Silent Confessions
Was it poetic justice…or an education in obsession? Bookstore owner Veronica Archer is eager to oblige when sexy detective Jack Parker shows up at her shop, seeking help on the stalking case he's working. Verses from Victorian erotica are being left for the victims, and Jack needs to interpret the clues - before someone gets hurt. Thankfully, Ronnie's an expert on naughty turn-of-the-century prose, but if she's going to play teacher, Jack will have to be a dedicated student…. With her own love life stuck in Neutral, Ronnie's sensual studies have piqued her curiosity, and she wonders if reality can be as stimulating as fiction. She agrees to help Jack with his case, if he'll satisfy her wildest, most scandalous desires - a request Jack has no problem accommodating. But the closer they get to each other, the closer the stalker circles in, leaving Jack to question if Ronnie is merely a very skilled scholar - or the key to something far more sinister….
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Was it poetic justice…or an education in obsession?
Bookstore owner Veronica Archer is eager to oblige when sexy detective Jack Parker shows up at her shop, seeking help on the stalking case he’s working. Verses from Victorian erotica are being left for the victims, and Jack needs to interpret the clues—before someone gets hurt. Thankfully, Ronnie’s an expert on naughty turn-of-the-century prose, but if she’s going to play teacher, Jack will have to be a dedicated student….
With her own love life stuck in Neutral, Ronnie’s sensual studies have piqued her curiosity, and she wonders if reality can be as stimulating as fiction. She agrees to help Jack with his case, if he’ll satisfy her wildest, most scandalous desires—a request Jack has no problem accommodating. But the closer they get to each other, the closer the stalker circles in, leaving Jack to question if Ronnie is merely a very skilled scholar—or the key to something far more sinister….
Thanks to the folks in the Detective Bureau, NYPD,
for answering my stream of questions about procedural details. And thanks to the Austin P.D. for filling in some gaps, and to Cyndee Duhadaway for putting me in touch with the right folks. Also, a big thanks to Mishell Kneeland for not running far and fast from my unilateral announcement that she’d become my own personal NYC expert, and for patiently answering my avalanche of emails. To all of you, the help provided was invaluable and accurate. Any embellishments (or mistakes) are purely my own.
Contents
Don’t be frightened, darling; lovers can say anything. Those words, out of place in colder moments, add fresh relish to the sweet mystery of love? You will soon say them, too, and understand their charm.
Detective Jack Parker snapped on a pair of latex gloves and plucked the note off the satin-covered pillow. Neatly typed on pale pink paper, the writing seemed innocent enough. Hell, in another time, another place, the words could have been romantic, lovers sharing naughty endearments and euphemisms meant only for each other.
Tonight, though, the words had been meant to terrify.
Bastard.
Their Casanova had struck twice before, and so far the police didn’t have one solid lead. The situation ate at his gut.
Jack hated to lose.
Closing his eyes, he counted backward from ten, letting the efficient bustle of the crime-scene investigators wash over him. The gentle whoosh of the vacuum collecting telltale fibers, the click-whir of the camera documenting the room. New York’s finest were on the job. They’d catch the creep.
They had to.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and saw his partner, Tyler Donovan, waving him over from the doorway. Jack made his way across the sprawling bedroom, passing the note off on the way to be processed with the rest of the evidence.
“Give me some good news.”
“Dollar beer all week at Martini’s,” Donovan said with a shrug. “That’s about the best I can do. Here, we got nada.”
“Not what I wanted to hear.”
“No kidding. All I can tell you is that they don’t have a clue who’s doing this. But the wife’s pretty shook up.”
“Can’t say I blame her.” Over Donovan’s shoulder, Jack could see Caroline Crawley sitting unnaturally straight on an upholstered bench in the living room. Her husband, anchorman Carson Crawley, stood stone-faced behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder. Both had the shell-shocked expression of the violated. It was a look Jack knew well. That haunted, injured look had marred his cousin Angela’s face many years ago.
With only three months separating them in age and two blocks separating them in distance, he and Angie had been constant companions. At least until the summer of her sixteenth year.
The monster hadn’t even waited until after dark. He’d pulled Angie off her bike right after school as she’d ridden by the local gas station, dragged her into the putrid men’s room, and left her there when he was done with her. The gas station owner had found her hours later, unconscious and battered, her beautiful face disfigured and both arms broken. Her face and arms had healed; the rest of her hadn’t.
Sweet Angie took her own life exactly one year later.
Jack may have joined the force because he was a third-generation cop. But he’d clawed his way up the ranks to detective in the sex crimes division because it was personal.
Yes, Jack knew the expression on Caroline Crawley’s face. Knew it well. And it never failed to spark a rage that wouldn’t dim until the perp was dead or behind bars. Until then, nothing else mattered.
“Crawley’s shipping the kids off to his parents’,” Donovan said, pulling Jack from his memories. “Wants the wife to go, too, but she says no. And they’re gonna have the locks changed and the security system upgraded.” He shook his head. “How the hell did the bastard get in? We’re twenty floors up. This place has more security than Fort Knox.”
