"I don't care what you think. It isn't a crime to prefer rich men," Rachel sat back comfortably in her chair. She isn't your average femme fatale Inspector Francis thought.
"It is a crime to kill them," Detective Lopinski said. The inspector was content to let John carry the ball for a while. She was pretty sure the interrogation wasn't going anywhere.
"You can't really think I killed Martin," Rachel said. "I'm sure the doctor told you that he died of natural causes."
"How natural it was is exactly what we want you to tell us," Francis added and then got up and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was sure she'd regret that decision. Stuff always tasted like sawdust and castor oil. The inspector nearly spat it out when she discovered it actually tasted like coffee.
"Isn't that great," Lopinski said. "It's that new desk seargeant, the gorgeous one. Insists on making it himself. Obviously a man of many talents."
"We were fucking, he died. What more can I tell you?" Rachel said. It seemed there wasn't going to be much chance of using any of her Basic Instinct tricks. Just her luck, a gay detective and a straight female inspector. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a cake walk.
"Lets start with why you were screwing a man in his eighties with a bad heart," Lopinski asked. He hated Rachel. She had what he wanted most money and men. So far he and Francis had interviewed six well hung young men who thought they were Rachel's piece on the side.
"Wow. A question with metaphysical implications. Simple answer, because he wanted to and for the record, his cardiologist had cleared him," Rachel responded.
"Not for the venus fly trap," Lopinski threw back at her.
"Actually John, that's the venus butterfly," Inspector Francis corrected gently.
"There is no such thing," Rachel said. "It's an urban myth." Maybe that's what I should call it, Rachel thought to herself. Venus Butterfly. Rolling it around on her tongue she decided she still liked vaginal suffocation better.
"But you would describe yourself as an expert on sex wouldn't you?" John asked.
Expert, professional, talented amateur, what's the difference Rachel thought.
"I meet men and I fuck them until they die," Rachel said.
"You murder them," John said.
"Not murder detective, I give them what they most want, a glorious send off."
"Sexual euthanasia," Inspector Francis said.
"Exactly," Rachel said. She realized then her opponent wasn't to be under estimated. Nobody had ever got there so quickly on so little evidence.
"Donald Martin was what, husband number nine?" Detective Lopinski asked.
"Yes, but only seven ended up dead," Rachel pointed out in her own defence.
"The once you left alive would be Jack Tonquin, he was husband number one. Twenty eight when you married, poorer than dirt. You divorced him. Then there was husband five, can't figure him out, Monty Backman, doctor, worked at a walk-in clinic, forty years old. He divorced you. Sited mental and emotional cruelty. Which means only the seven who were rich and old died while you were having sex with them," John said.
"So lets go back to the beginning, to husband number one," Inspector Francis said, finishing her coffee and sitting up alertly. "Tells us all about him."
It was pouring rain, the mud was drowning. Rachel sat on a stool behind the diner counter and wished herself far from the coast. Las Vegas, dry, hot, and with casinos. Noise, people. Not another shift in food service hell. What kept Rachel there, annealed to her stool, week after week, month after month, was that she was a realist. If she got motivated, moved to Nevada she'd just end up working in some broken down diner, in a ghost town in the desert, watching her skin dry up and split apart. She knew the wet air took ten years off her.
Jack happened right then, at Rachel's first awakening to the flaws of her own character when she could see the future so clearly. He was soaked, guy didn't have a raincoat, had to be a stranger to these parts. She took his order. Liver and onions. She thought even at the time there had to be something wrong with the guy, ordering an old man's dish. He looked right through her, never even made eye contact.
Rachel knew what people saw when they looked at her. She'd worked it out one day when she was making bread, fresh bread was her hallmark, what kept people coming back day after day. Rachel never made the same loaf twice. Most people had no idea there were so many kinds of bread and rolls.
This one day she was making Sasquatch bread, figured that would tickle people's fancy. It wasn't much more than Black Russian Rye with a few nuts in it and some tufts pulled from the soft dough and baked in place. She took it out of the oven and put it on a rack on the counter. That's me, a female sasquatch. It came to her like that. Tall, chunky, ugly, with way too much hair, and I smell. The realisation hadn't helped her self-esteem much.
Wasn't more than a week later that Jack Tonquin walked into the diner and changed her life. With some food in him he started taking in his surroundings and Rachel.
"Listen, I'll be straight with you. My name's Jack Tonquin and I'm on the run. The police want me for fraud, postal service for mail fraud, and my ex-business partners for...so they can tear my fingernails off one by one. Let me hide out here and I'll teach you everything I know about sex." Rachel got up off her stool then, walked over to where he was sitting, keeping the counter between them. Up close she peered at him through her glasses and thought, he's kind of cute.
"Do you know a lot about sex?" She asked.
"Sex is what got me in this jam. I wrote a little book. How to get women into bed and keep them there. Started selling them through Playboy, some of the cheaper men's mags."
"Now, I'd guess if you could deliver the goods you wouldn't be wanted for fraud," Rachel pointed out.
"Gee, you're quick. Wrong but quick. It was the side effects got me in trouble," Jack said and paused to try to comb the water out of his hair.
"Side effects, what sort of side effects?" Rachel asked.
