At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(30)
“It’s okay, Frank,” said Whitney with easy familiarity. Then he turned to Maclean and gave her a smile that was almost a leer.
“You know, Detective, if you ever want to trade in that frowsy pantsuit for something a little strappier—maybe boots, a corset, and a whip? I could get you eight hundred dollars an hour just for dishing out that attitude . . . and a bit of light punishment. There are some very wealthy and respectable people in Seattle who would just love to take orders for a change instead of giving them. If you want, I can even—”
“Just shut the fuck up,” shouted Maclean, annoyed as much by Verraday as by Whitney. “You do not talk unless I ask you a question. Got it, asshole?”
“Oooh,” responded Whitney with an exaggerated squeal. “Feisty too. But I don’t think I want to answer any more of your questions right now.”
“Good,” replied Maclean. “Then you’re welcome to camp out in the lockup until you’re feeling more talkative. We’ve got some crackheads and Crips that I’m sure would love to meet you. Have a nice night, Mr. Whitney.”
CHAPTER 15
Verraday’s call went directly to voice mail on the third try. He knew that Maclean had turned off her cell so she could ignore him.
“Damn it, Maclean. I’m telling you, the killer’s still out there. And you know what that means. Call me.”
Verraday terminated the call and put his phone down. Agitated, he went to the kitchen, took his Seattle World’s Fair tumbler out of the dish rack, then grabbed the bottle of brandy from the counter and went back upstairs to his den. He unscrewed the cap and was about to pour it, saw that it was still early, then screwed the cap back on the bottle and put it up on his bookcase where it wouldn’t be within immediate reach. Damn it. Maclean’s comment about good old-fashioned legwork stung him. But maybe there was something to it. He was already certain about the psychology of the victims and the perpetrator or perpetrators. But that wasn’t going to bring them any closer to catching the killer. Not yet. There was a missing piece of the puzzle that they had to find first.
He pulled up the screengrab that Kyle Davis had taken of Rachel Friesen dancing with the unidentified blonde girl. She might be able to tell them what Rachel no longer could. He zoomed in on her to look for any identifying marks. She had lots of piercings, including one in her nose, but all the studs and rings were nondescript. Her legs were mercifully free of the tattoos that marred so many otherwise beautiful young women these days. But that would make it harder to identify her. He scanned her chest, arms, and face. Finally, he spotted something distinctive. On her shoulder was a tattoo of the Norse goddess Freya.
Verraday reasoned that since this unknown young woman had been part of Rachel’s scheme to work the webcam sex circuit doing girl-on-girl scenes, there was a better-than-even chance that she too might have a web page on Assassin Girls. He went to the site and scanned through hundreds of photos of alt girls: brunettes, blondes, redheads, girls with black hair, and girls whose hair was streaked with pink or maroon or blue. But the blonde woman from the screengrab remained elusive.
He decided to be more direct and typed in a search for “Escorts + Seattle.” There were pages and pages of links and scores of girls on each, hundreds even on some of them. He worked methodically through each site. His task of searching for the unknown blonde was made more difficult by the fact that most of the photos were cropped so that they stopped just above the chin, or the faces had been pixilated to protect the identity of the girl posting the ad. There was a mind-boggling assortment of young women offering themselves. Many claimed to be university students. He wondered if it was true, if any of the young women who sat in his lecture hall twice a week had been driven to the sex trade as the only way to finance their education, forced to pay tuition fees that were twice as high as what their parents and most of their clients had had to pay. He felt a pang of depression at that thought, then returned to scanning the photos. He went through another two hundred or so and was about to take a break, when he spotted a blonde whose face, like most of the others, had been intentionally blurred. Her listing identified her as “Destiny.” Her hair was longer than that of the blonde in the screengrab and was pulled up into a French twist, with several long strands left hanging down on either side of her obscured face. Her body was wrapped in a black latex dress that clung as tightly to her as a secret, covering the young woman from her wrists up to her neck, and all the way down to midthigh. Although there were no identifying features visible on Destiny, there was something familiar about her. Verraday pulled up Kyle Davis’s screengrab.
His pulse began to race. He realized then it wasn’t the pixilated girl he had recognized. It was the dress. In her ad on the escort site, the faceless blonde named Destiny was wearing the same dress that Rachel was wearing in Kyle’s photo of her and the blonde dancing together. If Verraday’s hunch was right, then Destiny and Rachel, like a lot of young female friends who were on tight budgets, had been sharing wardrobes to get the most fashion bang for the buck. Verraday clicked on the link to the young woman’s gallery of thumbnail photos. In all of them, her face was pixelated, but the camera explored her body voyeuristically, in ways designed to arouse desire in a potential customer. Verraday scrolled through a dozen of them. Then he spotted it: the Freya tattoo.
This woman was one of the last people to see Rachel alive, and she might provide the clues they needed to catch Rachel’s killer. And, Verraday realized, she might be in danger herself. Verraday groped around the site, looking for a contact link. He went back to Destiny’s main page and at the bottom, under her description, found a text number. He grabbed his cell and quickly typed, “Hello, Destiny. I would like to hear from you as soon as possible. Please message me anytime.” He hit send.