The killer drove slowly down Bridge Street Balwyn studying the talent. The north end of the street was well lit and populated with fresh trade: pretty young girls who were not yet ravaged by drugs, beaten ugly by their pimps and johns or world-weary of a life walking the streets and selling their bodies. They strutted their stuff confidently. The west side of the street was occupied by older but still presentable women who could still make their pimps a decent buck. The east side was where the women who were well past their use-by-date worked, offering twenty dollar blowjobs and fifty dollar half-n-half behind the dumpsters.

The killer was only interested in the girls working the south side. This was where the transsexuals worked. He passed a couple of good-looking girls with big hair and heavy makeup wearing short skirts, fuck-me heels and nylons. They weren't what he was looking for and he shooed one of them away when she approached his car.

Then he saw the girl he wanted. She was obviously a crossdresser, easily clocked, but her face was pretty and she was proudly displaying the parts of her body that attracted him. Her long legs were sheathed in high-gloss tan pantyhose and her snatch was swathed by tight black velvet hotpants. It was this that fascinated him, titillated him, drew him, captivated him, compelled him. He was captivated by the illusion this presented. The perfect curve of a pubic mound, how it so agreeably mimicked the contour of a woman’s labia.

He loved their pretty faces, their makeup, the hair, their long legs and their asses but it was the perfect pubic mound that pressed all of his buttons and made this man-woman so desirable. He knew that the illusion was created by careful tucking of male genitals but as long as he didn’t have to see them he didn’t care. He found the sight of their male genitals repulsive.

He pulled to the curb and the girl approached his car. As she got closer he could see her flaws. Her wig-line wasn’t quite straight, her makeup was not blended properly, one leg of her pantyhose had a runner in it, her high heels were scuffed from walking the streets.

The killer didn’t care. The woman was still pretty even if she wasn’t polished; ‘let’s call her a rough diamond’ he thought to himself. He was mesmerised by the V of her crotch as she stood next to his car checking him out, making sure he wasn't a vice cop.

“You got a place hon?” when the woman leaned into the car he was shrouded in a miasma of perfume.

“I’ve got a place,” the killer gave her his best smile.

He knew that he presented well to the hooker. He was middle-aged with a dad-body, he was wearing good clothes and the stolen BMW he was driving was a sweet ride; she’d think him a rube.

“What ‘chew want?” the transvestite was using her femme street voice.

“I want you to suck my dick until its hard then I wanna fuck you in the ass,” the killer gave her his best smile.

“How’s a hundred sound?” the hooker tested the waters.

“Sounds good to me,” there was no need to haggle; he didn’t intend to pay this girl.

In his hurry to leave the dingy hotel he had forgotten to take the two hundred dollars from April’s purse. She was only his second murder and he was still learning. This one would go better.

He knew that it was a big risk taking another girl so soon but he just couldn’t control the impulse and now that he’d seen her there was no turning back. He had to have her. He didn’t have to kill her but he knew he was going to. He fingered the cheap nylons in his jacket pocket and his hard cock became stiffer.

The hooker walked around the car and slid into the front passenger seat and the killer drove off.

“Where we goin honey?” the tranny slipped her hand between his legs and stroked his thigh.

“There’s a place in Battersea Park,” the man’s throat was thick with lust.

“Thought you said you had a place?” the hooker leaned in and nibbled his earlobe.

“There’s a place in the park I know. There’s a bed and that’s all we need, somewhere to fuck comfortably,” the man put his hand on her thigh and stroked her gossamer-clad flesh.

“Shit honey; I done it standing up against a wall in Battersea Park, I done it in the underpass, shit I done it in the bushes so if you got a bed, that's luxury,” the hooker nipped his ear.

The killer drove into Battersea Park along a gravel track until he came to a Park Services hut. He’d cased the place earlier, ensuring it wasn’t alarmed and had broken the lock before he went hunting.

They both giggled as he led her into the dark hut using the torch function on his mobile phone. It was filled with tools and smelled musty. Both sides of the hut were fitted with workbenches but at the back of the hut there were two battered lounge chairs, a stained and scratched coffee table and an older model flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. There was a small kitchenette in the corner and a steel framed camp bed propped along the back wall. The maintenance staff used the hut as a workshop but also as their lunchroom and changing room. A small toilet and shower had been fitted as an addition.

“Honey, this is the Ritz compared to some of the shitholes I’ve been in,” the transvestite hooker giggled as she pulled off her fake fur bolero jacket.

The killer switched on a lamp beside the bed so that they had some light.

The hooker put her thumbs in the waistband of her hotpants preparing to pull them down.

“No! Don’t!” the man put his hands on her wrists to stop her.

“Sure sugar. You want some foreplay before we get down to the nitty-gritty,” the hooker smiled at him.

“Here. A little extra if you do just what I ask,” the man gave her two hundred dollars.

The hooker broke into a grin and took the money.

“Ok honey; I can get kinky but nothing that leaves a mark and no fuckin’ scat!” the hooker stuffed the twenties into her purse.

“Just lie on the bed. Don’t take off a thing,” the man said as he started to disrobe.

The hooker did as she was told and lay on the bed with her head on the musty pillow. The man, now naked with his erect penis standing proud climbed onto the bed and lay on top of her.

“Well this is nice,” the hooker smiled up at him and he kissed her.

She tasted like Marlboro Menthols and Juicy Fruit but the man didn’t care. He placed his hard cock in the V of her crotch and began to rut.

“Don’t cum on my hotpants honey, ain’t no way to get that shit out of velvet,” the hooker complained around his kisses.

The man rutted at the hooker and she closed her legs around his cock so he was stimulated by the smooth velvet of her hotpants crotch and sleek slippery nylons on her legs. He had to stop a couple of times because he was so close to coming. The feel of the woman’s body, the smell of her perfume, the smooth pubis pressing on his penis felt divine. The knowledge that that under her hotpants and pantyhose was a cock and scrotum intensified his pleasure but the thought of seeing or touching her genitals was repugnant. It was the illusion that fascinated and excited him.

“Roll over and get on your knees,” the man panted.

The hooker scooted herself up the cot, awkwardly rolling over onto her hands and knees. While she was distracted the man reached for his coat which was neatly folded on the foot of the bedframe. He took the nylons from the pocket and stuffed them in the coverlet beside him.

“Let me get my stuff,” the hooker reached for her purse and took out a Ziploc bag containing a tube of lubricant and a package of condoms.

She tore open the condom wrapper with her teeth.

“An extra fifty if we go bareback,” the man said excitedly.

The bitch was getting it bareback whether she wanted it or not but it would be easier if she acquiesced.

“Sure honey, I’m on PrEP and I was at the free clinic last week,” the hooker tossed the condom on the floor.

“Just stay like that,” the man ordered.

He pulled down the hooker’s hotpants as far as they would go exposing her buttocks encased in the sheer-to-the-waist pantyhose. She hadn't bothered with panties. Her genitals were tucked along her perineum held in place by the tight pantyhose, out of sight.

The man rubbed his cock on her shiny ass and enjoyed the tingling feeling of the gossamer pantyhose against his sensitive penis.

“Feel good sugar? You like that?” the hooker wriggled her buttocks for him.

The man poked his finger into the girl’s anus pushing the sleek material of her nylons into the puckered crevice. He snagged the fabric with his fingernail and made a little hole.

“You like them nylons don't you sugar?” she wiggled her ass at him appreciatively and cooed when he dropped a dollop of lubricant onto her sphincter and began to massage it in.

He pushed his middle finger all the way inside her and wriggled it around and smiled when the hooker groaned appreciatively and pushed her ass back against him. He was pleased to see that his finger was clean when he pulled it out.

“Just be careful when you… oh Jesus!” the hooker sighed as the man pushed his lubricated cock into her anus all the way.

He wasn’t as big as some she had taken but he was no lightweight. His cock stretched her anus and the hooker felt herself full. She didn’t usually get off with her johns but this guy knew how to fuck, slowly driving his cock in and out of her anus, pulling it nearly all the way out then pushing it all the way back in, grinding his pubis against her buttocks.

She was becoming erect and she put a hand between her legs trying to free her penis. She wanted to stroke it while the john fucked her.

The man slapped her hand away angrily.

“Not part of the deal honey,” the man growled as he began to fuck her harder.

The hooker just shrugged and raised her ass higher for him; she would likely come in her pantyhose without even touching herself.

Which is exactly what she did when she felt the man push his penis all the way inside her as he orgasmed; grinding his pubis into her buttocks, howling like a banshee. It might not have been the most intense orgasm that she had ever felt but it was certainly her last. She drummed her feet in the bed and clenched her sphincter as the delicious orgasm radiated from her prostate, into her loins and washed over her.

The killer quickly slipped the pantyhose over her head and wrapped them tightly around her neck. He twisted them once and then pulled back on them as hard as he could. The hooker managed to get two fingers under the nylon before it became embedded in her flesh but it was to no avail. She was vaguely aware of the man ejaculating inside her before she lost consciousness.

The killer kept the hooker’s body in the hut until just before sunrise, using her corpse for his pleasure. He took the money from her purse and left her cold and dead on the bed face down with her legs spread wide.

“Fucking tranny whore!” he shouted at her lifeless body for probably the hundredth time as he slammed the door shut.

The killer drove the BMW to a quarry on the outskirts of Balwyn where he had parked his own car. He splashed gas into the BMW’s interior, threw in a match and ran to his car. He could see the flames from the BMW receding in his rear vision mirror as he drove away.

*****

“What have we got Alice?” Steve hung his coat on the rack and joined Alice at her workstation in the Special Task Force office.

“We ran the DNA and the fingerprints through the system but there is no match. The perp’s a non-secretor which he may or may not be aware of. He’s not careful with his bodily fluids or fingerprints so I doubt they are on file anywhere but I’ll have them sent out to all of the national databases: medical, military, education, employment agencies and so on,” Alice didn’t sound confident.

“The semen found in April’s anus and on her body and clothing came from the perp. There was a lot of it. He likely ejaculated several times, at least once inside her anus and at least once on her legs and backside. The semen was confined to the lower extremities of the body.”

“The tox screen revealed no alcohol or illicit drugs in April’s blood,” Alice alternated reading from both the pathology report and the CSI crime scene summary.

“The fluid on the front of April’s panties was her own pre-ejaculate.”

“The pantyhose used to strangle her were L'eggs Everyday Regular. Cheap pantyhose sold at Walmart in an eight pack. I don’t think they have any real significance other than they are a convenient means of strangulation and easy to conceal. They can’t be traced to any particular store or date of purchase.”

“I’ve entered the autopsy and scene of crime reports into the case file and checked on the physical evidence in the evidence room to ensure it’s all there. I read your interview with Wendy Beaumont prior to meeting her at the apartment and processing April’s bedroom,” Alice stopped speaking to take a sip of coffee.

“Did you do anything this weekend other than work? You’ve been a busy girl,” Steve felt guilty.

He’d spent all day Saturday with Felicity and spent Sunday at home online reading the CSI and autopsy reports which Alice was doing a good job of summarising for him.

“Weekend? What’s a weekend?” Alice continued her case summary.

“Come and look at this. It’s April’s OnlyFans,” Alice fired up April’s laptop.

Alice logged in as administrator to April’s OnlyFans account and then opened a separate tab and logged in as a user.

“I set up a user ID so we can see what her OnlyFans looks like to a member. I’m using PD funds to pay for it,” Alice smirked and Steve grunted, staring at the screen.

The home page was simple enough. Once you registered and paid a joining fee you had the option to view pictures and videos of April in provocative poses and having sex with an unidentified male. There was a link for contact details which listed an email address and a phone number.

Alice clicked on a random video thumbnail. The video began with April and the man kissing and engaging in foreplay. Alice forwarded the time bar stopping randomly throughout the fifteen minute video. April was dressed in sexy lingerie, stockings and heels and her makeup was heavy. She was wearing a wig. The couple engaged in fellatio which progressed to coitus in various positions with the obligatory ‘cum shot’ with the male shooting his load over April’s face.

Throughout the video a banner ran along the bottom of the screen inviting the viewer to contact April to engage in the same activities in real life. The stills were similarly logoed.

“Here is her OnlyFans email account,” Alice opened a Gmail account.

She opened emails at random. Some were from men who genuinely wanted to hook up, most of them were just fan mail complementing April on her performance and wishing they had the fortitude to actually meet with her. A few were downright derogatory, calling her a whore, an aberration and threatening her with damnation or worse.

“Why join a site that advertises itself as a transsexual porn site and then vilify the performer?” Alice asked.

“Who knows? I’m no psychiatrist but I’ll bet a lot of the anger directed at April comes from people who have self-loathing issues and are disgusted that they find the material appealing,” Steve surmised.

“We can’t rule out that the murder is related to the site’s content,” he extrapolated.

“Are there any requests for April’s services on the day of her murder?” Steve asked.

“Not in her email but I’ve downloaded her mobile phone records into the computer. She has two accounts. One is a pre-paid Gen Mobile account that she runs from an unlocked cheap mobile phone linked to her OnlyFans. That’s the phone we found at the scene. The other is with AT&T which she uses only for legitimate business and personal reasons. The two are kept separate. Her OnlyFans website and email account is accessed through the burner phone; her private phone has no ties to her OnlyFans,” Alice held up the phones, one in each hand.

“There are a series of texts organising the meet at the motel. They start the day before and culminate with April providing the john with the hotel room number at 1300 on the day of the crime,” Alice pointed to a list of texts on the screen.

“Bingo!” Steve finally thought they were getting somewhere.

“Not bingo I’m afraid. The perp’s phone is a burner and can’t be traced to its owner. I’ve checked the pings from the cell towers to the burner number and it was only ever used in public places: shopping malls, public parks, gas stations, etcetera. It was purchased five days before the murder and April’s is the only number ever dialled or texted,” Alice explained.

“It was last used in the parking lot of the motel and hasn’t pinged since. I’ll bet it’s been destroyed and disposed of,” Alice sighed.

“So we need to set up several lines of investigation. We look at the registered members of her OnlyFans. There are several thousand but only three hundred or so in Texas. We go through her email and look for any messages that raise our suspicion; those that are threatening or particularly vitriolic. We also look for other ties and links that might lead us to someone who is smitten with her,” Alice stated the bleeding obvious.

“Can we work up a profile of the perp?” Steve asked.

“We can do all sorts of stuff Steve but we can’t do it on our own. I’m good at tech stuff and analysis but you need at least one other detective who is a skilled investigator to work the case with us. You need a partner,” Alice got out of her seat and went over to the Bunn to pour coffee.

“Tell me what I don’t know,” Steve sighed.

Why did Sylvia Bickle have to be on vacation? He wasn't used to leading an investigation. He was a good detective, a good street cop and had great investigative skills but he needed someone with organisational skills to help him run the investigation.

“I’m going to see the Chief of Detectives. Don’t go anywhere,” Steve began to put on his coat.

“Where am I going to go?” Alice settled back down at her workstation with her coffee and began clicking keys.

Gary Rasmussen was on the phone when Steve arrived at his office. He signalled for Steve to sit, barked into the phone for another minute or two and then hung up.

“What’s up? How’s the case going?” Gary asked spinning a pen through his fingers.

“Alice sent you a summary in an email but the gist is we have plenty of leads but nothing solid. I need another investigator to assist. Someone experienced. I have a few patrolmen running errands for me between calls for assistance but I need a trained investigator,” Steve explained while Gary read the case summary on his screen.

“I need a vacation somewhere where there are warm sandy beaches, tanned women in itsy-bitsy bikinis and cocktails with little straw hats but I ain’t gonna get it. Budget cuts, manpower ceilings, cops on furlough, compassionate leave, sick leave, whatever the fuck… I don’t have anyone Steve,” Gary sighed.

Steve knew that arguing would get him nowhere. He stood up to leave.

“I’ll approve overtime for a couple of uniforms. They can run-go-fetch while you and Alice work the case,” Gary opened his desk drawer looking for his cigarettes.

Steve paused at the doorway, nodded, and walked away.

Back in the Task Force office Steve began to set up a crime wall on the whiteboard that took up nearly the entire wall. It was an old fashioned technique but Penelope Bishop and Silvia Bickle had put it to good use in the past and when he was seconded to the Task Force during the hunt for the Lipstick Killer he had seen the value of it.

Data on screens and in files was good but having a visual reference with photographs, timelines, clues and deductions represented pictorially in one place gave a succinct observable summary of the case. Alice came over and began to help, sticking up pictures of the crime scene and linking them to thought bubbles while Steve put a horizontal timeline at the top of the board.

They had just about finished when Gary Rasmussen came into the office. He was sweating as if he’d run down the three flight of stairs from his office. He paused to catch his breath.

“Ok you got your trained investigator,” his breathing was still hitched.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’ve got another murder, this time in Battersea Park. The MO looks like it might be connected to the motel case. Go and prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong,” Gary wiped sweat from his brow.

At that exact moment Alice Leasingham’s phone pinged as did Steve’s.

“It’s Bob. He needs me at a murder scene. Battersea Park,” Alice looked at the screen of her phone.

Steve pulled out his phone and saw a text message also from Bob requesting he come to a crime scene at Battersea Park.

“Fuck!” Steve checked he had everything he needed and snatched up his car keys whilst Alice quickly checked the contents of her CSI crash-kit.

“Let’s go!” Alice and Steve brushed past Gary Rasmussen who was leaning against the door-jam praying to whatever god looked over policemen.

“It ain’t a serial until there’s three,” he whispered.

The scene at the Park Services hut was nothing like the scene at the Abacha Motel and everything like the scene at the motel. The area was fenced off with crime tape and uniformed cops were treading carefully around the exterior, putting little orange neon flags on potential clues. A CSI tech was pouring plaster into tire tracks. The path leading to the doorway was laid with crime scene tiles.

Two police cruisers and a crime scene van were parked just outside the taped off area; a Park Services truck was parked next to the work hut. A CSI tech was cataloguing evidence bags before putting them away. Two men in Park Services uniforms were being interviewed by police officers. They both looked pale and shaken.

Steve parked outside the crime scene perimeter. Alice went over to the crime scene van and Steve approached the two men being interviewed. One of the police officers met him half way.

“They picked up their truck at the depot this morning around seven, drove out here and found the door had been jimmied. Said it’s not the first time it’s happened and figured it was kids or junkies but then they found the victim. Said they didn’t touch much but we’ll take them downtown and get detailed statements and print them,” the officer summarised what he knew.

“Good work. You don’t think they're suspects?” he had to ask.

“Not a chance but we’ll confirm the facts once we have their statements,” the officer smiled grimly and turned on his heels and went back to continue his interview.

Over at the crime van Steve put on Tyvek over-boots and surgical gloves and Alice stepped into a full hazmat suit. He waited for her and they logged into the scene and entered the hut together.

It smelled of two-stroke gasoline, decaying vegetation, old sweat and fried food. Steve surveyed the brush-cutters, chainsaws and other power tools hanging from hooks on the wall and some others laid out on the workbenches for repair and maintenance. Yellow PVC raincoats and orange hi-vis work vests hung from wooden pegs next to the power tools.

He followed Alice to the scene of the crime at the back of the hut where the workmen had set themselves up a little kitchen and rec space. He observed the two battered lounge chairs, the reclaimed coffee table, the old flat-screen mounted on the wall and the salvaged appliances in the crude kitchenette.

Alice went over to join Bob Tanner, carefully putting her pelican case down and opening it up.

The deceased lay face down on a steel-framed camp bed propped along the back wall. Her legs were spread wide. Her pantyhose and hotpants had been crudely pulled up over her buttocks. The smell of semen was strong. He noted the condom wrapper and unused condom on the floor.

The setting was different but the signature was the same, Steve would bet a year’s pay that it was the same perp.

“The strangulation is identical, the staging of the body, the sexual rituals appear the same although he spent a little more time with this one,” Bob Tanner came over and summarised what he’d observed already.

“Can we turn her over?” Steve asked.

“Brendan, you finished? You got enough pictures and taken all the trace?” Bob asked the ME and crime scene techs.

They all nodded.

Steve and Bob carefully turned the victim over on her back.

As they did her wig fell off. The victim had a buzz-cut under a pantyhose skullcap and was obviously male. His face had been feminised by the heavy makeup and the wig. He was flat-chested, the satin blouse he was wearing clung to his ribcage; there was no bra.

“This one’s different,” Steve mumbled to himself.

Steve, Bob, Alice and Brendan took a while to observe the victim whilst a CSI tech took a series of photographs.

They couldn’t help noticing that the victim had stubble on his chest.

“The victim shaves their body but hasn’t done so for a couple of days. That wig is a cheap store-bought synthetic, shake-n-go, the makeup is heavy but not professionally blended,” Steve began making notes on his tablet.

“Shake-n-go?” Alice asked.

“Straight out of the box, no styling,” Steve’s knowledge of wigs came from Felicity and the drag queens at the club.

“The victim presents as female but I don’t think they are transgender. More like a transvestite… a crossdresser,” Steve surmised.

“The face is very attractive, the figure slim, good legs and buttocks. In a dark room she’d pass as femme,” Steve continued.

“Or a dark street corner?” Bob pointed to the track marks on the inside of the victim’s arm.

“Could be a pro?” he speculated.

Steve surveyed the scene again and took it all in including the cheap fake fur bolero jacket on the table.

“Another prostitute but this is no April Summers. I bet this one is street,” Steve sounded confident.

Steve deliberately used neutral pronouns. Until the victim’s chosen gender was established he didn’t want to disrespect the dead.

Steve and Alice worked the scene until their presence was no longer needed and then they left the CSI techs to continue doing what they did best. Brendan Scott left with the body and advised that he would conduct the autopsy first thing the next day.

They drove back to Police Plaza and began to download their evidence and observations into a new case file which they linked to the April Summers case file.

“We need to link all of the similarities between the two cases but also identify the differences. We can’t assume the crimes are linked until we prove it,” Alice said as she tapped her keyboard.

“First off we have to ID the victim and inform the next of kin,” Steve replied as he worked through the list of items he had found in the victim’s purse: condoms, lubricant, chewing gum, a small baggie of crack cocaine, a crack pipe, cigarettes and lighter; nothing to identify the victim.

“He’s Leroy Dubbin or Loretta when he’s working the street,” Penelope Benson said from the doorway causing both Steve and Alice to jump with surprise.

Penelope was wearing her Balwyn PD police officer’s dress uniform which was the mandated uniform for officers undertaking administrative duties or attending official functions and parades. The uniform hadn't changed since the 1970s, the PD stubbornly stuck to the past, calling it tradition.

It consisted of a navy blue skirt and jacket with badges and insignia appropriate for her rank and grade. Steve noted the numerous citations and decorations on her left breast. Her white blouse was wrinkled and grimy from lifting boxes in the evidence room. Tan pantyhose and black low heels completed the ensemble; she held her service cap in her left hand. Her makeup was on the heavy side but she was still a good looking woman for her age.

“What are you doing here Bishop? I thought you’d been assigned to administrative duties,” Steve bristled.

“Rasmussen assigned me to you on temporary duty. Apparently you need a trained investigator and I’m the only one available. Funny how when the shit hits the fan they break the glass and bring out the bad penny,” Penelope entered the room uninvited and perched herself across from Steve and Alice.

Like most of the female police officers Penelope had her uniform tailored to fit and had shortened the skirt to just above regulation length and had cinched the waist of her jacket. She dropped her cap on the desk and dragged a stool up between Steve and Alice. When she sat the hem of her skirt rode up revealing the dark band of her control top pantyhose. Her perfume was cloying, deliberately applied heavy to mask the stink of last night’s bourbon. She chewed gum to freshen her breath.

Steve had worked for Penelope when she headed the Task Force and although they had never hit it off they had a mutual respect for each other. He was particularly impressed with how she had overcome the prejudice against her being a transgender woman early in her career. She was respected by everyone in the PD and her recent fall from grace, marital breakup and lapse in sobriety was tolerated but she was on borrowed time. She needed to clean up her act or she was likely to get fired, heroine or not.

Steve had never been physically attracted to Penelope Bishop but as he studied her time-worn but still attractive face, her glacial-green eyes, the heft of her bosom, her curvaceous figure and long legs, he could see why so many men in the PD lusted after her.

Penelope was aware that Steve was studying her but she ignored him. She leaned across him and clicked the mouse and bought up a mug shot on the screen. Her arm brushed Steve’s chest and he felt a spark of something and he swallowed and leaned away from her, giving her some space.

“Leroy Dubbin, aged twenty eight, no fixed address, just completed a one year parole period after a two-year stint in a medium security prison near Austin,” Penelope tapped the screen.

“He’s a junkie and street level dealer and he’s gay. As soon as he was incarcerated he knew that he would be grist for the mill being overtly gay. For his own protection he voluntarily became the prison wife of Alexi Sales who was his cell block boss,” Penelope explained.

“Alexi smuggled in female clothing and makeup and feminised Leroy who after lights-out became Loretta. As well as tending to Alexi’s needs, Loretta was prostituted to the other inmates.”

“When Leroy was released he dropped Loretta’s persona but he continued to sell his fag ass for drug money. He soon realised that if he hit the streets as Loretta he could make more money. So Leroy became Loretta at night as a matter of financial convenience; he has no gender dysphoria per se, he just crossdressed to make money,” Penelope slid off the stool and straightened her skirt.

“And you know all this how?” Steve asked.

“Leroy was also a snitch. Not really ever a CI but he sold the odd titbit of information to supplement his habit. I’ve used his services now and then over the years,” Penelope took off her jacket and hung it on a coat hanger.

“So boss? Am I hired?” she smirked at Steve and pulled up a seat at her old workstation and fired up the computer.

“Do I have a choice?” Steve replied.

“Not really. It’s me or some dumb-ass rookie,” Penelope smiled at Steve.

“You’re hired. Welcome back to the Task Force,” Steve returned her smile.

The three-person team went to work chronicling the evidence, putting together a timeline and calling in supporting agencies, lighting fires under bureaucrats. A police patrol found the burned out BMW at the quarry. Two of the tires hadn't burned and were identified as being a preliminary match for the tire tracks in Battersea Park. Penelope searched the DMV records and found the owner.

“Why do idiots keep their spare car keys under the inside fender,” Penelope shook her head and hung up her phone.

“The BMW was stolen from a house in Forest Gardens two nights ago. It’s getting trucked to the compound but it’s burnt out and we’re unlikely so retrieve any evidence,” Penelope pinned a downloaded picture of the burned out BMW on the wall.

Alice Leasingham’s phone rang and she took the call.

“Preliminaries in from CSI. Fingerprints from the Park Services hut match those taken at the Abacha Motel. They're still waiting for a DNA match,” Alice looked expectantly at Steve.

“Do we go ahead and tell the Chief that it’s the same killer?” Steve said to Penelope who had her head buried in her computer screen.

She held up a finger signifying Steve should wait.

He took a beat and let Penelope work the keyboard and mouse. He didn’t want her to assume that she was back in charge but he valued her input.

“Bingo!” Penelope’s smiling face looked up from the screen.

Steve noted that she was pretty when she smiled, which was seldom.

“The burner phone used by the perp to lure April Summers to the Abacha Motel,” Penelope snapped her fingers at Alice Leasingham who obediently came over to look at Penelope’s screen.

“Shit I should have found that!” Alice berated herself.

“We’ve all been busy Alice. I only just thought of it myself,” Penelope consoled her colleague.

“You ladies want to let me in on this,” Steve sniped.

Penelope nodded at Alice.

“The perp’s burner phone pinged off a cell tower in Battersea Park two nights before he killed April Summers. He was already casing the park service hut even before he killed April,” Alice announced.

Steve rubbed his chin. The two murders were now intrinsically linked.

“Maybe he considered using the hut to meet April,” Steve opined.

“From what we know of April she wouldn’t have met him there. She may have been a prostitute but she was no street walker,” Penelope offered a contrary opinion and Steve nodded his agreement.

“Was our killer already planning his next murder before he killed April?” Steve tossed out another postulation.

“Or he could have been scouting for somewhere to use whenever the occasion arose,” Penelope countered.

“Keeping it for a contingency. Then he found Loretta on the street and she triggered something that caused him to act out,” Steve went along with her hypothesis.

“We need to narrow down the signatures that trigger him,” Alice agreed.

“We need to hit the streets and talk to the other hookers. You fancy a date tonight? A rendezvous on Bridge Street,” Penelope smiled at Steve.

He nodded.

“Ok. I’m going home to get changed out of this fetishist dream of a uniform into something more suitable. Pick me up at eight?” she asked Steve who looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly 7pm.

Steve followed Penelope outside into the corridor and pulled Penelope into the stairwell by the crook of her arm.

“Stay off the sauce,” he growled.

Penelope just glared at him and shook off his grip.

He watched her walk away down the deserted corridor and couldn’t help but stare at her ass and legs.

“Fuck!” he hissed and began to climb the stairs to tell the Chief of Detectives that the same man who had killed April Summers had killed Leroy Dubbin.

When Penelope arrived at the small bungalow that until recently she had shared with Bradley Wilson she saw Ellery Gamble’s motorcycle parked in the driveway.

“Fuck!” she hissed and got out of her vehicle.

Didn’t Ellery know that he was just a convenient fuck whenever Penelope got drunk and melancholy? He was a boy-man: young, handsome, fit and about as intelligent as a sack of hammers.

After her first husband Randy Cole had died on the job Penelope had used alcohol and sex to try to numb the pain; to try to ease the guilt. She was already drinking heavy and catting around before Randy was killed by a hit and run driver.

FBI agent Bradley Wilson had rescued her. She had hated Bradley when she first met him, seconded to the Task Force to help solve the Sleeping Beauties murder case but she fell in love with him. With Silvia Bickle, her partner and best friend supporting her, she had driven off her demons.

It all came crashing down when she had been seduced by Melissa Doyle who was Silvia’s lover and life-partner. The scandal and backlash against her had ruined Penelope’s life; she had lost her second husband and her best friend and had been demoted and relegated to the evidence room as punishment.

She was using alcohol and sex yet again to ease her conscience but maybe she had a chance to redeem herself now that she was back on the Task Force.

The problem was that Ellery Gamble had taken her advances as some sort of declaration of love. He was nearly half her age for fuck sake!

She found Ellery sitting in the swing on the back porch. Penelope bristled. That was where she and Bradley sat on quiet evenings, holding hands, content with each other’s company.

Ellery scrambled off the swing, nearly falling down in his haste. He was so clumsy that Penelope wondered how he managed to stay astride his 1200cc BMW motorcycle.

“You look kinda sexy in that uniform,” Ellery held Penelope lightly by her elbows and looked lovingly into her green eyes.

“I suppose you do too,” Penelope admitted.

Ellery’s blue uniform clung to his muscled torso like it had been painted on.

“I gotta get changed and get back on the job. I’m back working as a detective again with the Task Force,” she eased herself out of Ellery's embrace and found her keys.

When Ellery followed her inside Penelope got a little angry.

“I don’t have time to fuck around Ellery,” Penelope tried to push him out the door but he was far too powerful for her to succeed.

“We can fool around a little before you get changed. You gotta take your clothes off anyway,” he grinned at her and she noticed the thick bulge in his tight pants.

For some reason she looked over at the kitchen counter. There was half-bottle of cheap whisky on the counter and she desperately wanted to bring it to her lips and feel the liquid burn her throat as she chugalugged it. She knew that she should end her relationship or whatever it was she had going with Ellery but fucking him seemed the lesser of two evils.

Penelope pounced on him, kissing him viciously as she furiously unbuckled his duty belt and fumbled with his pants. Ellery tried to speak but she drove her tongue into his mouth to shut him up. She didn’t want anything from him except his penis.

She yanked his tight motorman’s pants down to his knees and took the girth of his huge cock in her hands and squeezed it. Ellery sighed into her mouth, she could feel the pre-seminal fluid begin to flow and she massaged it into his flesh. His hand went under her Penelope’s skirt, inside her pantyhose and found her cock already elongating along her perineum.

Ellery had been useless at first. As much as he had wanted to pleasure Penelope he had been afraid to touch her penis. The fantasy of fucking a trans woman was a lot different to the reality but Penelope had cured him of that in the few days that they had been lovers.

He eased her cock from between her legs but left it nestled inside her pantyhose and satin panties. He began to stroke it though the silky layers of delicate fabric knowing it would drive Penelope wild

And it did. The feel of slinky diaphanous nylon and satin on the sensitive flesh of her erect penis felt magnificent. Penelope nearly forgot that she was in a hurry as she let Ellery stroke her through her undergarments, feeling his hard cock throbbing in her hand.

Their kisses became frenzied and Ellery began to guide her towards the bedroom but Penelope had no time for that.

She dragged him by his shirt to the kitchen countertop and he took the hint. He put his hands around her slim waist and hefted her onto the countertop without even breaking the kiss. Penelope rubbed his cock on her pantyhose-sheathed thigh and felt him shudder. He let go of her penis and began to yank at her panties and pantyhose, wanting to get them down, to get access to her ass.

Penelope shook her head and grunted. She tore a hole in the crotch of her pantyhose and eased her panties aside, exposing her sphincter. Ellery’s fingers scrambled around the countertop until her found the butter dish. He scooped a dollop of margarine into his fingers and rubbed it on his cock as Penelope frantically guided it to her sphincter. She wanted him inside her desperately.

She opened her legs wide, lifting her feet high, putting her ankles on his shoulders, offering herself to Ellery like a slattern.

Ellery positioned his cock at the entrance to her anus and pushed, ramming his huge cock into her ass in one thrust. Penelope bit her hand to stifle a scream and lay back on the countertop and let Ellery ravage her.

It was over quickly. Ellery gripped her thighs with his big meaty hands and held her while he savagely rammed his cock in and out of her anus. Even with the margarine her anus was tight and gripped his large appendage snugly as he plowed his cock in and out of her, delighting in the feel of her sphincter gripping his tender flesh, the feel of her panties and pantyhose on his scrotum and thighs, her pretty face contorted in pleasure and pain.

Ellery’s cock was bruising Penelope’s anus. It was almost like being raped but she craved the forcefulness of the act; the brutality, the animalistic rutting. Ellery’s cock stretched her sphincter, eliciting ripples of pleasure which combined with the deep rings of delight that radiated from her prostate every time Ellery’s glans rammed against it.

“Oh god!” she cried as her penis, standing proud and erect, erupted without her even touching it.

She came so hard that she didn’t care that she was ejaculating her seed all over her skirt, blouse and jacket. She felt a second orgasm building as Ellery’s cock expanded inside her, quivering as it blasted his issue deep in her ass. Her body convulsed on the countertop and she moaned like a banshee. Ellery stifled her screams by putting his hand over her mouth.

The feel of her nylon-clad legs on his torso and her pulsating anus gripping his cock was tremendously arousing. Fucking her in her policewoman’s uniform was kinky. He’d never tell Penelope this but she reminded him of an Aunt who he used to masturbate over in his teens.

As Penelope’s orgasm began to subside and her breathing began to return to normal she realised what she had done. She had used Ellery to slake a different kind of thirst. She knew that she was addicted to sex as much as she was addicted to alcohol and all she had done was swapped the witch for the bitch.

She pushed Ellery off her even as he tried to be tender with her, wanting to hold her and kiss her in post-coital bliss.

“Get off me. Go home! I have to work!” Penelope struggled out from underneath him.

Her uniform was a mess, wrinkled and spattered with semen. If she didn’t get the semen off her skirt and jacket soon they would be ruined. An image flashed through her mind of the last time she had descended into a period of alcohol-fuelled sex addiction: using a black sharpie to cover dried semen stains on her navy skirt before she went to work.

Penelope got to her feet and began to rip off her clothes. Ellery attempted to help but she pushed him away.

“Fuck off! Go home! Go to the Longhorn and tell the guys you nailed Penelope Bishop again if that’s what you want,” she screamed at him

“You are one cold hard bitch!” Ellery hissed as he adjusted his clothing.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” Penelope called over her shoulder as she made her way to the bathroom.

*****

Steve Edwards watched Penelope Bishop as she walked down her driveway towards his unmarked police cruiser. She had a determined look on her face and despite the heavy makeup which was her signature, she looked strained. Her weight had fluctuated over the years and it looked like she was replacing meals with booze or just plain forgetting to eat. She was far from skinny but she was lean except for her bosom and buttocks, both of which he suspected had had work done on them.

She was wearing black lycra leggings and black high heels and when she turned to lock her front door he appreciated the way they that they clung to her ass. Her legs were long and well-formed, her breasts were hidden under a fleecy parka but the heft of her bosom was pronounced. Her long blonde hair was piled under a woollen beanie. In a pinch she could pass as one of the streetwalkers they intended to interview.

“Any more news?” she asked as she settled into the passenger seat and checked the contents of her handbag.

“I’ve got Alice chasing down Leroy Dubbin’s last known address from his parole officer.”

“I assume it was a halfway house and maybe one of the tenants knows where he moved on to when his parole period was completed,” Steve put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

He noticed that her perfume was similar to a scent that Felicity sometimes wore and he imagined Felicity lounging around her hotel in LA. They’d spoken on Skype while Steve ate a TV dinner at the kitchen counter. He cleared his head and concentrated on the case.

“I know a couple of the trans hookers who work the south side of Bridge Street where Loretta sold her ass,” Penelope looked pointedly at Steve.

Penelope knew that Steve lived with Felicity and that Felicity owned Ride em’ Cowgirl. It was quite the scandal when Steve had come out publicly about his relationship with Felicity because she was a minor celebrity in Balwyn and popular with the LGBT community. Penelope had been popular too until the scandal involving her relationship with Melissa Doyle had hit the media.

Penelope had met Felicity a couple of times at Balwyn PD social functions and they had circled each other warily and arched their haunches like two alley cats about to fight. The fact that they were both trans women did nothing to endear themselves to each other. Steve had deliberately withheld from Felicity the fact that Penelope was back on the Task Force.

Steve drove through the suburbs and into downtown Balwyn. Located on Interstate 10, two and half hours west of Austin with a population that hovered around 150,000, Balwyn was a mid-sized city. The city’s affluence and the high police to civilian population rate meant that street crime remained low for a city of its size. People felt safe on the streets of Balwyn and Balwyn PD used unorthodox methods to keep it that way.

Unable to completely stamp out prostitution and recreational drug use the PD went to great efforts to keep it confined to one location: Bridge Street which was unofficially known as the Bridge Street free zone. The street was lined with titty bars, adult stores and greasy spoons. Visitors and locals alike cruised the street looking for something spicy. The police deliberately kept a low profile on Bridge Street but diligently patrolled the adjacent streets and were intolerant of any miscreants who attempted to bring their unsavoury behaviours outside of the delineated area. Silvia Bickle called Bridge Street an island of crud in a sea of resplendence.

Steve parked his car and he and Penelope walked one block over to enter Bridge Street from the north, the blaring music emanating from the bars and the smells of fried food gave the place an almost carnival atmosphere. The streets were full of working class men and the occasional businessman looking to blow off steam. Some of the more affluent students from Balwyn College bar hopped looking for cheap beer and weed. They passed working girls out plying their trade, the standard of the hookers steadily declining as they worked their way south.

“Ok you see that girl across the street? I know her. She isn’t a CI but she helps me out now and then. Let’s not spook her or compromise her in front of the other girls,” Penelope lifted her chin pointing across the street.

Four women in ‘cooch-cooler’ skirts, stripper heels, open blouses with big hair and heavy makeup walked slowly back and forth from corner to corner. Penelope and Steve watched as a man approach one of girls and talk briefly to her before she led him down a dark alley.

“Think they’ve gone to play scrabble?” Penelope surprised him by putting her arm through his and sidling up to him.

“We’re a couple looking for an adventure to spice up our life,” she said by way of explanation.

They crossed the street and made a beeline towards a girl Steve estimated might be in her early twenties. At first she smiled as they approached hoping to make a good score but when she recognised Penelope her smile turned into a scowl.

“What you want?” the woman adopted a distinct street accent that didn’t suit her.

Although she wore the uniform of a hooker: cooch-curtains, fuck-me heels, tits-out blouse, nylons and face paint, she didn’t have the weathered look of the street.

“Jaylene, play nice and make it look like you're working a trade,” Penelope kept a false smile fixed on her face.

“We’re just two women haggling over the price of a threesome,” Penelope said through her fixed grin.

“I ain’t sucking your dick Penny but I’ll throw your man a freebie. You can watch,” Jaylene looked Steve up and down like he was a piece of meat.

Penelope opened her palm to reveal a small roll of bills and gave Jaylene a questioning stare.

Jaylene looked at the money, licked her lips and nodded her head curtly.

“Let’s go to our car,” Penelope continued to smile.

Penelope hugged Steve and kissed his cheek, a charade for the other working girls to make them think she was pleased that she and her man were about to embark on an exotic threesome. Steve blushed and when Jaylene took his other arm his face flared red.

“Don’t look all heathered honey, you supposed to look like we goin’ for a good time,” Jaylene breathed into his ear sultrily.

Her breath was warm and smelled of bubble gum, her cheap perfume was cloying. Despite the situation Steve felt his dick twitch. Another time he might have been susceptible to the premise of taking on these two women but the thought was fleeting.

They walked the block and half back to Steve’s car, they checked to see that no one was watching and got in, Steve in the front and the women in the back.

“This about Loretta and the other bitch?” Jaylene rummaged in her purse and Steve rolled down the front windows in anticipation that she was going to smoke.

He was surprised and annoyed that Jaylene didn’t feel sorry for the two murdered women.

“What? You think all trannies are in the same club? We hang out together at the coffee shop swapping recipes and talking about the price of pantyhose? Ask your girl here… ain’t no sisterhood of the travelling tucking panties,” she tucked a stick of gum under her tongue and Steve rolled up the windows to keep out the cold.

“Knock it off Jaylene; I know you’re enrolled in the adult degree program at Balwyn College,” Penelope poked Jaylene in the ribs and Jaylene shrugged her shoulders.

Jaylene’s inflection suddenly changed from street to a refined Southern accent.

“That’s right Penny and this is how I’m paying for my BA. Stocking shelves at Brookshire's sure isn’t going to pay for it,” Jaylene snapped her gum.

Penelope hated to be called Penny but she let the dig go.

“So tell us about Loretta?” she asked calmly.

“Leroy? That fuckin’ crossdressing faggot!” Jaylene sniped.

“Your man here knows about gender identity versus gender expression?” she reached out and stroked Steve’s shoulder affectionately.

“My girlfriend is Felicity Goodnite,” Steve took a little illicit pleasure at the surprised look on Jaylene’s face.

She took a beat and continued.

“In that case you're all over it, right?” but Jaylene continued to lecture them both anyway.

“You see girls like myself, Penelope here and your girl Felicity identify as female. Our gender identity is how we see ourselves; our own internal sense and personal experience of gender. That's what makes us transgender women,” Steve put up a hand to stop her but Jaylene continued to lecture.

“Gender expression includes all the ways a person communicates their gender based on societal factors such as gender norms and perceptions. Penny, Felicity and I live our lives full time as women, presenting as women.”

“Now as you would know from the girls who work for your missus, gender expression is not binary. Most of those drag queens are homosexual men who present as women to entertain but when they do their behaviour and outward appearance such as their dress, hair, make-up, body language and voice is female.”

“I know that for some of them, their actual gender identity switches depending on how they express themselves. They have a femme side that only manifests itself in drag. Just like the fetishic transvestites who hang out at some of the Bridge Street bars. For a couple of hours a week they like to present as women and maybe suck a dick or two and take it up the ass but for those few precious hours Manny has become Mary,” Jaylene rattled on.

“Is this going somewhere? We don’t need a lecture on gender identity,” Penelope interjected.

“You know I don’t really hate those men who like to slip into a corset, nylons and heels, put on a wig and paint their faces to fulfil some sexual fantasy. But I hated Leroy Dubbin,” Jaylene would not be knocked off her soapbox.

“That man didn’t have a modicum of femininity in him. He hijacked the identity of Loretta just to make money so he could stick that shit up his nose or in his arm. There was no real transformation when he changed from Leroy to Loretta, he just put on those clothes every night and sucked dick for money. It’s men like him that promote the prejudice and hatred of the transgendered. Every time I hear about a trans woman getting beat up I blame Leroy Dubbin,” Jaylene let out a long sigh.

“Surely you’re not proposing that Leroy got what he deserved?” Steve was astonished.

“I feel truly sorry for what happened to that drag queen got killed in the motel but there’s no sympathy on Bridge Street for Leroy Dubbin. He took away our trade, he stole from his clients, he sold drugs, he was a shit stain. He was hated by everyone who knew him so don’t expect any help from us,” Jaylene talked as if she represented all the hookers on Bridge Street.

“He was still a human being,” Penelope reasoned.

Jaylene paused and took a deep breath.

“On the night of, I approached a man cruising the street driving a white BMW SUV. It was good car, he was well dressed and he was kinda gawky lookin’. You know, a Poindexter type, safe. It looked like a good score. He waved me away and picked up Leroy... Loretta. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Maybe he was a cheapskate or was looking for rough trade because Loretta presented rough,” Jaylene said.

Penelope and Steve looked at each other knowingly. Jaylene had witnessed Loretta getting into the killer’s car. She had actually seen the killer.

“Would you be prepared to come down to Police Plaza and make a statement, provide a description of the man, maybe look at some pictures or help our sketch artist put together a facial composite?” Penelope asked.

“Not tonight. I’ll come in tomorrow. Tonight I gotta earn. That designer vagina won’t pay for itself,” Jaylene said obstinately.

She tapped Steve on the shoulder.

“So now we done talking you wanna hop in the back with me and bang tidy honey?” Jaylene reverted to her street talk.

Penelope handed Jaylene the roll of bills and reached across to open the door for her.

“Given the circumstances maybe we should drive Jaylene back to her corner,” Steve said.

“You got yourself a real gentleman here Penny. You treat him right and you might steal him away from that snooty-ass drag queen he calls his missus,” Jaylene cackled.

“Be careful. Warn the other girls ok?” Steve said as they pulled up to the curb.

“Isn’t that your job?” Jaylene said just before she slammed the door closed.

“She’s got a point. We need to get the word out that there is predator preying on trans women,” Steve said to Penelope who had joined him the front of the vehicle.

“Yeah. Good luck getting Gary Rasmussen to convince the city bureaucrats to make public that there is possibly a serial killer killing trans prostitutes,” Penelope growled.

“Maybe you can warn them all at the next club meeting,” Steve said dryly.

Penelope punched him in the arm. She begrudgingly admitted to herself that Stave wasn’t really the asshole she thought he was.

Steve drove Penelope home; he pulled into her driveway and killed the lights but left the engine running.

They sat there in the dark. The silence was awkward.

“There’s a bottle sitting on the kitchen countertop,” Penelope breathed.

“So what? Leave it there or put it away. Better still, pour it down the sink,” Steve replied.

“I’d feel stronger if you came inside with me,” Penelope whispered.

She put her hand on his forearm and turned to him.

“I can’t do that Penelope,” Steve gently removed her hand from his arm.

“Why?” Penelope looked at him but Steve stared resolutely ahead.

“You know why,” Steve switched on the headlights and put the car in gear.

“Yeah… I know,” Penelope sighed and opened the door.

Steve tried to concentrate on the case while he drove home but he couldn’t. He tried to think of Felicity but he couldn’t conjure an image of her. All he could see was Penelope in her tight uniform skirt or her black leggings.

The images of Penelope abruptly disappeared as he approached his apartment block.

Wendy Beaumont was sitting on the Italian marble steps out front of the building backlit lit by the fluorescents in the lobby.

To be continued

The killer had gone to an all-male college. Although he was majoring in business studies and accounting he was also a performer in the campus amateur theatrical society which liked to put on light musical comedies and modern farces. Being an all-male school the men played the female roles.

It was during one such a production that his fetish began to intensify. The play was a nonsensical musical comedy in which he was playing the role of a school jock who is besotted by the head cheerleader. For most of the play the boy playing cheerleader is dressed in only in a little pleated skirt, leotard, and tights with big hair and heavy makeup. The boy playing the part of ‘Susan the cheerleader’ was slim and effeminate; perfect for the role. If the killer hadn’t known that it was an eighteen year old boy under the makeup and wig he would have sworn it was a young woman. It was easy for the killer to think of Susan only as a girl because she was so convincing.

The killer was raised in a very wealthy conservative household, hence his enrolment in the all-male college. His father wore suits and his mother wore dresses or skirts and blouses, never pants. She wore hosiery as a matter of course and high heels, full makeup and coiffed hair were the convention. Growing up he had sometimes seen his mother dressed only in her lingerie: pantyhose with high-cut satin panties worn over and a matching bra. He’d been fascinated by his mother’s smooth mound. He knew that hidden under the layers of satin and nylon was something forbidden, otherwise why would his mother go to such extremes to cover it up and to scowl at him if she saw him staring?

That mound had captivated him. The shiny nylon pantyhose stretched across his mother’s firm thighs, the little crinkles in the crease where her legs joined her torso, the smooth lustrous V-shaped satin covering her pubis. He knew that something wonderful existed under there, something forbidden. He’d sneak into his mother’s bathroom and caress the garments he found in her laundry hamper. He’d hold them to his face delighting in the feel of the delicate fabric and the scent of his mother’s perfume and something else… something musky and decadent.

He’d wrap the silky garments around his turgid member and masturbate into them, imagining that his cock was pressed against his mother’s satin-clad pubis.

When their housekeeper told his mother that she had found ejaculate in his mother’s underwear his mother knew immediately who the culprit was. She’d fired the maid and even though he was nearly a grown man she had put Mitch across her knees and spanked him until his buttocks were red raw.

There was one night when he’d come downstairs because he couldn’t sleep and heard his mother crying. He’d padded his way barefoot to his father’s drawing room to investigate the noise. His mother was on her back with her legs high, her dress rucked up. His father was between his mother’s legs, his trousers around his knees and he was thrusting against his mother who was whimpering and crying, but not in a bad way.

He’d stood in the doorway staring at his mother’s legs sheathed in sheer nylons, red nail-polished toes pointed to the ceiling while his father grunted and groaned between them. The look of alarm on his mother’s face when she saw him sent him racing back upstairs to bed.

His mother had pulled him from under his bedclothes and laid him across her lap and paddled his ass. All he could think about was the feeling of her silky nylons on his bare flesh as she beat his buttocks until they glowed pink and felt like fire. He knew that between her legs was that silken mound that had somehow attracted his father to the extent that he’d put his wife on the couch, pulled down his trousers and put his thing inside it.

After this episode he became more fascinated with his mother and was caught again and again by her spying on her and each time she put him across her knees and spanked him.

There was a scene in the play where they kissed. It was a superficial, fatuous scene where the footballer kissed the cheerleader and at first she welcomed his advances but then pushed him away, rejecting him. Their tutor Mr Fabisher, who all the boys suspected was gay, told them it was ok if they just air-kissed or if he kissed Susan’s cheek.

They could both feel the tension whenever they rehearsed the scene. At first his lips brushed Susan’s cheek while he held her at arm’s distance. They both agreed that it was unconvincing so he held her closer, at first awkwardly, but soon her tiny body seemed to fit perfectly against his when he held her.

They both knew. They never spoke about it or admitted it but they both knew immediately that they were attracted to each other. Why else would they need to run-through the scene continuously and then agree to dress-rehearse the scene repeatedly alone in Susan’s dorm. She was always Susan, never Grant, the boy whose body Susan inhabited.

The killer could recall their first fumbling embraces, neither of them willing to admit what they felt for each other. He recalled his lips brushing her soft cheek, the feel of her soft body pressed against his, his lips moving to the side of her mouth, feeling her tremble when they did. He recalled the first time they kissed properly, his lips closing over hers, the taste of her lipstick, the scent of her perfume, which she really didn’t need to wear for the role. Then the day she opened her lips tentatively and he slipped his tongue into her sweet mouth, her arms around his neck, her body pressed against his, standing on tippy-toe in her high heels. Why was she wearing high heels with a cheerleader’s costume? He didn’t care.

He recalled the first time Susan's hand brushed against his cock. They had both pretended it was an accident but the next time they rehearsed in private his hand ‘accidently’ glided across her mound; the feel of the hem of her little skirt on his wrist, the caress of her tight smooth lycra-clad mound and her soft silky gossamer-clad thighs on his fingertips.

Susan had gasped into his mouth and he had pulled her tighter into his embrace. She made no pretence of it being accidental when Susan gripped his cock through his pants and squeezed it. He ejaculated into his trousers whispering obscenities into her sweet mouth. The next time, at his insistence, Susan had taken it out and stroked it while his fingers caressed her pubic mound. He could feel the heat coming from the thing between her legs but as long as it stayed safely tucked away it didn’t matter.

That time his seed had spattered across her belly and she had trembled in his arms whispering endearments into his mouth as he kissed her. Then came the time she allowed him to guide her to the bed and lie on top of her. She’d helped him undress, neither of them caring to admit that what they were doing had nothing to do with their characters in the play. The first time he had pressed his cock against her mound and she had locked her legs around him, encouraging him to rut against her. He suspected that she had ejaculated into her tights but he didn’t want to know.

Then the time she rolled over and unsnapped the clasps on the crotch of her leotard and pulled down her tights exposing her soft buttocks. It was Susan who had taken him in her fingers and guided his throbbing manhood into the cleft between her cheeks and pressed it to her puckered sphincter. It was Susan who had pushed back against him so that his cock slipped into her pre-greased hole like a knife through butter. The killer had felt the warm moist flesh of her anus envelope his cock and had experienced the most intense orgasm he had ever felt as he gripped her thighs and pulled her ass against his body so could empty every single sperm into her.

The next time she had lay on her back with a pillow under her. He liked this better because it was more like she was a woman. He recalled the images of his father lying between his mother’s legs. He liked it because he could kiss her while he fucked her, she could wrap her legs around his and he could gaze into her pretty eyes enhanced by her colourful eyeshadow, mascaraed eyelashes and eyeliner. He insisted that she keep on her tights and panties and keep herself tucked. He’d make a little cock-sized hole in her tights so he could fuck her tight little ass.

Susan was his. She was his lover, his sweetheart, his mistress and his whore. He never wanted to see her undressed without her wig and her makeup, her male counterpart did not exist. He certainly did not want to see the repugnant thing she kept taped between her legs.

Then one day she had ruined everything. She had let it spring free and tried to guide his hand to it. He told her it was disgusting and repellent and that he didn’t want to see it never mind touch it. She’d told him that he was a hypocrite. That she didn’t mind him pretending that she was girl but not touching her genitals was unreasonable and tormenting given that she gladly offered him her mouth and her anus.

They argued. They fought. Lucky for him their raised voices were not heard over the loud music and cacophony of booming male voices coming from the other rooms in the dormitory.

He entered a fugue, coming out of it to find Susan lying dead on the bed with her legs spread wide, her skirt hiked up and his drying semen on her panty-clad pubis and nylon-sheathed thighs. Her neck was red-raw, the marks of his fingers evident, his hands stung where she had scratched him during the struggle. Later that night when the dorm was quiet he had lifted Susan into his arms and carried her out to nearby woods where he had put the noose around her neck and put the end of the rope over the branch of an elm tree. His muscles had burned as he hauled her up and tied off the rope.

He’d tried his best to wipe away any evidence on her body; he didn’t leave any footprints because of the soft mat of dead leaves on the forest floor.

He was euphoric when Susan’s death was ruled a suicide. He never thought of Susan’s male persona, she was only ever Susan to him. So when the other boys talked about Grant’s suicide it felt as if they were talking about someone that he didn’t know.

So he rationalised the killing that way. He tucked it away, deep in his subconscious. He tried as hard as he could to supress his fetish, to drive it away. He concentrated on his studies and then on work. After graduating he did a three-year stint in the Army because all of the men in his family had served and it was expected. He served as a logistics officer and completed a deployment to the Middle East, leaving the Army with an honourable discharge. He started working at an accountancy firm where he dated the pretty office girls but they never stayed with him for long. They found his fascination with their panty-clad mound pubic mounds and insistence they keep on their nylons and panties during sex a little freaky.

He moved frequently until years later he found his dream job. He was managing a bar in Balwyn Texas called Ride em’ Cowgirl where every day he was surrounded by beautiful men-women who wore provocative costumes as a matter of course. Even his boss was a beautiful trans-woman.

He let his fantasies run wild but he never acted them out until he was finally overcome with the urge to find release. He was smart enough not to engage with any of the girls who worked at the club, they just fuelled his fire. He sated his lust with professional ‘ladies’ but the memories of Susan slowly crawled out of the hole in his brain where he had buried her and eventually he had no choice but give in to his primal urges. He called them tranny whores, he raged at their lifeless bodies, he shouted obscenities at their corpses after he had finished with them.

Including Susan, Mitch Freeman had so far killed only three of the special girls that were his addiction but he knew that he couldn’t stop. He would kill more.

*****

Steve pulled up to the curb outside his apartment block and sprung the locks on the car doors. Wendy Beaumont lifted herself up from the tiled steps like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was wearing a denim skirt and matching jacket with a flannel shirt, matte black tights and low cut high heeled ankle boots. The blue denim she was wearing accentuated her flaming red hair.

Wendy opened the passenger door and leaned in. Her heavy eye makeup had run down her cheeks. She had been crying. She was wearing some sort of exotic perfume that excited him, even though it was inappropriate.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asked the obvious question.

“I’ve been to Police Plaza every day but they won’t tell me anything. They say I’m not related to April and because the investigation is ongoing they wouldn’t tell me anything anyway,” Wendy’s voice was hoarse from crying and smoking too many cigarettes.

“Did you call Alice?” Steve asked.

Wendy shrugged.

“She put me onto someone called Penelope Bishop who gave me the same line I got from Police Plaza,” Wendy produced a battered pack of Marlboro Menthols from her pocket.

When she saw that it was empty she crumpled it and dropped it in the gutter.

“You know you can be fined for littering,” Steve tried to make light of the situation.

“Arrest me,” Wendy forced a smile which lit up her face.

“Go home Wendy. I promise I’ll call tomorrow and update you,” Steve tried to suppress a yawn.

“I don’t want to go home. Everything there reminds me of April,” Wendy mumbled.

Steve paused and contemplated what he should do.

“Get it,” he finally conceded.

Wendy slid into the seat, her skirt riding high on her thighs. Steve couldn’t help but look and she saw him looking and he snapped his eyes away.

“I don’t wanna go home,” Wendy pouted.

“I’m not taking you home but I’m not parking on the street,” Steve stared ahead, already regretting his decision.

He drove around the block and entered the underground car park and parked in his assigned place. He opened the door for Wendy and helped her out of the car, his eyes once again drifting to her firm thighs sheathed in the black matte tights. Wendy knew he was looking but she said nothing and didn’t look at him. He guided her to the elevator and used his pass card to activate it.

“Nice place,” Wendy whistled as she strode around the open-plan lounge room softly touching the tchotchkes and baubles that Felicity liked to collect.

She ran her hand along the back of the white leather sofa and Steve once again noticed her chipped acrylic fingernails, the red nailpolish pared back to halfway along the nail.

“Take a seat and I’ll make us some coffee. I’ll update you on the case then I’m calling a taxi or an Uber to take you home,” Steve said from the kitchen where he was fussing with the coffee maker.

“You got anything harder?” Wendy asked, sitting herself down on the couch and pulling off her boots.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s late,” Steve replied snapping the little button to turn the coffee maker on.

“They took April’s laptop and Penelope asked me about Alan,” Wendy picked up the current edition of Vogue off the coffee table and fanned the pages without really looking at them.

“You mean Alan Wright? The man who performed with April on her OnlyFans,” Steve found cups, cream and sugar and put them on a tray.

Wendy didn’t answer; she didn’t need to.

“Penelope eventually found him in Wisconsin visiting his mother; he’s been ruled out as a suspect,” Steve continued.

“Alan wouldn’t hurt a fly. He just likes to fuck us but he’s friendly too… a real fuck buddy,” Wendy dropped the magazine back on the table.

Steve wasn’t fazed by Wendy’s profanity but he did pick up that Wendy had used the word ‘us’, implying that Steve was the lover of them both.

He carried the tray over to the couch and put in the table. He’d put two tumblers of scotch on the tray alongside the coffee.

“I thought you said it was too late,” Wendy said, picking up the scotch and ignoring the coffee.

Steve just shrugged and took a sip of his scotch and then picked up his coffee. Wendy had curled her legs under herself and was sitting on the couch just like she had when he had interviewed her in her apartment. She’d made no effort to smooth out her denim skirt and her legs were openly on display. Steve wasn't sure if this was done purposely or she just didn’t care.

“I’ll be honest with you we haven’t made as much progress as I would have liked with the case. We have a ton of forensic evidence but we don’t have a viable suspect to match it against,” Steve explained.

“We’re working through a list of men who solicited April’s services from her OnlyFans but it’s difficult, some of them used blocked numbers or anonymous email accounts set up specifically for that purpose,” Steve admitted.

“There’s a lot of so-called straight guys out there who wanna fuck a tranny,” Wendy swallowed the last of her scotch.

“Sorry I shouldn’t have said that, it’s disrespectful to April,” Wendy sighed.

She eased herself off the couch and went into the kitchen and found the bottle of scotch and brought it back to the couch and settled back into it, pouring herself a hefty slug. She held the bottle out to Steve and gave him a questioning look.

“No thanks,” he finished his coffee and poured another cup.

“And to you,” Wendy said, her voice flat.

“What?” Steve at first didn’t understand what she meant.

Wendy nodded to a life-size framed poster of Felicity Goodnite dressed in her best eleganza. She looked radiant and was wearing a jewelled crown and holding a sceptre having just won a pageant title.

“I know her. She was all April could talk about that last week before… before she died. She was so excited that she was going to work at the club owned by Felicity Goodnite,” Wendy downed her drink and made to pour another.

Steve reached across and put his hand over the glass.

“Just one more; then I’ll go,” Wendy said.

Steve nodded.

“You didn’t say,” Wendy said not looking at him as she poured her drink.

“I didn’t say what?” Steve was nonplussed.

“You let me explain to you about April’s drag like you were some novice and all the time you’re living with…” she nodded at the poster.

“I don’t make a habit of sharing my personal life with potential witnesses to a crime,” Steve said a little harshly.

“But here we are,” Wendy sighed.

“Yes, here we are,” Steve sighed too.

“Do you have anything positive?” Wendy steered the conversation back to April’s murder.

“We have something else. I wouldn’t say it’s positive but it’s linked,” Steve said tentatively.

“Go on,” Wendy looked at him intently.

Steve took a beat to study her face which was surrounded by a shock of red hair. Her bangs came down over her wide blue eyes, her nose was a little too big and crooked, and her pale skin was sprinkled with freckles, her lips were full, remnants of her pink lipstick in the corners of her mouth. She was by no means a beauty but she was uniquely alluring.

“There has been another murder. It will likely make tomorrow’s news cycle. It’s the same guy,” Steve said solemnly.

Wendy reached out and squeezed Steve’s wrist.

“You’re certain?” Wendy drilled her gaze into Steve’s eyes.

“Yes we’re certain. Same signatures, same fingerprints, some other stuff that I can’t tell you and we’re waiting for a DNA match but it’s him,” Steve said.

“And the victim?” Wendy asked expectantly.

“Trans woman prostitute,” Steve didn’t go into the specifics.

“Jeeze. Oh my god! Is there a serial killer out there?” Wendy sounded genuinely frightened.

“We aren’t saying that and technically a killer isn’t serial until he had killed three victims,” Steve blurted and instantly regretted saying it.

“Anyway you don’t fit his victim profile,” Steve realised he’d just made it worse.

“But he’s a killer! What if he knows where April lived? What if he comes there for some reason… I don’t know looking for evidence or something?” Wendy sounded paranoid but Steve understood.

“You can stay here tonight but I’m not sleeping on the couch,” Steve volunteered, a little angrily.

“Don’t bother!” Wendy recognised Steve's begrudging tone.

She tried to get up off the couch and stumbled back onto it.

“You’re staying here,” Steve said, determination evident in his inflection.

Wendy looked up at him with her panda eyes.

“I always was a cheap drunk,” she mumbled.

Steve moved her to a lounge chair while he pushed the coffee table out of the way and pulled out the sofa-bed which was already made up. They didn’t have a second bedroom and Felicity had the white leather sofa-bed custom made for such eventualities.

Steve pulled down the covers and turned on a table lamp beside the bed which he dimmed right down to a pool of pale yellow. He turned off the overhead lights.

“You can sleep here tonight. I’ll bring out a towel and some toiletries tomorrow morning,” Steve said.

Wendy was already on her feet. She had peeled off her jacket and shirt and was in the process of removing her skirt.

“I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight Wendy,” Steve said and hurriedly left the room.

Steve was awakened about an hour later by the rustle of the sheets and then the perception of someone climbing into his bed. Wendy scooted across the big bed and spooned him. He could feel her soft breath on his shoulder, her hair tickled his neck, he smelled her beguiling perfume. Her breasts were soft pillows pressed into his back and she put one leg over his as she snuggled against him. She was still wearing her tights and the smooth lycra caressed his sensitive skin.

“This is a bad idea,” Steve whispered into the dark.

“I don’t want to be alone. I just want you to comfort me; I don’t want your babies,” her breathing was heavy, her breath like a zephyr on his shoulder.

“We shouldn’t. My partner nearly lost her job for doing this; her husband left her,” Steve murmured.

“Would Felicity leave you if she found out?” Wendy rested her head on his shoulder.

Steve remained silent.

“Would she?” she nipped his ear and he flinched.

“We have an arrangement,” Steve hissed; a little angry.

“An open marriage?” her hand slid along his belly and found him hard.

She squeezed and Steve gasped.

“Something like that,” Steve sighed and rolled over.

Wendy smiled at him and squeezed him again.

“This is a bad idea,” Steve began to say again but Wendy’s lips were on his and the words got lost as he reached for her.

He pulled her close and kissed her. Her body was so different to Felicity’s. Wendy was wide hipped and she had broad shoulders, her breasts were matronly, she had a little pot belly, her skin was so soft; she felt bigger. There was more of her to hold, to explore. Her areolas were huge and her nipples were as big as blackberries when he suckled on them. Wendy cradled his head and cooed.

His mouth moved down to her belly and Wendy lay on her back as Steve kissed and licked her midriff, exploring her belly-button with his tongue. He could smell her sex. Steve hadn't had sex with a genetic woman for a long while and the difference between Wendy and Felicity’s genitalia was enticing. He nuzzled her belly and tweaked a nipple with one hand while his other traced the outline of her sex through her tights.

Wendy moaned and her body shuddered. She entwined her fingers in his hair.

Steve’s mouth travelled down to the crease at the top of her leg where he used his tongue a little before moving towards her sex.

“No! I stink! I haven’t washed since this morning,” she yanked on his hair.

Steve pressed on anyway and his tongue traced the outline of Wendy’s labia through the sheer tights.

She did stink. But it was a good stink: the pungent musky smell of womanhood that Steve hadn't smelled for quite some time. When he tore open the crotch of her tights and put his mouth on her cunt Wendy groaned. He opened her labia and his tongue found her clitoris. He lapped at the sensitive nubbin, hardly touching it. Wendy’s fingers twisted in his scalp pushing his face into her pubis. She was no longer embarrassed by her smell; she wanted Steve to use his mouth on her.

Steve slid a finger then another into Wendy’s gaping wet vagina while he suckled her clitoris, putting his whole mouth over it and using the tip of his tongue on the little pink protuberance. Wendy’s feet drummed on the bed as a mighty orgasm swept over her.

Steve rode the orgasm along with her, using his mouth, his fingers and his tongue to evoke a shattering climax as Wendy writhed on the bed, moaning and squealing, her fingers pulling painfully on his scalp.

When she began to descend from the plateaux of her orgasm Steve slipped his fingers out of her and began to snake up her body.

He lay on top of her and kissed her, driving his tongue into her mouth at the same time as he drove his cock into her sodden minge. Her cunt was hot, fleshy and buttery and enveloped his pulsing iron-hard cock. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted her legs, clamping them around his torso.

Steve put his hands under Wendy’s buttocks and gripped them, squeezing them as he drove his cock in and out of her steaming cunt. His body crushed her fat breasts, her nipples like ripe berries against his flesh. She moaned into his mouth and cycled her legs against his flanks, her silky slippery tights triggering the delicate nerves which amplified the pleasure he was feeling from her fleshy vagina clenching his cock. Her lips and tongue worked his mouth.

He dug his fingers into her buttocks so hard that her tights ripped as he drove his cock all the way inside her and ejaculated. Wendy pushed her pelvis up and ground her pubis against him, her cunt quivering, milking him of his seed, her vaginal juices flowing freely as she too climaxed.

It was hot, messy, stinky, violent sex and it was what they both needed.

Neither said anything as Steve finally lay still on top of Wendy gasping as he recovered from the earth-shattering climax. Wendy stroked his sweat-soaked hair with one hand and held him close with another. Their bodies were stuck together by sweat and sex juices. Steve fell asleep on top of her and Wendy gently rolled him off, pulled up the covers and snuggled up to him.

They both slept dreamlessly for the rest of the night.

Steve woke up to find Wendy standing at the edge of the bed. She was freshly showered and she smelled of expensive soap and perfume.

“I used Felicity’s makeup and borrowed some pantyhose. She has so much lingerie in that walk-in robe that I’m sure she won’t miss one pair,” Wendy smiled down at him.

She had her purse slung over her shoulder ready to leave.

“So you’re going to replace the pantyhose then, because you only borrowed them?” Steve tried to keep things light.

In the morning light Wendy’s unique beauty was more evident. The fresh makeup and shampooed hair had taken away the haggard look she’d had last night. Her legs were at eye-level. She was wearing flesh-toned shiny dance tights and Steve felt a stirring in his groin but he knew that pulling Wendy onto the bed would be an even worse mistake than last night had been.

“Thanks for last night… I just didn’t want to be alone,” Wendy sighed.

“Look… I’m sorry if I took advantage, I…” Steve stuttered and Wendy shut him down by bending over and kissing him on the lips.

“If anything, I took advantage of you. Get up. Go to work. Go and find out who killed my girl and arrest him,” she leaned down and rubbed her lipstick from his mouth.

Steve watched her ass in the little denim skirt as she walked to the bedroom door. He heard her heels click-clack on the Scandinavian pine then the front door open and close.

He climbed out of bed and ripped the sheets and pillowcases off the bed and dragged them to the laundry. He got the washer going then he went over to Felicity’s vanity table. He cleaned the used makeup brushes on Kleenex and put them back in their little crystal cup, he put the cap on a tube of lipstick and closed the cosmetics cases that Wendy had left open. He reached into the little tidy beside the table and removed the empty package of Weissman shimmer tights. He would throw the packaging in the trash on the way to work.

One of the rules of their open marriage was that they didn’t fuck other people in their home.

Steve had broken two cardinal rules.

*****

In the Task Force office Penelope and Alice were ready for the morning update. Gary Rasmussen had decided to attend and sat at Steve’s desk broodily drinking coffee. Steve knew better than to ask him to move. Alice Leasingham began the briefing.

“The DNA at the Park Services hut and the Abacha Motel are a match. Still no correlation in any of the State and Federal DNA and fingerprint databases,” Alice took a deep breath and continued.

“The signature appears to be the same. The perp has anal sex with the victim; there is nothing to indicate that the sex is non-consensual, he strangles the victim from behind, in both cases using a pair of L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose which we are assuming he brings to the crime scene.”

“In both cases it is evident that he also ejaculates on their clothed bodies post mortem. In the case of Loretta Dubbin it would appear that he interfered with the corpse sexually multiple times before he left the crime scene,” Alice completed her brief and sat down.

Penelope stood up and approached the crime wall.

She was wearing a charcoal short-skirted power suit, white blouse, tan hosiery and heels. Her makeup as usual was on the heavy side and Steve studied her for any sign of hangover but she seemed bright-eyed and sharp.

“The burned-out SUV found at the quarry is a positive match for the tire tracks found in Battersea Park. There was no other useful evidence obtained from the wreck. I’ll get Jaylene Foster to confirm it was the same make and model used by our suspect to pick up Loretta on Bridge Street when she comes in today to work with our sketch artist on the facial composite,” Penelope pointed to the relevant pictures and notes on the crime wall.

“So far Jaylene Foster is our strongest lead. We’ve interviewed everyone listed in the Abacha Motel guest register on the day of April’s murder and drawn a blank. I interviewed Wendy Beaumont, April’s flatmate, and she was very forthright but not very helpful,” Penelope looked over Steve’s way and he blushed.

She couldn’t know about last night, Steve thought.

“The man having sex with April on her OnlyFans, Alan Wright, has an iron-clad alibi but we’ve asked the Wisconsin Staties to get a DNA sample anyway. The clients from April’s OnlyFans have been, shall we say, a little reluctant to talk to us but we have ascertained that April used the Abacha Motel on at least four other occasions for her liaisons and this was confirmed by the clerk who took cash and didn’t enter her details in the register,” Penelope read from her notes.

“So far all of the clients we have located have alibis, there are still a significant number of clients who used blocked numbers and once-only email accounts to solicit April Summers and I doubt we will find them all.”

“The pings from the Battersea Park cell tower linked to the burner phone used to solicit April before she was killed link the perp from Loretta Dubbin murder to the April Summers murder, I think we are wasting scarce resources chasing down anymore OnlyFans clients.”

“Our best bet is to get a composite drawing and description from Jaylene Foster when she comes in this morning and try to work the evidence that links the cases,” Penelope sat down, smoothing her skirt under her and crossing her legs which drew the male gaze of Steve Edwards and Gary Rasmussen.

Steve stood up and cleared his throat.

“Chief, there is no doubt in my mind that the same perp killed both April Summers and Loretta Dubbin. He’s preying on transsexual prostitutes, at least for now. There being only two murders that we know about we can’t be certain of his MO. I’m going to issue a state-wide bulletin requesting the details of any unsolved murders involving trans women where the same or similar signatures are evident,” Steve announced.

“Now hold on a minute Steve. As soon as you do that tongues are going to wag. We can’t be absolutely certain that this guy is still operating in our jurisdiction, that he’s even still in the state for that matter,” Gary held up his hand like a stop sign.

“Chief, we need to warn all of the trans sex workers, in fact probably the whole of the trans community, that there is a killer out there targeting them,” Steve said heatedly.

“No one has said serial yet!” Gary banged the table.

“Chief we have deliberately shied away from using the words serial killer but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck,” Steve rose to his feet.

Gary was seething. He knew that Steve was right but the political hierarchy were pressuring him to play down the significance of the murders. As far as they were concerned it was just two tranny hookers and their deaths were not significant.

Gary looked at Penelope who nodded and then at Alice who also nodded.

“Fuck it! Put out your state-wide request for assistance and get the composite out to the trans community and warn them, especially the sex workers. But no fucking press! No fucking publicity! Do it on the QT,” Gary picked up his coffee and headed for the door.

*****

Mitch Freeman had been rightly pissed when Felicity Benson hooked up with Steve Edwards. She had fired Mitch and given his job to Steve. That is Mitch had been pissed but also relieved. He was pissed because managing Ride em’ Cowgirl had been his dream job surrounded by beautiful drag queens who fired his imagination. The club’s financials weren’t that difficult to manage: wages, profit and losses, property administration, asset management, hiring and firing the servers, cooks and bartenders, security and of course taxes.

Mitch was relieved because being around those gorgeous drag queens fuelled his fantasies. Felicity managed that side of the business: finding and auditioning the talent, engaging with choreographers, DJs, lighting technicians, stage managers and costume designers. Anything to do with the drag performances was managed by Felicity and her assistant Panti Down. But Steve was still around the girls periphery, watching them, lusting after them.

Mitch had a rule that he would never use the services of any of the girls who worked at the club. When he sought out those special women who offered their services online he meticulously checked their pictures against the girls who worked at the club. He’d often visit the bigger cities to find those special women there to service his needs or if he couldn’t wait he’d pick up a girl off Bridge Street.

April Summers had been a mistake and he knew it. He’d subscribed to her OnlyFans and become besotted with her. He’d been careful, he’d used a VPN, used a bogus email account and being an accountant he knew how to pay for services online without it being traced. He’d used a cheap burner phone to make contact with her and set up the rendezvous at the Abacha Motel.

She’d selected the location but he’d surveilled the place before the meet and was content that there were no security cameras and that it was the kind of place where people minded their own business. He was confident that he could do what he desperately wanted to do and get away with it.

He’d lied to himself. Said to himself that killing April Summers had been an impulse, even though he had purchased the eight-pack of L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose at Walmart and put a pair in his pocket prior to going to the motel.

There was nothing impulsive about the murder. The need to kill a tranny whore had been blossoming inside him ever since he had come back to work at Ride em’ Cowgirl. He pretended that he was grateful to get his old job back and in some ways he was. But he resented that this trans woman had power over him; that she was the boss. The drag queens who worked in the club ignored him, treated him as if he was part of the furniture. Some of them gave him sass when they saw him ogling them.

But they’d loved Steve Edwards. They’d fawned over him, teased him and behaved like the coquettish sluts they were around him. Even that supercilious bitch Jill Graham was hot for Steve; even though she tried to hide it. Mitch was an excellent observer of human character.

The drag queens at Ride em’ Cowgirl reminded him of Susan. Susan had become demanding and wanted him to do things that he didn’t want to do. Susan was his plaything not the other way around. She had taken out that disgusting thing when he had told her not to and look at what had happened to her.

Mitch didn’t know what had triggered the lust to kill. For many years he’d been content to satisfy his urges using prostitutes and callgirls. Maybe it was the humiliation of being replaced by Steve and having to come back when Steve couldn’t do his job. Maybe it was the jealousy and resentment he had for Steve when the ‘girls’ fawned over his handsome athletic visage whilst they treated him as if he was an underling.

April had deserved what she got. He’d told her to leave her genitals tucked but she’d taken them out and tried to pleasure herself. She’d taunted him. He remembered what she’d said just before he killed her: “You don’t like to see it do you? Are you scared that it’s bigger than yours?”

It was all her fault. But was it? If he hadn't planned to kill her why had he brought the pantyhose to the motel and hidden them under the pillow when she wasn’t looking? Why had he gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their communication could not be traced back to him? Why had he cased the Abacha Motel to make sure he could come and go without being noticed?

Mitch smiled to himself. He’d always intended to kill the bitch!

The only reason that killing April Summers had been a mistake was because Felicity had hired her to perform at Ride em’ Cowgirl. Steve didn’t know that because Felicity handled that side of the business. There was an outside chance that her murder would lead the investigators to Ride em’ Cowgirl and look who had showed up… Steve Edwards. Felicity had told Mitch that Steve had asked her about April Showers but that she couldn’t help him. She’d only ever met April at her audition.

Even so that didn’t stop Mitch going out and killing Loretta or whatever the fuck she called herself. He’d planned that better. He’d scouted a good place to fuck her and kill her, he’d stolen a car in which to solicit her and he’d remembered to take the cash he had given her. He’d had more time with her after he had killed her. He had been able to do things to her after she was dead. Things he’d dreamed about doing for quite a while.

Mitch’s cock was throbbing painfully in his trousers as he thought about the atrocities he committed on Loretta’s body. He’d need to take the crusty nylon stocking out of his bottom drawer and go to the men’s room and take care of it. Then he’d be able to come back to his little office located at the back of the bar and concentrate on his work.

He looked up and saw Jill Graham’s tight ass in her little skirt as she skittered about behind the bar stocking shelves. That was it! He opened the bottom drawer and his fingers foraged around for his wanking stocking whilst he ogled Jill’s ass and her long legs sheathed in those shiny pantyhose. He stuffed the stocking in his pocket and made his way to the employee men’s room and locked the door.

*****

Steve volunteered to pick up Jaylene Foster at Balwyn College at ten in the morning after her first class and drive her to Police Plaza. Nothing was actually articulated but Steve knew that Penelope wouldn’t want to go anywhere near the college where she had first met Melissa Doyle and set in motion the calamity that had wrecked her life.

Jaylene was not wearing her cooch cooler hooker attire. Far from it, she looked quite respectable in a knee-length pleated grey skirt, white blouse and navy blazer. Her makeup was toned down. She wore red opaque tights and black Mary-Jane’s.

Steve got out of the car and opened the door for her. She looked a lot younger and fresher out of her street makeup.

“How long is this gonna take, I got classes again this afternoon,” Jaylene tossed her satchel onto the back seat.

“Good morning to you too Jaylene,” Steve smiled at her.

“You look nice today,” he complimented her.

She paused halfway into the car and glared at him, trying to determine if he was being serious or sarcastic.

“I once had a guy offer me two hundred extra if I’d wear a school uniform while we fucked. This is the closest I’ve got. He gave me half the money but I had to use twenty of it to dry-clean the jizz out of this skirt,” she folded the skirt into her lap and slammed the door.

Steve got into the driver’s seat and appraised Jaylene critically.

“I think you behave like a cunt as a means of defence. I bet underneath that hard shell there is a nice person,” Steve smiled at her.

She turned and appraised him in return.

“I think underneath that rugged handsomeness and pleasant disposition you’re just an asshole who wants to get into my panties,” she gave him a cutting grin.

They glared at each other for a full minute before they both broke into peals of laughter.

“Sorry, thanks for the compliment Steve. I hear Felicity’s knocking them dead in Vegas,” Jaylene popped a stick of gum into her mouth.

“Yeah she’s got another week before they fly over to London,” Steve had spoken to Felicity on Skype and of course the whole time he had felt guilty about shagging Wendy Beaumont in their bed.

“Strange pairing… a detective and a drag queen,” Jaylene opined as Steve entered the mid-morning traffic.

“Penelope Bishop is trans too and she’s currently my partner, isn’t that just as strange?” Steve replied a little tersely.

“You said it not me. Do you have a thing for trans women in particular? Should I be worried that you want to get into my panties?” Jaylene needled him.

“What are you studying?” Steve changed that subject.

“Fashion design,” Jaylene snapped, waiting for Steve to ridicule it.

“Felicity took fashion design part time after her stint on Drag Race. She hated that she was sent home because she failed a sewing challenge,” Steve said levelly.

“I watched her season. She deserved to go home for wearing that hot-glued piece of shit on the runway,” Jaylene chuckled.

“You watched her season?” Steve sounded a little surprised.

“Hey there have been plenty of Texas queens on the show but she was our girl from Balwyn. I was just a queer little boy who liked to play dressup at the time, but she inspired me,” Jaylene admitted.

Steve wondered if Jaylene’s comment was a blunt way of reminding Steve of their age difference. Steve had watched Felicity’s season on their streaming service not long after they had got together, Felicity refused to watch it with him. Jaylene was right; Felicity’s runway garment for the sewing challenge was indeed a hot-glued mess.

“Hey? She ever get the call for All Stars?” Jaylene asked enthusiastically.

Steve steered well clear of the subject.

“Here we are, Police Plaza. I’ll sign you in and hand you over to Penelope who will take you to the sketch artist. After that she’ll get you to look at some mug shots,” Steve explained, showing his badge to the rent-a-cop guarding the underground car park.

They wanted Jaylene to work with a facial composite technician who wasn’t the kind of artist who drew faces on paper. Although the technician was trained in classic drawing techniques he used a computer based facial composite system to produce the likeness. Penelope didn’t want to show Jaylene any mug shots until after she had finished with the sketch artist because she didn’t want Jaylene’s memory tainted by looking at other pictures.

The mug shots Jaylene would be looking at were composites of unidentified sexual predators complied by their victims. It was useless showing her pictures of known predators from the sexual offenders register because their fingerprints and DNA were in the system and the man they were looking for wasn’t.

Steve handed Jaylene over to Penelope and drove over to Ride em’ Cowgirl. During their Skype conversation this morning Steve had promised Felicity that he would drop by the bar and make sure everything was ticking over. Felicity trusted Mitch Freeman to manage the bar-nightclub in her absence. Why shouldn’t she? Mitch had Jill Graham managing the bar itself, the head chef Manuel Ramirez had been at Ride em’ Cowgirl since it opened and Panti Down, a drag queen whose legal name was William Russell, booked the performers and produced the shows. Mitch had great support staff.

But it was still her business and Felicity wanted Steve to just make sure that everything was ok. Steve had managed the bar himself long enough to get a feel that all was fine or otherwise.

There was no matinee today and the lights were up in the club so that the place could be deep-cleaned and planned maintenance conducted. A contractor was steam cleaning the floor, a lighting tech was in the rafters over the stage adjusting the gel lights, drag queens are very particular about how they are lit and lighting them was an art, according to Felicity anyway.

Steve stopped by the kitchen. The caterers were busy packing away a food delivery but Manuel still offered to make him lunch. He was tempted to get a burger and fries but he asked for a chopped salad and made his way to the bar where instead of his usual beer he poured a Coke Zero Sugar over ice. Jill Graham came out of the adjacent stockroom with a bar code scanner, she was conducting a stocktake.

“Hey, help yourself big boy. You here for a free lunch?” the bantering had begun.

“Surprise visit to make sure you ain’t slipping a case or two of liquor out back to your boyfriend,” Steve retorted.

Jill was dressed for her current task. She was wearing denim Daisy-Dukes, a ZZ Top t-shirt, tan pantyhose and sneakers. Her hair was up and her makeup toned down except for her signature heavy eyeliner.

“I don’t have a boyfriend, I find them high maintenance. I find it’s easier to just get the men I fancy to do the job and move them on,” Jill deliberately brushed her breasts against Steve as she squeezed past him behind the bar.

“You have a runner in your nylons,” Steve fingered a little hole in the pantyhose on Jill’s thigh.

He slowly traced the runner up to the stringy edge of her cut-off shorts.

“That another job Felicity gave you while she was away? Checking the girl’s nylons for runners?” she looked down at his hand then into his eyes.

“No but I think it’s something I’d be good at,” Steve met her gaze.

“Yeah I bet you would but maybe you should just concentrate on being a cop. Get good at that first,” she gently removed Steve’s hand from her thigh.

If Jill wasn’t one of Felicity’s best friends and trusted employee, Steve would have been tempted to take Jill into the stockroom and investigate where that runner led and Jill would likely have let him but both he and Jill knew that despite their ribald banter they would never disrespect Felicity in her own club.

“Ahem,” Mitch Freeman was sitting at his desk in his cramped office.

He could see directly into the bar and had witnessed the interchange between Steve and Jill. He knew that Felicity had sent Steve to check on him but he choked down his resentment. He had his dream job back. He just wished Felicity would get over her infatuation with the lanky cop and things could go back to how they had been before Steve and Felicity had hooked up.

“Hey Mitch,” Steve called out and extricated himself away from Jill.

“How’s it all going?” Steve gave Mitch a genuine smile.

Despite Mitch’s dislike for Steve it was not reciprocated. Steve was grateful that Mitch had taken his old job back which allowed Steve to return to the job he did best which was policework.

“Fine and dandy, how’s the missus?” Mitch forced himself to smile.

“Fine and dandy also, living the high life in Vegas; she sends her regards,” Steve sipped his Coke.

“Yeah we spoke yesterday. She was so sorry to hear about that girl we were going to hire… April something?” Mitch went digging.

“April Summers, her drag name was April Showers which is one of the reasons I came to the club. Is Panti around?” Steve asked.

It was not unusual for the performers to mix their drag names and their birth names and Steve had fallen into the habit.

“Yeah, Will’s working with the DJ putting together tonight’s mix I think,” Mitch got up from behind his desk and led the way into the club.

Manuel had set up Steve’s lunch on a table near the front of the club and Steve put his Coke down next to his salad and followed Mitch to the edge of the stage where William Russell was talking to the DJ who was fiddling with his sound equipment.

“Hi Steve,” Will was genuinely glad to see Steve.

Even out of drag Will dressed very effeminately. He was wearing black dance tights accented with pink tiger stripes, an oversized long-sleeved t-shirt with a picture of Allyssa Edwards on the front, and pink Adidas. His black hair was razor cut with bright blue highlights and he was wearing eyeliner and lip-gloss.

“Hey Will; come and join me for five minutes will you?” Steve waved him down off the stage.

Uninvited Mitch Freeman sat down with them at the table but Steve didn’t mind.

“I want you to talk to all the girls,” Steve said, using the inclusive term for all the drag queens who worked at the club.

“I know some of them are subsidising their income with their bodies and that’s really none of my business. But we strongly suspect that there is a serial killer out there who targets trans women, transvestites and crossdressers,” Steve said gravely.

Both Will and Mitch leaned in and gave Steve their complete attention.

“A serial killer?” Will arched his plucked brows.

“Technically not yet but he’s taken two and I don’t think he’s going to stop. They were both doing sex work when they were murdered, one was advertising her services online and the other was working Bridge Street,” Steve explained.

“I’d really like any of the girls involved in sex work to stop until we catch him and I’d like all of the girls to be very vigilant, I’d prefer it if there weren't alone when in drag,” Steve said gravely.

“Are you going to get him?” Will asked, his eyes wide.

“We have some leads,” Steve embellished the truth.

“More importantly I’ll have a composite of the guy by the end of the day. I’ll email it to you and you can send it to all the girls. If any of them recognise the man in the picture they should contact me immediately and if they are approached by anyone who looks even vaguely like him they should not go anywhere with him and make sure they are safe,” Steve tapped his finger on the table to emphasise his point.

“You say you have a picture of the guy?” Mitch sounded excited.

“A composite. A drawing from someone we believe has seen him,” Steve explained.

‘The hooker who had approached his car on Bridge Street’ Mitch immediately thought.

Mitch didn’t listen to the rest of what Steve had to say he was too busy with own thoughts. He knew that even some of the most accomplished killers made mistakes that got them caught, no matter how careful they were and that some of the sloppiest killers got away with it. He was pissed that he had taken so many precautions and still might be caught because some tranny hooker saw him behind the wheel of a stolen car.

He knew not to panic. The girl wouldn’t have had a good look at him. It was dark and she didn’t get that close. He’d seen police composites before and they often weren't worth shit. They were too generic, they could be anybody or the witness misremembered what the perp looked like.

“Make sure you forward the composite on to me and I’ll get it circulated around the staff, maybe he’s been in the club,” Mitch said excitedly.

Steve looked at Mitch quizzically for a beat and then he nodded.

“Good idea Mitch. If this guy is sweet on trans women and crossdressers he might have been in here or the gay bars on Bridge Street,” Steve nodded his head appreciatively.

Will seemed a little excited to be drawn into the intrigue of a working murder case. He was also a little sweet on Steve as where most of the drag queens. Felicity knew this and that was why she had mandated that Steve was not to fuck any of the girls who worked at the club. She wasn’t jealous of them; she just didn’t want them being jealous of each other. It was another reason Mitch resented Steve. It was obvious that the girls had the hots for Steve, some them had blatantly propositioned him during the brief period that he had managed the club. The girls all thought of Mitch as a father figure, he’d never once been propositioned by any of them.

When Steve left the club to go back to Police Plaza Mitch followed him. He parked in the employee parking lot across from the imposing building, an annex of City Hall, where he could see the entrance and exit from the underground parking garage used by police vehicles.

He saw Steve’s vehicle nose out of the exit about two hours later. There was someone in the front with him. He couldn’t be sure that it was the witness but he followed anyway, keeping a discreet distance behind. He was surprised when Steve tuned into Balwyn College and even more surprised when the young woman wearing the knee-length pleated grey skirt, white blouse, navy blazer, red opaque tights and black Mary-Jane’s alighted from the vehicle. She leaned into the back of the vehicle and collected her satchel.

Mitch wasn’t close enough to get a good look at her but she certainly didn’t look like a hooker. But that meant nothing. He didn’t look like a serial killer.

The rest had been surprisingly easy. He’d waited for Steve to leave and then followed the girl around the campus until she went into the library. The college was crowded enough that he could blend into the background but not so crowded that he risked losing sight of the girl; her red legs made her easy to follow. He quite liked those red legs.

Mitch was eventually able to get a good photograph of the woman on his phone. He called the club and spoke to Jill Graham and told her he was done for the day and went home.

Mitch Freeman lived in a modest townhouse which he owned outright. He made his way to the basement which he had converted into a studio office. He downloaded the picture of the woman in the red tights and used an editing program to crop and enhance the image then he used a sophisticated image search program to search the web for comparisons.

It took the program a while to complete the search and he poured himself a drink and took off his jacket and tie and made himself comfortable while the program did its job. His phone pinged and he opened the email that Panti Down had sent to him and downloaded the attachment. He smiled to himself.

The facial composite wasn’t that great. The face structure was the same, but it was the same as countless other faces. The eyes were a little too far apart, the hair was parted on the wrong side and the nose was a little too long. Did it look like Mitch Freeman? A little… yes. At a stretch... but it looked like hundreds of other people too. Because the woman had only seen his face she had no idea how tall he was or his build. There were no tattoos or identifying features. He was hardly recognisable.

Mitch went back to his image search program and when the search was completed he sorted the results by date posted and started to work through the images.

It took him less than five minutes to find Jaylene Foster. She had a Facebook account and was active on Twitter and Instagram. She was an advocate for LGBT rights and identified as a transgender woman. That would explain why she had approached his car on Bridge Street, she was working the streets there.

He studied the images of Jaylene Foster that his program had found. She was an attractive woman in her early twenties and she didn’t mind showing off her assets. If you looked closely you could see that her breasts were too perfect to be anything but augmented but she didn’t mind showing them off. Same with her tight ass and long legs and although none of the images he had found of Jaylene approached being pornographic, there were plenty of cheesecake photographs of her posing provocatively.

He enhanced an image of her wearing a bathing suit taken on the beach at Lake Brindle. The suit was bright orange and clung to her body like a second skin. She had recently got out of the water and her long dark hair glistened in the sun, droplets of water shimmered on her limbs, her eye makeup had run a little but it just made her look sultry and sexy. The bathing suit clung to her firm breasts, her nipples conspicuous. The suit was hewn to her flat belly and her pubic mound.

Mitch knew that her pubic mound was a falsity, a fabrication, an illusion that Jaylene created by tucking her penis along her perineum and retracting her testes into her inguinal canals. He didn’t care about the mechanics of it; he just loved the aesthetic, the way the orange lycra clung to her pubis, defining the shape.

He reached into the drawer and took out a packet of nylon stockings and extracted one of them. He put it over his erect penis and brought himself to extremis in a few strokes, filling the gossamer garment with his semen which darkened the silken fabric as it extruded into a glistening white gobbet. He cleaned up and put his manhood away and went back to work on the computer. He had things to do. Jaylene Foster might have provided the police with a lousy identikit facsimile of his face but he was almost certain that she would be able to identify him in the flesh and that just wouldn’t do would it?

During his time in the army Mitch had learned discipline, planning, organisation, prudence and risk management. He had learned about contingency planning: always have a backup plan, a means of escape, diversionary tactics.

He’d always knew the day would come when he would either be caught or have to make a run for it before he was caught. Mitch had a stash of false identity documents and cash reserves in a storage locker in Austin. He was a man who covered all contingencies. If he had to he could move to another state; another country even, and assume a false identity. There were plenty of special girls out there for him enjoy.

But it hadn't come to that yet. There were other courses of action. Mitch had also learned how to use subterfuge and misdirection to take objectives and the ability to react quickly and think on one’s feet. He’d applied those skills when he’d lured April Summers and Loretta Dubbin to their deaths.

Mitch had other contingencies too. He’d scouted suitable locations where he could take his special girls and spend some time with them secure in the knowledge that he would not be disturbed. One such location had been the Park Services hut in Battersea Park; another was an abandoned Texaco service station on a seldom used back road just off Route 190 and yet another contingency was an old lumber storage warehouse north of Balwyn.

Jaylene Foster was ripe for just such a contingency.

He went into his garage and grabbed his go-bag. He opened the eight-pack of L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose and took out a pair and put them in his pocket. There were only five pairs left now. He wandered if he would use all eight before he was caught?

To be continued

Mitch Freeman drove to the abandoned Texaco service station off Route 190. It looked deserted; the Texaco sign was faded and broken, hanging drunkenly from a rickety pole. The dusty driveway was choked with weeds, the ancient gas pumps were rusted; the hoses had been ripped off them, likely by some scavenger. The awning over the gas pumps was equally corroded; holed and lopsided, almost ready to collapse.

Mitch pulled up next to one of the rusting gas pumps and hopped out of his car and approached the dilapidated roadhouse diner. It looked even more forlorn than the gas stand. The sheet-iron roof that had once been adorned with a Texaco logo was hitched and broke-backed, holed in places and corroded. Windows that were not boarded over were dirty and cobwebbed and most of them were cracked.

As Mitch approached the doors, which hung drunkenly on their hinges, he passed a rusty old Coke machine with a faded decal bearing the image of a smiling woman in a bikini drinking an ice-cold beverage with the words For Real Refreshment peeling off it.

Incongruously a shiny new stainless steel chain and padlock had been threaded through the metal door handles, which despite being tarnished, were still serviceable. Mitch had put the chain on the doors when he had scouted out the place. He wasn’t sure if it would keep people out if they desperately wanted to get in but why would they?

Mitch unlocked the padlock and dragged the doors open wincing at the protesting screech of the hinges and the grating of the bottom of the doors against the concrete floor.

Most of the furniture had been taken away or vandalised beyond use. The place smelt musty; a lingering stench of mildew, stale cigarettes, stale liquor and a faint undercurrent of ancient fried food. The filthy floor was littered with beer and liquor bottles, drug paraphernalia, cigarette butts and decaying used condoms.

Some joker has pinned a pair of lime green satin panties to the flaking dry wall like they was on display in the lingerie section of a department store. The same joker had scribbled graffiti on the wall besides the undergarment I fucked Stephanie here 05/12/21 with an arrow pointing to the crotch of the panties. Whoever Stephanie was, she was long gone and she was sans underwear.

Beside the panties a series of nineteen-sixty era framed advertising posters had been hung from the wall, probably in an effort to provide cheap decoration to cheer up the baby-shit yellow painted walls. They plugged cigarettes, beer, motor oil and other products one would expect in a gas station. There was also an advertisement for Hanes Underall Pantyhose. It featured the buttocks and thighs of a woman clad in sheer pantyhose with the slogan ‘pantyhose & panties all in one’. Someone had drawn an ejaculating penis between the buttocks of the woman with a sharpie.

In the corner of the decrepit diner a space had been cleared of detritus and a relatively new mattress covered with a clean fitted-sheet and two pillows with fresh pillowcases had been placed on the floor. There was a cardboard box containing bottled water, sanitary wipes, gel lubricant, liquid hand wash and sanitizer beside it. Two lithium ion Coleman lanterns were arranged at the head of the mattress. Mitch was glad to see that no one had broken in and stolen anything.

Seeing that nothing had been disturbed Mitch locked up the diner and drove his car out back to what had once been the service bay but was now a decrepit dark hole stripped of anything useful. Rusty chains hung from the ceiling and the inspection pit was full of slimy fetid water. The nondescript Toyota sedan he had stolen a week earlier was still parked in the bay. Mitch unlocked it and transferred his go-bag into the trunk and locked his own car and set the alarm.

He checked his phone for messages, checked the time, and then climbed into the Toyota and pulled onto the 190 and headed east towards Balwyn keeping just below the speed limit.

Mitch Freeman sat in the Toyota parked in a gloomy alley just off the south side of Bridge Street and watched the passing parade: the tranny hookers plying their trade and the johns coming and going. Some girls climbed into cars and were driven away, some led johns into the foyer of the Ambassador Hotel where rooms were rented by the hour, some just led their john into the dark alley and serviced them behind the dumpster or in the doorways of the decrepit buildings.

But they all returned back to the street. Didn't matter if they’d done their business in the back of a car, on the stained sheets of the Ambassador Hotel or on their knees or bent over in the alley… they all returned back to the street.

Except for Loretta Dubbin. She wouldn’t be returning back to the street.

“Fucking tranny whores!” Mitch hissed through clenched teeth.

He spent some time thinking about Susan, his college sweetheart. She had been beautiful, feminine and sweet. Susan liked to kiss him and hold his manhood in her fingers while her sweet tongue explored his mouth. Susan knew he liked to press himself against her silky mound and she would lie on the bed with her legs spread and her skirt hitched up so he could. Susan knew that he would always gasp with delight when she rolled over and pulled down her panties to expose her soft, creamy white buttocks. Susan gasped in turn when he slid his manhood inside her.

Susan had been perfect. Until she wasn’t. Susan knew that Mitch wanted nothing to do with the ugly appendage she kept tucked between her legs. He hadn't even complained when she sometimes whimpered and wet her panties while he was fucking her. He knew that it was the horrible snake between her legs had caused her panties to become wet. He knew that smell. The musky swampy scent of semen but it was ok because he didn’t have to see it… to touch it.

But Susan had betrayed him. She had set it free and tried to make Mitch touch it. He remembered the revulsion he felt when the back of his hand had brushed against the warm swollen flesh when she’d tried to guide his hand there.

“Fucking tranny whore!” Mitch barked.

He was sweating despite the cold. His cock was rock hard, his fists were clenched and his teeth were gritted. All his pretty girls turned out to be tranny whores: the girls in Bangkok were he had spent two weeks R&R during his tour of duty. The trans callgirls in Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth where he would spend his long weekends and vacations. The girls here in Balwyn. All the pretty girls. They were all tranny whores!

He didn't know why he thought of his mother when he ground himself against them. He knew it had something to do with seeing and touching that perfect silken-clad mound. Her thrashing his behind as he lay across her knees; her pantyhose feeling like soft silken butterfly kisses on his skin while his buttocks burned bright red as his mother flailed him.

As he got older they both knew that what she was doing was wrong. Had she felt his penis become hard when she paddled his ass? Did she deliberately walk around in her underwear so that he would watch her so she would catch him watching her and punish him? She must have known when he ejaculated. She must have felt the fiery heat of his ejaculate scalding her thighs. She had certainly felt it the one and only time she had let him lie on top of her and press his engorged member against her panty-clad cunt, making him promise not to tell anyone.

They didn’t know that his father had returned home early from a business trip and intended to surprise his wife by springing on her naked, undressing himself as he had silently climbed the staircase.

Mitch remembered his father pulling him off his mother and thrashing him within an inch of his life. His father was hard, erect in anticipation of fucking his beautiful wife but instead he lay into his son as he cowered on the floor, his father standing over him with fists raised, his penis erect and proud.

It wasn’t long after this that he had found Susan. Susan was safe because she didn’t have the secret parts that his mother kept inside her panties but she was dangerous because she had the same parts as his father. So long as Susan kept those parts hidden away it didn’t matter; she was perfect.

All his pretty girls were perfect… until they weren't.

Mitch knew that he could pay some psychiatrist thousands of dollars to tell him all about his Oedipus complex and Freud’s sexual inversion hypothesis which caused Mitch to transfer the desire he felt for his mother to men who presented as beautiful women. The paradox for him being that because they didn’t have a vagina in his mind it was not incestuous but the illusion would be destroyed if he was forced to confront their penises.

Mitch came out of his reverie when he saw Jaylene Foster strutting down Bridge Street in her fuck-me pumps. Her hair was teased her makeup heavy and she wore a micro-miniskirt and a faux fur coat.

This was the most dangerous thing he would ever do; his timing had to be perfect. Although he was a logistics officer in the army he had undertaken infantry training prior to being deployed and he knew how to take down an opponent.

He had followed Jaylene home from the college and had briefly thought of taking her inside her flat but it was too dangerous. Instead he’d activated his contingency plan. Common sense would mandate that Jaylene would take the most direct route from her apartment to Bridge Street and he had gambled that she would take the shortcut down the dark alley connecting Balwyn’s commercial district to the tenderloin district of Bridge Street.

The contents of his go-bag had been carefully laid out on the front passenger seat. He took the chloroform-soaked rag out the Tupperware container and secreted it up his sleeve as he got out of the car. He left the back door of the car open and opened the trunk, pretending to be searching for something as he listened to the click-clack of Jaylene’s high heels on the pavement as she got closer.

When he sensed that she was right behind him he turned and sprang on her, grabbing her from behind. It was only at the last second as he pressed the chloroformed rag over her mouth that he realised that it wasn’t Jaylene Foster.

It didn’t matter. It was too late. The woman struggled briefly and then became a deadweight which he dragged onto the back seat. He quickly secured her hands and feet with cable ties and put a canvas bag over her head, leaving the chloroform soaked rag inside the bag to keep her drowsy. He slammed the door shut and closed the trunk and took a look around.

The alley remained quiet and deserted.

Mitch slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. He turned left on Bridge Street and took a final look at the whores working the street. In his mind they seemed to be mocking him.

Never mind.

He had another pretty girl to play with.

Mitch didn’t realise that the woman's handbag had fallen off her shoulder during the brief struggle and lay in the gutter.

*****

The Task Force was busy. Penelope and Alice had compiled an evidence pack consisting of the facial composite, a summary of the perp’s MO and signature behaviours and the perp’s fingerprints to accompany the state-wide bulletin requesting a comparison be made against any unsolved murders involving trans women.

They knew that Jaylene’s identikit picture wasn’t that great but that was all they had. She had seen him only briefly behind the windshield of a car on a dark street.

Steve had forwarded the composite to Panti Down and asked her to send it to everyone she knew who engaged in any form of female impersonation. He asked her to distribute copies to the bars on Bridge Street frequented by the LGBTI community which she did. She also posted a blog on the Transgender Education Network of Texas website claiming that a killer was targeting trans women in Balwyn and uploaded the facial composite.

It took only twenty four hours before Gary Rasmussen was summoned to the office of the Chief of Police and was ordered to escort him to the Mayor’s office to explain what the fuck his Special Task Force was up to.

“Handle those fuckers Gary. Get them to keep a lid on this. I don’t wanna see anything in the mainstream media. You feel me?” the Chief of Police growled at Gary as they walked back to his office, both their asses sore from the figurative kicking they had both received from the Mayor.

Gary went down to the Task Force office and passed on the message.

“I just got my ass handed to me by the Mayor. It’s ok, I can take the heat while you work the case but you better get this thing solved,” Gary ran his hands through his thinning hair.

“We’re working it hard Chief,” Steve replied.

“We’ve had some responses to our state wide request for assistance and Penelope and Alice are working the data looking for comparisons but so far we don’t appear to have any cases that match,” Steve pointed to his crime wall.

“That’s a good thing and a bad thing I suppose. It’s good that our killer seems to be confined to the Balwyn area and has only taken two victims that we know about. It’s a bad thing because we don’t really have any corroborating evidence from cases where the perp may have used the same MO or signatures in other cities,” Steve sighed.

“We do have a bunch of mug shots of offenders who have targeted trans women in the past. Sexual assault, indecent behaviour, stalking, the usual bullshit,” Penelope interjected.

Gary looked at her, both hopefully and quizzically.

“Tranny chasers,” Penelope explained.

Gary winced at Penelope’s use of offensive language but rationalised that as a transgender woman it shouldn’t be taken as offensive. It was the same as African Americans using the ‘N-word’ or homosexuals referring to each other as fags. Minorities stole back pejoratives and reappropriated them, empowering themselves, neutralising the effect of the slur when used by intolerants.

“I’ll get Jaylene Foster to look at them and see if she recognises any of them,” Penelope said.

“We get them at the club sometimes. Guys infatuated with female impersonators. They’re mostly harmless and some of the girls milk them for tips or whatever but the creepy ones are kicked out by security and are banned. Penelope is working that angle,” Steve explained.

Gary guessed the ‘whatever’ Steve was referring to was getting them to pay for sex.

“Assholes and elbows people. Get this thing solved,” Gary left the office.

Penelope and Alice looked at Steve who gave them both a grim smile.

“You heard the man ladies; assholes and elbows,” Steve went back to work.

Penelope contacted Jaylene Foster who told Penelope that she was too busy to come down to Police Plaza, besides which she didn’t want to be seen there too often in case the other girls thought she was a snitch. She was busy trying to educate herself and get off the streets. When she wasn't at college she was studying and when she wasn’t doing that she was working Bridge Street to pay for her education and to pay her rent.

Jaylene agreed to let Penelope come round to her place and show her the pictures after college, before she went to work.

Penelope pulled up outside of Jaylene’s apartment block which was only three blocks over from Bridge Street. Jaylene had joked that it was convenient because she could walk to work.

Penelope and Jaylene had built a rapport during the time they had spent together at Police Plaza working on the identikit, taking her statement and looking at mug shots. Jaylene respected Penelope for who she was, someone who had worked hard and overcome adversity and was still considered a hero by most in Balwyn despite the fallout from the Lipstick Killer case.

“What you did was to rise through the ranks using just hard work and dedication. You saved people’s lives, you solved crimes. Any girl with good looks, a great body and a modicum of ability can compete on Drag Race and become famous,” Jaylene had pointedly made the comparison between Penelope Bishop and Felicity Benson; Balwyn's two trans femme heroines.

“What about all that charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and, talent that they prattle on about?” Penelope had replied.

They both looked at each other and burst out laughing. A bond had been formed.

Penelope was buzzed into Jaylene’s studio apartment which although pokey was immaculately clean and tastefully decorated. Penelope looked around the apartment appreciatively.

“What? You expected a prostitute’s hovel?” Jaylene asked from where she was seated in front of a small mirror applying the last of her makeup.

“No. I expected exactly this. A small place well within your means that would be clean and well kept,” Penelope said dropping the folder containing the pictures on the tiny dining table which was pushed against the wall.

Jaylene applied the last touches to her mascara and stood up.

“What’s that?” she pointed at the folder with her chin.

“Pictures. Pictures of men who have targeted transgendered women,” Penelope spun the folder in a circle on the table top.

“Targeted?” Jaylene took one last look in the mirror and picked a stray skerrick of lipstick out the corner of her mouth.

“Men who have committed sexual assault, indecent behaviour or stalked them. Men from all over the state,” Penelope replied.

“Do you know that most of the men who solicit my services consider themselves straight? They want to kiss me, caress me, they want me to suck their dicks and they want to fuck me in the ass. A surprising amount of them want to suck my dick and have me fuck them in the ass,” Jaylene stepped into the tiny kitchenette.

“But they aren’t gay. They go home to their wives and girlfriends and tell homophobic and transphobic jokes in bars. They change the station when anything ‘gay’ comes on the TV. But when the compulsion takes them they come on down to Bridge Street and take me into the Ambassador Hotel to make their secret fantasies come true,” Jaylene took a bottle of scotch down from a shelf and took two glasses out of the cupboard.

“I know those men. I’ve known them all my life. From college to the academy, from being a beat cop to heading up a Task Force I’ve had those men approach me. The Sleeping Beauty killer captured me. It was never made public what he did to me but you can guess,” Penelope whispered.

“Like all men who rape women, it’s about power more than sex,” Penelope straightened the folder on the table.

Jaylene came over to Penelope and held out a glass of scotch.

“I’m an alcoholic,” Penelope shook her head.

Jaylene snatched back the glass as if it held poison.

“I'm sorry; I didn’t know,” she apologised.

“Why would you?” Penelope smiled at Jaylene who smiled back.

Jayleen poured Penelope’s drink into her own glass and took a can of Coke out the fridge for Penelope and sat down at the table.

Jaylene was dressed for work. Her makeup was heavy, her hair teased, she wore a black leather miniskirt and red satin blouse, her legs were sheathed in shimmery hose which when she sat were disclosed to be hold-up stockings. Her black heels were ridiculously high. Penelope noted the faux fur coat hanging on the back of the door. Jaylene would wear it to keep warm on the streets but leave it open to display her wares. Penelope knew what these women had to do to make a living.

Penelope sat down at the table at right-angles to Jaylene, the space so small that their knees touched under the table. Penelope opened the folder.

“Do you mind if I drink this? I should have asked,” Jaylene raised the glass she had half-filled with scotch.

“It’s my addiction not yours,” Penelope said opening the Coke with some difficulty using her fingernail.

“I only have two glasses, I should have rinsed the other one out,” Jaylene apologised.

“Out of the can is fine,” Penelope raised the Coke to her lips and took a slug.

The sugar hit her and she needed it. She had hardly eaten all day.

She studied Jaylene closely. She looked older than her years. The streets were wearing her down. Penelope realised that she must be sleep deprived, attending college during the day, working Bridge Street at night, studying. Only just making ends meet. Penelope had been in her apartment less than ten minutes and Jaylene had apologised to her twice. The trash-talking hard woman who had bantered with Penelope and Steve on the streets was gone.

“Look it’s a long shot but please study these pictures and tell me if any of them look like the man you saw in the BMW the night Loretta was taken,” Penelope got down to business.

She handed the pictures to Jaylene one at a time and Jaylene studied each one carefully and handed them back shaking her head each time. When they had gone through all the pictures they both sat at the table feeling a little exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” Jaylene whispered, sounding world-weary.

Penelope reached out and took Jaylene’s hand.

“Stop saying you're sorry. You have nothing to apologise for,” Penelope tried to engage Jaylene’s gaze but she turned away.

“You must think I’m ludicrous, a prostitute living in a hutch, studying fashion design. I’m pathetic,” Jaylene sighed.

Penelope turned Jaylene’s face to hers.

“I think you’re amazing. I know where you came from; I read your juvie file. Thrown out on the streets as a kid because you were confused about your gender. Children’s home, foster families, some who took you in only for the stipend and some who abused you. Back on the streets. The busts, the beatings. Rising above it all to make something of yourself,” Penelope squeezed Jaylene’s fingers gently.

“I came from privilege. My mother worshipped me and accommodated my transition. She didn’t want me to follow my father into law enforcement but I did anyway. I rose to the top of my profession and threw it all away… twice. Two failed marriages and a failed career, so who’s pathetic?” Penelope gave Jaylene a grim-faced smile.

They rested their foreheads together.

“We’re both pathetic,” Jaylene giggled nervously.

Penelope held her breath when Jaylene touched her lips to hers. She could hardly breathe. The last time she had been intimate with a witness it had been a disaster.

Jaylene pulled away abruptly.

“I’m sorry. I got the signals wrong. You wouldn’t want to… not with someone like me,” Jaylene clumsily got to her feet and smoothed out her skirt.

“I’ve got to get to work,” Jaylene cleared her throat.

Penelope straightened the pictures and put them back in the file and closed it. She stood up and tucked the file under her arm and put the strap of her purse across her shoulder.

She went to the door and Jaylene followed her and opened it for her.

Penelope turned to Jaylene.

“I’m sorry…” Jaylene didn’t get to finish her sentence.

Penelope let the folder fall from under her arm; the pictures scattered across the floor. She pulled Jaylene into her arms as she kicked the door closed.

Their lips mashed together, their tongues entwined. It was an awkward dance as Penelope half pushed half guided Jaylene across the room to the bed in the corner. They fell on the bed still entangled in each other’s arms. Penelope struggled to toss away her purse and shuck out of her jacket whilst still kissing Jaylene.

Jaylene tasted of scotch and Juicy Fruit, Penelope tasted like the cigarette she had smoked on the way over to Jaylene’s flat. Penelope kicked off her heels and Jaylene did likewise. Penelope pushed Jaylene down on the bed, crushing her lips against her. She pawed at the buttons on Jaylene’s blouse and Jaylene fumbled with hers. They both shucked out of their blouses and bras and then kissed again.

They reached for each other’s breasts, stroking and caressing the soft flesh, fingering nipples to full bloom. The feel of Jaylene’s mouth on her mouth and her hands on her breasts excited Penelope so much that her erection was painful; tapped between her legs held there by her hose and panties.

Jaylene’s cock has sprung free and was tenting her panties, her skirt high on her waist, her cock pressed against Penelope’s belly. Jaylene snaked a hand between their bodies and pushed her fingers under Penelope’s tight suit skirt. She slid it inside Penelope’s pantyhose and freed Penelope’s hard throbbing cock.

Penelope snatched Jaylene’s hand out of the way and hiked up her skirt as she straddled Jaylene’s body, never breaking the kiss. She pushed Jaylene’s hands up behind her head and kicked her legs open. Penelope lay on top of Jaylene kissing her brutally as she pressed her cock against Jaylene’s erect penis and her breasts against Jaylene’s tender bosom.

Their cocks rubbed together through layers of satin and nylon, their panties soon wet with pre-ejaculate. Jaylene suddenly pushed up with all her strength and rolled Penelope off her and onto her back. She sprang on Penelope who gasped when Jaylene took Penelope’s penis into her mouth and began to suckle it.

Penelope clawed at Jaylene until she turned around on the bed so that Penelope could use her mouth on her. They suckled on each other’s cocks using their lips, their tongues, and even their teeth until they were both close to extremis.

Penelope suddenly pushed Jaylene’s mouth away from her penis and dragged her onto her back and fell between her legs, lying on top of her. Jaylene opened her legs wide and lifted her buttocks. Penelope pulled aside the gusset of Jaylene's panties and began to prod at her sphincter trying to find her puckered bud. Jaylene reached down and guided Penelope’s penis to the crinkled entrance to her anus and looked up longingly into Penelope’s eyes.

Penelope could feel the slippery lubricant that Jaylene had squeezed inside herself in anticipation of her night’s work. She lowered her face to Jaylene’s and kissed her softly as she slowly entered her.

Jaylene sobbed at the tenderness of it. The frantic foreplay had transitioned into kind, considerate love making. Penelope kissed the side of Jaylene’s mouth and Jaylene mewed as Penelope slid another inch of her cock into Jaylene's tight passage. Penelope stoked Jaylene’s hair and pressed her lips on hers as she slid another inch into Jaylene's velvety sheath. Jaylene murmured an endearment and a tear ran down her cheek.

Penelope lapped up the salty tear and then kissed Jaylene softly.

“Are you ok?” she whispered.

Jaylene locked her hands behind Penelope’s neck and lifted her face to kiss her. She looked into Penelope’s beautiful green eyes and gave a wry smile. She locked her calves against Penelope’s and raised her abdomen up off the bed so that the last of Penelope’s cock slid all the way inside her.

Penelope lowered her face Jaylene’s and kissed her again, this time with passion, using her tongue. Their breasts mashed together, hard nipples pressing on hard nipples. Penelope lay still, too scared to move in case she ejaculated. Jaylene's anus gripped her cock like a velvet glove, her penis pressed against Jaylene's prostate.

They were both enraptured by the passion and the tenderness of it all. The sensation of soft breasts and hard nipples pressed together, the splendour of being filled with a hard throbbing cock, the deliciousness of a cock being cushioned inside a satiny tight passage, the taste of lipstick, the scent of perfume, the diaphanous feel of nylons rasping against each other. Both women were in sensory overload.

Penelope thrust once, twice, three times and ejaculated. Jaylene felt Penelope tremble in her embrace, her penis shuddered inside her anus, her breathing become ragged, the heat of Penelope issue deep in her bowel and she too climaxed. Penelope felt Jaylene’s scorching semen on her belly and she smiled around their impassioned kiss.

The lovers clung to each other, hardly moving whilst they shared the bliss of their climaxes and when they were both spent they didn’t move. They lay locked together kissing tenderly and softly caressing each other. Stroking hair, smoothing brows, caressing cheeks, looking languidly into each other eyes; smiling guiltily and sheepishly but lovingly.

Eventually they disengaged but only long enough to undress and then they snuggled together under the bedclothes.

“That better not have been a sympathy fuck,” Jaylene whispered and stroked a stray lock of hair out of Penelope’s eye.

“Right back attcha,” Penelope smiled down at Jaylene.

Penelope stayed the night with Jaylene unknowingly saving her life because three blocks over, Mitch Freeman was bundling a woman he thought to be Jaylene Foster into the back of his car.

*****

Mitch thumped the steering wheel as he drove down the 190. How the fuck had he fucked up so bad? The woman looked exactly like Jaylene Foster from a distance walking down that alley in her cooch cooler and fuck-me pumps. Her hair was the same, she was the same height, same build.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman lying trussed on the back seat. Her skirt had hiked up exposing the tops of her black stockings and her purple satin panties. His eyes were drawn to her mound. He heard the blaring horn of an oncoming cab-over-Pete and swung back into his own lane just in time.

He concentrated on the two tunnels light from his high beam until he arrived at the turnoff to the abandoned Texaco gas station and pulled up adjacent to the diner.

The chloroform had dissipated and worn off long ago but the woman lay silent and still. She was playing possum; lying doggo. Mitch went to the diner and unlocked the padlock and removed the heavy-duty stainless steel chain from the door handles and opened the door, the screech of metal on concrete sounded like the growl of a coyote.

The woman didn’t struggle when he cut the cable ties around her ankles and helped her out of the car.

“Don’t take off the hood. Just do what you're gonna do to me but don’t take off the hood. I won’t tell anyone what you did and anyway I won’t be able to describe you,” the woman said as he led her into the diner.

“What the fuck did you say?” Mitch asked.

“Don’t take off the hood. I’ve seen the crime shows. The girl gets killed because she can identify her attacker so if you leave the hood on me I won’t see your face,” the woman said, the panic evident in her voice.

Mitch guided her towards the makeshift bed in the space he had cleared amid the ocean of shit.

“I won’t fight. Hell, I’ll do whatever you want willingly. I fuck strangers for a living, just don’t kill me,” the woman pleaded.

Mitch’s anger dissipated and was replaced by amusement.

“In the interests of full disclosure I’ll tell you that I’ve picked up the wrong woman. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mitch eased her down onto the mattress.

“I could probably just leave you here and drive away because as you said you can’t recognise me,” Mitch said.

“There you go cowboy. You can even fuck me a little if you want before you go, I won’t struggle,” the woman sounded more confident.

She was used to negotiating with wicked men during her years on the streets.

“Trouble is I wanna see your pretty face while I'm doing it,” Mitch whipped the canvas bag off the woman’s head.

“No!” she screamed and screwed her eyes closed.

“You’re pretty. You even look like her,” Mitch commented as he gazed at her face in the light of the twin Coleman lanterns.

“Look like who? No! Don’t tell me!” the woman hissed.

She was kneeling with her legs wide apart to keep balance because her hands were still tied behind her back. Mitch had a perfect view of the V of her panties; the silky purple satin clung to her pubic mound defining its shape.

This was no illusion like Susan and the others. This was the real thing just like mother’s.

For that reason alone the compulsion wasn’t the same but the curiosity was there. He had tried dating women, mostly those that resembled his mother but they found his fascination with their panty-covered pubic mounds and his reluctance to let them take off their underwear and hosiery during foreplay disturbing. Or did they just have an instinct that there was something wrong with Mitch Freeman?

Now he had one all to himself. This woman did resemble his mother. He thought that he would like to play with her a little but he didn’t feel the pent up anger and hatred that he felt with his tranny whores. This one was a pretty girl but she wasn’t special like the others. Maybe he could play with her a little and then just let her go.

“Ok here’s the deal. I was trying to abduct a woman who is very special and dear to me. I wasn’t going to hurt her, I was just going to bring her here where it’s nice and quiet and try to convince her to take me back. To seduce her, to woo her,” Mitch lied.

The woman opened one eye and took in her surroundings.

She was no fool. Who the fuck was going to be seduced in an abandoned Texaco station surrounded by litter, used condoms and empty booze bottles underneath an Underall poster and a crusty pair of lime green panties nailed to the wall?

Mitch imagined the wheels spinning in the prostitute’s head.

“Look it’s quiet and out of the way; I know it’s a shithole but it’s what I got,” he explained.

“You are a victim of circumstance but let me reassure you that I mean you no harm. I’ll take you back to Bridge Street and you forget this ever happened ok?” he said reassuringly.

The prostitute nodded vigorously wanting to believe the lie.

“I tell you what. I’ll sweeten the pot,” he took off his jacket and lay it beside the mattress and took out his wallet.

He laid out five crisp Benjamin Franklins on the mattress. The hooker stared at the money and licked her lips.

“Turn around,” Mitch said taking the wire cutters he had brought with him from the car.

The hooker swivelled around so that Mitch could cut through the cable tie bonding her wrists together. She rubbed the raw skin to get the circulation flowing.

“Go ahead; take the money,” Mitch nodded at the Benjamins.

“And you ain’t going to hurt me?” the hooker looked at him with a pleading expression.

“Nope. I’m going to drive you back to Balwyn and say sorry for the mix-up,” he gave her his most ingratiating smile.

The woman snatched up the money and stuffed it in her bra. She’d dropped her cheap knock-off purse during the struggle in the alley but she wasn't going to tell this man that. There was nothing in there but her driver’s licence, her smokes, a lighter, condoms, lube and a single unmarked house key so what the fuck!

“Of course I’d like a little tail before I take you back,” Mitch grinned, beginning to get undressed.

The hooker looked at him carefully. He had a dad-bod and looked about as dangerous as her grandpa. She’d dealt with guys far more dangerous than him and now that she was free she bet she’d beat him easy if it came to fight. She knew how to use her heels, her fists, her nails and her teeth and had done so when required.

“Sure honey. You want half n’ half? A little head, a little tail?” she cooed at him.

She began to take on the dominant role, confident in her abilities.

“How about a little role play?” Mitch asked sounding a little apologetic for asking.

“Sure honey? No need to feel embarrassed,” the woman took off her coat and began to unbutton her blouse.

“No! No! No! Keep your clothes on. It’s part of the fantasy,” Mitch smacked her hands away from her blouse.

“Sorry… can you leave your clothes on?” Mitch mumbled and apology.

“Of course I can honey. Anything you like. You’re paying for it,” the woman grinned at him lasciviously.

“Ok. This is what I wanna do,” Mitch told her what his fantasy was and the hooker nodded knowingly.

Having sex fully clothed was not new to her and it gave her the advantage if anything untoward developed. He would be naked and she would be dressed and in a far better position to defend herself.

“Get over here you naughty boy, I saw you looking up mommies skirt,” the fantasy began.

Naked, Mitch lay across the prostitute’s lap while she slapped his ass, his flaccid penis pressed against her stocking tops.

It wasn’t working. The woman was no substitute for his mother. Mitch climbed off her.

“Just lay down,” Mitch said, the frustration evident in his tone.

The woman did as she was told. Mitch didn’t need to lift her skirt, the cooch-cooler didn’t cover her sex when she lay prone on the mattress. He stared at her pubic mound encased in shiny purple satin. It was starting work. His cock sprang to attention.

“Just let me…” Mitch lay on top of her and pressed his cock against her pubis.

That was the sensation he was looking for: the silky material rubbing on his cock, the fleshy protuberance of her sex enveloping his meaty shaft. He ground against the woman, breathing in her perfume. He looked at her pretty face and then moved in to kiss her. She turned her head to the side.

“I don’t kiss johns,” the woman said.

“You’ll kiss me,” Mitch growled.

The woman knew not to argue and she turned to face him and was responsive when he kissed her. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his body and rose to meet his thrusts as he rutted against her. His cock was pressing against her clitoris through her panties and despite the situation it felt quite nice; it helped that he was good kisser and she began to put her heart into it.

This was what Mitch wanted. Now she felt like the other girls lying underneath him, his naked body pressing on her clothed body, her panties rubbing on his cock, her nylons caressing his bare flesh. He wished that she had been wearing pantyhose instead of stockings. His mother always wore pantyhose. Susan always wore pantyhose.

The woman’s mound felt different. It was pliant… fleshy… moist. It was like being with those other women; the other women who had found his sexual peccadilloes abhorrent. But this girl didn’t; she liked it. He could feel the heat of her cunt through the satin, feel the warm moistness of her secretions dampening her panties.

She put her arms around him and kissed him harder, using her tongue. She tasted like last night’s dinner. She ground her cunt against his hard cock and began to whimper. This was nice. This was different.

He had never taken a woman before and the idea intrigued him. He eased aside her panty gusset and placed his hard cock inside her fleshy mound. It was so different to his special girls. It was wet and squishy, the folds of her labia were spongy, almost succulent. The woman did something, wiggling her body, adjusting her position on the mattress and his cock slid inside her.

She was slippery and wet, her cunt clasped his iron-hard cock, almost like it wanted to express his seed. He didn’t like it as much as fucking his special girls in the ass but he liked it all the same. It was different.

The woman was arching and bucking beneath him; holding onto him desperately as she ground her vulva against him, her greedy cunt clinging to his manhood. She was making whimpering noises, begging him to fuck her harder, her kisses sloppy, her silken-sheathed legs cycling against his tender flesh.

At least he knew that she didn’t have a disgusting appendage between her legs. He knew that she wasn’t going to ejaculate. He liked the feel of her; she was different. But she wasn't as good as the others. He fucked her harder to get it over with.

He jackhammered his cock in and out of the woman’s cuntal sheath until he felt his orgasm building to the point of release. It was a relief when his quivering cock exploded inside her. The woman clawed at him, shaking with desire as she climaxed. Her kisses were feverous, her nails raked his back, her legs held him close, keeping him deep inside her as he disgorged his spend.

Mitch held onto her and kissed her, forcing every scintilla of pleasure out of the moment.

When they had both descended from the pinnacle of their climaxes Mitch lay on top of the woman panting; his cock still inside her. The woman lay back with her legs open wide, her head on the pillows, smiling up at him.

“That was good. I usually don’t come but that was amazing. You have a great cock,” the woman had a vacuous grin that Mitch didn’t like.

His reached out and found his jacket; his fingers went searching in the pockets.

“Yes that was good. Different,” Mitch smiled down at her.

She patted his back like he was a dog. He hated it.

“I said I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Mitch stroked her cheek.

The woman smiled up at him and nodded.

“I lied,” Mitch slipped the nylons over her head so fast that she hardly knew what was happening.

He wound them around her neck and pulled them as tight as he could. When the lights went out in her eyes he ejaculated inside her again.

That was much better.

*****

Penelope had just completed her morning run around City Park when the bike messenger approached her. He skidded to a stop beside her.

“Are you Penelope Bishop?” the young man asked.

“That’s me,” Penelope was half bent over with her hands on her knees catching her breath.

“You’ve been served,” the messenger slapped the thick envelope into her hands and cycled away.

“Fucking asshole,” Penelope slammed the envelope down on her desk in the Task Force office.

Steve Edwards and Alice Leasingham looked up at her but said nothing. They knew better than to talk to Penelope when she was in one of her moods. She would either tell them what was pissing her off or she wouldn’t.

“Bradley fucking Wilson is suing me for divorce on the grounds of adultery and uncommon grounds based on alcohol abuse and professional misconduct,” Penelope seethed.

Penelope was still dressed in her running clothes: black tights, pink spandex sports top and running shoes. Her suit was still in the car. She had intended to shower and change at work. She was getting back into her old routine, getting her life back in order.

“You wanna take the day? Get yourself together? Talk to a lawyer?” Steve asked.

“No! Yes! Fuck it! Yes I’ll take the day thanks Steve,” she snatched up the letter and left the office.

Jaylene Foster had finished her classes and was walking towards the gates of Balwyn College amid a crowd of students when she saw Penelope Bishop parked on the side of the road. Penelope was leaning on her car. She was wearing a bright short-sleeved dress with a floral pattern, tan hose and low heels. Her makeup was lighter than usual and she had let out her blonde hair.

When she saw Jaylene a beatific smile spread on her face.

Jaylene approached her cautiously. She was surprised to see Penelope waiting for her outside of the college. Did she have news about the case? She certainly wasn't dressed for work.

Jaylene was surprised when Penelope reached out and took her hand and leaned in and kissed her cheek. She was wearing a flowery perfume and smelled delightful.

“Is everything ok?” Jaylene asked.

Penelope had not let go of Jaylene’s hand and their fingers were entwined like young lovers.

“Everything is fine. I have a picnic in the car. Wanna come?” Penelope gently squeezed Jaylene’s fingers.

“Penelope. Everyone can see us. People know who you are,” Jaylene whispered.

“Fuck everyone,” Penelope leaned in and kissed Jaylene full on the mouth.

A small group of college students applauded and whistled.

“You go girl!” a young woman called out cheerfully.

Penelope and Jaylene found a sunny spot in a grove of Box Elders and spread out a blanket on the grass. From their hilltop position Penelope could see the fountain where she had twice met Melissa Doyle but Melissa wasn’t in Penelope’s thoughts.

Jaylene helped Penelope unpack the picnic basket they had carried from the car.

“I haven’t been on a picnic since I was a little boy. I imagined I was actually a little girl. A princess on a hill looking down at my castle,” Jaylene blushed as she told Penelope her story.

“At least one pleasant memory form your childhood then?” Penelope smiled.

“Yeah. That was before I told my parents that I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body,” Jaylene frowned.

“Sorry,” Penelope gave her a wan smile.

“What for? It’s not your fault,” Jaylene squeezed Penelope’s hand.

“This is weird. I’ve never had anybody meet me after school and take me on a date,” Jaylene blushed.

“Now I feel like a paedophile,” Penelope laughed.

“The age difference isn’t that much,” Jaylene said.

“Ten years,” Penelope sighed.

“Now I feel stupid,” Penelope bowed her head.

“I think you're wonderful,” Jaylene scooted closer, on her knees.

She lifted Penelope’s face and kissed her softly.

“I think you're wonderful too. I used to tease Silvia about being a U-Haul lesbian and here I am behaving just like one,” Penelope blushed.

“Oh you are sweet. Now let’s eat I’m starving,” Jaylene giggled.

They ate sandwiches and drank iced tea and Penelope told Jaylene the parts of her life story that she had omitted the last time they were together, concluding with being served divorce papers that very morning.

“What are you going to do?” Jaylene asked.

They were both lying on the blanket looking up at the big blue sky which was slowly darkening.

“I’m not going to contest it. He want’s half of everything and that’s fair; he brought most of the stuff to the marriage anyway. I’ll sell the house and still have enough for an apartment when I give him his half,” Penelope sighed.

“It’s really over?” Jaylene asked.

“It was over before it was over. We both knew it. My misstep with Melissa Doyle wasn’t the cause of our breakup it was a symptom,” Penelope turned to face Jaylene.

“I feel a little intrusive; like I’m peeking behind the curtain into someone else's house,” Jaylene confessed.

“I want you to know everything about me. I know everything about you,” Penelope said sagely.

“Why?” Jaylene inched closer.

“Because I feel something for you and I think you feel something for me. We didn’t just fuck the other night. We made love. We shared intimate secrets,” Penelope replied.

They kissed. Softly at first and then it became passionate. Jaylene was wearing tight jeans and a letterman’s jacket over a t-shirt. She hadn't tucked and Penelope could feel her becoming tumescent.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” Penelope whispered.

Jaylene nodded.

They lay in Penelope’s big bed exhausted by their lovemaking; their clothes left a trail from the front door to the foot of the bed.

Penelope was lying on her side propped on one elbow; her finger lazily circled the areola of Jaylene’s right breast.

“Is it too early in our relationship to say that I love you?” Penelope breathed.

Jaylene froze. She didn’t reply.

The silence in the room was unnerving. Penelope could hear her own heartbeat.

“I have to go to work,” Jaylene pushed herself to the edge of the bed and sat up.

“Don’t,” Penelope reached out and stroked Jaylene’s bare back.

“I have to,” Jaylene whispered.

“You don’t have to. Stay here,” Penelope’s voice was hushed.

Jaylene turned and leaned down and kissed Penelope on the forehead.

Penelope watched her pick up her clothes and get dressed. Jaylene left the room without looking back. When Penelope heard the front door close she began to cry.

*****

Penelope’s phone rang and she snatched it off the nightstand.

“Holliday’s over. We’ve caught another one. It’s an old Texaco out on Route 190; I’ll text you the coordinates,” Steve’s voice came through the phone.

Penelope ate a banana in the car on her way to the scene. That was breakfast. She hadn’t slept well last night because she had been woken by the sound of Ellery Gamble’s motorbike revving incessantly in her driveway at the change of shift. She’d come to the door carrying her service weapon and they had a huge fight which ended with Ellery calling her a drunken tranny skank, telling her he wanted nothing to with her, which suited Penelope entirely.

The boy was immature and selfish. She hadn't had a drink for over a week but he hadn't noticed and he didn’t mind that she was skank when he was bending her over a car out in the Longhorn’s parking lot. She was glad it was finally over.

Penelope was more concerned about her budding relationship with Jaylene Foster. Had she gone too far telling Jaylene that she loved her? She needed to clear her mind and get her head in the game.

The scene at the Texaco station was chaotic. There were police vehicles of all descriptions parked on the concrete apron, their rooftop light bars flickered lazily. The whole abandoned service station was roped off with police tape and uniformed officers were patrolling the perimeter because somehow the news services had found out. News trucks with satellite dishes were parked just off the entrance ramp. Stylishly dressed female reporters with short skirts, big hair and blowjob lips and handsome male reporters with fake tans and white teeth were taking into microphones using the old gas station as a backdrop.

One of the reporters recognised Penelope and made a beeline for her with his cameraman and sound guy running beside him. Penelope made it under the chequered tape just in time as the reporter began to yell questions at her. The questions were indistinct but she did hear the words serial killer and she bristled. She saw that Gary Rasmussen’s service vehicle was parked amongst the melee and she knew that was not good.

Alice Leasingham came out of the ramshackle diner and helped Penelope with her Tyvek overboots and handed her a pair of latex gloves. She followed Alice’s lead stepping on the crime scene tiles.

“We are pretty certain that it’s him but this one is different,” Alice said over her shoulder.

“Different how?” Penelope asked.

“I don’t want to contaminate your thought processes so I’ll let you evaluate the scene and make up your own mind,” she said.

Penelope took in the carnage in the diner: the wrecked furniture, the detritus of young people and the homeless looking for a place to party or a place to crash. The stained and faded ancient advertising posters on the wall and the obligatory pornographic graffiti. Crime scene lights had been rigged, their brilliant LEDs lighting up the tableaux like an island in a sea of crud.

The usual suspects were in attendance: Bob Tanner and his CSI techs and Brendan Scott the medical examiner. Steve Edwards was having an animated conversation with Gary Rasmussen, the Chief of Detectives, off to one side.

Penelope managed to push her way through the CSI techs and stood at the base of the mattress and surveyed the scene. A young woman lay on the mattress. She had been displayed in a similar fashion to April Summers and Loretta Dubbin. Her hair was teased, her makeup heavy, her micro-miniskirt was rucked up around her waist displaying her purple satin panties and black stockings; her legs were lewdly spread wide. She was wearing fuck-me heels and a faux fur coat lay on the floor beside the mattress.

The woman’s underwear and stockings were stained with what Penelope assumed was dried semen. It had also spattered on her skirt and on her satin blouse. The woman’s countenance just screamed hooker.

There was a pair of pantyhose embedded in the flesh of the woman’s neck.

Penelope was ashamed that she thought that the woman resembled Jaylene Foster when she was dressed for the street.

“Do you think it’s him?” Bob Tanner had sidled up to her.

“Looks like the same MO. Definitely the same signatures,” Penelope postulated.

“Look carefully,” Bob said.

Penelope carefully scanned the scene and then she drew in a deep breath when she realised what Bob was alluding to.

“She’s a genetic female,” Penelope got down on her knees and edged closer to the corpse.

“Can I confirm that?” she looked up at Bob.

“Go ahead,” he handed her a stainless steel extendible pointer.

Penelope used the tip of the pointer to move the crotch of victim’s panties aside so she could see the woman did indeed have vulva. Penelope could see a gobbet of semen caught in the woman’s labia.

She eased the panties back into place and got to her feet, handing the pointer back to Bob.

“I still think it’s him. Same signatures, similar MO. Maybe he’s morphing, serial killers sometimes change their MO or maybe it was a case of mistaken identity? Maybe when he picked her up he thought she was trans?” Penelope opined.

“What do you think?” Steve Edwards came over standing uncomfortably close to Penelope on the crime scene mats.

“I was just saying to Bob, I still think it’s our guy. Does she have any identification?” Penelope asked.

“None that we can find. I’ve been here since the crime scene unit arrived and we are in agreement that the signatures are identical to the other victims. Looks like consensual sex took place on the mattress then she was strangled and the perp spent some time with her sexually abusing her post mortem. The pantyhose around her neck look the same as the others. She screams hooker,” Steve summed up the crime scene nicely.

“Besides the obvious difference that this woman is genetically female, there are ligature marks on her wrists and ankles indicating that she had been bound, most likely while she was being transported. Another significant change to his MO,” Steve added.

Steve pointed to the cut cable tie beside the mattress.

“We found two more outside. Probably used to bind her legs, this one would have likely been used on her wrists,” he pointed to the cable tie with the toe of his shoe.

“We found a vehicle round back which we believe the perp used to bring her here. We ran the plates. It was stolen eight days ago from outside a house in Forest Gardens,” Steve referred to the tablet he was holding.

Just then one of the crime scene techs hurriedly made his way over to Bob Tanner looking excited. Steve, Penelope and Gary huddled next to him so they could hear what he had to say.

“It’s him! It’s the same perp from the Summers and Dubbin crime scenes,” the tech said excitedly.

“I ran the prints we took from the lock and chain on the door and from the Toyota and they’re a match. We’ll have to wait a while for the DNA but it’s him,” the tech’s excitement waned when he realised the importance of what he’d just said.

The CSI crime scene van was a wonder of technology. It was basically a mobile lab with a high speed satellite data feed. But with all this technology at their fingertips they were no closer to finding the killer.

Gary moved away from the scene and found a quiet corner in the diner to make calls. When he came back he looked sombre.

“I’ve been told to address the media outside. I’ll do the talking but I want Bishop standing beside me,” Gary was addressing Steve.

“I know that you’re running lead on this but the victims are women and I want them to see that a policewoman is working the case. Also Bishop is well known to them from the Sleeping Beauty and Lipstick Killer cases. I want people to know we have our best working on this,” Gary explained.

Steve nodded. It made sense.

“When they find out that all the victims were prostitutes and that two of them were transgender women a lot of sympathy for the victims will dissipate. If the crimes weren’t so juicy the press wouldn’t be so excited,” Penelope stated the bleeding obvious.

“You know how this works Penelope. Stick to the usual tag lines and stay away from the specifics,” Gary motioned for Penelope to follow him outside to meet the vultures.

Later that day in the Task Force office Steve and Alice were updating their crime wall with the specifics of their latest victim while Penelope worked on the computer trying to get a photo-match for their latest victim.

“I think I’ve found her,” Penelope called out and Steve and Alice went over and looked over her shoulder at the screen.

“Pauline Sanders. Age 32. Originally from Denton Texas. She has raps for solicitation in Fort Worth and Dallas and has been cautioned here for soliciting outside of the Bridge Street free zone,” Penelope pointed to the screen.

“I’ll run her prints to confirm; they will be on file because she’s been pinched,” Alice went over to her work station.

“Steve! Check this out,” Penelope had run the name Pauline Sanders through the Balwyn Police database and scored a hit on a lost property report.

“They found her purse in Bolen Alley just off Bridge Street,” Penelope said pushing back her chair.

Steve followed Penelope down to the lost property section. Personal items handed in by the public were catalogued and efforts made to contact the owner if there was any form of ID or registration associated with the item. Unclaimed items eventually went into storage and were periodically auctioned if not claimed within a certain time period.

Penelope explained the situation to the Sergeant in charge, a veteran female officer who was close to retirement and happy to have an office job. She’d had her uniform tailored to fit her slim frame and was pushing the boundaries with her makeup and heels. She and Penelope had been drinking buddies at The Longhorn back when Penelope was running wild.

At Penelope’s request the Sergeant handled the purse with latex gloves and put it in an evidence bag and had it entered into the system as evidence. Penelope then followed the proper chain of custody procedure and signed the evidence out along with the lost and found data sheet.

Back in the office Penelope carefully emptied the contents out of the purse onto a pristine white sheet of blotting paper, handling everything with gloves. She catalogued and photographed the contents: Pauline Sanders’ drivers licence, a packet of Marlboro Menthol Lights, a disposable lighter, a packet of condoms, a tube of lubricant and a single unmarked house key.

She handed the purse to Alice to take away to be dusted for fingerprints and processed for DNA. She ran the driver’s licence through the system and came up with a current address for Pauline Sanders in Balwyn. It wasn’t far from where Jaylene Foster lived.

“What’s the bet that that house key opens the door to Pauline Sanders’ apartment?” Penelope picked up the unmarked key.

“Well it sure looked like a hooker’s purse. All the tools of the trade but nothing of value, just her ID which she is legally required to carry,” Steve commented.

“She’d keep her house key unmarked in case her purse got snatched or stolen,” Penelope agreed.

“I’ll get onto Denton PD and get them to standby to make a call on the next of kin once Brendan Scott makes the formal identification. Then let’s go check out Bolen Alley where the purse was found and then Pauline’s apartment. Looks like you and I have another date on Bridge Street interviewing hookers,” Steve said.

Penelope nodded and picked up her handbag. They drove to Bolen Alley which connected to Bridge Street and parked where the lost and found report said the purse had been found, in the gutter next to a recycled clothing outlet.

The Alley was cruddy, half the premises along it were for let and the other half were typical for the district: second hand shops, pawnbrokers, bail bonds and payday loans.

There was nothing there to help them. They showed Pauline Sanders picture to a few of the proprietors near where the purse was found but no one knew her.

Steve bought up Google Maps and entered in the address they had for Pauline Sanders. He showed the screen to Penelope.

“If she was working Bridge Street and she lives here, she would have used this alley as a shortcut to get to work,” Steve traced the route on the screen.

Penelope nodded and then she froze.

“Fuck! Get me to Balwyn College, now!” Penelope made a dash for the car pulling out her phone as she got in.

“What?” Steve sensed Penelope’s panic.

Penelope shook her head and began to madly text. A few seconds later her phone pinged with an incoming text. Penelope pressed dial and put the phone to her ear.

“Jaylene! Yes I know you're in class but this important. Stay at the college. Stay in a pubic area like the library or the cafeteria, can you do that for me please honey? Please just do it for me. Stay there until I come get you; I won’t be long,” Penelope pleaded into the phone.

She nodded and hung up.

Steve could only hear one side of the conversation but he picked up on the word honey.

Penelope pulled out her tablet and tapped it, swiping and typing frantically. When Steve stopped for a red light Penelope put the tablet in front of his face. The screen was split. On one side was a picture of Jaylene Foster on the other was a picture Pauline Sanders. They didn’t look like twins but they looked similar.

“Pauline lives only a few doors down from Jaylene. They both work Bridge Street. They have similar features and a similar build and they dress the same. They would both use Bolen Alley as a convenient shortcut to get to work. Remember what I said back at the Texaco? What if it’s a case of mistaken identity?” Penelope had to pause to take a breath.

“He was stalking her Steve! He was waiting for Jaylene to come down that alley so he could abduct her,” Penelope said excitedly.

“That’s one hypothesis but how would he know about Jaylene? How would he know that she was the one who saw him in the car the night he abducted Loretta Dubbin?” Steve sounded sceptical.

“Exactly Steve! How would he know?” Penelope slammed her palm down on the dash.

To be continued

Author’s Note: Some of you will recognise the abandoned Texaco gas station from my story ‘Fair Trade’. It was just too good of a plot device to be used only once so I decided to take it out for another outing.

Hugs and kisses, Michele

There was no déjà vu when Penelope burst into the college cafeteria. Melissa Doyle was the furthest thing from her mind; her heels clicked-clacked on the tiled floor as she strode purposely into the large space, mostly empty at this time of day. She looked around frantically until she found Jaylene Foster sitting at a table by herself, her head buried in the screen of her laptop.

Penelope sat across from her and Jaylene looked up a little surprised and then she smiled and Penelope’s heart swelled. She reached out and took Jaylene’s hand in her own and kissed it softly.

“What's wrong Penny?” Jaylene looked concerned.

If anyone else had called her Penny at that particular time she would have swung at them.

“There’s been a development,” Penelope swallowed.

“A development?” Jaylene closed her laptop and looked at Penelope, trying to read her expression.

“He’s taken another girl,” Penelope’s mouth was dry; she could hardly speak.

She put her hand over Jaylene’s and clasped it, wanting to hold her, wanting to comfort her, wanting to never let her go.

“Oh?” was all Jaylene could articulate; she couldn’t take in the enormity of it.

“Was she?” Jaylene whispered.

“She was a prostitute yes but she wasn’t trans,” Penelope said.

“Are you sure it’s him?” Jaylene didn’t like that she said those words with hope in her voice.

“It’s him,” Penelope said with cold conviction.

“I want you to come and stay with me. Just for a little while,” Penelope forced a wan smile.

“Stay with you?” Jaylene sounded confused.

“I don’t want anything from you. I know I behaved petulantly asking you to stay with me before, telling you that I loved you so early in our relationship. I’m sorry,” Penelope breathed.

“It’s not what you think. I left your apartment because I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to go to work. I wanted to get up in the morning and make you breakfast and then crawl back into bed with you and eat in bed while we watched the morning news together. I wanted to sit and watch you read the morning newspapers, watching your facial expressions change as you skipped from story to story. You’re so intense when you read anything,” Jaylene squeezed Penelope’s hand.

Penelope had no idea that Jaylene had studied her so closely.

“But if I did that. If I stopped working. If I’d stayed in your bed. I would have sacrificed my independence. I’ve been dependent on people all my life and they have all hurt me or abandoned me,” Jaylene shivered with emotion.

Penelope could hardly believe that the woman that she had only just come to love was pouring her heart out to her in this cold chrome and steel cathedral of a room.

“I promise I won’t abandon you, that I won’t hurt you,” Penelope whispered.

“Says the woman with two failed marriages and a string of jilted lovers,” Jaylene said coldly.

Penelope snatched back her hands.

“There’s more,” Penelope’s voice was cold; almost stern.

“I think… we think… that the killer took this woman by mistake. We think he wanted you,” Penelope said.

“Me? Why would he want me?” Jaylene looked nervously around the cafeteria.

“Because you are the only person who can identify him,” Penelope said sombrely.

“The composite! How does he know it’s me? I only saw him for a few seconds on Bridge Street and he waved me away and took Loretta instead. And now you’re telling me that he came back for me and took someone else by mistake? It makes no sense,” Jaylene shook her head slowly.

“The woman. Pauline Sanders. She was taken in Bolen Alley. Am I right in guessing that you use Bolen Alley as a shortcut to get to Bridge Street?” Penelope asked.

Jaylene nodded dourly.

“Pauline Sanders lived a few doors down from you. In the dark… from a distance… she looks like you. Fuck! She looks a lot like you up close,” Penelope said coolly.

“That doesn’t explain how he knows that it’s me who can identify him. Has he been stalking me? Following me?” Jaylene shivered violently.

“The honest answer is I don’t know. What I do know is that it takes a lot of time and resources to follow someone. When we do it we have two teams in twelve hour shifts. We’re talking about one man,” Penelope explained.

“A psychopath,” Jaylene countered.

“Yes, a psychopath. He can’t follow you twenty-four seven but he has followed you. He must know where you live. He obviously knows where you work,” Penelope regretted saying that last sentence as soon as it left her lips.

Jaylene bristled.

“Steve Edwards is waiting in the car outside. I want you to come with us to your place and pack up some essentials. I’ll relocate you to my place temporarily until I can get a safe house organised,” Penelope started digging in her handbag for her phone.

“What if I say no? What about my studies? Can I still go to school? How am I going to earn?” the questions tumbled from Jaylene lips.

“Let me get you safe first. We’ll arrange something with the college; maybe get you an undercover escort?” Penelope countered.

“A bodyguard?” Jaylene sounded incredulous.

“Maybe. Someone to keep you safe until I catch this guy,” Penelope began to write a text.

Jaylene reached out stopped Penelope from texting and looked at her tersely.

“And how am I going to live in the meantime? How am I going to earn money?” her voice was cold.

“We will work something out. I… we need to get you safe first and then we can work out the rest,” Penelope went back to texting.

Jaylene leaned back in her chair and thought about the situation. It was no use dying in a ditch if the outcome was that she literally died in a ditch.

“So your place at first. Then a safe house. And I get to continue to study for my degree,” Jaylene sounded resigned.

“Yes. It will take me a little time to organise a safe house and security for you,” Penelope replied.

Jaylene began to pack away her laptop and gather her course notes and Penelope sent her text.

The ride to Jaylene’s apartment was conducted in silence. Steve was glad that he was driving so he had something to pay attention to because you could cut the tension in the car with a knife.

Steve followed Jaylene into her apartment and helped her pack and brought her suitcases back to the car while Penelope stayed in the car working her phone and her tablet, silently fuming.

“I need to go by the workshop,” Jaylene announced.

Jaylene and a couple of other women studying fashion design rented a small workspace where they worked on their projects. Penelope hadn't been there but Jaylene had told her about it.

“When we get you settled in the safe house we’ll take you there to pick up any materials you need for your course but for now let’s just get you settled,” Penelope countered.

Jaylene leaned back into the seat and crossed her arms and silently fumed as they drove the rest of the way.

“You know where everything is,” Penelope said when she had Jaylene settled in her house.

Steve had helped carry the bags inside and beat a hasty retreat back to the car.

“Can I have a key?” Jaylene asked.

“Jaylene, I need for you to stay inside for now. It’s almost impossible that the killer knows where you are and highly unlikely that he will come after you again but I want you safe. Please just stay inside and keep the place locked up until I can get you to a safe house,” Penelope pleaded.

“I’m your prisoner,” Jaylene snapped.

Penelope sighed with frustration and wiped away a tear. She stood in the centre of the room looking forlorn.

Jaylene stepped into her and put her arms around her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean all the nasty things I said. I know that you are doing your best to keep me safe. I act out when I’m not in control. It’s a defence mechanism I’ve developed over the years,” Jaylene whispered and held Penelope close.

“It’s ok. I understand,” Penelope sighed.

“You shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve seen it before,” Jaylene stroked Penelope’s hair.

“Really? When?” Penelope looked at her quizzically.

“When I left your house when you asked me stay,” Jaylene smiled.

Penelope furrowed her brow and looked at Jaylene curiously.

“I left because I was losing control. I was ok when I knew you as a cop who occasionally came to me looking for information. Then you started making me trust you and made me fall in love with you and if I love you then I’m no longer in control,” Jaylene kissed Penelope softly on the lips and then eased out of her embrace.

“Go! Catch bad guys. I’ll get set up in the spare bedroom, I have work to do,” Jaylene snatched up one of her suitcases and walked down the hall towards the spare bedroom.

*****

“Are you fucking crazy Bishop! And you! You’re in on this too! You're supposed to be in charge Steve!” Gary Rasmussen was dressing down Penelope Bishop and Steve Edwards in his office.

“You come to me with some half-baked theory that the killer really wanted to kill this trans hooker but took another woman by mistake.”

“It’s just conjecture; there’s no real evidence to support your hypothesis,” he fumed.

“Need I remind you too assholes that you leaked the composite picture and the story about the killer into the general population when I told you only send it other law enforcement agencies and to keep a fucking lid on it!” Gary was furious.

“It’s your fault that we had the press gang out at the gas station hanging around like vultures waiting to feed off the carrion. If your story has any truth to it then it’s your fault that this guy went after Ms Foster and took Pauline Sanders by mistake,” Gary waved his finger at the both of them.

“No fuckin’ safe house! No fuckin’ bodyguards! I don’t have the budget or the justification,” Gary fumed.

“What else you got?” Gary calmed down and sat down behind his desk and indicated for them to sit.

“The fingerprints at the Texaco match the other two crime scenes, we’re waiting on DNA. The pantyhose used to strangle Pauline Sanders are L'eggs Everyday Regular just like the others. The MO is similar; the signatures the same. He even stole the Toyota from Forest Gardens just down the street from where he stole the BMW. It’s him Chief,” Steve said grimly.

“The ME has formally identified Pauline Sanders. Denton PD found Pauline’s NOK and they identified her from photographs. The father is flying into Balwyn to make funeral arrangements when the body is released. We found Sanders’ purse in Bolen Alley. Alice Leasingham and another CSI tech are at her apartment but they haven’t found anything that helps us,” Steve continued.

“After you and Penelope made your statement to the media the phones started running hot. The usual lunatics trying to take credit for crimes they know nothing about. A couple of leads that won’t go anywhere. Lots of assholes with grudges identifying their next door neighbours and ex-boyfriends from the identikit,” Steve summed up the situation.

“We’ll follow the leads, conduct interviews, ramp up the police presence around the Bridge Street free zone,” Penelope added.

“You don’t use the term free zone anywhere near the media,” Gary said gruffly.

“What about Jaylene?” Penelope asked.

“You have her in a safe place. Just make sure that nothing happens to her like it did to Melissa Doyle,” Gary wagged a finger at Penelope.

“That was uncalled for Chief,” Penelope bristled.

“Get out of here and catch this guy,” Gary dismissed them

When Penelope got to the door he called her back into his office. He looked her up and down studying her closely.

“You look good Bishop: smart, alert, impassioned, sober. Heard you haven’t been around The Longhorn for a while. That hotshot Ellery Gamble just transferred out to the Highway Patrol. Good riddance I say. I don’t know what you’re doing but keep doing it. Maybe I’ll keep you on the Task Force when this is over,” Gary said.

“Thanks Chief,” Penelope blushed.

“Keep that girl safe Bishop. I mean it,” Gary said solemnly.

“I will Chief,” Penelope flushed deeper, her cheeks rosaceous.

*****

Steve, Penelope and Alice worked the case. Steve and Penelope chased down leads while Alice reviewed the crime scene information and sent an evidence pack to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and asked for a criminal profile to be created. Now that they had a serial killer on their hands they could enlist assistance from the FBI. Penelope’s soon to be ex-husband Bradley Wilson still worked out of the field office in Austin and Penelope had made it clear that she did not want him working the case.

After work Steve went to Ride em’ Cowgirl to catch a show and catch up with Jill Graham and the queens. Since he had taken up with Felicity Benson and fallen out with Steve Randal his social circles had changed dramatically. He no longer hung around with other cops after work; he preferred the company of Felicity’s circle of friends.

Jill was working the bar. The waiters on Thursday nights were twinks dressed in black hotpants with red suspenders, white tank-tops and Doc Martin boots to cater to the gay clientele. Jill was similarly dressed in black hotpants with a white tank-tops and black high heels. The tank-top showed off her tattooed arms and shoulders and her tits. The hotpants showed a lot of leg. She was wearing glossy flesh-toned pantyhose and Steve was taking an eyeful of her ass as he sat at the bar watching her. She was bent over with her back to him, struggling to take a six-pack of Vodka Cruisers from the under-shelf built-in fridge.

When she stood up and turned around Jill saw Steve and blushed.

“You get a good eyeful asshole?” she smirked at him.

“No. Do it again but this time take a while longer,” Steve smiled back at her.

“What would Felicity say if I told her you were ogling my ass and flirting with me?” she placed a Lone Star on the bar before him and turned to pour him a shot of JD.

“She doesn’t mind where I get my appetite so long as I eat at home,” Steve smirked, appreciatively looking at Jill’s long legs as she poured his drink.

Just then his phone buzzed with an incoming text message. Expecting it to be work he reluctantly read the text and was surprised to find it was from Wendy Beaumont. He typed a response and then sipped his drink and continued his small talk with Jill Graham.

“You see much of Mitch Freeman lately?” Jill asked.

“Not really but I’m not his keeper; he works for Felicity not for me,” Steve replied.

“He’s taken a few days off here and there is the only reason I asked,” Jill commented.

“While the cat’s away and all that,” Steve grinned.

“He usually makes some excuse to watch the girls rehearsing, especially their dance numbers. Ain’t like him to miss a free show,” Jill continued, only really half interested in the conversation.

“Is he sweet on one of them? I can’t say I’ve noticed is all,” Steve replied just as disinterestedly, checking his messages repeatedly.

“Never took him for a tranny chaser. Seems too straight-laced,” Steve smiled when he read an incoming text.

“Who knows what the fuck you men get up to? I know he keeps a wanking stocking in his desk drawer,” Jill said offhandedly, causing Steve to choke on his beer.

“Fuck Jill. I’d never let Felicity look in the drawers of my work desk. A man’s gotta have some secrets,” Steve said once he’d swallowed his beer.

“Be right back,” Steve went to the front door and spoke to the security guy briefly.

The door opened and Wendy Beaumont entered. She kissed Steve chastely on the cheek knowing that this was not the time or the place to show open expressions of affection.

Steve thanked the security guy and led Wendy into the club and over to the bar.

“Jill this is Wendy; Wendy this is Jill,” Steve made the introductions.

The women looked each other over critically like only women can, looking for flaws and making comparisons. Jill was impressed with Wendy Beaumont’s eclectic style. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress which in Jill’s opinion was little too short and showed a little too much cleavage. The irony was not lost of her that she was wearing hotpants and a tank-top but that was a prescribed uniform.

Wendy's face was surrounded by a shock of red hair, her bangs came down over her wide blue eyes, her nose was a little too big and crooked, and her pale skin was sprinkled with freckles, her lips were full, emphasised by her bright red lipstick. She was putting a lot of stress on her cocktail dress, it was close to bursting at the seams because Wendy was wide hipped and broad shouldered. She was a big girl with long legs. Thank god for lycra Jill thought, feeling a little bitchy.

Jill thought that she had won the staredown and of course Wendy thought she had.

“Wendy was April Showers’ best friend. They lived together,” Steve explained.

“Sorry for your loss,” Jill said and was immediately sympathetic to the woman.

“What can I get you Wendy?” she asked.

“Scotch neat please,” Wendy gave her a beatific smile.

“Wendy’s having trouble sleeping with all the commotion about the serial killer so I invited here to check out a late show. Have one of the waiters bring our drinks over to my table please Jill,” Steve said and directed Wendy through the crowd to his reserved table at the back of the club.

Jill knew that when men explained too much they were up to no good. She wondered what Felicity would think of Steve bringing Wendy to the club.

“Well… while the cat’s away I suppose,” she said to herself and began to fill drink orders.

Steve deliberately did not sit too close to Wendy. He’d fucked her in the bed he shared with Felicity which was an act of betrayal even though he and Felicity were not exclusive when she was away. Flirting with Wendy in the club would be another act of betrayal and Felicity would find out because if drag queens liked to do anything it was gossip and kiki.

“I’ve seen April perform of course but the places she worked were nothing like this. The production value here is amazing; the queens are incredibly talented,” Wendy said as they watched the performance.

“April must have been just as good otherwise Felicity would not have invited her to perform,” Steve replied.

“I miss her. I hope you catch that guy soon; I can’t believe he’s taken three victims,” Wendy sighed.

The news had been hot with the story, the reporters trying their best to get the specific details of the murders. ‘If it bleeds; it leads’ was their mantra. The press were calling the perp ‘The Honey-Trap Killer’ because they believed he had gaslighted all the women. They were either too stupid or just didn’t care that they were using the term honey-trap out of context. The press focussed on the fact that all the women were prostitutes so they assumed he had solicited them and lured them to their deaths.

“Anyway, the queens are amazing and those costumes! My god they are brilliant, I’d die to be able to wear clothes like that,” Wendy gushed.

“Who makes them?” she asked.

“Some of the queens can sew but most have designers who make them. Panti Down is in charge of costumes for the big production numbers,” Steve pointed to Panti on the stage.

They had a couple more drinks and over the course of the evening Wendy edged her seat closer to Steve and was eventually close enough that she could put her hand on his cock under the table.

“Take me home and fuck me,” she whispered in his ear and then nibbled his earlobe.

“I can’t take you back to my place,” Steve breathed.

“Then come back to mine,” Wendy squeezed his growing erection.

Wendy stayed glued to him in the car, if it wasn't for the centre console she would have been in his lap. She kissed his face and stroked his cock and put his hand under her dress and mewed when he stroked her thighs. They pawed at each other as they entered the converted red brick townhouse in Slattery Park.

Wendy half dragged Steve to her little bedroom; she was so horny that she didn’t even bother to close the door. Not that it mattered anymore, April no longer lived there.

Wendy pulled Steve down on the bed and pounced on him; straddling him. Her hair fell around his face as she kissed him passionately. She rubbed her crotch on his hard cock and mewed and then she began to frantically undress. She struggled out of the tight fitting cocktail dress and Steve reached up and unclasped her brassiere releasing her pendulous breasts.

She lowered her face to his and kissed him again while Steve stroked her soft creamy bosom, her huge nipples became engorged as Steve tweaked and twisted them.

“Let me get undressed,” Steve gasped under the weight of the big woman.

Wendy refused to budge; she worked her hand into his crotch and unzipped him, freeing his erection.

She was wearing flimsy lycra full-cut panties, almost granny-panties which wouldn’t show any VPL under her tight dress. Wendy pressed his cock into her cunt and he could feel the folds of her sex through the sodden fabric.

Wendy eased the crotch of her panties aside and slipped Steve’s cock inside her sodden minge. Steve could smell her sex; she was hot and wet and her vagina gripped his cock like a slippery, satin glove. She hardly moved, just grinding her crotch into his so that his pubis pressed on her clitoris.

She kissed him harder, driving her tongue into his mouth to stifle her moans. Steve thrust upwards, driving his cock deep into her warm, moist cunt, feeling her vagina clutch at his phallus and the folds of her labia press on the base of his throbbing cock.

Wendy broke the kiss and leaned back, bucking and rocking on his hard penis, using his manhood to elicit her orgasm. She howled and screeched and drove her heels into his flanks and put her hands on his shoulders so she could ride him to an earth shattering climax.

Steve’s cock quivered and pulsed as he ejaculated deep inside her cunt which undulated and quivered as Wendy milked every last drop of semen from his sac.

She fell on him and kissed him and he held her close, relishing the feel of her big soft breasts on his chest and her sloppy cunt still quivering around his hard pole.

When Wendy finally had her breathing under control and the last vestiges of her climax had receded she dismounted.

“You can get undressed now,” she grinned at him sheepishly.

They both got naked and climbed back into bed and this time they took their time making love, slowly building to a crescendo of pleasure. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The next morning Steve lay beside Wendy in bed drinking coffee while she lay on her back blowing smoke at the ceiling. He felt like a heel because he kept looking at the time calculating how long he needed to get back to his apartment, take a shower, get changed and get to work.

“I thought the lease didn’t allow you to smoke in the apartment,” Steve said.

“Fuck the lease; I’m moving anyway. I can’t stay here. I’ve rented a shopfront for my IT business and it has a small one-bedroom apartment upstairs,” Wendy lit another cigarette off the butt of the one she had just smoked.

Steve could see across the hall into April’s bedroom. The mannequin had made him jump when he first saw it in the shadows; it was draped in a red satin evening gown studded with Swarovski crystals. For a second or two it looked lifelike. He saw the sewing machine sitting forlornly in the corner. The owner of the mannequin and sewing machine would never return and it made Steve feel sad.

Steve thought about what Wendy had asked him last night about where drag queens get their clothes and he suddenly had an idea. He sprang out of bed and started to get dressed.

“How much will you take for mannequin, the sewing machine, the fabric… in fact everything in April’s bedroom?” Steve asked.

Wendy looked at him quizzically.

“You told me that April really has no NOK and I take it you can’t move all her stuff into your new apartment,” Steve answered the question she hadn't asked.

“You’re right. Truth is I want it gone. It constantly reminds me of April,” Wendy sighed.

“I’ll give you two thousand and I’ll have some guys pack it up and move it today,” Steve sounded excited.

“It’s not worth that much,” Wendy replied but Steve knew that she could use the money.

“I’ll cut a check and get the removalists to give it to you when they pick it up,” Steve bent down to tie his laces.

“Get them to take everything. All her drag, the shoes, the wigs the lot,” Wendy swivelled onto the edge of the bed.

“Ok, three thousand,” Steve stood up and reached for his coat.

“That’s too much,” Wendy said.

“Take the money,” Steve bent down and kissed her cheek.

“This is it, isn’t it?” she smiled forlornly.

“Yes. I can’t keep doing this,” Steve said honestly.

“Me neither. I have to move on with my life,” Wendy heaved a sigh.

“I told you that I just wanted comfort; that I didn’t want your babies. I don’t need your comfort any more. Thanks for everything Steve,” she leaned in and gave him one last long lingering kiss.

Steve drove home, showered, shaved and changed and made it to the Task Force office in time for the morning brief. He took Penelope aside after the brief and asked her to join him outside for a smoke.

“How’s Jaylene doing?” Steve asked.

“She’s pissed because there is no safe house for her to go to and no protective detail. She’s desperate to get back to college and continue her studies and she wants to go back on the street to work,” Penelope studied the end of her cigarette.

“I threatened to handcuff her to the bedroom door if she tried to leave my house,” Penelope huffed.

“Your bedroom door?” Steve raised his brows at her.

“So what Steve?” Penelope bristled.

“I don’t need a lecture on fucking a material witness. Melissa was never a thing, we were just fuck buddies. She was the one who went all Fatal Attraction. It’s different with Jaylene,” Penelope explained.

“Hey I’m not taking your inventory. Since you came on board the Task Force you’ve been sober and you’ve been a real asset. If Jaylene has anything to with steadying that ship then good on her,” Steve nodded sagely.

“Don’t be so sanctimonious Steve. I know you're fucking Wendy Beaumont. She creams her panties every time she sees you,” Penelope spat.

Steve blushed.

“Well that’s over. She’s moving on, which is why I wanted to talk to you. I have a proposal that might just work out for you and Jaylene. We just have to sell it to her,” Steve grinned.

“Ok. What you got cowboy?” Penelope asked.

Steve told Penelope his idea and between them they hatched a plan.

That afternoon Penelope picked up Jaylene and took her to Balwyn College where Penelope had made an appointment to see the Dean of the college of arts and sciences. Without going into too much detail Penelope explained that Jaylene was a material witness in the Honey-Trap Killer case and that she needed to remain in protective custody.

The Dean agreed that Jaylene could continue her courses online and submit her design projects when required, accompanied by a member of the Balwyn PD which would always be Penelope because Penelope was actually shading the truth about Jaylene being in protective custody.

“Ok, so we got that sorted out but how am I going to be able to make the garments I need to submit for my fashion design projects? You can’t spend all day at the workshop with me when I’m working on my pieces,” Jaylene was still sulking a little.

“I think I have that covered,” Penelope smiled when she saw Steve’s car and a removal truck parked in her driveway.

The truck backed out of the driveway just as Penelope arrived at her house. She parked the car and smiled at Jaylene who looked at her suspiciously.

“What the fuck is going on Penelope?” Jaylene asked.

“Come inside and see for yourself,” Penelope could hardly contain herself.

They went inside and heard a commotion coming from the spare bedroom. Steve was in his shirtsleeves whilst William Russell was ordering him around, telling him where to place various objects and trappings.

“Oh no darling… the light there is shocking. Move it over near the window,” William ordered as Steve pushed a sewing machine across the room.

In between giving orders William was flicking through Jaylene’s workbook.

Jaylene snatched the book out of William’s hands.

“Where did you get this?” Jaylene pressed the book against her bosom protectively.

The book contained all of Jaylene’s fashion concepts. The patterns and layouts were kept on computer but she hand-drew the designs herself.

“And what the fuck is this doing here?” Jaylene pointed to the mess in what had been her temporary bedroom.

“I bought out everything that belonged to April Showers and then had the delivery truck stop by the workshop and collect all your things,” Steve pointed to a second sewing machine and two other mannequins besides the stuff he had collected from April’s bedroom.

“And what the fuck do you propose I do with all this?” Jaylene asked angrily.

“Can you two take a chill pill pulleese!” William shrieked.

William snatched the sketchbook out of Jaylene’s grasp and waved it at her.

“Did you design all this?” he asked almost aggressively.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jaylene seethed and tried unsuccessfully to snatch her book back.

“I am Panti Down. The second best drag queen in Balwyn Texas but you may call me William when I’m out of drag,” William took a theatrical bow.

“So who the fuck are you again?” Jaylene was not impressed.

“I am Felicity Goodnight’s assistant. I help produce, choreograph and script the shows at Ride em’ Cowgirl. I’m also in charge of wardrobe. So let me ask you again, did you design the fashions in this workbook?” William tapped the book.

“Yes,” Jaylene replied, exasperated.

“Then I would like to sit down with you and discuss the possibility of you making some of these designs for my girls. They will need to be changed a little but they are more than adequate for what is required,” William sniffed.

Jaylene bristled but Steve quickly interjected.

“Err, ‘more than adequate’ is a compliment coming from Panti Down,” Steve explained.

“We will pay you for them of course. We pay top dollar for the right gowns,” William added.

“What the fuck Penelope?” Jaylene turned her ire on Penelope.

“Come with me!” Penelope dragged Jaylene into her bedroom and closed the door.

“You can continue your studies here and submit your work online and your designs in person with me accompanying you to the college as necessary. It was Steve’s idea that you design costumes for the drag queens at Ride em’ Cowgirl, he persuaded Panti to come and have a look at your work,” Penelope explained.

“You can’t work the streets. I don’t want you working the streets. This is what you want; to be a fashion designer. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Penelope was tearing up.

“So you are keeping me captive Penny,” Jaylene said coldly.

Penelope began to sob.

“I’m trying to help you. You can leave here as soon as we catch the killer. You don’t have to design anything if you don’t want to. I’ll tell Steve and William that you have turned down their offer,” Penelope took a tissue out of her purse to dry her eyes.

Jaylene wrapped Penelope in her arms and let her cry on her shoulder.

“I’m such a bitch. It’s that control thing again. Of course I’m going to work something out with Panti. Think I wanna keep selling my ass on the streets forever? She’s not going to fuck with my designs though,” Jaylene said determinedly.

Jaylene stormed back into the spare bedroom.

“Ok you can leave,” she pointed at Steve.

“You can make coffee,” she pointed at Penelope.

“And you can join me in the kitchen and we will discuss my designs and talk remuneration,” She pointed at William.

Steve was feeling pretty smug as he walked to his car when suddenly Jaylene came running after him. She put her arms around him and hugged and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you for this,” she smiled at him.

“I got it wrong. You're not really an asshole. You're a nice guy masquerading as an asshole,” she kissed him quickly and skipped back to the house.

That night Jaylene had prepared dinner for them both when Penelope came home from work. Jaylene was deliberately dressed provactively in a sheer robe under which she wore diaphanous see-through nylon panties and a matching bra. Her legs were clad in black fully-fashioned stockings held in place by a red satin garter belt. She was wearing black high heel pumps and doused in exotic perfume.

“I made us dinner to thank you,” Jaylene smiled mischievously.

“It was Steve’s idea,” Penelope said, taking off her jacket and eyeing her lover appreciatively.

“Yes. But I can’t fuck Steve to thank him can I?” Jaylene smiled seductively and pulled Penelope into her arms.

“What about dinner?” Penelope whispered.

“Fuck dinner,” Jaylene muttered throatily as she put her hand under Penelope’s skirt.

She found Penelope hard inside her panties and pantyhose and squeezed her cock. Penelope eased her hand inside Jaylene’s robe and began to stroke her throbbing phallus through her nylon panties.

They kissed passionately as their lust intensified. Jaylene unzipped Penelope’s skirt and it pooled around her ankles.

“Let me take off my blouse,” Penelope said around crushed lips.

“Fuck your blouse. We can do that later,” Jaylene gasped and squeezed Penelope’s cock harder.

“At least let me take off my panties and hose,” Penelope sighed.

“Fuck your panties and hose,” Jaylene pressed Penelope against the dining table.

Jaylene swiped away the utensils clearing a space on the table and she lifted Penelope up and perched her ass on the edge of table.

“I forget how strong you are sometimes,” Penelope gasped.

“And now I'm going to fuck you,” Jaylene pushed Penelope down on the table and lifted her legs over her shoulders.

“Jaylene, what the fuck?” Penelope tried to lift herself up off the table but Jaylene held her down.

She ripped the crotch out of Penelope’s pantyhose and nudged the glans of her penis into Penelope’s sphincter.

Jaylene took a tube of KY jelly out of the pocket of her robe and drizzled the viscous fluid on her cock and then she drove it deep into Penelope’s anus.

“Oh my god!” Penelope gasped.

Jaylene pushed the tails of Penelope’s blouse out of the way and freed Penelope’s penis from her pantyhose and panties. She drizzled more KY jelly on Penelope’s hard cock.

“Watch my blouse!” Penelope shrieked.

“Fuck your blouse. Fuck you!” Jaylene giggled and held Penelope by the hips and began to fuck her hard and fast.

Penelope held onto the edge of the table while Jaylene fucked her so hard that her body shook. Jaylene’s cock thrust deep inside her anus and pressed on her prostate. She began to writhe with pleasure and when Jaylene began to squeeze and stroke her penis she moaned like a slattern.

Jaylene stroked Penelope’s thighs which she knew drove her crazy, alternately caressing her penis. Penelope's anus clutched at Jaylene’s penis and she could feel her orgasm building.

Jaylene grasped Penelope’s cock and frantically stroked it as she jackhammered her cock in and out Penelope’s tight ass.

Penelope screamed and her cock erupted. Fountains of hot semen erupted from her juddering penis and spattered on her belly and soaked into her blouse as Jaylene’s cock disgorged her seed deep in Penelope’s ass. Penelope lifted her ass off the table so that Jaylene could get every bit of her cock inside her anus. Penelope wriggled her buttocks and moaned while Jaylene continued to milk her quivering cock, extracting every scintilla of sperm.

Jaylene lowered Penelope’s legs and leaned down and kissed her lover as Penelope wrapped her legs around Jaylene and held her tight. Their clothes became messy with spilled semen but neither cared.

Jaylene lifted Penelope off the table, her cock still buried in Penelope’s anus. Penelope clung to her, wrapping her legs and arms around Jaylene to support her weight. She carried Penelope towards the bedroom.

“What about dinner?” Penelope smiled into Jaylene’s face.

“Dinner can wait. I want to make love to the woman I love; then we can eat,” Jaylene kissed Penelope and gently lowered her to the bed.

*****

Mitch Freeman took stock of the situation. He’d abducted, fucked and killed Pauline Sanders, mistaking her for Jaylene Foster in the dark alley. Pauline had been fun… a diversion but she wasn’t one of his special girls and while she had sated his lust she hadn't satisfied his compulsion.

He lay low, beavering away at Ride em’ Cowgirl and staked out Jaylene’s flat when he wasn’t working. Jaylene had gone to ground and was no longer living there nor was she active on social media. He’d staked out Balwyn college but she wasn’t attending her classes either. He considered asking her tutor about her but it might raise suspicion.

Mitch checked the tax records and found that Jaylene was still listed on the lease. Had the cops figured out that he’d mistaken Pauline for Jaylene? No. They weren't that smart surely? But they did know that there was a serial killer active and that Jaylene was the only person that could identify him? He bet they had her stashed in a safe house somewhere.

In his basement studio office Mitch reviewed everything that was available online about the Honey-Trap Killer and his victims. He scoffed at the media for giving him such a stupid name that made no sense. He’d desperately like to grill Steve Edwards to find out how the Balwyn PD was progressing with their investigations but he had to be careful.

Steve and he were hardly best friends and Mitch needed to keep things cool. He didn’t want to leave his job. He liked watching the drag queens, being near them, smelling their perfume, listening to them titter in their false falsetto. Staring at their long legs encased in tights and pantyhose, staring at their perfect luscious pubises. Those perfect V-shaped pudenda that reminded him of his mother’s panty-clad mound and of Susan’s… his first love Susan, she who had betrayed him.

Like all the tranny whores did! They deceived him, betrayed him.

It was Texas’s own drag star Alyssa Edwards who had coined the phrase ‘sitting on a secret’ and all those pretty girls: the ones who worked the drag clubs, the ones who worked the streets, the ones who just liked to dress up pretty and hang out around the bars on Bridge street…all the pretty girls… all they had to do was keep their secret. But they never could. And their secret disgusted him.

Deep down Mitch knew that it was disgust for himself; his self-loathing, that made him what he was. His incestuous relationship with his mother which he transferred to his illicit relationship with Susan, which in turn led to his fascination and addiction to female impersonators and trans women.

Steve wondered what to do next. Pursuing Jaylene was dangerous. Taking any more special girls in Balwyn was dangerous. They had been warned. They had been told that a killer was stalking them. The identikit composite was a joke but it looked a little like him. No one was going to recognise him walking the streets but if he was to approach one his special girls she might become suspicious of him, compare him to the composite.

He could work the same online scam he had worked with April Summers but that was tedious. Taking Loretta off the streets had been better. Even taking Pauline Sanders had been exciting. Seeing the fear on her face. Making her bargain for her life. She pretending to be his mother before he fucked her and killed her; that was nice.

Mitch had one more card to play. One last place he had scouted for a rainy day. He would take one more girl in Balwyn and then he would disappear without a trace.

Mitch would be Balwyn's Jack the Ripper or Keyser Söze; terrorising Balwyn… ‘and like that... he's gone’.

Mitch believed he had covered his tracks perfectly. His last posting in the Army had been in the Personnel Division at Fort Bragg. He had altered his Official Military Personnel File and his medical records, removing and replacing his fingerprints with another officer's. They would never find him! He could do it all again somewhere else! But first maybe take one more here in Balwyn.

He smiled to himself. Yes… just one more. Then he’d stop hunting in Balwyn. He’d still get to watch the girls at Ride em’ Cowgirl and when they escalated his lustful fantasies to the point that he would have to do something about it but he would do it elsewhere, in one of the bigger cities.

The abandoned warehouse north of Balwyn was perfect. It was located on the edge of a forest and had been used to store rough-cut raw timber prior to distribution to smaller retail lumber yards. It was almost isolated, located one mile down a gravel road off the highway. In the office at the back of the warehouse Mitch had found a metal-framed bed. The windows in the office were boarded up and he had locked it with a length of chain and a padlock identical to the ones he’d used at the Texaco gas station, purchased on the same day at the same Home Depot.

Mitch had stolen a nondescript Honda Civic and parked it in the warehouse and brought in a new mattress and bedding and the other accoutrements he’d need to make himself comfortable whilst he entertained himself. He’d even placed a pair of the L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose under the pillow so they would be handy. There were now four pairs remaining in the package. He would use them all eventually but not in Balwyn.

Now all he needed now was for someone to join him at the warehouse. One last hurrah.

His cock was hard thinking about it and he took a stocking from the package he kept in drawer and searched his favourites on Google Chrome until he found something suitable to fuel his fantasies while he relieved himself.

*****

Steve Edwards and Penelope Bishop continued to beaver away. They interviewed the girls working Bridge Street and they followed up on leads that came in on the tip-line. Alice Leasingham worked the forensics. She had insurmountable proof that the same man had killed April Summers, Leroy ‘Loretta’ Dubbin and Pauline Sanders. The DNA and the fingerprints found at all three crime scenes were a perfect match. The same brand of L'eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose had been used to murder all three victims and the MO and signatures were almost identical. The single irregularity being that Pauline Sanders was a cis woman but she was still a sex worker.

The probability that hers was case of mistaken identity was a close-kept secret.

Jaylene Forster had settled into a routine. She was happy living at Penelope’s house and didn’t really miss her freedom. She was too busy submitting her course notes and working on her fashion designs. Panti Down was a regular visitor who worked alongside Jaylene putting together the costume designs for the next big production at Ride em’ Cowgirl. Jaylene submitted the same designs for her final exam for her Bachelor’s degree.

Jaylene needed to construct three different costumes changes to be worn by the four queens during the new big budget production. She had finished the prototypes and constructed and tailored them using Panti Down as her model. Penelope agreed to accompany Jaylene to Ride em’ Cowgirl so she could put a final fitting on Panti who would get into full drag and model the costumes on the main stage. The other three queens performing in the production would be present to see the costumes under stage lighting.

Final approval would come from Felicity Benson who was nearing the end of her tour. Felicity had approved the initial designs and had been liaising with Panti via email and Skype.

Mitch Freeman had been too busy catfishing a young trans prostitute who had been advertised her wares online and keeping up with his day job to pay too much attention to what was happening on the theatrical side of the house. He’d approved the purchases and made the appropriate payments for the forthcoming production because that was all part of his job but the everyday minutiae of the production lay in the hands of William Russell and her alter ego Panti Down.

He was totally unaware that Jaylene Foster was coming to the club with Penelope Bishop for a costume fitting and catwalk with Panti and the other queens. He was working in his office with the door locked arranging to meet the unsuspecting trans prostitute blissfully ignorant that the only person who could identify him as the Honey-Trap Killer was only yards away from where he was sitting.

Penelope had work to do and as much as she would have loved to stick around to see the final fitting and stage modelling she had to leave Jaylene at the club knowing she would be safe in the company of Panti Down and the other queens. She was walking back to her car while inside the club Jaylene had asked for and been given directions to the ladies room.

At the same time Mitch had made his final arrangements with his online paramour and she had agreed to meet him outside a Starbucks in Balwyn. Mitch would have his go-bag ready in the Honda Civic so that he could take the unsuspecting young woman to the abandoned warehouse where he would do to her the things he needed to do to satisfy his needs.

He was excited at the prospect and used the wanking stocking he kept in his desk drawer to relieve himself. After which he needed to take a leak and wash his hands.

Jaylene was coming out of the ladies room just as Mitch was about to enter adjacent men's convenience.

They both looked at each other in shock and awe.

Mitch might have had a dad-body but he was still proficient in self-defence and he was lightning fast. He punched Jaylene Foster in the face so hard that she saw stars and was unable to cry out. He hit her again and she fell to the floor unconscious.

Mitch dragged Jaylene into the men’s toilet and put her in one of the stalls. Beside the lighting tech he was the only one presenting as male in the club so it was unlikely she’d be found any time soon.

He briefly considered dragging Jaylene back to his office and making her pay for ruining his life but that would be suicide; he just didn’t have enough time. He’d always knew the day would come when he would either get caught or have to run for it; he just didn’t expect it would come so soon. It was time to activate his escape plan. He’d drive to the warehouse and swap his car for the Honda Civic and then drive to Austin to the storage locker and begin a new life far away from Balwyn Texas.

Mitch ran back to his office and grabbed the .44 Ruger Blackhawk he kept in a lockbox in his office safe. He took the rear entrance out of the club into the car park and was surprised to see Penelope Bishop leaning against her car talking on the phone. She was parked in the space next to his.

How convenient. One of the bitches who was responsible for fucking up his life and she just happened to be a transgender woman. She was a little older than he liked them but she would do.

Penelope had met Mitch Freeman before and she knew that he worked at the club. She put away her phone and smiled at him as he approached.

“Detective Bishop,” Mitch returned the smile and continued to walk towards her purposefully.

“What can I do for you Mitch?” Penelope asked.

Penelope and Mitch were between the two cars so when Mitch drew the Ruger and pointed it at Penelope’s belly no one could see. Not that there was anyone in the deserted car park to see anything.

Penelope made to reach for the pancake holster on her waist but Mitch cocked his weapon and pressed it into her belly.

“Don’t do that Penny,” Mitch said levelly.

Penelope put her hands up.

“Don’t do that either Penny; I’m not stupid. What’s a passer-by going to think when he sees a woman with her hands up like that? Put your hands behind your back,” Mitch took a step back to keep a safe distance between them.

“Turn around and lean against your car,” Mitch said when she complied.

“I take it you have handcuffs on that little Batman belt?” Steve said sarcastically.

Penelope nodded.

“Then you know what to do,” he said.

Penelope fumbled her hand inside her jacket until she found the handcuffs attached to the belt looped through her skirt. Penelope took the handcuffs from their case and with a little difficulty Penelope was able to cuff her wrists behind her back. Mitch leaned against her and locked them tight. She could feel his erect penis pressing against her ass.

“Now we’re going to take a little drive and I’m going to have a little fun with you. You behave yourself and play nice and you might just get out of this alive,” Mitch stepped back from her and opened the front passenger door of his car.

Penelope knew two things right then. Mitch freeman was the Honey-Trap Killer and he was lying. He was never going to let her live.

*****

Steve Edwards’ phone began to chirp incessantly and would not be silenced. He pulled over immediately to look at the screen. It was as he suspected; the dispatcher had issued an ‘officer needs assistance’ alert. The location given was the address of Ride em’ Cowgirl.

Steve hit the lights and siren and called Gary Rasmussen on the hands free.

“Chief? What the fuck? Is it Penelope?” Steve barked when the Chief answered.

“She butt-dialled me. I don’t know if she did it on purpose or by accident but she’s been abducted. I only heard a few muffled words before the connection was lost. Her last 10-20 was your club; she’d just dropped off Jaylene Foster,” Gary explained.

Steve didn’t waste time correcting the Chief that it wasn’t his club.

“Alice Leasingham is attempting to trace and track Penelope’s phone,” Gary sounded worried.

“So what exactly did you hear?” Steve asked cutting off traffic as he made a left into the Ride em’ Cowgirl’s parking lot.

“It was muffled but it sounded like ‘play nice and I’ll let you live’ or something like that,” Gary replied, his voice full of concern.

“I can see her car. She’s not in it. Wait!” Steve said excitedly as the back door to club suddenly burst open and Panti Down waved frantically at him.

“I gotta go Chief. If Alice gets a trace get her to let me know immediately,” Steve said excitedly.

“There are more units inbound to your location. Call me on my cell if you get anything useful. I’ll be in the incident room,” Gary broke the connection.

A frantic Panti Down beat her hands on the hood of Steve’s car as he skidded to a stop.

“It’s Jaylene! Somebody assaulted her and she says it’s the killer but she’s not making sense. It can’t be Mitch Freeman can it? Well, because, well we’d know wouldn’t we and he’s not here but it couldn’t be him…” Panti was almost incoherent.

Steve got out of his car and raced inside followed by Panti Down who was having difficulty hobbling on her ridiculous high heels. Steve didn’t bother to stop and tell her to just take them off; she was obviously in shock.

Steve found Jaylene Foster lying on the couch in Felicity’s office. Jill Graham had her head in her lap and putting a cold compress on the contusions on Jaylene’s face.

“About time you showed up!” Jill huffed as Steve burst into the room.

Jaylene looked up at him, her eyes filled with fear and panic. She scrambled to sit up and Jill eventually let her.

“Tell me everything and tell me quick,” Steve was necessarily abrupt.

“I came out of the ladies and there right in front of me was the Honey-Trap Killer. I’m certain it was him. He hit me and I blacked out. That’s it,” Jaylene said, her breathing ragged.

“It was fucking Mitch Freeman! Can you fucking believe that? I always knew that guy was a creep!” Jill wailed.

Steve was hit by a jumble of emotions. The killer had been right under their noses! He and Mitch had worked together handing management of the club to each other. Mitch had been Felicity’s right hand man. She had trusted him! They had all trusted him!

“Did he say anything? Did anybody else see Mitch?” Steve asked both Jaylene and Jill.

Both women shook their heads.

“Jaylene… we think he’s got Penelope. We think he abducted her,” Steve said gravely.

“Noooo!” Jaylene sobbed and Jill held her tight.

“I’ll get her back! I’m going to get her back! You can count on it,” Steve left the room pulling out his phone.

He called Gary as he made his way to Mitch Freeman’s office.

When Gary answered he put Steve on speaker and Steve updated him, telling him that their witness had identified Mitch Freeman as the serial killer and that he was very likely the man who had abducted Penelope. He gave a description of Mitch and passed on the details of Mitch’s car as best he could remember. He promised to send a picture of Mitch Freeman asap.

“I’ll get the tags from DMV and put out a BOLO. I’ll send a crime scene unit out to the club and to his residence. You got anything else Steve?” Gary barked into the phone.

Steve could hear dispatchers in the background responding to Gary’s instructions.

“I don’t think this was planned; in fact I’m certain it wasn’t. I think Mitch panicked when he saw Jaylene. He knocked her out and made a run for it. I think running into Penelope was happenstance; if he wanted another victim why not take Jaylene?” Steve said as he entered Mitch’s office.

Gary just grunted into the phone.

“Mitch is smart and he’s been hiding right under our noses. He must have an escape plan. One thing’s for certain; he has a hostage and he’s not going to keep her much longer or she will become liability,” Steve began searching through Mitch’s desk looking for anything that might help.

“This isn’t Penny’s first rodeo Steve. That woman has been abducted twice before and came out of it alive and well,” Gary said by way of consolation.

“Yeah well the last time she came out of it alive. I wouldn’t say she came out well. No one except her and her psychiatrist knows what the Sleeping Beauty Killer did to her when he had her paralysed in his basement,” Steve had no need to extrapolate.

They both knew what Mitch Freeman was capable of.

“Any word on that trace?” Steve asked, turning out the drawers on Mitch Freeman's desk.

“Nothing. Her phone has stopped pinging,” Gary said with some finality.

Steve heard approaching sirens and hung up the phone.

A uniformed Sergeant entered the room and Steve briefed him and told him to set up a crime scene and to get a female officer to tend to Jaylene Foster and stay with her until further notice.

He could hear the commotion in the club as other officers arrived and began rounding up everyone so they could be interviewed. They were being loud and unnecessarily aggressive but one of their own had been taken and they were acting out.

Steve went out into the club with the Sergeant and settled things down. He herded all the police officers together.

“Ok I get it. One of our own officers had been abducted and we all want to do everything in our power to get her back but you treat these people with respect. No one here is guilty of a crime. They are all good people. Do your duty and do it well but remember you are here to serve and protect,” Steve growled at the assembled men and women in blue.

“Sergeant; take charge please,” Steve handed over to the Sergeant and went back to Mitch’s office.

The assembled drag queens and other club employees were once again impressed with Steve Edwards. He might be a cop but he was their cop.

Steve tried logging into Mitch’s computer but it was password protected. He wished that Alice was here to help; she was the tech guru. He started going back through the paperwork again looking for clues and feeling helpless.

*****

“That was very naughty,” Mitch Freeman tossed Penelope’s mobile phone out of the window.

Penelope had hit the dial button on her phone when she had reached for her handcuffs.

It was painful sitting in the bucket seat with her hands behind her back. Mitch had fastened the seatbelt around her and she had to lean forward slightly to keep the pressure off her hands. He had patted her down and taken her service weapon and found the phone. Her skirt had ridden up high on her legs and Mitch had softly caressed her thighs before pulling down her skirt to cover them.

“I don’t want to be distracted while I’m driving,” Mitch had patted her leg like he was patting a dog or a small child.

Penelope felt nauseated.

She had been in this position before and she knew that being antagonistic towards her captor would only make things worse. He was going to do what he was going to do, the best thing she could do was to be cooperative and wait for an opportunity to strike.

“I know what you’re thinking: I’ll be nice to the man until I can find a weakness or he lets his guard down. But I have no weaknesses and I’m not letting my guard down with you Penny. You’re a little older than I like them but you are pretty. I'm going to have so much fun with you before I let you go,” Mitch sniggered.

He was never letting her go and Penelope knew it.

They drove in silence until they arrived at the warehouse. Mitch had to get out of the car to open the big metal gates to the lumber yard and again to unlock the chain and open the sliding door on the warehouse. Both times he had waved his Ruger at Penelope and locked the doors to the car. The first time she had tried to get her hands to the door lock on the armrest but she couldn’t reach.

She took in the interior of the old warehouse. It smelled of sawdust and wood sap. The ceiling was high and dust motes floated in the air. She saw the older model Honda Civic parked in the corner. She figured rightly that it was Mitch’s getaway car and then she saw the office. She could see through the office door and when Mitch frogmarched her towards it she could see the bed. She knew what was coming.

*****

Alice had driven as fast as she could from Police Plaza to Ride em’ Cowgirl. She found Steve frantically going through files and stacks of paperwork looking for some clue as to where Mitch might have taken Penelope.

“Steve. Let me,” Alice said in a commanding voice.

Steve stood and let Alice sit in the office chair. She opened her briefcase and took out a USB and slammed it into the port on Mitch’s computer and tapped some keys on the keyboard.

“I’m in,” she stared fixedly at the screen.

“That was quick,” Steve was always marvelled by Alice’s abilities.

She just glanced at him quickly and then went back the screen and worked the keyboard.

“Most of this is just club financials and administration but he has a hidden folder. Why do idiots really think that hidden folders are actually hidden?” she hissed.

Steve knew that the question was rhetorical and remained silent.

“Here!” Alice pointed excitedly at the screen.

Steve leaned in so he could see.

A series of snapshots appeared on the screen. There were exteriors and interiors of the Park Services hut and the abandoned Texaco service station. There was another series of snapshots of what looked like an old warehouse surrounded by forest.

“What’s that?” Steve poked his finger at the screen.

“Let me do my thing,” Alice pushed his finger out the way and worked on the geo-tags and metadata attached to the photographs.

She punched the coordinates into Google Maps and then brought up the satellite picture overlay.

“Here!” she pointed at the screen excitedly.

Steve’s brain was working hard; he was thinking and predicting various scenarios and outcomes. He knew Mitch Freeman or as much as anyone could know him. He knew Mitch’s temperament and personality. He mentally compared what he knew about Mitch with the criminal profile that the FBI had provided to the Task Force.

He knew that Mitch was a numbers man. He worked on calculations. He worked the odds and percentages.

Steve also knew that this was likely to turn into a protracted siege. There would be trained hostage negotiators, SWAT teams standing by keen to kick ass, police psychologists providing input on their assessment of the perp’s mental state, and oversight from above wanting the standoff to end without anyone getting killed. There would be a strict chain of command imposed which prevented anyone from doing anything without half a dozen brass hats giving the go ahead.

Steve knew that the most likely outcome was that Mitch would drag out the siege as long as possible because having control of Penelope was that the only thing that would matter to him once he knew there was no escape. He doubted Mitch would surrender because he knew what awaited his type of criminal in the penal system. It would end badly.

Mitch had about 45 minutes lead. Steve figured Mitch would be arriving at the warehouse soon.

“Alice. I’m going to ask you to do something that is totally against the rules,” Steve looked at Alice gravely.

Alice swallowed and nodded.

*****

“Take off your jacket and make yourself comfortable,” Mitch had taken the handcuffs off Penelope and made her sit on the bed.

Penelope grimaced but she tried not to show any signs of fear or loathing. She needed to appear to be cooperating whilst she assessed the situation. The building was well off the main roads and had been abandoned for a while but it was still structurally intact. The warehouse was big and empty and the windows were grimy but still allowed light into the cavernous space. The office, at the rear of the warehouse would effectively become a redoubt if the police found them before Mitch had killed her and made his escape.

Despite knowing what was going to happen to her Penelope remained calm.

“Here. Have a drink,” Mitch kicked the crate containing bottled water, sanitary wipes, gel lubricant, liquid hand wash and sanitizer.

Penelope reached down and took one of the bottles of water. She unscrewed the cap and guzzled down half of it. The adrenaline surging through her body had made her thirsty. She finished the bottle and reached for another.

Mitch kicked the box out of reach.

“No I don’t think so. If you drink too much water you’re going to want to piss and I don’t want to see that and I can’t let you go on your own,” Mitch grinned at her.

Penelope picked up on what Mitch said and recalled the crime scenes. All of the women were displayed lewdly: on their backs, legs spread, skirts hiked up but they were all still wearing their panties. Some serial killers liked to display their victims in lewd poses but the women were usually nude. Had Mitch kept his victims dressed when he raped them? The evidence suggested he had. The semen was confined to the anus with other ejaculatory evidence on their clothing. They were certainly dressed when he displayed them.

“Why can’t I go pee?” Penelope asked.

“I told you that I don’t want to see that,” Mitch grunted.

“Is it because you don’t want to see my penis? You know I have one right?” Penelope goaded him.

Mitch cocked the Ruger and pointed it at her head.

“Enough conversation for now I think Penny. Lie down on the bed,” he stepped back and waved the gun at her.

Penelope did the calculations in her head. Mitch could fire at least one round into her before she got to him if she lunged. A .44 round wound would be instantly fatal if it hit her in any of her vitals and even if the wound was not lethal the ballistic trauma would debilitate her. It was a zero sum game.

She thought quickly. She was not one of Mitch’s intended victims, he had told her as much. The other girls were younger and except for Pauline Sanders, who was a case of mistaken identity, they had been lured to their deaths. In all the other instances he had used stolen vehicles but Mitch had used his own vehicle to abduct her. The Honda was the getaway car. He was going on the run.

It was happenstance that he had found Penelope outside the club. If he even suspected that he wasn’t safe here at the warehouse he would kill her immediately and leave. Penelope had to keep him here to give herself a chance. She had to hope that Steve would track her down. That the full force of the Balwyn PD would come to her rescue

Penelope lay down on the bed as she was told. She had to trust that Steve would find her.

“I promised you that I would let you go once we’ve had a little fun together and that is still my intention but if you don’t comply I will kill you,” Mitch began to undress, the Ruger close at hand.

Mitch approached the bed, his cock erect poking out in front of like the prow of a ship.

“Are you tucked?” he asked as he gazed down on her prone body.

Her face was pretty, framed by her long blonde hair, her makeup heavy just how he liked it. He wasn't a tit-man but her breasts straining against her white blouse were impressive. Her charcoal-grey skirt was cinched across her flat belly, the hem rested mid-thigh, her long legs were sheathed in glossy flesh-toned nylons her feet shod in low-heeled pumps.

The question threw Penelope and then she got it.

“I’m tucked but I’m not taped. It’s too uncomfortable to go all day taped,” she replied.

“Let’s see,” Mitch used the muzzle of the Ruger to slide Penelope’s skirt up her thighs until her pubis was exposed.

She was wearing white satin full-cut panties over her pantyhose. Her penis and scrotum were tucked along her perineum out of the way. Mitch was pleased to see the pleasant mound of her pubis swathed in the shiny satin V of her panties. A long string of clear viscous pre-ejaculate drizzled for the eye of his penis. Thoughts of escape and a new life elsewhere were replaced by feelings of lust and debauchery.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you it’s just that I don’t trust you,” Mitch giggled insanely.

“Put your hands through the bedframe please Penny,” he dangled the handcuffs in front of her face.

Penelope complied and her heart fell as Mitch closed the cuffs around her wrists, locking her hands to the bedhead.

“Now we can have some fun. A little foreplay before I fuck you I think,” Mitch giggled again.

There was no doubt in Penelope’s mind that he was insane.

Mitch put the gun on the crate next to the bed where he could reach it and then he climbed on the bed between Penelope spread legs. He pressed his penis on her satiny pubis and lay down on top of her. He held her close and nuzzled her neck, slowly moving his cock up and down on her panty-clad mound.

“You fucking tranny whore!” Mitch hissed as he ground himself against Penelope’s body.

Penelope closed her eyes and prayed.

*****

Steve saw Mitch’s car parked beside the Honda as he peeked around the door of the warehouse. He had parked his own car a half-mile down the road and walked in through the woods being as careful and quiet as he could. The gates to the lumber yard were open as were the doors to the warehouse. A new stainless steel chain with a padlock threaded through the links hung from door. This was the place!

Steve drew his weapon and entered the warehouse carefully and silently. He used the cars as cover. He could see the office at the back of the warehouse and could make out movement. He sneaked closer.

As Steve got closer he could hear Mitch shouting obscenities. He was repeatedly calling Penelope a tranny whore.

Mitch was so engrossed in doing what he was doing to Penelope that he never heard Steve as he tiptoed closer along the outer wall of the office.

Steve sprang into the doorway automatically adopting the Weaver stance; sighting his weapon downrange.

Mitch was between Penelope’s legs, her ankles over his shoulders, her buttocks raised. He’d torn open her pantyhose and pulled aside her panties so he could ravage her. Penelope was helpless, handcuffed to the bed and sobbing as Mitch used her for his pleasure. Penelope’s eyes were closed so she didn’t see Mitch reach for the L’eggs Everyday Regular pantyhose secreted under the pillows supporting her head.

Nor did she see Mitch’s head explode as Steve put two Winchester PDX1 9mm rounds into the back of his head. Mitch’s body fell sideways off the bed and Steve kicked his legs out of the way.

Penelope opened her eyes and looked up at Steve.

“I knew you would come,” she whispered.

Her mascara and eyeliner had run and her lipstick was smeared but Penelope didn’t show any fear.

Steve pulled down her skirt to give her some decorum and then looked for the keys to her handcuffs. He didn’t ask if she was ok; that would be pointless. He found the keys and unlocked the cuffs and eased Penelope into a sitting position.

“Can I have some water?” Penelope pointed to the crate with the bottled water in it.

Steve took a bottle of water, carefully not touching the Ruger which lay on the crate.

Penelope gulped it down sitting beside Steve on the bed.

“Don’t you dare pity me,” Penelope whispered through gritted teeth.

“Never,” Steve replied.

Steve was surprised when Penelope put her head on his shoulder and he put a comforting arm around her.

“They don’t need to know he raped you,” Steve murmured.

“My clothes are covered in his semen Steve,” Penelope sighed.

They heard the whirl of helicopter blades and sirens approaching in the distance.

“The cavalry are coming,” Penelope smiled wanly.

“This office is a crime scene. I’ll keep everyone out except Alice until you have been given the opportunity to change your clothes. Alice will take the clothes you are wearing and provide you with coveralls. I will ensure that your clothes are properly bagged and entered into the evidence logs. Alice will ensure that there is no evidence of semen recorded when she does the forensic examination,” Steve said, reaching for a bottle of water for himself.

“That’s a crime and a conspiracy,” Penelope lifted her head off Steve’s shoulder.

“It’s the decent thing to do. Alice and I are already involved in a conspiracy. Alice gave me half an hour head start before she told Gary where you were,” Steve took a sip of water.

The chopper was landing in the forecourt and the sirens were closer.

Penelope turned and looked Steve in the eyes.

“There really is a nice guy underneath that asshole exterior,” she leaned in and kissed the side of his mouth.

“I’ll bring Jaylene to you as soon as I can,” Steve stood up and holstered his weapon.

He went out the office door with his hands up displaying his detective’s shield just as the SWAT team burst through the warehouse door.

*****

The aftermath was controlled chaos. Everyone wanted to claim kudos for finding and eradicating the Honey-Trap Killer. Steve, Alice and Penelope let them.

Penelope was paraded before the cameras as the hostage who had bravely negotiated with the psycho killer until the police arrived. Steve was paraded as the first officer on scene who had been forced to kill Mitch Freeman when he reached for his Ruger.

But the brass took the glory and emphasised how they had coordinated the search and the demise of the Honey-Trap Killer. The FBI, SWAT and other agencies jumped on their coattails.

Behind the scenes Steve took a verbal beating for going rogue but there wasn’t much that could be done to him without exposing to the press what had really happened. Steve shielded Alice Leasingham and told Gary Rasmussen that he had bullied her into delaying telling the proper authorities where she suspected Mitch Freeman was holding Penelope Bishop.

Penelope was forced to spend twenty-four hours in hospital under observation even though she told the investigating officers, the police phycologists and anyone else who would listen that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Mitch Freeman was just about to rape her when Steve arrived on the scene and saved her.

Jaylene Foster refused to leave Penelope’s side once she had completed her debrief and slept beside her in the hospital bed.

Things had only just returned to normal when Felicity Benson’s flight arrived at Balwyn airport. She had flown direct from London to Austin and then taken a commuter flight to Balwyn. Steve arrived in a limo filled with flowers to meet her.

After a get-to-know-you canoodle on the back seat Steve poured them both champagne.

“Silvia Bickle was on the commuter flight. I hope you don’t mind; I invited her to our little soiree,” Felicity said.

“Silvia has been vacationing on a dude ranch. She wanted time alone, away from the modern world. No cell coverage, no internet, no daily new cycle. Just wide open spaces, starry skies and nature at its finest,” Steve said.

“I can think of nothing worse,” Felicity wrinkled her nose.

When the limo pulled up outside Ride em’ Cowgirl Felicity saw a sign on the door that read: ‘Closed For Private Function’. Steve was throwing her a welcome home party.

The club was decorated and a huge Welcome Home banner hung across the front of the stage. There were helium balloons, streamers and party favours. The club was packed.

Panti Down had the drag queens on stage ready to provide a preview performance of the new show. Drinks and snacks were being passed around by waiters dressed as cowboys instead of their usual hotpants and tank tops. Jill Graham was in control behind the bar.

Felicity surveyed the crowd and was surprised to see Penelope Bishop, Alice Leasingham and Gary Rasmussen present. Steve didn’t usually bring his work colleagues to the club. Penelope, Jaylene and Alice were huddled together in a little group away from everyone else and Steve guided Felicity over to them.

“You know Penelope and Alice from work. I’d like to you to meet Penelope’s friend Jaylene Foster,” Steve said by way of introduction.

Penelope had her arm around Jaylene and they were standing hip to hip. Felicity gave Steve a knowing look and Steve smiled at her.

“You’re our new costume designer. I’m looking forward to seeing your work. I have some ideas of my own that I’d like to discuss with you for my next tour,” Felicity smiled warmly at Jaylene.

The door opened and Silvia Bickle walked into the club. She was still dressed in her travelling clothes and had come directly from the airport. She made her way over to the group, a smile fixed to her face. She looked relaxed and refreshed.

“So… did anything exiting happen while I was away?” Silvia asked.

The End

Author’s Note Thank you for coming on this journey with me. My readers are the ones who inspire me to write; without you I have no one to tell my stories to. For those of you who have contacted me personally, thank you so much for your praise, encouragement and critiques. As always I invite you to leave comments or critiques and to grade my story as you see fit. Please leave me a little something to let me know you care.

xxx

Michele Nylons

September 2021