The Venus Fix

Thirty-Six

“Ben wa balls painted with toxins,” Perez said.

“Leather outfits with topical poison applied to the inside of the garments,” Butler offered.

“Good one. How about whips soaked in poison that would enter the bloodstream when the strap broke the skin?”

Butler added it to her growing list of ways sex toys could be turned into deadly weapons. “You scare me,” she said. “Dildos outfitted with explosive devices.”

“I scare you?” Perez quipped.

Butler leaned back in her chair and looked out through the glass partition that pretended to be a wall. The station house was in high-activity mode, as if it was the middle of the day, but it was after eleven. She’d been working since eight that morning, after getting only five hours of sleep the night before, and was exhausted.

Until early Sunday, the investigation had been focused on Debra Kamel, whose death they’d assumed was an isolated incident. Now they were not only trying to solve two murders, but they were also strategizing on how to prevent countless others.

She looked up when Jordain walked into the office. He’d come back from New Orleans, been briefed, and then gone into a powwow with the lieutenant about what to tell the public.

“We’re not going to release anything about the delivery systems of the poisons,” he said. “No one-not the mayor or the police commissioner-wants us to start a panic, and I don’t want us to tip our hand and lose any leads that might come our way.”

“All three victims worked for the same porn site. Can’t we at least get word to the rest of the women who work there?” Butler asked. “God only knows how many of them already have some deadly sex toys in their hands now.”

Jordain nodded. “Sure, we can do that. As soon as you figure out how to do it without a list of who the hell all those women are.”

He was frustrated. Although he’d gotten court orders to get a list of employees and all the customer records from the porn company, the man they were dealing with at the Global Communications office in Singapore wasn’t accommodating them. They knew there was someone in the States running things, but they hadn’t cracked the code and found out who he was or where he was.

“Any ETA on how long it’s going to take to cross-reference the two computers?”

Perez nodded. “Another hour or two. Maybe more. Penny’s computer files are complete, but ZaZa’s are almost all corrupted.”

“Let’s assume nothing turns up. Do either of you have any doubt the same person orchestrated both killings?” Jordain asked.

Neither of them did.

“No details out of place?”

“There aren’t any details to be out of place. We still have squat,” Perez said.

“Any chance it was a copycat?”

Perez shook his head.

“We’re sure no precise info about how Debra was poisoned has been leaked to the press? No one but us knows the poison was in the lubricant, right?” Jordain asked.

“Right. And we’re assuming no one guessed about the delivery system and then put poison in the massage oil,” Perez agreed.

“Okay. That means someone is targeting these women for a reason. Any ideas?” Jordain asked.

Butler drained what was left of her soda, yawned and shut her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she looked at the clock. It was almost 11:30 p.m. Jordain didn’t even look tired, she thought. He was wide awake and ready to start brainstorming.

Detective Details they called him, only half joking, because he was obsessed with minutiae. But as often as not, that was what solved cases. Not the big, broad strokes but the infinitely small details that no one else noticed. Jordain was a perceptive man-he made it all look so easy, so possible. He was tireless and determined, and most of all, he was just. He had a heart. He balanced compassion with rationality and never wavered.

Perez was smart, too, but he wasn’t that different from everyone else. She respected him, but she didn’t look up to him. There hadn’t been many men in her life she looked up to. Perez was a good guy, but still just another guy. Jordain was the one you stuck it out for. If he said you were doing a good job, that mattered.

She yawned once more.

“Maybe you should go home, Butler. How long have you been here?” Jordain said.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s a chance those women’s computers might give up a name tonight, and if you can wait for it, I can, too.”