Chapter 1

It wasn't really appropriate for someone like me to waltz into a senior prosecutor's office and toss a stack of case files onto his desk, but that's exactly what I did. I strutted in, tossed them down, then stood waiting. When they hit, the topmost file broke loose and slid across the varnished wood, stopping only when it bumped the keyboard on which his fingers rested.

"One second," he said. The keyboard clattered. The mouse clicked. Then he raised his eyes to look at me. No recognition. A frown.

"Well, sit down. I can't stand it when people hover."

I settled on a wooden chair with velvety upholstery. The chair itself sat on plush carpet, unusually plush for a county employee. Surrounding me were wood paneled walls with diplomas, certificates, and photos of him with politicians. He picked up the topmost file and glanced at its contents. Then he grabbed a few more and thumbed through them.

"Dead hookers, huh? Never a pleasant topic. But I've seen all these before. What's your point? And while we're at it, who the hell are you?"

"Detective Wimberly, Robin Wimberly."

"You new with homicide?"

"Nope. I'm just a plain detective. I mostly work prostitution stings."

He let he eyes run over me. Today I was wearing well fitting slacks and a lavender blouse buttoned all the way up. But I figured he was replacing all that in his mind's eye with a miniskirt, stockings, and heels, my "uniform," when I was undercover.

"I see," he said. "So, what's the deal with all of these? Homicide looked into them and didn't come up with much."

"You don't see the pattern?"

He glanced back at the files. He opened one and pulled out a photo of a bloated corpse. Amy O'Shaugnessy. They'd found her floating in the old harbor.

"All were tortured pretty bad," he said, "sexually, but four had their throats cut, three were strangled, and four beaten with a blunt object. So, yeah, I guess. Each pimp must have his own little way of killing."

He replaced the photo and closed the file.

"Look at the dates," I said. "Four sets of three, each set a couple months apart, each with a severed throat, a strangulation, and a bludgeoning. The estimated times of death overlap for each group. Get it?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. What do you mean four sets of three? There were only three girls strangled."

"Check the last file." He pulled out the last file and glanced at its contents. "Her name was Domonique Washington. She washed up on the Cambridge side of the river, so the Middlesex DA got her."

"How did you get this?"

"I asked. Anyhow, guess how she died. Guess when."

He read through the file more closely. "I see what you mean."

"Each group was done together and the bodies dumped apart."

He sat back and raised his fingers to his chin. "It's possible. We did consider it, even without this last one. Got any real evidence though?"

"No. But it seems pretty unlikely that a bunch of pimps would coordinate their murders so well."

"Could just be chance."

"Maybe, but I don't think so." He didn't say anything. "Look, a pimp will beat a girl, maybe cut her or shoot her, but these are way beyond what pimps do."

"You know a lot about pimps, huh? – and what they do?"

A few seconds passed. Then he gave me the look, that long curious gaze, as if he were searching me for any obvious scars. I knew what was coming next.

"You were the one in the Mill's case, yes?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm the one from the Mill's case."

"That was fucked up."

"Yeah, it was fucked up."

He sat forward and relaxed. His expression softened. "Look, any officer who took one in the line of duty gets special consideration in my office. Even if –" He stopped. But I didn't blame him. Nobody liked to talk about what happened on the Mill's case. He went on, "I'll give the files another once over, and maybe have a homicide take another walk around. But that's all."

"Fine."

"You're not gonna go all crusader cop on me?"

"Nope. I learned my lesson. I'm as docile as a little kitten."

I'd traveled that route once, playing the crusader cop, pushing a hard case too far. It earned me a rape and a bullet in the head.

"Anyhow" – he picked up the files – "you won't mind if I hold on to these."

"Go ahead."

"Give my secretary your cell. I'll let you know what I find."

I got up and left his office while he gathered the files, easily holding the whole stack. There were twelve files total, twelve lives, each a quarter-inch thick. That's all a dead hooker gets.

That evening, I lay on the couch with my girlfriend Jenny. My head was in her lap. She caressed my face.

Her name was actually Xiao-Xiao – Zhang Xiao-Xiao – but she had decided to Americanize it after hearing enough folks call her "Jowl-Jowl", and after discovering what "jowl" meant in English. I called her by her given name, sometimes. It seemed proper. But then, I didn't mind "Jenny" either. It seemed cute and wonderful, like her.

She was small. Her hair was long, black, and straight. She had dark-brown eyes. Tonight, she was wearing gray sweats and a tiny UMass tee-shirt.

I sat up. "Turn over. I wanna see your butt."

She smiled and turned over. Once again, I beheld her lovely ass. It looked good even in sweatpants. I reached and squeezed, feeling her tense up, hearing her coo. Then I grabbed the waist of her pants and began to lower them.

I'd met Jenny a couple years ago, when I decided to rent out my spare room to some likely student who didn't mind living with a cop. She was the first to answer the ad. Right away, I liked her. On the third night after she moved in, I liked her a lot more. We'd been side by side on the couch, just like now. Glances led to smiles, smiles to soft touches. She got real close and embraced me, but she still cast down her shy eyes. I raised her chin. We kissed, deep kisses. Soon, love.

Officially, she was renting the spare room, but she hardly ever slept there.

I got her pants down below her bottom, her lovely round bottom in stretchy lilac panties. I slipped a finger beneath, where her right leg emerged, and moved along her pale flesh, along the reddish furrow where the fabric had dug in. Then I kissed through the soft cotton and nuzzled in close. She parted her legs, only slightly, and raised her torso on her elbows and turned to me. It was amazing the way she could twist and stretch.

I hugged, just hugged. I wrapped my arms around her thighs and pressed my cheek against her bottom. Then I took a deep breath and listened to the drapes flutter in the breeze.

We lay that way for a while. Then she said, "Uh, sweetie, are we going to do anything?"

"Nah. I just wanna hold you."

"Okay."

We lay a bit longer. I pressed against her warm flesh. Soon, she wiggled. "I'm going to grab a bite to eat."

I released her and she rolled from the couch onto her feet. She pulled up her sweats. Then she walked to the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge. I lay back and pretended to stare into space. But, furtively, I let my gaze drift to her. She sat at the table and nibbled from a fruit cup. She sipped from a glass of juice.

She had two semesters left until she graduated and, presumably, until her student visa would expire. After that, I had no idea. I watched her bring a strawberry to her sweet mouth and eat.

A month passed, a long, uneventful month of skimpy outfits, dark evenings, and unhappy men. They never seemed to enjoy being arrested. As that month drew to a close, and as I began to believe that my friend the prosecutor had forgotten me, I received his call. I was eating noodles at a little Vietnamese joint on Dorchester Ave.

"Detective Wimberly?" the voice said through the phone.

"Yes?"

"This is Ryan Green, the district attorney."

"I know who you are."

"Can we meet?"

"Yes. Of course. Right now?"

"Tomorrow. Two o'clock. Sound good."

"I'll check my schedule." I smiled into the phone, I didn't have a schedule. "Sure. Your office?"

"Actually, no."

"Oh?"

"Let's meet at Sully's Diner."

"Uh ... okay."

Sully's was only a few blocks from my apartment. It was a small place that, if nothing else, didn't attract many cops – nor district attorneys, for that matter. It was dingy and the food was cheap. But it was quiet. It was the sort of place that few would notice or even know of. I arrived the next day promptly at two.

They waited at a table in back away from other tables. He sat in jeans and a polo – no power suit nor silk tie today. A woman in jeans sat next to him. She was stocky with sharp blue eyes and cropped blond hair. I recognized her as a cop, but I didn't know her name.

"Hey," I said as I pulled out a wobbly chair and sat down across from them.

"Hello Detective Wimberly," he said. "This is Detective Scott, Jan Scott. From Homicide."

We went through all the "nice to meet you" bullshit. Then I asked, "So, obviously you found something."

"We did," Detective Scott said in a flat voice.

But she didn't continue. She leaned back and waited for Counselor Green.

"Have you ever heard of The Culture?" he asked.

"Uh ... no I guess not. What's The Culture?"

"The underground of the underground," he said, "as near as we can tell."

Then Detective Scott leaned forward and said, "You know, extreme sex, bondage, S&M." I gave her a blank look. "That kinda stuff. You must know all of that – from your line of work."

I didn't know all of that. I had touched on it, from time to time. But actually, most folks in that scene didn't pay for it and, thus, never got a visit from me. And those that did pay, it wasn't exactly the sex they paid for. I didn't really care if some horny old lawyer paid a mistress to spank him. As long as they didn't fuck.

"It's never really been my bailiwick," I said. "So clue me in. What does this have to do with the dead girls?"

"It's a tiny clue," she said. "But it's all we got."

I waited. She seemed to peer at me, studying me, as if what she was about to say would amaze me.

"Actually," she said, "it came from within your squad."

"Oh?"

He interrupted. "Before we go on, I'd like a promise from Detective Wimberly."

"Sure. What?"

"Whatever we say now stays under wraps. You got it? No blabbing around the station house."

"No problem. I'm not the sort to blab."

He nodded. She went on. "We identified one of the Jane Does, the blonde that everyone assumes was Russian."

"Oh?"

"Yes. But we don't plan to put it in the case file."

I didn't say anything to that. In every investigation, there are those little things we let slide. However, we usually don't say it out loud, and I'd never heard of hiding the ID of a victim.

"Anyhow," she went on, "it turns out, actually, that she was brought in a few weeks prior by a certain Detective Pierce." I knew Pierce, worked with him frequently. He was a solid cop. "However, it appears Detective Pierce did not properly fill out his paperwork. In fact, he didn't fill out any paperwork. He didn't process her at all."

I stayed quiet. There are two reasons Pierce would do that. One of them was not so nice.

She must have seen my look and understood. "Oh, don't worry. Pierce isn't in any shit. He says he felt sorry for her, and I guess we believe him. She was pretty and spun a good story."

That made sense. We didn't always believe the tales the hookers told, but we did feel sorry for them. From time to time we gave one a pass. It wasn't a huge secret, but again, we didn't really like to talk about it.

"So," she continued, "when we showed him her picture – well – let's say he and I went out for lunch and had a private conversation about Klara Stasiuk."

"Fine," I said. "It happens. The hookers are the victims as far as most of us are concerned."

"Right. But there is more. She told him she wanted out. I guess they all say that, but he believed her. She had friends back in the Ukraine. If she could only call them maybe they could help."

"He let her make a call?"

"No. Better. Much better." She got a big smile. "He paid for minutes on her phone. On his credit card. And her bought her one of those pre-paid long distance cards."

"I see."

"So, we know what phone she was using. Anyhow, we pulled up the CDRs and found that she'd received a text message the night she was killed."

I leaned forward. "You got the message?"

"Nah. The company doesn't keep the messages. But we know what cell tower it was on. And we know the number that texted her."

I smiled a bit also. "I see."

"And so back to Detective Pierce. It turns out the number was also a pre-paid phone, but that number had showed up in the investigation of a certain Jerome Johnson."

I knew Jerome well enough. He was a small-time pimp. Very small time. But he treated his girls well enough, by the standards of a pimp. We kept our eyes on him, but we hadn't brought him in.

"And what did Jerome say?"

She turned to Green, who said, "Let's just say that I had a little chat with him and his attorney. It turns out he wasn't very happy about Klara's death either. Anyhow, we formed what we called a temporary understanding. Long story short, without admitting to pimping the girl, he suggested that maybe she was to meet a certain 'large, blonde gentlemen with a blue cap' in a certain downtown bar, the Primrose Path."

"Which," Detective Scott said, "was only a few hundred yards from the tower where she received the text."

"Nice."

"But," she went on. "That's where the lead dries up. I tried going to this bar. Now, I'm no undercover sort, but it would hardly help. You could put me in that costume, paint me and wrap me in latex, but I don't think they'd ever believe I was one of them."

I looked her over, at her stocky figure and her chiseled face. If you put a dog collar on her, it would scream bull dyke, not fuck toy.

No, she'd never fit in there.

Green said, "We're reasonably certain there is something to find there, within The Culture, if we could get in. It would be long, deep cover. We'd want an officer with experience. And, bluntly, she'd need to be attractive."

He gave me a little grin.

"It can't be done," I said.

"Why not?"

"You can't just show up to these things and look pretty. Before they trust you, you have to do things. And you can't require an officer to fuck."

He smiled. "No. No we cannot."

Detective Scott sat back and crossed her arms.

Jenny seemed to bang the pots more than usual as she fried up some rice for the two of us. I waited at the table. She stirred, splashed oil, tossed herbs, then stirred more. It was something she did on many nights. But tonight, each move seemed more abrupt, more violent. She yanked down two plates and dropped them on the counter. With a wooden spoon, she scattered a measure of rice onto each plate. Then she brought them to the table and set mine before me. She didn't smile like she usually did.

I didn't dare speak. I took my fork and began to eat.

She rounded the table and sat across from me. Her fork sat untouched.

"Explain this to me again," she said.

I set down my fork and took a deep breath. "Officially, they're giving me an open-ended paid vacation, due to the stress of the job and lingering issues from the shooting last year."

"I got that. It is the unofficial part I'm interested in."

"I'm going to infiltrate the fetish subculture and report back what I learn."

"And to infiltrate, you have to fuck them."

"Only if I must. And that will never appear in any report."

She just looked, for a while, too long a while. Finally, she asked, "Am I supposed to be okay with this?"

"They're murdering girls, torturing them, butchering them."

"That shouldn't that affect us. Plus, they're hookers. What do they expect?"

She watched me with a quizzical look. But I didn't get angry. Not at her. From anyone else, yes. But I'd come to understand Jenny. She was sweet and caring, in her own way, but she'd never been sympathetic to the girls I encountered in my job. Perhaps people like her, who worked hard and got a lot from it, couldn't understand those who fell off the path. After a bit, she picked up her fork and took a bite of rice.