all ears!”

“You’re really all boobs (I began laughing) but we’ll get around to that. So, on to Fischer, as we referred to him. He had to be our first suspect. The spouse did it is almost gospel. Stabbing is not an easy thing to do, and twelve times… that’s rage, maybe some passion also, but it takes angerfueled rage to stab somebody twelve times. Each time was to the hilt of the knife.

“So, after delivering the bad news, which seemed to genuinely affect him, we asked the probing questions about where he was that night. We didn’t have an exact time of death yet, but he said he’d talked to her at 8: 16 pm, as his cell phone, and hers, showed. Our educated guess, while we waited for the ME’s report, was midnight, give or take an hour or so. He claimed he’d been at his suite at the Four Seasons all night. When pressed about corroboration for that, he said Anisha Jackson, ‘an old friend’ had been there well past midnight. When asked about anyone who might want to hurt his wife, he named Kent Randolph, her personal trainer, who he thought she was having an affair with. Further questioning yielded nothing more for followup.

“We located the gym where Randolph mostly worked. We called to check if he was there and the manager said he’d called in early saying he was sick and needed to cancel his appointments for at least two days. He provided Randolph’s home address and phone. We headed back to the office to await the ME’s findings and do some background checking.”

“It’s not as easy or quick as they make it seem on TV is it?”

“Remember what I said about the ninetynine and one percent. There’s a lot of boring routine and reporting involved to complete the puzzle. Ya know, we could always talk in bed.”

I jumped up. “Now you’re really talking!” I said as I dropped my skirt. “You better be getting naked also. Miss or not, I wanna see that y bod.”

“You undress me,” she said as she began slowly writhing like a snake ready to strike.

As I unbuttoned her blouse she ran her fingernails around and under my boobs, never touching my nips. God, she could turn up my heat so easily. I stepped close to remove her blouse and unhook her bra—I dropped both to the floor. Her hot breath wisped across my face, but we never touched. Her breasts were smaller than mine, but her nipples and areolas were large, red, and swollen. Such selfcontrol I thought.

Undoing her belt and jeans, I spread the waist and saw her black thong. Squatting, I began the process of pulling them down. They fit her like a glove and were just as difficult to remove. Inch by inch, as she continued moving, they came free and eventually puddled at her feet. She stepped away as she continued swaying. Only the thong was left. Her scent was strong, her wetness obvious. It had created a cameltoe. I took a chance and ran a finger up between her outlined lips, across her discernible clit.

“Mmm, soon you’ll be licking it.”

I felt like I might explode. Her eyes were closed so I ran a finger from my other hand around my clit. God, I was so close. A minute of that and I could cum, but I had no idea what she might do. I could never hide it. So I resisted and pulled down her thong. She had a landing strip. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Okay subbie, up ya come,” she said as her hand reached to help me up. “Off to the bedroom.”

Second floor rear of her townhouse. The room was immaculate. Her king bed was the centerpiece, but the room was tastefully furnished. I did notice hooks in the ceiling in various locations. Not something you’d normally see in a bedroom. I pictured myself somehow connected to one or more of them.

With one quick jerk, she exposed the sheets. Then she grabbed me into a tight hug and launched us onto the bed. We landed almost in the middle with her under me.

“Well, that was unique,” I said as I began to laugh.

“Surprises are fun,” she said and then we kissed. After a few minutes of tongue thrashing she pushed me away, closed her eyes, and said, “Okay subbie, show me what you got.”

I’d been hoping for something like that. I slid down and started kissing one of her nips as my fingers teased the other. It’d been several years since my last femfem experience and I was loving it. Her moans told me I was doing something right.

When I sensed she wanted more, I added my teeth to the stim and let my fingernails drag down and around her stomach and abdomen, occasionally running them through her strip. Her moans were getting louder and more frequent. I was determined not to go lower until she told me or pushed me there. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Damn you! Get down there and eat it!”

I laughed to myself and moved between her widely spread legs. Starting far south, my tongue flicked and teased her labia. Her oozing nectar was sweet. It flowed on my tongue as I probed her tunnel. Louder moans. Her hands ran through my hair. Then my final act. Spreading her wide, my lips enveloped her clit and my tongue went to work: circling, flicking, caressing her nub. Her hands clenched my hair and pulled me tight against her as she started bucking.

“OH fuck yes! Lick it, suck it! Damn you’re good. Oh, oh… Fuck I’m going… I’m cumming!”

Her legs locked around me so tight I couldn’t breathe. Her body trembled. That passed soon enough and with her hands still grasping my hair, pulled me up into our most intense kiss yet. When that finally broke we just stared into each other’s eyes.

By now, whatever is beyond horny is where I was. I said, “Turnabout is fair play.”

“I should make you wait.” I just stared at her thinking, sub or not, I’m outta here if you do. She grinned and went on, “But I won’t.” And flipped me on my back. Then assuming my former position, she went right to my pussy.

Her skills and my readiness brought me to a screaming, trembling orgasm in what seemed like seconds but was probably a couple of minutes. I locked my legs around her and she kept teasing my clit, driving me even crazier.

That ended with more kissing and us finally lying on our backs and panting to catch our breath.

“And you thought I smelled like before,” I said. I knew I reeked and she was not far behind that.

“I know. Isn’t it wonderful? This should be a perfume scent.”

I laughed. “Somehow I don’t think it would become a top seller.”

“You’re probably right, but more’s the pity. I’d buy it.”

After some talk of our recent escapades, I suggested a joint shower and then she could finish her .

“And so it shall be,” she said, “but we must stay naked. I so enjoy everything about you.”

“The feelings are mutual. So that shall be!”

With that, we headed to a joint, sensuous shower, and then downstairs for more wine and the rest of her .

“So where was I?”

“You’d told Mr Fischer about his wife and interviewed him. Found out about Anisha and that Randolph the trainer had called in sick. I think you were back at the office doing reports and waiting for the ME report.”

“Right! Good memory. Well, it turned out that Anisha was a twentyseven yearold (she paused to briefly stare and raise her eyebrows at me) lawyer working as a Deputy Public Defender. We found that unusual, to say the least. What’s a twentyseven yearold public defender doing having an affair with a fiftynine yearold lawyer who heads one of the most powerful law firms in the city.”

“Good question. And don’t think I missed your look. Ten years older is the most I’ve ever ventured. He was fun but not a keeper. So…”

“So, we checked Anisha’s location. She was in the office for the afternoon preparing for a trial. We decided to drop in unannounced, which we did. She was surprised by our visit and, at first, talked in very lawyerly, evasive, ways about Fischer. When we told her what he’d said and what we knew, she came clean. Yes, she’d spent most of the night with him at the Four Seasons. They were in fact lovers, but it was just a ‘phase’ for her. It turned out that her mother, now deceased, was Fischer’s housekeeper before Mrs Lopez, during the first Mrs Fischer’s time. She’d always been ‘enamored’ with him and he got her through law school. The affair ‘just happened.’ When pressed, she admitted that she had hopes of career help from Fischer and that being ‘friendly,’ as she put it, could only help.”

“So, that cleared Mr Fischer as the murderer, right?”

“Pretty much. At least until we checked out Randolph and others that might surface. It was getting late and the department hates overtime unless it’s really needed. We couldn’t make a case for that, so we headed back, wrote that report, and called it a day.”

“Do you get much overtime?”

“Yeah, it’s at least twentyfive percent more than my base. A nice supplement. Homicide gets first priority so we get it when we need it, and that’s fairly often.”

“So what about Randolph?”

“Well, with Fischer basically cleared, he became our new focus, especially with him seemingly disappearing. We talked to the manager, other trainers, and a few members from the gym where he normally worked. They all had fairly similar opinions of him: good guy, hard worker, fun as a trainer, knowledgeable, knew his stuff, reliable. That ‘reliable’ came up more than once and didn’t compute with him seemingly disappearing. We finally found out he has a girlfriend, Carol Burns, also a trainer who works at a competing gym. She’d also called in sick and nobody knew why. Long short, they’d taken a quick, lastminute vacation on a sailboat owned by one of Randolph’s customers—a customer that we’d not known of to interview.”

“But the murder happened before he called in sick. Right?”

“Right. We found Carol, and Randolph, the next day. She confirmed that she was at his apartment the murder night. They were planning and getting ready for their little sailboat adventure. She confirmed the video that they’d watched that he’d mentioned in his statement. We interviewed them separately. Standard procedure.

“So now he was totally cleared?”

“Yup, totally. We took another, closer look at Fischer and Anisha, plus building residents who had known the Fischers. Plus workers, delivery people, building employees. We checked all the CCTV we could locate. That all took time and we ended up with bupkis. It took two weeks to get the final autopsy report that included tox screens and DNA. Now that was interesting. There were prints and DNA on the knife handle. The DNA was female and not Mrs Fischer’s. We ran both through every database possible. Everything came back negative. Whoever’s prints and DNA we had were not in any database. Unusual in this day and age. Short of some really farout possibilities, that had zero likelihood of panning out, it was close to becoming a cold case.”

“So how did you make an arrest and get a confession!?”

“Well… this was one of those totally out of the blue things that happens almost never, but when it does it’s a complete surprise and sometimes provides an answer. Last Monday I was in the office when we received a call from Frank Martin. I didn’t mention him because, to that point, he had no useful information, none. He, his wife, Karen, and his son, Jimmy, live in the other condo on the floor, next to Fischer’s.

“When we’d initially talked to them, they’d indicated that they were neighborly friendly with the Fischer’s but didn’t socialize with them and hadn’t heard or seen anything at all that evening, let alone anything suspicious. But, and here’s where that luck comes in out of the blue, Jimmy, their son, is sixteen and a computer geek, plus a normal male teenager, albeit shy and not good with girls, but he is fully into the concept of . So Dad keeps tabs on his online activities.

“On that call I mentioned, Martin said he had some information regarding Mrs Fischer’s murder and that he needed to see us at his condo. I asked him what it was, and he told me it was a video that I’d want to see, but didn’t want to give any more information over the phone, could we please come over?”

“Ah, I can see something really interesting, and maybe not real unusual, for a teenage guy, happening.”

“Pretty much. So, at his request Jim and I went to see him. It seems that he was looking through Jimmy’s computer files, as he routinely does every so often, when he stumbled on a hidden file folder. He managed to unlock it and watched some of the stored videos. He didn’t say anything else. He just started the video. It’s Mrs Fischer lying naked in bed when another woman, dressed, comes into the room. There’s no sound, just the video. It’s easy to see the new woman is mad. They clearly are arguing. The new woman leaves and comes back in a few seconds with the knife and jumps on Fischer. She was obviously screaming. Then they’re both screaming at each other. That’s when the other woman starts stabbing. Twelve blows. All the full length of the knife. Then she stops, out of breath. She gets an ohmygodwhathaveIdone look, drops the knife, and runs out of the room. The video goes on for a few more minutes but nothing happens. Mrs Fischer is clearly dead. The video ends.”

“Holy shit! I can’t believe it. Who the hell is that woman? Do you know why?”

“We had similar reactions, plus how did Jimmy get that video? We told Mr Martin that we had to talk to Jimmy. He was reluctant but agreed. He’d been waiting in their bedroom. When he came into the room he looked and seemed totally mortified, which I could understand.”

“I’d have been mortified also!”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t? So, we treated him gently, told him he wasn’t in any trouble and that he’d done the right thing in coming forward.”

“But—”

“Yes, I know, he didn’t come forward, Dad did. But we wanted him to feel as good as he could about talking to us.”

“Gotcha! That makes perfect sense.”

“So, he told us it started when he wanted to see her having with her husband ‘cuz she’s so hot.’ So he bought one of those fiber optic inspection scope systems, 100 feet long, that people use to inspect pipes or in walls or as part of archeology. Any number of things. He figured out how to run it through the small ceiling space and work it into their bedroom by a smoke detector. So much for the CSI search. Anyway, he did record her and hubby. He also knew that Randolph went there a couple days a week and got curious. Result, video of him and her doing it.”

“And he was curious about this woman? She must have visited fairly often. Seems routine.”

“True, but that was an accident. He didn’t know about her. He’d left the video running and didn’t realize it. The next morning, when he realized it’d been running all night, he fastforwarded through it and, walah, the murder. It was kismet. He was going to send it to us anonymously because he was embarrassed about it all. If he wasn’t so young and teenage weird he’d get a reward of some kind. Frank and Karen are completely happy to keep it all as quiet as possible. Jimmy promised no more spying on people. Jim and I laughed and highfived on the way back to HQ.”

“So, what happened next? Did you know who she was?”

“No clue, but guessed she lived in the building. Ran her picture through facial recognition. Her DL pic popped up, Joyce Rampling. She and her husband, Bill, live on the lowest floor in one of the lowerpriced condos. They’re less than half the size of Fischer’s. We took a few days to think it all through and do a total background investigation on Joyce and Bill, her husband. We had to know as much as possible about them both. Nothing out of the ordinary came up.

“We didn’t want her to know in advance that we were going to interview her, so this morning we waited in the condo garage for her to leave for work and stopped her. We’d discussed different ways to approach the interview and decided to just show her the video rather than draw things out with a bunch of questions. So after ID’ing ourselves we told her we had something we wanted her to see and showed it to her on a tablet we had. She started crying and shaking. Then started to slip to the floor. Jim held her up. She sobbed out that she loved Susan, but she’d ended the relationship. She just wanted to talk to try and revive it, but ‘I loved her so much’ and ‘things got out of hand.’”

“Jesus, I guess they did. So she’s in jail?”

“Yeah. After we told her she was under arrest for murder and advised her of her rights she stopped talking and asked for a lawyer. That was that, but we have the tape and she confessed after seeing it. That’s what’s known as a spontaneous utterance—they’re admissible evidence. So now it’s all up to the D.A.”

“Damn! This is way better than marketing drugs. Can I be your partner? I’m a quick study.”

She started laughing. “Remember what I said about the ninetynine percent. I think you’d get bored. Besides, sometimes you have to kill people. You up for that?”

I know I looked shocked. “Shit! I never thought of that. Damn. Have you killed people?”

More laughing. “I’m just with you. Of course it’s possible for any cop, but I’ve never shot my gun except in practice. Listen, it’s been a long day. After the morning’s excitement, the afternoon was all report writing. Let’s enjoy the wine, and ourselves, in bed. I’m whipped. We have all weekend. At least I do,” she said, giving me an inquiring look.

“I seem to also be free. Sooo… the weekend could be fun, much fun in fact. I’m in!”

We went upstairs. Slower this time. In bed, skin to skin, propped up by pillows, drinking the last of the wine. I think we talked about movies we might go see. I’m not for sure about that. It was all a pleasant haze. The last thing I remember for sure is a tender kiss followed by dreams of the future.