Chasing Robes & Shadows

Patrick finally turned with a last glare and strode away. She half turned but never took both eyes off of the big man. Her left hand worked its way to her tiny purse and retrieved her key. The big man's back was barely visible in one of the widely spaced streetlights so she did a quick scan through the nearby brush and her back seat before she quickly unlocked the car and slid into the driver's seat. She quickly slipped her heels off and tossed them onto the floor in front of the passenger seat and put the corkscrew into a cubbyhole in the center console where it was secure but remained in easy reach.

She squealed the car out of the parking spot and drove further up the canyon. Although twisty, this canyon connected at the top to another and while it was an extra twenty miles home that freed her from driving past Sheryl's place. A mile on a decent gravel road offered a third canyon and forty miles extra but it meant any effort to ambush would require extreme resources she was certain no one would expend. Rougher roads offered more canyons but her car would be hard pressed to handle those and she didn't think getting high-centered on ruts was worth the risk. But if they planned to follow her they'd need to catch her and as she rounded the first curve she saw no headlights.

Her breathing slowed by a degree but her bare foot kept the accelerator pegged as the tires stayed just the right side of controlled.

She turned the wheel hard and the tires squealed this time but the car topped the canyon onto the mile of road that followed the top of the ridge line before it dropped into the next canyon. With the long sight line, the moonless night and the last streetlight long passed, any chasers would've been obvious as driving without headlights in this darkness would've been insanity.

There were none. Her right foot eased only slightly.

Cherry WAS the last of the black robes and now that she thought Bonnie and her Wolfman dead that would hopefully close off any thoughts of revenge for the fire and the loss of her fellow cult members. It didn't mean the Mongrels wouldn't still care but they didn't seem to be that active about it. Cherry and so far as she'd found none of the Mongrels had any knowledge of Peter's role in Oswald's death so while Shaw now had absolutely zero leads on how or why he and Carole had disappeared, she was near certain no one from the Church that night was involved. So who?

A rich family's rebel child running off to Europe wasn't unprecedented. Shaw would see what she could dig up on Sheryl but the woman had plenty of money, fronting some sort of investment for 'machines,' little or big or whatever, was odd but not unthinkable and this was one more conundrum that she couldn't take openly to the force. And that older woman's money meant her activities wouldn't be easily traced if she didn't want them traced.

Shit. Shaw had willingly let Peter go from her life but she'd never meant for him to be lost. He was. That hurt. But it seemed two other young people had their chance to move past their accidental arson, now if only they'd move past their lives of petty crime.

And she had Cherry and Patrick. Was all this just an extension of Sheryl's more socially adept and seemingly peaceful sex cult than what the Black Robes had been? Patrick as procurer of a bit of exotic fresh tail for his side of the pond? If so, Cherry seemed more than willing and she was well into adulthood and Shaw had no grounds to pursue her. Neither Bonnie nor the Wolfman would testify to what they saw and even then, the knife had never touched Adam's flesh and their statement had been that they'd not seen any faces beyond Oswald's. And he was beyond human justice.

She wasn't certain of the family's reaction but from the force's side their job was done and they'd have to let these chips fall as they would. Pearson's description of his meetings with that family mostly convinced her they'd buy a story that started an 'undercover officer found her at an orgy' and he'd likely recruit her to help him come up with the story. What she'd told Patrick would likely work well and it had the advantage it was in essence true. Most likely the family would let out a relieved breath and simply accept being short one daughter, they had a half dozen others and none had so far traced their eldest girl's path. And at least they'd know their first born was healthy and, for some definition of the word, happy.

The Broiler and the Cat

[February, 1986]

"I know you've got history with the crew that pulled this, Shaw, why I pulled you off that other case," Detective Lieutenant Jim Pearson said to her as she walked through the top floor of the Gatewest Center, all of the shops closed and locked. Her boots crunched on the broken glass that was strewn across the hall. Uniformed officers and other junior detectives were with a knot of people at the far end of the hall, many of them in chef's and service uniforms.

"Yeah, thanks, Boss. Sorry when I heard. Body still in there?"

She nodded through the opening that had been the glass door to a shop being remodeled.

"Girlfriend ID'd him, well, after she woke up she screamed his name over and over. Officer Holmes was the first one with her."

He pointed through an intact window to a uniformed female officer inside the shop.

"Woke up?"

"Fell down, hit her head while she was knifing the TV reporter, that Jayne Jacobs. You know, the brunette from that Halloween video that was all the rage few months ago with those kids."

"Oh, yeah, the demon and the angel. The barely dressed demon and angel. She was the Ca..."

"Hey, Shaw, you ok?"

She blinked, looked at her boss.

"Yeah, sorry. Where's the reporter?"

"On the way to the hospital, her camera crew had shown up, they're with her. I practically had to arrest her to make her go, wanted to interview everyone. All three still living perps on the way too, two of them will be there a while. One of the hostages fucked 'em up something fierce. Some sharp knife work."

"So I heard. Radio said they had three women, including that Jayne. How?"

He shrugged.

"The other two, including the ninja, in that restaurant across from the Broiler, end of the hall. Keeping 'em apart, just not letting them know it. I'll send you to talk to them, got officers keeping 'em busy. But that ninja. She's quite... something. Holmes will fill you in."

"Um, ok. Let me do this first," she slipped through the gap in the door and she and Holmes traded quick nods as Shaw walked toward the open door in the back wall. A police photographer with a pair of cameras emerged from the far room and offered her a grim smile as they passed. She stopped in the far doorway and felt the chilled air.

Two pools of blood to the left marked the spot where a prone victim had been. She knew that one, Tommy Robredo, aka, Nixon, was alive and expected to stay that way. Halfway across the room was a separate, small, pool of smeared blood, apparently Jayne's, also alive and her every thought around getting it on camera. Between the two smears and her doorway was the no longer alive Jake Jacobsen. The Wolfman. The coroner's techs had rolled him onto his back on a plasticized sheet and removed his mask. The others' masks, knives and gun had all been gathered, as had the two boxes, twenty pounds, of very pure cocaine, based on a quick field test. An impressive load even to her jaded crew.

She frowned and shook her head slightly, she couldn't help the sadness.

"What happened?"

"Fell through there," the tech pointed at the open hatch in the ceiling, "caught in the ladder. Neck's snapped cleanly. Woulda died instantly. We'll find out for sure but not much doubt."

"Any other injuries?"

"Not enough for you? Back of his head, must've hit the ladder during the fall. Way he fell, makes sense."

She nodded. The techs wrapped the body and lifted it. She stepped aside to let them carry it out to the stretcher in the hallway. She walked slowly into the room and scanned.

How? Tommy, Nixon as he styled himself, was a big, strong, nasty piece of work. It was possible that of the people who'd encountered him and his girlfriend Gail feared her even more, few in the City matched her viciousness pound for pound.

Shaw was surprised about Bonnie knifing the reporter. Tommy and Gail, they were happy with the brute work and Jed Miller's stroke had let them off their leashes but their victims to date hadn't been the kinds of people to file police reports. She'd known that couldn't last. But her undercover encounters with Bonnie and her Wolfman had made clear they were the sneaky ones who'd leave violence as a very last resort. They knew her as their former boss's brother Peter Miller's ex-teacher turned barely competent secretary who buttressed her income to pay for her borderline drug habit with occasional call girl stints. Who'd happened to help Bonnie escape the Halloween fire a few months ago.

Too late for that now. Since the Church fire she'd without fully conscious choice kept an eye on them, knew if their secret involvement in starting that Halloween fire ever came out they'd be dead. And she'd subtly encouraged them to grow enough confidence to walk away. Well, there was still the girl. Could Shaw nudge her now?

But that left a big question. How'd three 'nice' unarmed women turn the tables on this crew?

She looked up through the hatch. Looked at the ladder still on its side. Looked again at the intermittent trail of blood drops from where Nixon had been to a position near where Jayne must've been, based on the separate pool of smeared blood. Between the two spots those drops had come from a knife carried at a casual pace.

"You did what, Miss Washington?"

Shaw looked at the young, attractive redhead across from her in the booth in the restaurant they'd commandeered across the hall from the Broiler. It had been closed but the manager had still been there when the police had arrived and they'd used it as a forward post. The girl's hair was an unusual crimson-red Shaw hadn't seen much. She'd apparently had on a green wrap dress but now had only her coat on over her bra and panties but didn't seem interested in closing it up, her large breasts well displayed by the underwired demi-cups, plenty of smooth latte skin on display, smears where blood had been wiped only casually. Along with the blood-soaked dress they'd also collected her stockings but her bare legs still ended in ridiculous heels which also had blood spatters.

None of that blood hers.

"Just Asha, detective."

"Ok. Call me Joyce then."

Shaw knew a small bandage covered the redhead's right bicep. There was the beginning of a bruise on her right cheek and around a golden-irised eye which along with its twin showed sharp intelligence but her expression was soft. That same cheek maybe had a short and very straight well-healed cut but it appeared unrelated to the blow that had caused the bruise. She'd not emerged unscathed but compared to the damage she'd inflicted it was nothing.

"When the Wolfman fell, everyone jumped. Gail, Cleo, whatever her name is, had the gun. Tracy slipped away from Nixon but he had a knife. Cleo had a knife too. I wanted it and had to get the gun away. So while everyone was preoccupied I grabbed her arm and snapped it at the elbow."

"You practice that move?"

"Learned it years ago, never used it for real."

"Hand to hand training a hobby of yours? In those heels?"

"We, my brother and I, had weird parents..."

"You took the gun and knife off of her, right? Why'd you keep the knife?"

"I know how to use a knife. Figured Nixon could make a show of it but was pretty sure he hadn't really LEARNED how to use it. And I don't like guns. Tracy's a country girl so likely knew at least which was the dangerous end. Didn't know she thinks of guns when she rubs one out."

The young woman looked across at the thin brunette and Shaw followed her eyes. She was seated at a booth on the far wall with a uniformed female officer speaking to her. Indeed, Holmes' report said Tracy had quickly and efficiently safed the gun and turned it over when the initial officers had arrived.

"I was right, Nixon just figured he could outmuscle me. No way Cleo was going to do anything with her arm in two pieces and Jayne and Bonnie were having a snuggle on the floor. Once I had him we were clear."

"How'd you know no more guns?"

"Back in the Broiler Nixon had given his gun to Cleo. No way he'd have given it up if anyone else had one. So I knew, well, 99.99% sure, that was the only one."

"But why'd you go after him? Couldn't you have stood off? Pretty dangerous."

Asha looked across at Tracy before she answered in a quiet but ice cold voice.

"He put a knife to Tracy's throat. She's my friend. I wanted to open HIS throat but, well, the chance didn't come."

Shaw rifled through her notebook to gather her thoughts. Twenty, Uni junior. Accounting. Accounting? Not what she'd have guessed. Holmes' report said that both Asha and Tracy had been covered in plenty of blood but neither had appeared injured. Indeed. Tracy said hers was from treating the injured chef's life-threatening wound, a report confirmed not only by Jayne and Asha but also by the gang's leader, Nixon, as well as every witness in the pool of restaurant workers and others. But he'd been quite emphatic in stating that it was his blood all over the knife-fighting redhead. Neither she nor anyone else had disagreed.

A police forensics crew was already on scene, based on the original call mentioning kidnapping. Holmes offered to accompany Asha and Tracy to a rest room to collect their clothing but Asha had simply shrugged while they were surrounded by officers and paramedics treating the wounded and unhooked her wrap dress and slipped it off. She hadn't seemed to mind being the sudden focus of everyone's attention, but Holmes told Shaw the oddest part was she stared at Gail while she'd done it and had even seemed to pose. Two paramedics were working on that woman's snapped arm and she was seated and in between moans of pain she'd screamed 'be seeing you one of these nights, you redheaded cunt!'

"You can't afford me now, Gail, we'll have to give that a miss. What do you think, Mr. President?"

Apparently Tommy had kept his silence.

The dress in a bag, Holmes said she'd need the pantyhose too. Asha had simply shrugged, stepped out of her shoes and peeled them off. To more appreciative stares and more screaming from Gail.

"My coat's in the Broiler coat room, Officer," she'd said as she stood in a bra and panties, "can someone get it for me? Tracy's too. Or I'll go."

She'd retrieved the keys to the Broiler from the Wolfman's pocket where the women told them they were and she'd detailed an officer to go and meet the manager Valerie to get the coats. Holmes had already had a second officer take Bonnie to the hallway as she'd cried horribly and wouldn't stop when she'd woken up and seen the Wolfman's body.

Apparently prompted, Tracy had shrugged and pulled off her shirt for it to be bagged. With the incredibly curvy Asha willingly sucking up attention the petite girl had hardly been noticed. With the witnesses' statements Pearson had directed Holmes to let the brunette keep her slacks, they'd use the shirt to match the blood to the injured chef.

Once they had their coats, Pearson had sent them with officers to wait for fuller interviews in the restaurant across the hall from the Broiler. Tracy had pulled her coat on but Asha had simply held hers over a shoulder and strutted through the crowd of police and witnesses in the hall. Jayne's camera crew had been held back while paramedics treated the reporter's injury but they'd apparently filmed her, although that footage hadn't made the immediate reports. Shaw knew Holmes was a decade younger than her so closer to this redhead's age and she'd simply taken the younger officer's word that most of Asha's shapely ass had been revealed by her 'tanga' style panties. Shaw had also managed, she hoped, to hide her reaction to the definite glint in the eyes that showed the appreciation her colleague had for that shapely ass. As well as the fact that Shaw had no idea what 'tanga' panties actually looked like.

"You people better keep him," after a short pause Asha spoke in a low and harsh voice to draw Shaw out of her thoughts, "all of them, locked up a long time. This the second time that fucking gang's hassled her."

"Oh?"

"You don't remember... Last Thanksgiving, outside the dorms..."

"Oh, right. Jed Miller. Sorry, I was out of town all fall until just before Christmas, training course. But I've had some run-ins with this crew before. But that's ended now."

"Good. Now, can you keep that damned reporter away from us? She hassled Tracy months back and I know she's going to be after us."

Asha's smile was broad at that. Shaw laughed. Reporters were an unfortunate but sometimes useful part of her work.

"Probably not. After all, she played her part apparently."

"Yeah..."

Shaw felt Asha wanted to say more but the younger woman just stared somewhere above the detective's head.

"You guys happy you have our stories? Can I go over with Tracy now? Then can I see my boyfriend? I made him leave, bet he's still unhappy about that. But someone needed to call you lot in."

"Go..."

The redhead slid over and still didn't bother to do up her coat as she walked quickly as the brunette Tracy stood and they embraced. Tracy was cute and petite, she and Bonnie would never be mistaken for sisters but they'd have no problems sharing clothes although this one time they'd crossed paths made friendship unlikely. This brunette had been allowed to keep her blood-covered jeans but they'd taken her shirt to confirm the account of her first aid efforts and like the redhead she wore her coat over her bra. Like her curvier friend it was open. The view was much less expansive than that friend but the girl had a nicely-proportioned figure for her petite frame.

Shaw recalled the attack from the previous November, she was a lucky girl, her attacker stopped short by a near-fatal stroke that had turned a strapping six-foot plus gangster into a vegetable. And her familiarity with guns was nothing unusual for any child born and raised in this state. But the fact that the attacker was Peter Miller's brother. Shaw frowned at the coincidence.

Shaw slid out of the booth and stood. The redhead's coat covered her only to mid-thighs that were firm if just the far side of slender. Shaw pictured herself at that age and angle, the comparison apt. Now? Bit past thirty-five, but she felt she wasn't THAT far from the young woman.

But. Curves without end, seemingly soft flesh. How much strength did it take to snap Gail's arm? And how fast she'd moved and driven a knife into a man's muscular thigh wearing what, four, five inch heels. Through jeans and to the hilt according to the paramedic's report. As undercover vice Shaw had trained for self defense in heels, her then regular disguise, and knife fighting hadn't been part of it. She had trouble picturing this feat. Without those heels Red was five and a half feet of gorgeous and sexy young woman. With them she and Shaw with her low boot heels were eye to eye but even then the beauty and voluptuous curves were all that most any man, and most women, would ever see.

She wasn't JUST that. But what ELSE was she?

"Tracy, Asha," they looked at her, "wait here a few minutes, okay?"

They frowned but nodded. Shaw caught the eye of the young officer, not much older than her two charges, who nodded.

"Detective..."

She turned to her right as she exited the restaurant, saw a six foot tall, broad young man, the softness around his jowls implied a layer of padding over what was likely a decent build. Pearson had pointed him out, this was the boyfriend who'd slipped out and called the police but he'd handled his interview himself.