Elizabeth had slept poorly. She entered the bullpen in the morning in a correspondingly lousy mood.
Lying motionless in bed, unable to fall asleep. That was something like being an undead body. Conscious. But unable to move. Buried and yet alive. While she waited for the first sun to sting her eyes and remind her that she'd be walking through the world all day as if beaten. She had been working out on the cross trainer in the house's basement. But it had yet to make her much more alert.
Three stacks of files lay on the desk in front of her. The case file of Lisa and Jacqueline. And the woman's file they had only the feet of so far. Three files lay before her like three freshly dug graves. For all three were dead.
She thought of it earlier. Parents, including herself and her parents, always told the children everything would be all right. But they know it's not true, that most things don't work out. And the children somehow realize it, too.
In ten minutes, they were scheduled to interrogate a prostitute Jacqueline had known. Other vice detectives were on their way to question even more prostitutes and operators of strip clubs, dark rooms, and swingers clubs. Investigators hadn't found out much yet. Only that much that there was apparently someone who gave jewelry to prostitutes. This someone had killed the prostitute Jacqueline. And he killed young girls and took jewelry from them, which he, in turn, gave to whores before killing them. Which meant that two serial killers might suddenly have become one. It still wasn't good news because Elizabeth and her team had to dig deep into Boston's underworld to discover even more about Jacqueline and possible connections. Prostitution was often linked to human trafficking, and that was why Jane had been instructed that Homicide should look into this area after all. After all, she had come into contact with this milieu more than once during her time as a detective with the BPD and knew how to deal with this type of person.
xxx
Viola sat in a conference room. Elizabeth and Nick sat across from her. Viola was a noble whore. She often played the stern mistress to business people and executives who called the shots on the job and apparently otherwise liked to seek out someone to tell them where to go. With dirty talk, boot licking, and facesitting. Viola played not only the dominatrix Viola but also the teacher, doctor, and policewoman. But today, she wore no provocative clothes, varnish and leather, and corsage, but quite tight jeans and a white blouse. Perfectly made up, she was, nevertheless.
"You have to invest in the business," Viola said. "I had my boobs done. Cost almost six thousand dollars last time. But it's worth it; it can add a hundred bucks."
"A hundred bucks more?" asked Elizabeth with furrowed brows. "We'd heard of some in The Velvet Pearl who only get thirty dollars an hour total."
"Yeah. Because that's such a crap run." Viola shrugged. "Jacqueline shouldn't have stayed there that long in the first place. You don't turn into anything there. It's like an elephant graveyard." She looked in her purse. "Can I smoke in here?"
Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "No."
"Will survive." Viola pulled a small mirror from her purse instead of cigarettes, pouted into it, and pursed her lips. As if a suitor might drop by at any moment.
Nick took a long look at Viola and frowned a little. "Six thousand dollars is a lot to ask for."
"That's true. But it's worth it. After a hundred hours, the surgery has already paid off. And I'm only talking about the forty dollars I get on top. For that, of course, I have to offer a lot. And not just myself."
"But?"
"Sheets and towels with me; they're washed with hypoallergenic detergent. No odorants. And I don't wear perfume either. So the wife at home doesn't notice. Also, the shower gel with me is odorless. PH-neutral for allergy sufferers." Viola smiled briefly.
Elizabeth nodded slowly and gritted her teeth a little. "At the Velvet Perl, the women were behind glass windows. Jacqueline, too?"
Viola pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Sure. She had to. As long as she was there, anyway. That's how everybody does it there. Most of them can't help blowing money up pimps' asses, either."
"You don't have a pimp?" wanted Elizabeth to know.
"No, I don't. Because I only get booked by the better society."
"Via the Internet?"
"Yes. With Peppr, too, for example. It's an app for hookers in the area. Stands everything in it. With services, asking prices, and limits. And that actually only academics use. So people who have money, are well-groomed, behave, and are not psychos. The others are also too stupid for such apps."
Nick looked at the woman long and hard. "The Internet is changing all business models."
"That's right," Viola said pointedly with a smile, pointing at the detective. "Even the oldest business in the world."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows briefly and cleared her throat. "Let's get down to brass tacks. Did you notice a man giving Jacqueline jewelry back then?"
"Yes. I even remember that guy. He came with such unsteady steps."
"Don't a lot of johns do that?" Nick wanted to know, ignoring Elizabeth's questioning look.
"Yeah, right. Like they're scared shitless. But that one in particular. That was one of those guys with thick glasses. And pretty fat otherwise, too. I only saw him once."
"Would you recognize him?"
Viola shrugged. "I'm not sure. Do you have a picture of him?"
Nick pressed his lips together. "Not yet. But maybe you can describe him to the sketch artist so he can make a drawing?"
Viola leaned forward and looked at him with a lascivious smile. "I can try, but I don't want to make too many promises there, sweetheart. I only went to the Velvet Pearl for a little while. I was not too fond of it there very much. Made too little there for all the trouble."
Nick nodded slowly and took a deep breath as he made a mental note. "How did you get away from there anyway?"
Viola smiled and leaned back in her chair, arching a brow. "Through a headhunter who approached me. He suggested I get the boob job and move to the more upscale segment. That's where I would belong, he said. Trading up and upmarket, he called it."
"There are headhunters in the horizontal trade?"
"Well, it's still the oldest trade in the world. There's everything there is in the regular trade."
Nick pulled the corners of his mouth down with raised brows and nodded almost in agreement. "Sounds logical."
In the back of Elizabeth's mind, alarm bells quietly announced themselves, but she didn't let on. "How long have you been out of the Velvet Pearl?"
Viola lifted a shoulder carelessly. "A couple of weeks. The day I saw that guy must have been one of my last days at the Velvet Pearl."
Which may be why you're still alive, Elizabeth thought. At least, that's if Katherine was right about her Jack-the-Ripper comparison and the perpetrator only operated in Boston.
"Different question," Elizabeth said, increasingly irritated. "Is this what you've always wanted to do?"
"Sex for money, you mean?" Viola laughed heartily. "No, actually, I went to veterinary school once. But dropped out. When I started my own business, the case worker at the employment office already looked pretty stupid. I also had to submit a business plan for my tissue; the tax office wants to see an intention to make a profit and so on; otherwise, there's no start-up subsidy. It's like any other job where you start your own business. "She crossed her legs. Her jeans looked expensive and had appliqués of precious stones, though certainly not real ones.
Elizabeth wondered if Viola now looked particularly classy or mainly cheap.
"If I could make as much money at another job, I would do that. But this is the job I'm still looking for."
"Did you keep in touch with Jacqueline after you left the Velvet Pearl?" Nick wanted to know.
"Sporadically, sometimes via email or WhatsApp. But especially in our business, out of sight, out of mind. And I look for women I can still learn something from. Not stupid chickens who I still have to teach something to. Or who don't want to be taught anything because they think they already know everything. That's even more often the case."
Nick took a long look at her and smiled wryly. "Know how to make them more money?"
Viola rolled her eyes. "Sure. That's what it's all about, after all." She drank from her coffee. Her teeth were pearly white. Which meant she either rarely drank coffee or went in for whitening often. "Jacqueline's problem was that she never really wanted to go up. Trading-up, as I said. She didn't evolve. Always stayed at the Velvet Pearl, where she was lucky to get more than a fifty a fuck."
Elizabeth waited and looked at her partner.
Nick took a deep breath and furrowed his brows a little. "If Jacqueline had done what you did, would she have deserved more?"
Viola smiled wryly. "Sweetheart, for sure. But she was just out and about in discount whorehouses. And then, she moved out of the Velvet Pearl to cut costs. She should have increased her turnover rather than cut costs."
"And from then on, she worked from home?" wanted Nick to know.
"Sure, where else? She then let guys fuck her in her own apartment. Home office fucking, that can go wrong because no one's looking out for you. And then that's what went wrong."
Elizabeth took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "Indeed." She and her team had investigated Jacqueline's apartment. It didn't look like a struggle or murder there, though. Just piles of DNA, which was no wonder if that was where she received her suitors. Maybe she had received her killer somewhere else? Or had been kidnapped before? "You didn't have that much to do with Jacqueline if I understand correctly." Elizabeth made a mental note. "Were there others in Jacqueline's entourage?"
Viola turned to her almost reluctantly. "We had some brief contact at first. But then Natalie hung out with her more often."
"Natalie?" asked Elizabeth with furrowed brows. "Greg and John didn't say anything about that."
"They couldn't either. Natalie works at the Rose."
"Do you have a phone number for the lady?"
"Sure. I'll write it down for you."
xxx
After Elizabeth and Nick left the conference room, she pushed her partner into a quiet corner and gave him a long, wide-eyed look.
Nick returned her gaze, but then astonishment quickly spread through his eyes. "What?"
"Tell me, are you crazy?" she hissed, eyes wide. "With hookers?"
Nick continued to look at her in confusion, but then the realization set in that his sister-in-law assumed he had cheated on Katherine and with prostitutes at that. He laughed out loud and was about to head toward the bullpen, but he was pulled back into the quiet corner. "What the fuck, Liz?" he growled, a little miffed now.
She stepped closer to him and looked at him angrily. "Not enough that you cheat on my sister, no. You have to cheat on her with fucking hookers? Do you think that doesn't count? Do you even realize what you're doing to Kate and Jalen with this shit? Or do you think she'll overlook it because it's not cheating?"
"Now get over it, Liz," he replied in a sharp whisper, shaking his head. "Just because I know how to talk to women like Viola doesn't mean I'm cheating on Kate with prostitutes." He straightened up as his sister-in-law licked her lips in disbelief. "In case you've forgotten, Liz. Unlike you, I didn't spend my entire career in Homicide, I was in Vice and Sex Crimes before all this. So I know how to deal with that kind of woman very well to get them to be a little more talkative."
Elizabeth blinked a few times, dropping her shoulders and taking a deep breath.
Nick was sure that his partner had finally cleared her head and said, "So now that we've got everything cleared up, let's get back to work so we can catch this bastard and get back to normal."
Elizabeth nodded slowly and took another deep breath. "Yes. Yes, let's get back to work." No sooner had she uttered that her cell phone vibrated. She read the message and slumped her shoulders.
Nick's eyebrows drew together. "What?"
She rolled her eyes and headed toward the bullpen. "We have a missing person report."
"Great," he grumbled, following her, "we don't have enough on our plate yet."
