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The Next Day:
“Mmm.” Foxy Parish sashayed into her living room with a bottle of vodka and a champagne glass. She stared at Winston as if he were on a plate.
Mann’s ex-wife wasn’t what Winston pictured. He expected some meek old woman to answer the door and offer him oatmeal cookies and milk. Yeah, it was a fucked-up, stereotypical notion, but that’s what he’d expected. He sure as hell didn’t expect a tall, sexy, bleach-blonde cougar in a slinky, cheetah-print robe with her size Ds hanging out.
She sat beside him on the couch and crossed her long, toned legs.
No, she definitely wasn’t what he expected.
Her left boob shifted in his direction when she leaned toward him. She had a bra on but it didn’t seem to fit.
Wow. It’s true what they say about police work. You never know what the day might bring.
She bobbed her leg. “Sure you don’t want any, Detective?” She filled the glass with vodka and placed it between her plump lips.
He cleared his throat. “No, thank you. I’m on duty.”
She held the glass to him. “I won’t tell anyone you were drinking on duty.”
He smiled and pushed her hand away. “Even if I wasn’t on duty I wouldn’t drink this early. Do you usually drink this early in the day?”
She sipped. “It’s never too early in my book.” Her gaze fell to his lap. “You’re a cutie, huh? How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Well...” She set the glass down and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “That’s a great age.”
Where she could fit the cigarettes in that robe, he had no idea.
“I don’t suppose you smoke?” She stuck a stick in her mouth and got out her lighter.
“I’m here on business, ma’am.”
She puffed. “You always such a tight ass?” She licked her lips. “You are way too young and too handsome to be so uptight.” She scooted close to him. “Keep looking at me with those beautiful baby blues and my clothes are gonna fall right off.” She winked.
He cleared his throat again. “Thank you, but we need to keep this professional, okay?”
She pouted her lips. “Aw, come on.” She touched his hair. “I know you gotta be stressed so—”
“Please.” He moved her hand. “Don’t touch me. Now, I appreciate this show but I’m on official business. Can you respect that?”
“Just trying to get you to loosen up, Detective.” She puffed.
“Well, I don’t want to loosen up, okay? Besides, aren’t you married?”
She flicked her hand. “Don’t remind me.”
“Look, I don’t want vodka, a cigarette, or anything else you might be offering.”
She smirked.
“I want to talk about Mann.”
“Mann?”
“Yes.” He took out his notepad. “Adam Mann? Your ex-husband?”
Her lips curled up. “Why?”
“It’s about the Sandman murders.”
She flicked her cigarette in the ashtray. “You got the guy who did it, right?”
“Leb Benson isn’t the Sandman.”
“But,” she leaned up and straightened her robe, “the media said he was.”
“Well, we thought he was but he’s not.”
She groaned. “Well, what does this have to do with me?”
“I’d like to talk to you about Mann and how the case affected him.”
She sucked and puffed. “Why didn’t you just ask him?”
“I guess I wanted to get your insight since you witnessed what this case did to him.
Everyone knows he became fixated on the Sandman, and I wanted to see how things were through your eyes.”
“Adam lost his fuckin’ mind during that case, that’s what happened.” She uncrossed her legs. “He was obsessed with anything and everything about the Sandman. He thought about it morning, noon, and night.”
“Well, cops often take cases home.”
“Not like Adam.” She flicked ashes into the ashtray. “It was like nothing but the Sandman existed for him. Every fuckin time I turned around, he was talking about it. He worked on the case at work, then at night he’d come home and obsess over the news broadcasts.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d tape the news every time they ran something on the Sandman. Then he’d sit on the couch and rewind the DVD over, and over, and over. I had to literally yank his ass off the couch for him to stop watching it.” She grimaced as she took a hit of the cigarette. “It gave me the creeps. I’d never seen Adam like that before.”
“Well, I admit that does sound a bit out of hand.”
“It was ridiculous.” She blew smoke to the side. “I kept asking him why he couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t figure out what made the Sandman case so much more important than other cases he’d worked on.”
“And?”
She set the ashtray in her lap. “He just kept saying it was the biggest case of his career and it was gonna save his job.”
“Save his job?”
“Yeah, he was paranoid because he said that the department was trying to push him out because he was getting old.” She flicked her hand. “But it was just how he was seeing things. He kept saying the young people were taking over and he had to prove he still had what it took to be a cop.”
“I imagine it can be difficult to feel pushed out of doing something you love.”
“See, being a cop was more than a job to Adam. A cop was what he was. It’s what he always will be. It’s how he identified with himself. He felt that not being a cop meant he no longer had a purpose.” She wiggled the cigarette between her fingers. “And the Sandman case wasn’t the first case he got obsessed with. He almost lost it with the Terrence Washington murder. He couldn’t solve it and that almost killed him.”
“Lisa Swanson just solved it.”
“I know.” She fanned smoke. “I saw them talking about her on the news. I always told Adam back then that no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t control the outcome. But he didn’t listen to me.” She brushed ashes off her legs. “He changed during the Sandman case. He was scaring me and, on top of that, he started acting like some mad scientist.”
Winston scratched his head. “Huh?”
“He had this shed in the backyard where he kept his tools and things. Well, he started going out there at night and staying in there for hours.” She set the ashtray on the table. “I’d be waiting in bed and come to find out he’s in the shed.” She laid the hand with the cigarette on her knee. “So wondering what the hell was going on, I went out there one night and he threw a fit!”
Winston jerked.
“He was ranting and raving and told me to stay out of the shed and not to be sneaking into his things.”
Winston held his hands. “So what did you think?”
“I didn’t know what to think, but I guess he thought I was gonna just let it go, but no way. He was losing his damn mind and I needed to find out why.” She gaped. “So one day when he was at work, I went out there.” She laid her hand on her chest. “Oh.” She lifted her cigarette and shook her head. “As God is my witness I almost died, Detective.” She lowered her hand. “I could not believe what I saw.”
Winston’s heart pounded. “What did you see?”
“That shrine. Oh!” She shook. “It was the creepiest, morbid, just sickest thing I’d ever seen in my life.”
“What shrine?”
“The shrine with all that shit about the Sandman.”
Winston huffed. “What?”
“He had pictures and pictures and pictures!” She flung her arm. “He had newspaper clippings of the murders with things circled in crayon.” She scrunched up her face. “He had pictures of the victims and all these DVDs. I looked at one of the DVDs and it was of one of the crime scenes.”
Jesus. Jesus Christ.
“At first I thought it was videos the police took for the investigation, but I think Adam videotaped the scenes himself.” She closed her eyes. “I was horrified.”
Holy shit.
Her hands shook. “I’d never been that scared in all my life. I felt like I’d seen the devil himself.” She twirled one of her blonde curls. “I knew then that he was obsessed.”
Fuck.
“I waited until his ass got home and I confronted him. I told him he was scaring the shit out of me and that he needed to get rid of that trash or I was leaving.” She crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “So he got rid of it.”
Winston jumped up. “J-Jesus.”
“Are you all right, Detective?”
He dashed to the front door and left.