The first in a series of stories, featruing Detective Rachel Tiernan
*riiiing*
Rachel is instantly woken by the sound of the doorbell. Lying in bed, in the darkness, she tilts her head sideways to look at the clock on her bedside table. It’s 3am.
Probably just a drunk ringing all the doorbells in the street, she thinks to herself. Or someone trying to get in to the apartment building, trying random buzzers hoping that someone will allow them access. Either way, she decides it isn’t her problem, and closes her eyes.
Before she can get back to sleep, however, there is a bang on her apartment door.
Okay, she tells herself, now it’s my problem.
Rolling out of bed completely naked, she tip-toes her way through the darkness and towards the door of her apartment. A foot away from the door, another bang makes her recoil.
Who is it? Am I in danger?
She carefully leans a hand against the door, presses her face to the wood, and looks out the peephole. When she sees the male figure standing there, she recognises him instantly, and opens the door a few inches.
“Jeff, why the fuck are you here at three in the morning?”
“Well, I did try ringing and texting first, but there was no reply. You forgot to charge your phone again, didn’t you?”
“…Maybe…”
“As two detectives, I think we both know that when a suspect says ‘maybe’, they usually mean ‘yes’”
“Right, fine, sorry, guilty as charged. But, why are you here? Looking for a booty call?”
“Got a report in about a shooting in the Bradley Estate. First officer on the scene confirmed one male victim, deceased. We’ve been called in to lead”
“And why, for the love of God, have we been given the case when we are off-duty? Surely there are other detectives who could have taken it?”
“Looks like there’s been another victim of the Page Three Killer on the other side of the city. Most of the department is all hands on-deck over there, so we…”
“We’ve been left to clean up the scraps. The boring murders”
“Exactly”
“Fine, give me 20 minutes to shower and get dressed. You want to come in while you wait?”
“Inviting me in to your apartment, in the middle of the night? What would my wife think?”, Jeff jokes.
“She’d probably say that having affair is the most exciting thing that’s happened in your relationship for years”
“I’ll have you know I am a happily-married man”
“Debate is still open on the ‘happily’ bit. Come on then, in or out?”
“In, I’m freezing out here”
Detective Rachel Tiernan swings the door open, allowing Detective Jeff Maguire access to the apartment. She then reaches for the light-switch, lighting up the apartment.
“Oh you… um… you’re…”, Jeff stutters.
“Naked? Yeah, I noticed. You did get me out of bed, after all”, she responds casually, striding through the apartment towards the bathroom. “Tell me, is my ass better than your wife’s or not?”
“I’ll have to plead the fifth on that one,” responds Jeff, watching Rachel’s ass bounce with every stride.
“Do me a favour!” Rachel shouts from around the corner. “Brew us up a pot of coffee while you wait, I won’t be long!”
“Will do,” Jeff replies, happy to retreat to the kitchen where he can hide his growing erection behind the counter.
Rachel closes the bathroom door, turns on the shower and steps right in. She has always loved showers. She considers it her safe place, somewhere she can wash everything away the worries of the world, both literally and metaphorically.
As the warm water trickles down her skin, and she rubs body lotion across her breasts, she wonders what Jeff is thinking outside.
Despite her jokes about Jeff’s marriage, she knows that he is, indeed, happily married. He was already married before she was promoted to detective and joined his department.
She enjoys flirting with him, and he clearly enjoys flirting back, but she knows that it is unlikely anything will ever happen between the two of them.
Unlikely, but not impossible.
No, Rachel prefers men who are single, and available. Or at least, men who she thinks are available. It isn’t her fault if they don’t tell her they have a girlfriend, or fiancée, or a wife.
She has always been the centre of attention ever since she grew breasts. Men would fall over themselves to be with her. Which is just the way she likes it.
All men want is to fuck her, and all she wants is to be fucked. Why complicate things with talk of “love” or “relationships”? As soon as those words are brought up, then they are out the door, regardless of how big their cock is.
Absent-mindedly, Rachel realises she has been stroking the outside of her pussy for far too long, and turns off the shower. Masturbating alone can wait, she has a murder to solve.
Dripping wet, she dries herself off with a towel, and crosses the hallway into her bedroom to get dressed, making sure to remember her badge and gun. When she is finished, she re-joins Jeff in the kitchen.
“You’re a life-saver”, she says, seeing two flasks of coffee on the kitchen counter, ready-to-go.
“I plugged your phone in as well”, Jeff responds, pointing a finger towards the living room. “It should be up to about 20% now, which would be a personal best for you”
“Asshole,” she says smiling, as she unplugs her phone and retrieves her flask of coffee, before heading out into the night.
The Bradley Estate is a nice area of the city. At the centre of the estate is a small, rectangular park, surrounded on three sides by about 50 houses in total. The fourth side of the park is the only way in or out of the estate.
Rachel and Jeff make a note of this as they pass through the police cordon: either the killer lives in the estate, or they left the estate via this route.
Finding a place to park his car, Jeff leads the way towards the centre of the park, where the majority of police activity is taking place.
“Hello, detectives”, says one of the officers as they approach.
“Hello, Officer Hernandez”, says Rachel, reading his badge. “Were you the first on the scene?”
“Yes, ma’am, I was”
“Okay, tell us what you saw”
“Call came through on the radio at approximately 2:30, there was a report of gunfire at this location. I arrived five minutes later, and found this”
Officer Hernandez guides the two detectives through the huddle of police officers, where Rachel and Jeff get their first look at the victim.
“Male, deceased, found sitting here on this bench”, Officer Hernandez continues. “There appears to be a gun-shot wound to his chest”
“Yeah, definitely not going to need the coroner to determine cause of death on this one”, says Jeff, examining the body. “Do we have an ID?”
“Matthew Lewis, 32 years old. Lives three estates over”, Hernendez responds. “His wallet and phone were inside his jacket pocket. I have them bagged as evidence on the next bench over.”
“Have you found the gun?” Rachel asks.
“No ma’am, no other evidence has turned up yet”
“And did you see anyone else in the area when you arrived?”
“No, there was no one else here. Would you like to send officers over to his address?”
“Not yet, let’s find out everything we can about him first. Run his name through the database and see what comes up.”
“Yes ma’am will do. Before I go, you see the woman standing in the doorway over there?”
Hernandez directs the detectives to a woman in a dressing gown, standing in the doorway of a nearby house.
“She was the woman who called the police, but we haven’t had the chance to interview her yet”, Hernandez continues.
“Okay, thank you”, Jeff tells him, as Hernendez leaves to perform his tasks.
“You check the phone and I’ll check the wallet, then we’ll talk to the witness”, Rachel directs.
“Sounds good, you know what you’re like with phones…”
Unbagging their respective pieces of evidence, Rachel rifles through Mr Lewis’ wallet, while Jeff, having to use the dead man’s fingerprints to unlock it, looks through his phone.
Disappointingly, Rachel finds nothing of significance. His ID, a credit card, cash, some loyalty cards and a wrapped condom are all that she discovers.
“Nothing here”, she says. “What about you?”
“Nothing interesting in the texts. We have some missed calls from someone called Florence around the time of the reported shooting, we’ll definitely have to look into that. And… woah…”
“What?”
“Lots and lots of lesbian porn in his pictures”
“Oh, that’s nice. You can add those pictures to the wank bank for when you get home.”
“We’ll check for a Florence in his list of known associates when Hernandez gets back to us”, he says, ignoring Rachel’s comment, but also, she notices, not denying it. “Let’s go talk to the witness.”
As the two detectives approach the witness, standing in an open doorway, they see that she is a 40-something year old blonde woman, in a bright-blue dressing robe.
“Hi,” asks Rachel, as she approaches. “You were the person who called the police?”
“Yes, the name is Jennifer. I was just…”
Before she can finish her sentence, the cry of a baby comes from within the house.
“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s little Mike awake again, can you please come in and close the door behind you?”
Jennifer walks into the house, retrieves a baby from a cot, and sits down in a couch, holding the little infant. Just as Rachel and Jeff enter the room, Jennifer pulls the top of her dressing gown down, her massive tits and pokey nipples coming out, in order to breast-feed the baby.
“I’ll… um… wait outside, look for evidence…” says Jeff, sheepishly backing out of the room.
Lucky Jeff, Rachel thinks. This is the second woman to flash him the last hour.
“Men, huh?” says Jennifer, sarcastically.
Rachel laughs as she takes a seat opposite the now-topless witness. She knows that the size of Jennifer’s tits is partly down to her lactation, but she is nonetheless jealous of how big they are.
“So, Jennifer, can you tell me what happened?”
“Well, I was awake, feeding Mike here. I don’t know what time it was, you lose track of time when you’re awake 23 hours a day. Anyway, I was sitting here, breast-feeding, when I hear shouting coming from outside. Not just drunk shouting, but really angry shouting.
I look out the window and I see two men, one sitting on the bench the other standing in front of him. The standing man is shouting, top of voice, saying “you fucked my wife”, and “I should fucking kill you”, things like that.
Now the sitting man is talking back to him, but they’re too far away, so I can’t hear what the sitting man is saying, but it isn’t making the standing man any happier.
Then the standing man pulls out a knife. Now, at that point I close the curtains, because I don’t want him to see me looking at him, and I don’t want to see what he might do.
About a minute passes, and then I hear a gunshot. Then nothing, silence. I put Mike in his cot, and when I look out again, the standing man is gone, and the sitting man is dead. That’s when I called the police.”
“Sorry, just to clarify… you said you saw the standing man pull out a knife?”
“Yes”
“And then a minute later, you heard a gunshot?”
“Yes”
“And then you looked out, and the sitting man was dead?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. I saw a knife, and I heard a gunshot.”
“Are you sure it was a knife? Could it have been a gun?”
“No, definitely a knife, the glint off one of the streetlights shone right in my eyes. I know you police say that eyewitnesses can be unreliable, but I swear that’s what happened”
“Okay, thank you for your time,” thanks Rachel, as she leaves the house to join Jeff outside.
“Well, how did it go?” he asks.
“Weird. She claims the attacker pulled out a knife”
“But the victim was shot. You saw the wound, there’s no question about it”
“I know, but she swears that’s what happened. If the attacker pulled out a knife, how did the victim end up shot, not stabbed?”
“Two assailants?”
“She only saw one, a male, but I suppose it’s possible. Apparently our victim had, and I quote, “fucked” the attackers wife, so at least we have a probable motive.”
“That’d do it alright. Our victim probably had an affair with this Florence woman”
“Any progress out here?”
“Nothing. No gun, no cartridge. And no knife, before you ask. Still waiting to hear back from Hernandez”
“And what did you think?”
“Think of what?”
“Her tits. Good, weren’t they?”
“Rachel…”
“I mean, if I can admire them then so can you”
“I had an idea. Look at the houses around us. There are only six lights on in the whole estate, including Jennifer’s here. Everyone else is still in bed, haven’t even noticed that we’re here yet. I’m willing to bet that someone else saw something”
“Okay, ignore my question. Let’s go talk to the people who are awake and find out if they saw or heard anything. You take the three over there, I’ll take the other two on this side. And Jeff?”
“Yes?”
“If a woman answers the door and she’s completely naked, keep it professional”
Jeff just rolls his eyes, without replying, and makes his way across to the opposite side of the estate.
The light in the first house on Rachel’s side is coming from one of the upstairs windows, and as she gets closer, she can see the silhouette of a head behind the curtain.
She rings the doorbell several times, and is greeted a minute later by an angry man in a vest, boxers and flip-flops. He is initially angry, but is immediately distracted by the flashing blue lights coming from the police cars that have now invaded the estate.
“Who the fuck… wait, has something happened?”
“Sir, I’m Detective Tiernan. I’m afraid someone has been killed in your estate tonight. Did you see or hear anything tonight?”
“Oh God. Um, no, no, didn’t hear a thing. I went to bed around 11, and it was all quiet then. I was fast asleep until you started ringing the doorbell.”
“Mr…”
“Anderson. Geoffrey Anderson.”
“Mr Anderson. I couldn’t help but notice, but the light in your upstairs window was on when I approached the house. If you were asleep until I rang the doorbell, I assume that is not your room, so?”
“Oh. No, my bedroom is at the back of the house. That would be my son’s room, but he should have been asleep.”
“Would it be okay if I come in and talk to him, in case he saw anything?”
“Yes, of course, please, follow me.”
Geoffrey leads Rachel upstairs, and heads for his room.
“Ben, are you awake?” he asks as he opens the door.
“What? Oh, yeah...” Ben, a teenager, responds in a panic, sitting up in his bed.
“Ben, I told you you’re not allowed to play on your Xbox at this hour”
“Yeah, sorry,” he responds. However, Rachel notices that his Xbox and TV are both turned off, and what appears to be an iPad is sticking out from below his pillow.
“Right, well, we’ll have a talk about that tomorrow. In the meantime, this detective here would like to know whether you saw anything outside that might help them catch… the person they’re looking for”
“Yeah, I, uh… heard a man shouting, so I went to look out the window… but there were trees in the way, I couldn’t see him… then there was a loud bang… and…”
Ben stops himself mid-sentence.
“It’s okay, son, you can tell the truth”
“Mr Anderson,” Rachel interjects, eager to get information out of her potential witness. “Could you get Ben a glass of water, please? It will help him to compose himself.”
“Sure.”
After Mr Anderson leaves the room, Rachel sits down on the bed next to Ben.
“How old are you, Ben? About 16, I’m guessing. Old enough to know what you like. Old enough to know…”
Rachel leans back and pulls the iPad out from underneath the pillow
“…what turns you on, am I right? You weren’t playing on your Xbox, were you? You would rather your father think you were playing on your Xbox, because what you were actually doing would get you into even more trouble. And, for a young man like yourself, I know exactly what that might be…”
“Please, don’t tell my dad…”
“I won’t tell him a thing. I promise you, regardless of whether you help me or not, I won’t say a word. But, tell me Ben, what would it take for you to tell me the truth?”
Ben takes a moment to think.
“Your… um… your breasts… what do they feel like?”
Rachel looks towards the door to see whether Mr Anderson has returned yet. There is a killer out there, maybe two. They need to be caught before they have the chance to hurt anyone else.
She will do anything to close a case. Including, she decides, this.
“Go ahead. Find out yourself”
Ben reaches his hands up, and touches them on Rachel’s chest. He feels around, squeezing them like a stress toy. Even through several layers of fabric, he can feel her nipples between his fingers.
As he sticks his fingers in between the buttons of her shirt, trying to get one layer closer to bare skin, the footsteps of his father coming up the stairs force him to withdraw.
“Here you are, son,” he says as he hands the glass of water over to Ben.
“So, Ben, can you help me?” Rachel asks him, looking him deep in the eyes.
Taking a moment to compose himself, Ben responds.
“After I heard the bang, I saw… Sandra run from the park and into her house”
“Sandra Robbins?” interjects Mr Anderson. “Are you sure?”
Ben nods his head in agreement.
“She lives ten doors down”, Mr Anderson explains to Rachel. “Very friendly young woman, about your age. God, I hope she’s okay.”
“Okay. Thank you for your time, Mr Anderson. And thank you for your help, Ben.”
Ben says nothing, but exchanges a silent ‘thank you’ with Rachel, who heads outside to reunite with Jeff.
“Nothing so far from any of my houses,” he says. “All were woken up by either the gunshot or the sirens of the first responder. No help whatsoever.”
“I have a lead, a witness says they saw someone leaving the scene and enter this house here,” say Rachel, already on the move towards the house in question.
With gun drawn just in case, Rachel rings the bell and knocks on the door, with Jeff following suit.
“A woman lives here, name of Sandra Robbins. Suspect may be on the premises,” Rachel explains.
The door opens, and outsteps a woman with short, black hair, mascara running down her face with tears.
“That took you a lot quicker than I had hoped,” she says.
“Are you Sandra Robbins?” asks Rachel.
“Yes, and you can put your guns down. There’s no one else here. I’m the one who killed Matthew. I’ll tell you everything.”
Jeff beckons other officers to join them at the house, while Rachel ensures that Sandra makes no attempt to run or attack her, but she does neither. She is escorted to a police car and joined by Rachel and Jeff, who bring her to the nearest police station for interrogation. There, she tells them the full story:
“I have been having an affair… with Matthew’s wife,” she explains. “Florence fell out of love with him a long time ago.”
“There were pictures on Matthew’s phone of two women having… intimate relations…” Jeff says.
“Sex”, interjects Rachel. “One of them is you. I assume the other one is Florence?”
“Oh, you seen them? God, that embarrassing. Yes, we took them for a laugh. I don’t know how he found them, he was probably snooping through Florence’s phone, and copied them onto his.”
“So, tell us what happened, in your own words.”
“Florence and Matthew had a bad relationship. He was an abusive asshole. He never hit her, but he was always putting her down. Florence and I have been friends for a long time. One night, she came over, crying about the latest argument and… well… one thing lead to another”
“Multiple times, based on the number of pictures we’ve seen”
“Anyway, Matthew found out tonight, and started shouting at Florence, saying that he was going to kill me, and if she rang the police or tried to stop him, he would kill her as well. He took a kitchen knife with him, and left the house.
Florence was terrified for her life. She couldn’t leave the house, and she couldn’t call anyone for help. She tried ringing Matthew to talk him down, but he wouldn’t answer, so she rang me to warn me that he was coming.
Rather than wait for him to come to my house, I took my revolver and waited for him at a bench in the park, which is where he saw me and came over to me.
He stood over me, shouting at me, accusing me of things that I did do, like having sex with Florence. But also ranting about how it was my fault that their marriage was broken, but was all his fault, not mine.
When he took his knife out, I showed him that I had a gun, and that rattled him. It was like he knew he was defeated; he’d lost the argument, the fight, and Florence.
He stumbled forward and collapsed onto the bench I was sitting on, so I stood up, to get out of the way. He was mumbling about how he had nothing without Florence, and that it was all my fault.
Then, all of a sudden, he came at me with the knife, so I had to shoot him, to defend myself.
I don’t know what I was thinking afterwards, maybe I was trying to get away with it, even though I knew I did nothing wrong. But I took the knife, and the gun, and I took them home with me. I didn’t even get as far as throwing them away, I’m sure your officers found them on my kitchen table by now.”
“They did, yes,” responds Rachel. “So here’s the situation. You are under arrest for the murder of Matthew Lewis. If you wish to claim self-defence, that will be an argument for your lawyer to make to the courts”
Leaving the interrogation room, Rachel and Jeff reconvene in the observation room next door, looking in on their suspect.
“I assume you noticed her hair?” asks Rachel.
“Of course. Short, black hair.”
“Good, I though you weren’t sexist enough to figure that out. At night, it would be very easy for our eyewitness, Jennifer, to mistake her for a man at that distance”
“That is the strangest insult I’ve ever received. But, you have to admit, it was one hell of a coincidence with the timing on Jennifer closing the curtain”
“Agreed. She saw one person - Matthew - standing up, and another person - Sandra - sitting down. When Matthew pulled out the knife, Jennifer closed the curtains. She didn’t see Matthew collapse onto the bench, and Sandra stand up.
Then Sandra shot Matthew, cleaned up and left. Jennifer didn’t realise they had switched places while the curtains were closed, and when she looked out again, she assumed the same person had been sitting down the whole time.”
“So, case solved, rest of the day off, what do you have planned?” asks Jeff.
“Maybe I’ll meet a nice boy and get married.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“You’re right, I’ll hopefully meet a man-slut on the way home and fuck his brains out. You and the missus are welcome to join.”
“I’ll pass on this occasion, thanks.”
“I’ll get through to you one day…”
She leans over and whispers in his ear…
“…and you’ll fucking love it.”
She then leaves to head for home, hoping to pass a sex shop on the way to buy a new vibrator.
Jeff, meanwhile, heads off to the men’s toilet. Ignoring the explicit, sexual photos of Sandra and Florence licking each other out - which he has copied on to his phone - he thinks back to Rachel’s naked body in her apartment, fantasises about what it would be like to fuck her in the ass, and cums all over the toilet seat.