“No,” I said.
“Thought you hotshots were coming in to get us.”
“We’ll be coming—don’t worry. It’ll be in our time, not yours,” I said and muted the television. “In the meantime, tell me how you know Alexis Connelly.”
“First, tell me how you found us?”
“Who am I speaking with? Sugar or Spice?”
“We’re both on the phone. This is Jerry, but you can call me Sugar if you like. I can be very sweet. Want a taste?” She laughed. “Theresa likes to be called Terry.”
“I guess that’s a dyke thing, huh?”
“Agent Perry, do you know how close you came to being one of our captives?” Terry asked.
“Captives? Is that what you call the women you brutalize, rape, and dismember?”
Terry ignored my question and went on talking as if she didn’t hear me. “Remember taking that adorable daughter of yours to the library a couple of weeks back?”
“Yes,” I said in horror.
“When I mentioned you to my sister, she told me you were an FBI agent. If we had been identical twins, you would have recognized me. We let you live because we didn’t need the heat. So tell us how you found us.”
“A combination of luck and skill. When we found Rappaport, he was watching a skin flick called Sugar and Spice. We found a replica of the Plow you girls like to use on your victims in his closet, but what led us back to you, Geraldine, was the receipts.”
“The receipts?” Terry repeated. “What receipts?”
In a deprecating tone, Geraldine said, “I’m sorry, Sis. I forgot all about the receipts.”
I listened to the sisters talk.
“What receipts are you talking about?” Terry asked.
“The receipts we give to customers have our first names on them. And I forgot all about that. I got careless.”
“Don’t worry about it, Sis.” Terry consoled. “We knew they were going to find us sooner or later.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Now that we’re all getting along, tell me about Alexis Connelly.”
“We met her at Norrell,” Terry began. “She was a fragile thing, but a straight lesbian all the way. She had to be ganged by the Deuces a few times before she fell into a routine. Tried to escape. That’s when the guards started raping her. She told the warden and he got a piece, too. Kinda lost it after that. You could tell she wasn’t all there to begin with. Had special medication and everything.”
“Is that why she killed Warden Perkins and his wife? Because he raped her?”
“Alex didn’t kill the warden,” Jerry admitted. “We did. Me and Terry.”
“So she hired you to do it?”
“You might say we did it out of gratitude,” Terry said.
“Gratitude? So, she didn’t hire you? She didn’t ask you to kill for her? You did it as a thank-you gesture?”
“Yes,” Jerry agreed. “What you have to understand is that Terry and I are poor white trash. Alex Connelly was rich. We helped her enhance the library computer system, and she wiped out our records with a few keystrokes. We owed her something for that.”
“Why didn’t you just stay out of jail? Wouldn’t that have been thanks enough? You both had well-paying jobs with benefits and you threw them away.”
“You can’t change who you are any more than we could change who we are,” Terry barked. “Spare us the self-righteous attitude. Prison changes you, okay, Agent Perry. The things that we did to women. The things they did to us. You don’t know what freedom is until you’ve spent a few years confined with sex-crazed women. Prison is the only place left in America where slavery is allowed and, dare I say, encouraged. You have two choices in the penal system. Take or be taken. Now…are you coming in to get us, or do we have to come out there and get you?”
I asked, “If prison is so liberating, why are you willing to die, rather than go back?”
“Because we’ve outgrown that kind of freedom,” Jerry said. “Prison would be a setback for us now. Out here, we’ve had the freedom to pick a new captive at will. We’ve had the freedom to drive nice cars, live in a nice home, eat good food. No. We could never go back to Norrell. Never! It’s too limiting. No variety. No spontaneity. No makeup. No perfume. Just hardened prison women. Who wants that? Besides, they might try to enslave us.”
“So where’s Alexis Connelly now?”
“Right under your nose.”
With that, they hung up.