All The Pretty Girls Ch. 03

Jaylene was not wearing her cooch cooler hooker attire. Far from it, she looked quite respectable in a knee-length pleated grey skirt, white blouse and navy blazer. Her makeup was toned down. She wore red opaque tights and black Mary-Jane's.

Steve got out of the car and opened the door for her. She looked a lot younger and fresher out of her street makeup.

"How long is this gonna take, I got classes again this afternoon," Jaylene tossed her satchel onto the back seat.

"Good morning to you too Jaylene," Steve smiled at her.

"You look nice today," he complimented her.

She paused halfway into the car and glared at him, trying to determine if he was being serious or sarcastic.

"I once had a guy offer me two hundred extra if I'd wear a school uniform while we fucked. This is the closest I've got. He gave me half the money but I had to use twenty of it to dry-clean the jizz out of this skirt," she folded the skirt into her lap and slammed the door.

Steve got into the driver's seat and appraised Jaylene critically.

"I think you behave like a cunt as a means of defence. I bet underneath that hard shell there is a nice person," Steve smiled at her.

She turned and appraised him in return.

"I think underneath that rugged handsomeness and pleasant disposition you're just an asshole who wants to get into my panties," she gave him a cutting grin.

They glared at each other for a full minute before they both broke into peals of laughter.

"Sorry, thanks for the compliment Steve. I hear Felicity's knocking them dead in Vegas," Jaylene popped a stick of gum into her mouth.

"Yeah she's got another week before they fly over to London," Steve had spoken to Felicity on Skype and of course the whole time he had felt guilty about shagging Wendy Beaumont in their bed.

"Strange pairing... a detective and a drag queen," Jaylene opined as Steve entered the mid-morning traffic.

"Penelope Bishop is trans too and she's currently my partner, isn't that just as strange?" Steve replied a little tersely.

"You said it not me. Do you have a thing for trans women in particular? Should I be worried that you want to get into my panties?" Jaylene needled him.

"What are you studying?" Steve changed the subject.

"Fashion design," Jaylene snapped, waiting for Steve to ridicule it.

"Felicity took fashion design part time after her stint on Drag Race. She hated that she was sent home because she failed a sewing challenge," Steve said levelly.

"I watched her season. She deserved to go home for wearing that hot-glued piece of shit on the runway," Jaylene chuckled.

"You watched her season?" Steve sounded a little surprised.

"Hey there have been plenty of Texas queens on the show but she was our girl from Balwyn. I was just a queer little boy who liked to play dressup at the time, but she inspired me," Jaylene admitted.

Steve wondered if Jaylene's comment was a blunt way of reminding Steve of their age difference. Steve had watched Felicity's season on their streaming service not long after they had got together, Felicity refused to watch it with him. Jaylene was right; Felicity's runway garment for the sewing challenge was indeed a hot-glued mess.

"Hey? She ever get the call for All Stars?" Jaylene asked enthusiastically.

Steve steered well clear of that subject.

"Here we are, Police Plaza. I'll sign you in and hand you over to Penelope who will take you to the sketch artist. After that she'll get you to look at some mug shots," Steve explained, showing his badge to the rent-a-cop guarding the underground car park.

They wanted Jaylene to work with a facial composite technician who wasn't the kind of artist who drew faces on paper. Although the technician was trained in classic drawing techniques he used a computer based facial composite system to produce the likeness. Penelope didn't want to show Jaylene any mug shots until after she had finished with the sketch artist because she didn't want Jaylene's memory tainted by looking at other pictures.

The mug shots Jaylene would be looking at were composites of unidentified sexual predators complied by their victims. It was useless showing her pictures of known predators from the sexual offenders register because their fingerprints and DNA were in the system and the man they were looking for wasn't.

Steve handed Jaylene over to Penelope and drove over to Ride em' Cowgirl. During their Skype conversation this morning Steve had promised Felicity that he would drop by the bar and make sure everything was ticking over. Felicity trusted Mitch Freeman to manage the bar-nightclub in her absence. Why shouldn't she? Mitch had Jill Graham managing the bar itself, the head chef Manuel Ramirez had been at Ride em' Cowgirl since it opened and Panti Down, a drag queen whose legal name was William Russell, booked the performers and produced the shows. Mitch had great support staff.

But it was still her business and Felicity wanted Steve to just make sure that everything was ok. Steve had managed the bar himself long enough to get a feel that all was fine or otherwise.

There was no matinee today and the lights were up in the club so that the place could be deep-cleaned and planned maintenance conducted. A contractor was steam cleaning the floor, a lighting tech was in the rafters over the stage adjusting the gel lights, drag queens are very particular about how they are lit and lighting them was an art, according to Felicity anyway.

Steve stopped by the kitchen. The caterers were busy packing away a food delivery but Manuel still offered to make him lunch. He was tempted to get a burger and fries but he asked for a chopped salad and made his way to the bar where instead of his usual beer he poured a Coke Zero Sugar over ice. Jill Graham came out of the adjacent stockroom with a bar code scanner, she was conducting a stocktake.

"Hey, help yourself big boy. You here for a free lunch?" the bantering had begun.

"Surprise visit to make sure you ain't slipping a case or two of liquor out back to your boyfriend," Steve retorted.

Jill was dressed for her current task. She was wearing denim Daisy-Dukes, a ZZ Top t-shirt, tan pantyhose and sneakers. Her hair was up and her makeup toned down except for her signature heavy eyeliner.

"I don't have a boyfriend, I find them high maintenance. I find it's easier to just get the men I fancy to do the job and move them on," Jill deliberately brushed her breasts against Steve as she squeezed past him behind the bar.

"You have a runner in your nylons," Steve fingered a little hole in the pantyhose on Jill's thigh.

He slowly traced the runner up to the stringy edge of her cut-off shorts.

"That another job Felicity gave you while she was away? Checking the girl's nylons for runners?" she looked down at his hand then into his eyes.

"No but I think it's something I'd be good at," Steve met her gaze.

"Yeah I bet you would but maybe you should just concentrate on being a cop. Get good at that first," she gently removed Steve's hand from her thigh.

If Jill wasn't one of Felicity's best friends and trusted employee, Steve would have been tempted to take Jill into the stockroom and investigate where that runner led and Jill would likely have let him but both he and Jill knew that despite their ribald banter they would never disrespect Felicity in her own club.

"Ahem," Mitch Freeman was sitting at his desk in his cramped office.

He could see directly into the bar and had witnessed the interchange between Steve and Jill. He knew that Felicity had sent Steve to check on him but he choked down his resentment. He had his dream job back. He just wished Felicity would get over her infatuation with the lanky cop and things could go back to how they had been before Steve and Felicity had hooked up.

"Hey Mitch," Steve called out and extricated himself away from Jill.

"How's it all going?" Steve gave Mitch a genuine smile.

Despite Mitch's dislike for Steve it was not reciprocated. Steve was grateful that Mitch had taken his old job back which allowed Steve to return to the job he did best which was policework.

"Fine and dandy, how's the missus?" Mitch forced himself to smile.

"Fine and dandy also, living the high life in Vegas; she sends her regards," Steve sipped his Coke.

"Yeah we spoke yesterday. She was so sorry to hear about that girl we were going to hire... April something?" Mitch went digging.

"April Summers, her drag name was April Showers which is one of the reasons I came to the club. Is Panti around?" Steve asked.

It was not unusual for the performers to mix their drag names and their birth names and Steve had fallen into the habit.

"Yeah, Will's working with the DJ putting together tonight's mix I think," Mitch got up from behind his desk and led the way into the club.

Manuel had set up Steve's lunch on a table near the front of the club and Steve put his Coke down next to his salad and followed Mitch to the edge of the stage where William Russell was talking to the DJ who was fiddling with his sound equipment.

"Hi Steve," Will was genuinely glad to see Steve.

Even out of drag Will dressed very effeminately. He was wearing black dance tights accented with pink tiger stripes, an oversized long-sleeved t-shirt with a picture of Allyssa Edwards on the front, and pink Adidas. His black hair was razor cut with bright blue highlights and he was wearing eyeliner and lip-gloss.

"Hey Will; come and join me for five minutes will you?" Steve waved him down off the stage.

Uninvited Mitch Freeman sat down with them at the table but Steve didn't mind.

"I want you to talk to all the girls," Steve said, using the inclusive term for all the drag queens who worked at the club.

"I know some of them are subsidising their income with their bodies and that's really none of my business. But we strongly suspect that there is a serial killer out there who targets trans women, transvestites and crossdressers," Steve said gravely.

Both Will and Mitch leaned in and gave Steve their complete attention.

"A serial killer?" Will arched his plucked brows.

"Technically not yet but he's taken two and I don't think he's going to stop. They were both doing sex work when they were murdered, one was advertising her services online and the other was working Bridge Street," Steve explained.

"I'd really like any of the girls involved in sex work to stop until we catch him and I'd like all of the girls to be very vigilant, I'd prefer it if there weren't alone when in drag," Steve said gravely.

"Are you going to get him?" Will asked, his eyes wide.

"We have some leads," Steve embellished the truth.

"More importantly I'll have a composite of the guy by the end of the day. I'll email it to you and you can send it to all the girls. If any of them recognise the man in the picture they should contact me immediately and if they are approached by anyone who looks even vaguely like him they should not go anywhere with him and make sure they are safe," Steve tapped his finger on the table to emphasise his point.

"You say you have a picture of the guy?" Mitch sounded excited.

"A composite. A drawing from someone we believe has seen him," Steve explained.

'The hooker who had approached his car on Bridge Street' Mitch immediately thought.

Mitch didn't listen to the rest of what Steve had to say he was too busy with own thoughts. He knew that even some of the most accomplished killers made mistakes that got them caught, no matter how careful they were and that some of the sloppiest killers got away with it. He was pissed that he had taken so many precautions and still might be caught because some tranny hooker saw him behind the wheel of a stolen car.

He knew not to panic. The girl wouldn't have had a good look at him. It was dark and she didn't get that close. He'd seen police composites before and they often weren't worth shit. They were too generic, they could be anybody or the witness misremembered what the perp looked like.

"Make sure you forward the composite on to me and I'll get it circulated around the staff, maybe he's been in the club," Mitch said excitedly.

Steve looked at Mitch quizzically for a beat and then he nodded.

"Good idea Mitch. If this guy is sweet on trans women and crossdressers he might have been in here or the gay bars on Bridge Street," Steve nodded his head appreciatively.

Will seemed a little excited to be drawn into the intrigue of a working murder case. He was also a little sweet on Steve as where most of the drag queens. Felicity knew this and that was why she had mandated that Steve was not to fuck any of the girls who worked at the club. She wasn't jealous of them; she just didn't want them being jealous of each other. It was another reason Mitch resented Steve. It was obvious that the girls had the hots for Steve, some them had blatantly propositioned him during the brief period that he had managed the club. The girls all thought of Mitch as a father figure, he'd never once been propositioned by any of them.

When Steve left the club to go back to Police Plaza Mitch followed him. He parked in the employee parking lot across from the imposing building, an annex of City Hall, where he could see the entrance and exit from the underground parking garage used by police vehicles.

He saw Steve's vehicle nose out of the exit about two hours later. There was someone in the front with him. He couldn't be sure that it was the witness but he followed anyway, keeping a discreet distance behind. He was surprised when Steve tuned into Balwyn College and even more surprised when the young woman wearing the knee-length pleated grey skirt, white blouse, navy blazer, red opaque tights and black Mary-Jane's alighted from the vehicle. She leaned into the back of the vehicle and collected her satchel.

Mitch wasn't close enough to get a good look at her but she certainly didn't look like a hooker. But that meant nothing. He didn't look like a serial killer.

The rest had been surprisingly easy. He'd waited for Steve to leave and then followed the girl around the campus until she went into the library. The college was crowded enough that he could blend into the background but not so crowded that he risked losing sight of the girl; her red legs made her easy to follow. He quite liked those red legs.

Mitch was eventually able to get a good photograph of the woman on his phone. He called the club and spoke to Jill Graham and told her he was done for the day and went home.

Mitch Freeman lived in a modest townhouse which he owned outright. He made his way to the basement which he had converted into a studio office. He downloaded the picture of the woman in the red tights and used an editing program to crop and enhance the image then he used a sophisticated image search program to search the web for comparisons.

It took the program a while to complete the search and he poured himself a drink and took off his jacket and tie and made himself comfortable while the program did its job. His phone pinged and he opened the email that Panti Down had sent to him and downloaded the attachment. He smiled to himself.

The facial composite wasn't that great. The face structure was the same, but it was the same as countless other faces. The eyes were a little too far apart, the hair was parted on the wrong side and the nose was a little too long. Did it look like Mitch Freeman? A little... yes. At a stretch... but it looked like hundreds of other people too. Because the woman had only seen his face she had no idea how tall he was or his build. There were no tattoos or identifying features. He was hardly recognisable.

Mitch went back to his image search program and when the search was completed he sorted the results by date posted and started to work through the images.

It took him less than five minutes to find Jaylene Foster. She had a Facebook account and was active on Twitter and Instagram. She was an advocate for LGBT rights and identified as a transgender woman. That would explain why she had approached his car on Bridge Street, she was working the streets there.

He studied the images of Jaylene Foster that his program had found. She was an attractive woman in her early twenties and she didn't mind showing off her assets. If you looked closely you could see that her breasts were too perfect to be anything but augmented but she didn't mind showing them off. Same with her tight ass and long legs and although none of the images he had found of Jaylene approached being pornographic, there were plenty of cheesecake photographs of her posing provocatively.

He enhanced an image of her wearing a bathing suit taken on the beach at Lake Brindle. The suit was bright orange and clung to her body like a second skin. She had recently got out of the water and her long dark hair glistened in the sun, droplets of water shimmered on her limbs, her eye makeup had run a little but it just made her look sultry and sexy. The bathing suit clung to her firm breasts, her nipples conspicuous. The suit was hewn to her flat belly and her pubic mound.

Mitch knew that her pubic mound was a falsity, a fabrication, an illusion that Jaylene created by tucking her penis along her perineum and retracting her testes into her inguinal canals. He didn't care about the mechanics of it; he just loved the aesthetic, the way the orange lycra clung to her pubis, defining the shape.

He reached into the drawer and took out a packet of nylon stockings and extracted one of them. He put it over his erect penis and brought himself to extremis in a few strokes, filling the gossamer garment with his semen which darkened the silken fabric as it extruded into a glistening white gobbet. He cleaned up and put his manhood away and went back to work on the computer. He had things to do. Jaylene Foster might have provided the police with a lousy identikit facsimile of his face but he was almost certain that she would be able to identify him in the flesh and that just wouldn't do would it?

During his time in the army Mitch had learned discipline, planning, organisation, prudence and risk management. He had learned about contingency planning: always have a backup plan, a means of escape, diversionary tactics.

He'd always knew the day would come when he would either be caught or have to make a run for it before he was caught. Mitch had a stash of false identity documents and cash reserves in a storage locker in Austin. He was a man who covered all contingencies. If he had to he could move to another state; another country even, and assume a false identity. There were plenty of special girls out there for him enjoy.

But it hadn't come to that yet. There were other courses of action. Mitch had also learned how to use subterfuge and misdirection to take objectives and the ability to react quickly and think on one's feet. He'd applied those skills when he'd lured April Summers and Loretta Dubbin to their deaths.

Mitch had other contingencies too. He'd scouted suitable locations where he could take his special girls and spend some time with them secure in the knowledge that he would not be disturbed. One such location had been the Park Services hut in Battersea Park; another was an abandoned Texaco service station on a seldom used back road just off Route 190 and yet another contingency was an old lumber storage warehouse north of Balwyn.

Jaylene Foster was ripe for just such a contingency.

He went into his garage and grabbed his go-bag. He opened the eight-pack of L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose and took out a pair and put them in his pocket. There were only five pairs left now. He wandered if he would use all eight before he was caught?

To be continued