Murder on Sixth Street

Ron stroked her breast, then gently rubbed the nipple. Rhonda moaned and then whispered, "more". When he sucked on that nipple, Rhonda moaned and rocked her pussy up into his hand. When he slipped a finger into her entrance, Ronda gasped and stroked his cock a little faster.

Rhonda started to breathe hard when he slipped a second finger inside her, and she gasped and jerked when he stroked her clit. Ron felt her getting wetter at the same time Rhonda whispered, "Oh God, I want you."

Before he could do anything, Rhonda pushed herself up, straddled him, and reached for his rigid cock again. For a while, she rubbed the head between her hair-fringed lips, but when she started to shudder every time she stroked his cock head over her clit, Rhonda pushed his cock back, moved her hips around, and then took a deep breath.

When Ron felt his cock slipping inside her, he had to fight the urge to just ram his cock up and as deep inside Rhonda as he could get it. That urge got stronger as soon as his cock was buried in her depths. She raised up and bent over at the same time. Ron felt her nipple brush his cheek, and when he found it and sucked it between his lips, Rhonda made double lurch and gasped.

After that, it was either Rhonda pushing one nipple or the other into his face or bending low enough to lock her lips on his mouth and chase his tongue with hers, and all the while, she moved her body slowly up and down to stroke his cock inside her.

Rhonda was a fantasy come true for Ron. While he hadn't tried to meet any women since his divorce, he hadn't stopped thinking about them. In his mind at night, he'd lull himself to sleep with the vision of a heavy breasted woman on top of him, riding his cock, and moaning and jerking every time he touched her thick, stiff nipples.

That was what Rhonda was doing, and it was taking him to the end too fast.

Ron stroked her left breast and whispered, "Rhonda, slow down a little".

Rhonda gasped, then murmured, "I can't. I'm almost there".

Ron felt her hand between them and massaging her clit. Three moans and two slamming strokes later, Rhonda threw her head back, cried out, and started to shake. The contractions and the jerking movement of her passage around his cock took Ron over the edge.

Rhonda continued to make little mewing noises and kept rocking her pussy over his cock for a while, but then eased down on his chest and nestled her cheek against his.

"I feel better now", she whispered. "Stay with me and make me feel this way again."

When Ron left Rhonda's house the next morning, he knew he was going to be late, but he didn't care. What could the Captain do except chew him out? In another three weeks he was going to retire anyway.

Ron didn't care because he'd just been with a woman who was more than he thought he'd ever find. They'd made love and then Rhonda had fixed breakfast for them both. When he left, she kissed him goodbye and asked him to come back when he was done working.

Ron had liked Rhonda since they first met, and though he'd only talked to her a few times, he'd started thinking of her as more than just a potential witness. After last night and then this morning, he was thinking maybe she was a woman he could spend his retirement with. It was too soon to ask her anything like that, of course, but she seemed to like him a lot. If they kept seeing each other and it went further than just one night of sex, he knew he'd want to ask her if it could be permanent.

It was silly, he knew. Love didn't happen that quick. It took getting to know the other person, especially the things they didn't show to other people, and then deciding those things didn't matter. He couldn't help the way he felt about Rhonda though.

When he got to his desk, there was another note from Cindy that said "Call me. It's important".

Ron didn't call. He walked down to the lab. When Cindy saw him she dropped her face and slowly walked over to the door.

"Ron, I might have screwed up. When I dusted the knife for prints and found the full prints on the handle, I stopped looking. This morning, I was boxing it up as evidence and saw what looked like a fingerprint in one of the grooves where your fingers go on the handle that I hadn't seen before. There was only about half a print, but I lifted it and sent it to the FBI for identification."

Ron shrugged.

"So you missed a print. It'll just match the others, and what you already found is enough to convict my suspect."

"It didn't match, Ron. It came back as a forty percent match to a woman named Rhonda Richards."

Ron took the report on the partial print to the DA. The DA shook his head.

"This case was iffy to begin with because Mr. Allen didn't have total control over the box knife. The defense will probably claim that since the box cutter was outside the building anybody could have picked it up and used it to kill the guy.

"I could have explained that away because it's not likely anybody else would know where the box knife was kept except Mr. Allen and Ms. Richards. Mr. Allen's prints were the only ones on it and he was the only one in the pawnshop when the murder occurred.

"With another print on the knife, the defense will argue it was her and that Mr. Allen just used the knife after she did. I can argue that Ms. Richards probably used the knife at some time or other and that explains the partial, but that argument is going to fall apart. If they can't lay the blame on Mrs. Richards, the defense will claim that the other print could be anybody's print since it's only a forty percent match."

The DA scratched his head.

"Think you can get anything more to confirm the guy was the killer?"

Ron shook his head.

"You know how it is down there. Nobody sees anything or hears anything. I've talked to the girls and I've talked to the pimps and they don't know anything. There's nobody else to talk to unless there was a junkie in that alley, and no jury is gonna believe a junkie. Besides, they don't shoot up there anyway. They shoot up on the street where there's enough light to let them find a vein."

The DA looked at Ron and frowned.

"I guess you let the guy go with our apologies and keep investigating. We can still charge him if you find more evidence."

Ron couldn't tell Harry much about why he wasn't being charged. He just said some new evidence had come to light that made them unable to hold him at this point in the investigation. Ron was careful to add "at this point in the investigation" so Harry wouldn't think it was over. If Harry thought he was still being investigated, he might do something that would lead to enough new information to convict him. If he thought he'd been cleared, he'd just go on about life as if everything was back to normal.

Harry was still pissed, but he was happy to be out of jail. Ron walked him down to Property, watched Harry sign for his personal belongings, and then watched him leave.

When Ron got back to his desk, he re-read everything he'd written about the case so far. He was looking for some detail he'd missed, something he'd ignored before.

What he found wasn't in the report. It was in his memory, and when he found it, he knew Harry probably wasn't the killer. Walt had said the killer was left-handed, but Harry had signed for his belongings with his right hand.

That made Ron think back to the day he'd gone to the pawnshop and Rhonda was busy with a customer. He'd seen her writing something on a form. It didn't register then because he was in a hurry, but now, it did. Rhonda had been writing with her left hand.

Ron went back to his notes from the first time he'd talked to Rhonda. He'd thought it odd then that she knew what had happened in the alley behind the pawnshop, but her explanation had seemed logical. When he looked at his timeline, it wasn't logical from a timeline perspective.

He'd gotten to the alley about nine and it was cleared as he expected it would be. There was no crime scene tape and only the faint remnants of a blood pool because the fire department would have washed it away. The problem with Rhonda's story was the officers would have kept the crime scene tape around the crime scene until after the fire department flushed away the blood. For at least an hour afterwards, the asphalt would still be wet and the faint outline that remained wouldn't have been visible. It was still a little wet even when he got there.

If Rhonda had seen a blood pool, she had to have been there earlier and she wouldn't have seen police officers taking down the tape. She'd have seen either crime scene techs collecting evidence or the fire department flushing the site. It was either that or she'd been there before the officer had found Shank. That meant Rhonda had lied to him, and Ron could think of only one reason she'd have done that.

She'd said she wasn't going to open the pawnshop because she was still shaken up, so Ron drove to Rhonda's house. She was happy to see him.

"Was last night so good you couldn't stay away? It was for me."

Ron put on his stern cop face.

"No, Ronda. We have to talk."

The look on her face told him Rhonda knew he'd figured it out.

"You better come in. I can't do this on my porch."

Ron followed Rhonda inside, and when she didn't stop to shut the door, he did. When he turned around, she was sitting on her couch with her face in her hands. Ron sat down in the chair beside the couch.

"Rhonda, I think I know part of what happened in the alley that night, but I want to hear it from you."

Rhonda looked up at him.

"I just wanted him to go away. I didn't want to kill him. If he hadn't tried to make me..."

Ron calmly said, "Let's start at the beginning. Why were you in the alley that night?"

"Because he told me I had to be or he'd burn down the pawnshop."

"Why did he want you there?"

Rhonda had tears streaming down her face.

"He walked into the pawnshop that morning and said he had a job for me. I told him I already had a job, but he laughed and said it didn't matter. I was going to go to work for him. He said he had two clients who wanted an older woman and he didn't have any. He said I looked pretty good and they'd probably like me. Then he said he'd try me out and if I was good enough, he give me to those clients.

"I knew what he was so I told him I was going to call the police if he didn't leave. He just laughed and said for me to be in the alley at eleven or he'd burn down the pawn shop with Harry still inside.

"I thought he was probably going to rape me right there in the alley, so I took our box knife home with me. I thought if he tried to do that, I'd just cut him on the arm and that would let me get away. Then I could go to the police and they'd arrest him.

"That's what he was planning to do. He told me to get down on my knees. He said if I couldn't suck his cock good enough, he'd teach me how, and he was going to fuck me after that. I wasn't going to do that even if he killed me. I did get down on my knees, but when he unzipped his pants and pulled up his shirt, a swiped my box knife at him.

"I thought he'd just yell and run away but he didn't. His insides started to fall out and he was squirting blood all over. He stayed standing up for a few seconds, but then he fell down on his back and stopped moving.

"I knew he was going to die, but since nobody had heard what he said to me, it would be like in Louisville. He'd be dead and I'd say what happened, and they wouldn't believe me and they'd put me in jail for the rest of my life.

"The next day, I went to the pawnshop at seven instead of eight and cracked the back door to see if he was still there. He was but there were police and people walking around so I didn't go out. I didn't think they'd suspect me, but I've watched enough crime shows on TV to know about fingerprints and blood. I took the box knife and washed it off. I put it a paper towel so I wouldn't leave my fingerprints and was going to take it back outside when I took out the trash.

When I went outside to take out the trash, the officers were about done and nobody had talked to me, so I thought maybe it would just go away. When you came to the pawn shop and talked to me, I knew why you were there. I just didn't think you'd accuse Harry.

He told me what you talked about, and when you arrested him, I thought if we got to know each other better, I might be able to convince you he couldn't have done it. I guess I should have known better and just left town. Now, it's going to be just like it was in Louisville."

"What happened to you in Louisville?

Rhonda wiped her eyes with a tissue.

"This guy came up to me after I finished dancing and asked me how much it was to fuck me. I told him I didn't do that sort of thing and that made him mad. He called the police the next day and told them I'd propositioned him.

"He was the son of some big business owner in Louisville, so the police believed him and arrested me. The only thing that saved me was Reggie found out and somehow got them to drop the charges. That's when he asked me to come to Bowling Green with him. If he hadn't done that, I'd have gone to jail, but now, it's going to happen again and Reggie's not here to help me."

Ron frowned.

"Then last night, that was all fake?"

Rhoda's face was pleading with him.

"No. It started out to be, but when we...it just felt like I think it's supposed to feel, and then when you stayed with me...it wasn't fake, Ron. It was more real than anything I've ever done."

"Am I supposed to believe that?"

Rhonda shook her head.

"No. I know you don't believe me. It's true though. I lied to you before, but I'm not lying now."

Ron knew what he had to do. It was going to be hard for him to do it, but there was no other way.

"Rhonda, you need to come with me now."

The next three weeks were a whirlwind of activity for Ron. He'd put his house on the market the day after he submitted his retirement papers, and it sold two weeks later. That meant he had to start getting ready to move to the cabin on Kentucky Lake, so he spent one weekend sorting the things he'd need and the next having a garage sale. By the day of his retirement ceremony, he'd hired a mover to pack up everything, haul it to the cabin, and then put it inside.

Ron was proud of the cabin because it was more house than cabin. It had two bedrooms, two baths, a nice kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. It was high enough off the river it probably wouldn't see any water if the river flooded, and it sat in the middle of twenty three acres with a view of the lake from the living room windows. It was secluded enough he and Rhonda wouldn't have to worry about nosy neighbors.

That day when Rhonda told him what happened, he'd made a decision that hurt his professional pride but was the only decision he could live with for the rest of his life. He'd looked at her crying, knew she was telling him the truth, and then considered the situation she'd been in that caused it all.

Rhonda was a nice woman trying to make a living in an area where nice women were rare. She'd done nothing to cause Shank to do what he did, and she'd only been trying to defend herself.

Shank was an infected boil on the ass of society. There was no next of kin that Ron had been able to find, and nobody down on Sixth was going to miss him. In fact, the lives of the girls who'd worked for him had improved. It was just like Ricky C had said -- Shank got what was coming to him. He'd be cremated and his ashes put in a vault with all the other unclaimed people. He was no loss to the world. He was just a malignant blip in time.

The case probably wouldn't go to trial before Scotty took office. Like the DA had said, one partial print wasn't enough evidence to prove Harry wasn't the killer or to charge Rhonda so the detective who would pick up the case would have to keep looking for more. It wasn't likely he'd find anything that really implicated Rhonda because Ron hadn't until he'd remembered she used her left hand. Whoever that detective was, he wouldn't know that unless he happened to see Rhonda writing something.

Still, there was a risk that Scotty would somehow manage to build a case against Rhonda because even though Shank was what he was, Scotty would charge Rhonda with at least manslaughter to show everybody he was just as tough on murder as he was lax on drugs and prostitution. If he found out Ron and Rhonda had spent a night together, he'd also accuse Ron of being an accomplice to the murder.

Rhonda's lawyer would claim she feared she was going to be raped so it was self defense under current Kentucky law, but Scotty would just say she'd gone into the alley willingly, probably because Scotty was going to pay her for sex, and had changed her mind. Ron knew the law wasn't always fair, but he could make it fair in this case. If Rhonda was gone, nobody could talk to her.

That afternoon, he'd put Rhonda and her clothes and other things she wouldn't leave behind in his car and took her to his house. He couldn't let her try to get her car running and it wasn't worth much anyway. She was only renting the house, so that wouldn't be a loss either except for her furniture. He left Rhonda there while he went back to work, and that night, they drove to his cabin. He couldn't spend the night with her, but promised he'd be back on Friday night and they'd have the weekend together.

The rest of that week, and for the next one, Ron continued talking to the prostitutes and pimps down on Sixth. He knew he wasn't going to get any new information but it looked like he was doing something to solve the case and it kept him out of the station. Scotty was already issuing new directives about who the police could arrest and who they couldn't once he took office.

Ron wasn't worried that another detective would follow any leads to Rhonda. His own notes had nothing in them other than his two conversations with Rhonda at the pawnshop, and he hadn't added that Rhonda was left-handed. Another detective might talk to Harry and find out Rhonda was gone, but Rhonda had given him a good reason she'd left. Ron had Rhonda call Harry and tell him her mother was sick and she had to go home and take care of her. Somebody might be able to track her back to Olney, but she wouldn't be there and her parents wouldn't know where she was.

Two days before he retired all that became insignificant anyway. Micky the Mouth, one of the pimps Ron had talked to, was found dead behind one of the bars on Sixth. His girls said he seemed worried that night, but he didn't say why. The only other thing they knew is they saw him walking into the alley with a short guy who looked Hispanic.

Micky the Mouth had been nearly decapitated by one hell of a big knife, and like Shank, his pants were down a little. The difference was just like the drug dealer a couple years before, Micky's dick was stuck in his mouth. That pretty much convinced everyone in the department as well as the DA that there was a cartel takeover going on. It wasn't likely anybody would spend any more time trying to find out what really happened to Shank. It would just look like Shank was the first of the several that would probably follow.

The night of his retirement celebration, Ron drove to the cabin. It was dark by the time he pulled into the drive and it didn't look like there were many lights on inside. When he walked in the door, he saw why.

There were candles on the fireplace mantle, candles on the coffee table, and when he walked into the kitchen, there were two candles on the table along with two plates and silverware.

Rhonda was wearing a tight black dress and high heels. Ron didn't have to look very hard to see she wasn't wearing a bra under the dress. Even in the candlelight that lit the room he could make out the bumps her nipples made. Rhonda smiled as she handed him a glass of wine. "The steaks we bought are about done, so if you'll go get out of that suit and tie, we can eat".