Revenant in Death

Chapter 5

by Technomad

Rayleen Straffo quietly let out a sigh of relief when she exited the mansion, walking deferentially just behind her employer. She had been in there, face-to-face with Eve Dallas, and her nemesis had never recognized her. The first test had been passed.

Of course, she had taken precautions. Mame had been puzzled by her decision to have her blonde hair tinted a medium brown, but had cheerfully loaned her the use of her own private stylist and home beauty salon for the purpose. Relaxing under the stylist's skilled hands, Rayleen had thought about the long years in confinement. In there, beauty care was a constant struggle, between a starchy diet that threatened to submurge her slim figure in pudge, a lack of supplies, and rules forbidding the possession of many things that women used to improve their looks.

By the time she'd been seriously concerned about the problem, though, she'd been inside more than long enough to know that for every rule set by her keepers, there were work-arounds. There were places in every institution she was in that were never searched, that served as stashes where contraband could be stored in relative safety, combined with deniability if, by chance, they did come to light. And many of her fellow-unfortunates had been skilful at working with what they had, both licitly and illicitly, to keep themselves and each other looking as good as they could. Most of them, ostensibly unlike her, were expecting to be released, and either had men waiting for them, or wanted to be able to attract a new partner. They had taught her much about beauty care in adverse conditions.

In addition to getting rid of her signature hair color, she had also taken advantage of the chance to get a free makeover. Her hair no longer flowed down to the middle of her back; instead, she wore it in a neat pixie cut. Her blue eyes were concealed behind contact lenses, turning them brown. Mame had been rather startled, but Rayleen had had just the answer to satisfy her employer.

"Well, Mame, it's a new job, in a new city, so I want to look like a new me! And your stylist is such a mistress of her art, I wanted to really see what she could do!" Mame had clapped her hands in delight and swallowed the story at face value.

With her new look firmly in place, she had swallowed her fear, gritted her teeth and walked into Roarke's mansion to face the woman whose face had haunted her dreams for thirty years. She hadn't been so scared since the day she had first entered prison, and back then, she'd only been ten years old.

The mansion was incredible, she thought. She wasn't quite able to place the décor, but it was lovely. It made the home she'd been raised in, before her arrest and imprisonment, look like a crib in the slums. She knew that the areas she hadn't seen were just as splendid as the parts she was permitted to view. Nothing but the best for Roarke! She knew that she deserved equal luxury, and one way or another, through hook or through crook, she'd get it. And bring down that smug bitch, Eve Dallas, into the bargain!

She had dreaded coming face-to-face with Eve Dallas, even considering pleading sickness or an emergency to get out of this meeting, but she was still new enough to Mame's household to not be sure that her employment would survive any such thing. Only her years of practice at keeping a poker-face had prevented her showing her fear as the majordomo, a saturnine Englishman named Summerset, had shown Mame, Vera Charles, and herself in, and led them to the parlor where Eve Dallas was waiting for them.

Her first view of her enemy was sitting in her wheelchair, going over some lists or other. To Rayleen's eye, Eve Dallas had changed rather little from the woman she remembered, apart, of course, for the injuries that had forced her to retire from the police. She'd always been slender and spare, and unlike some women who'd been forced into inactivity, she hadn't gained weight. Her hair was now streaked with grey, and there were lines in her face that Rayleen did not remember, but she was instantly recognizable.

However, the recognition was not mutual. She had shaken hands with Eve Dallas, and Eve hadn't shown so much as a flicker of realization of her real identity. Between being "incarcerated," being on record as being in an irreversible coma, and her changes to her appearance, she had gotten away with her impersonation. She wanted to hug herself with sheer joy.

The discussion itself had been more interesting than Rayleen had been prepared for. Even though she'd been a life prisoner, she had taken courses in secretarial work, and she had diligently taken notes on every word that was said. The parts that particularly intrigued her were where Eve Dallas and her guests had discussed how the mansion's security screens would have to be lowered for the evening, to accommodate the guests.

That had gone into Rayleen's planning. Normally, all people entering and exiting Roarke's mansion were monitored, and if fewer people left than were on record as entering, save only Roarke and his immediate family and employees, the security systems would start scanning for intruders. But during the fundraiser, people would be going in and out and the scans would be turned off to prevent embarrassing false alarms.

With an opening like that, Rayleen thought that she'd have to be a complete idiot not to be able to come up with a workable plan to get at Eve Dallas. And she knew she wasn't a complete idiot.

She had spent years studying Eve Dallas, both in the "IH8LTDallas" forum, and through other people who had known her. There had been many people who had shared quarters with her over the years who had had run-ins with the Lieutenant, and it generally didn't take much to get them to tell what they knew. Even discounting for bias, stupidity and (in many cases) chemical impairment, she had learned a great deal.

One very valuable source had actually celled with her for a few years. Renee Oberman had not only been in the NYSPD herself, but had been busted for corruption and murder by Eve Dallas. And she was raging for revenge. Once she had found out just why Rayleen was behind bars, they had become soulmates.

In the long hours when they were locked up together, they hadn't wasted any time. Renee had given Rayleen an intensive course in the structure, procedures and weaknesses of the NYSPD, from the viewpoint of an insider. Not only had she been a lieutenant in the Illegals division before her downfall, but her father had been a legendary cop in his own right. Renee had grown up eating, breathing and living police work, and she was gleefully happy to pass along all she knew to her eager, willing pupil. Rayleen privately thought that Renee was one of the most naturally talented teachers she'd ever met, and might have been happier doing that than going into the police force.

Even though her name was now officially mud with her former employers, Renee still had some access to the cop grapevine. Not everybody had agreed with her conviction; many people had thought that Eve Dallas had engineered her disgrace as a way to remove a potential rival for higher rank. These people told her things, and she had always been very intelligent and gifted with a very good memory.

For years before her fateful encounter with Eve Dallas, Renee Oberman had run a ring of corrupt police, arranging for them to rake off illegal profits from their dealings with the public and criminals, and seeing to it that anybody who tried to report their activities was either discredited or, better still, dead "in the line of duty." The knowledge she had gained at this had also been part of what she passed along to her willing protegee.

"One thing to keep in mind, Rayleen," she had said, her voice low so that no snoopy neighbors could hear what they were discussing and wonder why two lifers were talking of such things, "is to never, ever discuss anything the least bit illegal in any public venue! That was what started me on the road to where I am now!" She had looked rueful. "I had got sloppy and careless; I admit it! I was talking with one of my men about some things we were doing, in a gym at the police station!"

"At the police station?" Rayleen couldn't quite believe her ears. To be sure, she had made a blunder that was just as careless, by bragging to herself in what was meant to be her private diary, but she had only been ten years old at the time! How could a veteran cop be so sloppy?

"Yeah," Renee nodded, smiling ruefully. "To be fair, the place we were in, an old gym, was almost always deserted. It was just sheer crappy luck that Dallas' damned Mini-Me, that pest Peabody, had been down there exercising on that particular day. She was in the locker room, and heard us talking. She caught enough of the conversation, and apparently saw enough of me, to be able to ID us to Dallas. That was when the perfume went into the soup for all of us. She rolled up our little group and off to prison we went!"

"So where would be safe to talk about things like that?" Rayleen did not intend to start an organization, but she knew…none better!…that life often had its own plans. She made a mental resolution to never, no, never get careless about security. "Would your own home be better?"

"Depends on whether you live alone, and if you don't, whether your partner or roommate or whatever you have is in on things. Also, there's a chance that if anybody suspects you, there could be bugs in your home. Basically, just take it as a general rule that you never talk about sensitive subjects anywhere that someone who isn't in on things could listen in." Renee looked thoughtful. "The best way, I'd say, would be to randomly select a motel, take a room, and have your conversations in there. Even the cops can't bug every motel room in New York. And if they come a-knocking, don't stand on your rights and demand a warrant! That makes them suspicious. If all they see is a motel room with some people sitting around talking, they may get the idea that something hinky's going on, but they can't prove a blessed thing. There's often many a kilometer between what the police know, and what they can prove to the satisfaction of a court."

Rayleen nodded. That made excellent sense.

"Be careful who you recruit, if you do start an organization!" Renee looked very serious. "Only recruit people who bring something worthwhile to the table, and test them carefully before letting them in on any sensitive information. Smaller is better if you do start an organization, although I would recommend operating alone if you can swing it."

Rayleen thought that was an excellent idea. She knew very few people...Renee excepted…who she thought were her intellectual equals, and she had no particular intention to start an organization. However, her plans for her post-prison life were nebulous at best, past the goals of revenge on Eve Dallas and her ex-parents. After those pleasant tasks were taken care of, she could envision situations where recruiting people who had skills she lacked, or could go places she couldn't, would be very useful.

She had once had ambitions to be a great dancer, artist or something of the sort, but she knew that was out of the question now. Particularly under her real name. Being a great criminal would be a good thing to aim for, but she knew that staying well under the police's radar would be mandatory if she wanted to stay free and eventually retire with her ill-gotten gains.

Renee had been her best teacher, but by no means her only teacher. The other members of the IH8LTDallas forum she had found in one of the hidden areas of the Internet had also had many very interesting things to tell her. They all loathed Eve Dallas, and when they found out that her plan was to win release and exact revenge on their nemesis, they had fallen over themselves to be as helpful as they could.

Of course, she hadn't been on that forum, or in the Deep Net, as "Rayleen Straffo." It had amused all the members of the forum to take on the names of famous criminals. One pair of men who called themselves "Leopold" and "Loeb," she had pegged pretty quickly as Winston Dudley and Sylvester Moriarity, a pair of wealthy thrill-killers who'd had the temerity to deliberately draw Eve Dallas' attention. And had got themselves well and truly jugged for it, locked up for the terms of their natural lives.

They had been very informative about the little details of life at Roarke's level, and had been quite encouraging to her, but Rayleen had nothing but contempt for them. Even on the Net, they came across as arrogant and patronizing, and not quite able to believe that Eve Dallas had had the temerity to take them down, or that a judge would have had the nerve to convict and sentence them. Rayleen acknowledged that she'd been overconfident, herself, but she'd had the excuse of being only ten years old! How could grown men be so stupid with their pants up? She had long since noticed that most men (and women!) were often stupid when they were letting the little head do the thinking, but these two idiots had apparently done what they did just out of boredom and a feeling of unutterable superiority. She thought their online aliasses were well-chosen.

And there were others. One, calling himself "Sarge," she managed to identify after a while as Roger Kirkendall, one of the killers of Nixie Swisher's whole family. One of his two accomplices, Isaac Clinton, had died in prison for reasons Rayleen had never been able to determine. But "Sarge" had been very informative on a lot of things.

Another mentor, the one who had actually introduced Rayleen to the IH8LTDallas Forum, had actually been a social equal of Rayleen's family before falling foul of the accursed Lieutenant. She was on the Forum as "HitchcocksGirl," but Rayleen knew her as Ava Anders. Rayleen thought that Ava's plan had actually been very clever, but of course, it hadn't been quite clever enough. In Ava's shoes, she'd have seen to it that her patsy, Suzanne Custer, had a tragic accident not long after she'd served her turn.

Suzanne had received a much lighter sentence than Ava, who was in for life just like Rayleen was supposed to be. The stupid cow had avoided a life sentence by singing like a canary, and had been out for some while. Rayleen wondered whether it'd be worthwhile to track her down and pay her back, or not. On the whole, she decided, it wasn't. While Ava had been a very good mentor, and they had celled together for quite a while after Renee Oberman had stupidly let herself be caught with illegals and sent to the hole for a very long time, Rayleen didn't figure that taking care of her unfinished business was really worthwhile. Ava, like Renee, had served her turn, and she was now discarded. As she deserved, for being stupid enough to be caught despite having had such a clever idea!

Rayleen knew that she wasn't stupid. In a lot of ways, she looked forward eagerly to the coming contest. Not many people who lost to Eve Dallas ever came back for a rematch!

END Chapter 05