Chapter Two
Maurelle
“Thank you, officer.”
I gave him my widest smile and leaned against the door of the house I’d had him drive me to.
He was a youngish sort of man, with bags under his eyes.
I wondered if he got enough sleep. There was something about him that had me on edge, but I put it down to him being a cop.
The sooner I got away from him, the better. I had things to do and people to meet.
“I’m a detective,” he corrected. He was annoyed and I had to fight not to smile at his arrogance.
“My apologies,” I said. “I’ve not had much interaction with police, and am unaware of ranks.”
“It’s fine,” he replied, but I could see he was annoyed by it. He was potentially a newly promoted detective and had something to prove.
“Would you like to come in and have something to drink?”
“No,” he replied, quickly. “I have to get back. Stay here, though, we may need to come and talk to you.”
I nodded, remembering the process from the countless times I’d been through this.
“I am the prime suspect, am I not?”
His head cocked to the side, as if he were trying to figure me out. Good luck, boy, I thought. No one could figure me out.
“Should we suspect you?”
“Of course not. I loved my husband. I simply understand that I was in the house and I was his wife, so therefore, don’t crime shows tell us that the spouse is always suspect number one?”
“Have a good day, miss.”
He turned his back on me and headed back to the car. As I watched him get in, I headed inside and closed the door. Moving to the window, I looked out from behind the lace curtains and saw him sitting in the car, on the phone.
Of course they’d have me under surveillance. This hadn’t been my first rodeo, but something felt different this time.
Something felt…final.
I pushed the feeling away and headed into the house, moving through the hall until I came to the button for the stairs to be descended from the attic.
They filed down with ease, revealing my den of horrors.
Oliver never came to this house, in fact, not many knew I owned it.
It was the one thing I’d taken from my third marriage that housed everything I needed about my future, and my past, including my wall of potential next victims.
I ascended the stairs and sat at the desk I kept here, opening my laptop that was heavily encrypted, so that no one could trace it back to me.
Pulling up the list of names I’d held onto for so long, I crossed Oliver’s off.
I glanced down the list, a list that never seems to end, only grow, as my victims began to show their true faces and the true reason for them being on my list.
I picked a name at random and looked it up.
When his photo flashed up on the screen, I felt a smile appear on my face. Recently divorced. He’d be an easy lure.
Searching the internet for more information on Colby James, I started to formulate a plan for weaseling my way into his life. I was getting older now, which meant I wouldn’t be able to keep it up at this rate, not unless the men I claimed were a lot older and had no other options.
I leaned back in my chair and pondered the right amount of time I should grieve before I started my plan of attack on Colby. I swiveled my chair around and looked out the tinted window down at the car.
The detective was still here.
My phone dinged in my pocket. I pulled it out to look down at the caller ID. I had to fight to not roll my eyes.
Daisy.
Oliver’s adult daughter from his previous marriage. She’d considered us friends since the wedding day two years ago. I’d done everything I could to dispel her friendship but she was a stubborn little wench, sometimes I thought she’d done it to push me away.
Little did she know, I had a heart of steel and a resolve even stronger.
I forced tears from my eyes and willed the strength to put on a show as I clicked the green accept button.
“Daisy, oh, it’s so awful,” I wailed into the phone.
Daisy’s own tearful sobs were almost too painful to hear myself. She had this whine to her tone that had always felt like nails on a chalkboard.
“How did it happen?” she asked me in between sobs. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I only just got away from the house now,” I told her. “It was too horrible, I had to get out of that place.”
“I understand,” she said, softly. “Do you want to come here?”
Dear god, no.
“No, I’m with friends now,” I told her. “I will call you tomorrow. I just can’t right now.”
“Of course,” she sobbed. “I’ll call tomorrow.”
She hung up and I let out a sigh of relief. Closing my laptop down, I moved to the stairs again with my task in hand, while I waited for the police investigation to officially call me down. Once I was done with them, and once I fooled those simple-witted fools, I would start with Colby.
I knew how it worked, I’d been here before, they’d call me in tomorrow or the day after to talk about it, put the grind to me about what I knew.
I’d answer them that I had no idea who Doris was, or that he’d received a gift. I'd be mad at him for drinking it without me, for if I’d drunk it with him, we’d both be dead and together.
The waterworks would come out, which usually sorted the men from the boys, and they’d release me, rule it unsolvable unless they could find Doris.
In just a few weeks, I’d be ready to be on the prowl again.
My phone rang again. Jesus…would his family leave me alone already?
I pulled it out and looked down at the number. It wasn’t saved in my phone but it was recognisable.
“Hello?” I answered.
“You don’t seem upset,” the annoying voice of that little pest reporter came down the line.
“Why do you insist on calling me and threatening me? You do realize I have a police detective outside right now and he can arrest you for harassment.”
“You wouldn’t do it,” he said, his tone dripping with arrogance. “I could end your little party.”
“Party?”
“You’re a black widow,” he said. “I have proof and soon they’ll see it too, and you’ll be strung up and hung for what you’ve done.”
“No one conducts hangings anymore, little boy.”
“They’re coming for you,” he said, his voice getting angrier as the time went on.
“You’ll never catch me,” I said, my threshold for annoying little pricks wearing thin.
“I leave no trace. You call me a black widow, do you know why they are the most feared spider? Because their venom is reported to be up to fifteen times stronger than rattlesnakes and they’re quick.
Be careful poking at my webs, Mr Dale, I have ways and means to eradicate any predator. ”
“If you think I haven’t been recording this, you’re the idiot, Maurelle.”
“Well done, little boy. You’ve learned my birth name. You did better than the last one who tried to stop me. Be a dear and listen back to your recording, take it to the police. I’ll be here waiting for them.”
I hung up the phone, knowing full well that the recording he’d used would be useless. I had an anti-recording app on my phone which meant he’d have nothing but static on his end. I hadn’t gotten away with it for this long without learning some tricks of the trade.
It did annoy me that he knew my real name, though.
Just how much had he learned of my real identity and how much of a threat did it pose?
Kane
Tommy walked back into the station house and I felt something shift in him. He sat down opposite me, staring off into space.
“You good?”
I seemed to break him from whatever spell he’d been under and he straightened in his chair, pushing into the desk and moving his mouse to wake his computer up.
“Yeah…something off about that woman.”
“I know,” I said. “But we don’t have enough to bring her in and question her.”
There was a moment, a brief one but a moment all the same, when I thought to tell him about Stanley’s folder of bullshit, but I knew Tommy would read too much into it.
The kid had risen in the ranks far too quickly, and he took everything to heart.
He was fuelled by his heart, and gut instinct, so a lot of things were done far too quickly.
It was probably why they stuck him with me. They needed him to mellow out.
“Did she give anything away when you were talking?”
“No,” he said. “Not really. She just seemed far too calm, especially since she was near hysterics on the phone calling it in.”
“Maybe it sunk in,” I replied. “We know these things happen all the time.”
Tommy nodded, shaking his head before reading his emails. I looked down at the folder, sitting under my keyboard, full of shit I needed to decipher.
“Call it a day, kid,” I told him. “You’ve been sitting on her all day, you gotta be tired.”
I grabbed my folder and my jacket, heading out of the office, down to my car. I felt for him, I did. He had the same gut instincts I did when it came to people, but he lacked the experience of the bullshit people could weave to hide their guilt. He needed to take a step back and stop reacting.
It made me think of my early days in homicide, when I’d been eager to please. God, that felt like a lifetime ago.
I made my way down to the garage and headed out of the underground carpark in my car. It wasn’t until I was just outside the bar that I decided to call in, quickly swerving off the street and into the parking lot behind the old brick bar.
It was one of the original cop bars in town, and remained that way today, even if our precinct had moved two blocks away from it.
As I headed inside, I motioned to the cops on the end of the bar.
They were retired, and practically lived here.
Good for advice when you need to clear your head.
Heading over to a spare seat, I motioned to the barkeep Craig to pour me one.
He grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels from the wall and a glass before he returned to me, pouring my first drink of what I could only imagine would be many.
“Rough day?” he enquired, putting the bottle to the side, knowing I’d probably finish it by the time the sun went down.
“Not overly,” I said, taking a sip and letting the liquid burn down my throat. “I think it’s getting close to quittin’ time.”
“You look like you’ve seen better days,” Craig chuckled. “How long have you been doing it now?”
“Too long,” I replied, finishing my drink and pushing the glass to him. He poured me another and pushed it back.
I liked Craig. He kept the conversation to the point and short, knowing we came here to disappear rather than to talk.
His father was the one who I knew well but when ol’ Perry’s heart came to quit on him, Craig came to take over the place, keeping it as genuine as if this were the 50s when it opened.
He was good people, just like his daddy had been.
Craig left the bottle of Jack on the side, so I could get to it if needed as he went to clean up some of the tables as the cops departed.
I let the whiskey burn my throat again as I sipped at it, pushing this case from my mind so I didn’t lose it.
It had been a rough couple of months ever since learning of my ex-wife Mimi re-marrying and was already planning on having kids with the new guy.
I’d never wanted kids, knowing full well that they’d never get a father they deserved. I was a broken man. It wasn't even fair to put that on my ex wives either.
They deserved a man who hadn’t seen the atrocities humans could do to each other. I would forever be burned from my work. The only thing that got me to sleep at night was the fact I had put these monsters away.
I always got my man, and that’s why I knew I would find Oliver’s killer.
I would find a way to put away the person who ended his life so callously, even if it didn’t turn out to be his wife, and if it did, then this was the last husband she’d be killing.
I would make sure of it.
I poured another, just as Craig helped a couple of cops remove one of their mates who was too inebriated to stand.
I remembered those days.
The days when I chose to lose my mind and sleep on someone’s couch, all because I didn’t want to go home to my wife and tell her about the three teenagers I’d found murdered by their own father because he’d been a mean drunk.
I couldn’t pretend everything was all good in this world, because it wasn’t.
This city wasn’t my safe haven anymore, it was becoming more and more like one of the bigger metropolises where crime was currency.
I just couldn’t do it anymore.
It’s why, after meeting the desirable woman in question, I knew this was going to be my last case.
There was something in the air that told me this case would end my career.