Other than the gleaming red slash across the beautiful woman's neck it would have easily appeared as though she was frozen in some sort of angelic slumber, waiting for eternity until she was finally awoken by some handsome prince.
At least that's what he thought.
Detective Marshall Watts had stopped counting how many cigarettes he had smoked a long time ago that evening. He was in the rain outside the Twin Palms Hotel in uptown Newark, nodding as two boys in blue explained to him the grim details of the situation upstairs.
Typical of the boys in blue, they knew very little of use, really, thought Watts, but still politely he listened out of occupational courtesy. But then again that was their job; to report crime, sometimes prevent it. His job was to stop a crime before it was ever committed.
Watts sent his cigarette sizzling into a puddle. He glanced to on the boys in blue. "Well then," he said, "Let's have a look than, shall we?"
The blue men followed Watts and shook the rain off their shoulders before they entered the Hotel. Then they strode across the tiled lobby floor to the elevators.
As they rode up, Watts considered what he was walking into: A woman, late-twenties. Housekeeping found her with a slashed throat. No signs of struggle...
At the Newark police station, Captain Peterson, a man with the drooping wrinkled face of a bulldog wearing a short ginger-grey wig, waved a long arm with a file in it at Watts, hailing him to his office.
Watts stirred the creamer into his coffee, blowing the steam off as he walked through the bullpen of desks and personnel, seeing some faces he knew, and some he didn't.
There was one particular face he knew he had never seen before, and it was an attractive face. She was by herself, a tall woman with bangs and a high bun, wearing a loose-fitting blouse, a short grey skirt suit and heels, sitting on a desk with legs crossed glancing over a file.
Now those are some sexy legs, thought Watts, especially the nylon, but he couldn't pin her face. He would have remembered that face, too, because of the deep blue eyes and the small dot of a beauty mark above her lips, he thought this as he passed by her.
"How's it going tonight sweetheart?" he said, ever so coolly.
The woman peered up at him from the file, said nothing, not even a glimmer, but she smiled back at him politely.
Watts shrugged it off, and kept walking. Thought: eh!
He entered the captain's office.
"Close the door," Peterson commanded, not looking up from the spread of papers he was mulling over on his overly crowded desk.
Watts obeyed, even slammed a little extra.
"Thank you. Have a seat."
Watts plopped down across from Peterson, placing his coffee on the desk.
"Not there," Peterson said.
Watts paused, then placed the cup on the floor, and then waited, anxiously, then randomly started playing his fingers on his knees.
Peterson looked up from the desk.
"Smoke a cigarette, Watts," he said, "before you drive me nuts with all that tapping. Just use an ashtray."
Watts stopped.
"Sorry, captain."
He lit a cigarette, cooled himself out, blowing grey upward at the ceiling fan.
Peterson sat back, folding his thick arms across his pot-belly.
"Better?"
"Better. Yes. Thank you."
"Little tense tonight, I take it, huh?"
"No more than usual," Watts admitted.
Peterson looked at Watts closely. Long close look.
"What? Why you giving me that look for, captain?"
"You getting tired of it?"
"The murders? Yes. Finding the bastard who did it -- never."
"Good answer, my boy. Good answer. So. What's your take on this one?"
"You got the report right there, captain."
"Just tell me hear your take, Watts. We're gonna need you on this one."
"Alright." Watts sat forward. "Uh, so far, I don't got much, really. I been..."
The door to the office opened, and the woman Watts had seen out in the bull pen quietly entered, and took a seat behind him, crossing the long nylon legs again.
Watts peered over his shoulder at the woman. She smiled, cruel, arrogant, maybe but a cute smile.
To Watts it's the kind of smile he would like to smite, cruelly.
He snapped back to Peterson.
"Captain, who the hell is that?"
Captain leans forward, folded arms on desk and begrudgingly smiles.
"That is Detective Kate Meyers."
Watts turned back to give another glare to Kate Miller's smile, her demeaner, her beauty, her legs....
"She's going to be working on this one with us, so play nice. She came highly recommended."
Watts glared. "You know we don't need her right?"
Kate sat up smartly. "Detective Watts, I've been called to assist on this case as it pertains to --"
"We can handle this on our own, sweetheart," Watts interrupted. "You hear me? I don't need no damn woman in here trying to make a name for herself."
"Show some damn respect," Peterson angered. "And keep your opinions to yourself, Watts. That's an order. Now tell me your side." To Kate, he said, "Detective take some notes back there. Watts may be a bit of a chauvinistic prick, but he's good at what he does. He's taken bullets for this department, understand?"
"Yes, captain. I understand", she said obediently.
"Now, go on."
Watts blew smoke at the ceiling. "Fine. This is it so far. Homicide. Slashed throat. No signs of struggle. No witnesses. Forensics is down there right now taking some samples, and some photos for us, gathering what evidence they can find. So far, no evidence of drugs in play, but we won't know for sure until we get the autopsy back. You getting all of this down, sweetheart," he added over his shoulder.
"Every word of it, detective," she smiled at Watts.
"Cool it, Watts, dammit. Go on. What else?"
"The woman looks to be about my age, twenty eight-twenty nine. We found out from the hotel manager that she checked in under the name Grace Bishop on Friday around 1030 in the morning. She paid with a credit card under that name. Security tapes show that she never left the room all that time, and no one was seen entering the room."
"Suicide do you think?"
"No couldn't have been. She wasn't that strong."
"For a woman?" Kate interjected, with a grin.
"No, sweetheart, not for a woman," he mocked. "For a person. Any person. The way the slash was made had come from behind with too much force to be done from the front. Whoever did it, nearly took her head clean off. And the way that she was laid back on the bed, propped up, like she had been sleeping could only have been done after the attack."
"Sick bastard." Peterson sat back. Okay. "Where do you want to begin?"
"Right now. I'm not sure. There was no I.D. or anything linking the name to the woman on the bed. But when we ran the prints on the body Grace Bishop, they came back belonging to a man named Calvin Ross."
"Calvin Ross, really?" Asked Kate.
"Yeah, Calvin Ross. That name mean anything to you?"
"Yes, actually, it does," she said. "Commissioner Hart has a nephew named Calvin Ross."
"Our commissioner?" Peterson jumped in.
"Yes. Her maiden name was Ross before she married her second husband, Miles. His last name is Hart. And the commissioner's brother, Charlie Ross, has two daughters and a son named Calvin."
Watts glared at the woman, half-impressed, half-annoyed, and looked back at his cigarette. Internal affairs, he thought. Maybe, but mostly like not. Maybe she was just the type of snoop that like to stick in her big nose in others people business. A natural born sleuth. Clever, bitch, becoming a detective. Now she had a badge to justify it all. Better keep an eye on her; those damn legs too, he admitted. Soft and smooth in nylon, stretching for miles...
"Watts?"
Watts shook off his attraction, and saw that Peterson was eyeing him."
"Yeah, Cap'?"
"Focus." Peterson sat up in his chair. "So, let me get this straight, the woman was really a man in women's clothes, and may have a possible connection to Commissioner Hart."
"Looks like it," Watts agreed. "She, err, excuse me, he, I mean, Calvin was using the alias Grace Bishop for whatever purposes he had in that room. Playing dress up, or whatever, before he was murdered. I think it was personal. We found something when searched the room."
"Found what?"
Watts stamped out his cigarette in the ashtray. "His penis. Someone had cut it clean off. We found it in the mini fridge."
"Jesus." Peterson sat in thought. Then, to Kate, he said, "What do make of this detective?"
"So far, I'd have to say I'm right there with detective Watts on this one. Until I view the crime scene, I can only go by what information I have. There definitely is a connection, even if small, with Commissioner Hart, but nothing incredulous. I doubt she even knows much about her nephew, actually, let alone her murder at the moment."
"His murder," corrected Watts. "Even though the man was a fucking transgender, transvestite, transsexual, whatever, doesn't make him a woman any more than it makes you a man, Meyers."
Kate stood up and came around to Watts, leaning against the desk.
Watts glared at her.
"What? Did I say something?"
Kate smiled. "You do know that I am a transgender woman, don't you Watts?"
"You're a what?" He shirked back from Kate, then glaring at the captain, said, "Is she for real, captain?"
"Yes, Watts, and she's your partner on this so you better get used to it."
"How the hell are you gonna spring some shit on me like this, captain? You know how I feel about all that gender reassignment shit going around."
Kate reached for the door. "You're a cop, Watts. You don't get to decide whom you protect and serve, and right now there is a murder case that you and I have to solve. So go throw some water in your face. I'll be in the garage."
The door closed.
Watts stared at the woman walking away in the heels and short tight skirt, hips swaying back and forth, moving just like a woman. He recalled then just how much he was checking her out a few moments, and shook his head confused.
"Well, then. That's that," Watts, Peterson said, rising from his chair. "Get to work."
Watts threw up his arms. "What fuck, captain? Do I at least have a say in the matter?"
"No, and even if you did, I don't give a damn. Meyers is right. There's a murder to solve, and a killer on the loose. You're a professional. Act like one. Now get out of my office, and get to work."
The stark light of the police-parking garage downstairs made Kate's long nylon-clad legs shimmer. Watts smoked, and tried not pay attention as he approached her. But she sat, leaning with her legs stretched out and her ankles crossed, on the hood of his personal black Bentley, looking around at the other parked squad cars.
