MoM - 3

By David Quinn

"Mind if I turn this on?" Matt asked. Not waiting for an answer, his fingers simultaneously pushed the "record" buttons on his tape recorder.

The phone rang at the same time, and when calls get through the chain of command to the captain, they're important. Matt raised an arm so everybody in the outer office could see it, telling them to cancel the call with a sideways wagging of his hand. The phone, obediently, stopped interfering.

"And then...?"

"And then I'd finish up," Monica answered, snapping her head to one side, releasing her shoulder length raven colored hair. Then she uncrossed her legs, letting the captain see way up her skirt. Matt looked and Monica smiled back derisively, something like the over-fed monkeys out in Golden Gate Park who more often than not ignore peanuts thrown at them because they seem to be thinking the real baboons are the ones doing the throwing. "I'd do it just as they’re coming," she repeated. "Their eyes would be closed and they'd be rumbling inside and out, and then their eyelids would shoot open like those of sleeping sinners who'd wake up surrounded by saints; the real ones from about two thousand years ago.. And then...then it’s over."

Monica's jet black eyes danced on the platform of her high cheekbones like ball bearings caught simultaneously in opposing magnetic fields. "Their pricks," she finally continued with a deep sigh. "Their scruffy pricks would still be erect, almost, when I'd cut them off with my razor and stuff the slimy things down their throats."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Matt erupted spontaneously. This's the real thing. She's the one!

"Wanna know why I do it; why I'm here telling you all of this right now?" Monica begged.

That kind of info's important, of course, but it's not the precinct’s business at all and Matt really didn't care anymore. One of the first things you learn on the force is what your job is and what it isn't.

I catch them. The pretty boys with the pearly words prosecute. And then the judge and jury tie the strings together or they just let the whole ball unravel. And another thing: I'm not a shrink and it's not my business to vacuum the closets people hide their secrets in... that's for the weirdos with adjustable seats in their suites. I've got straight chairs in my humble abode, thank you. And I'm proud of it.

Monica, though, seemed to feel the captain was both the engine and the caboose of the legal train and insisted on telling him the whole thing. "I'm from Duluth," her husky voice began rasping again. "Duluth, Minnesota. My father was First Mate on the ore ships and he made a lot of money. And we lived well, my mother and I--all three of us-- when he was working. But when The Lakes would freeze over in the winter he'd be home all the time, collecting unemployment, all he'd do was drink, drink, drink."

"Lots of us have that problem," Matt confessed, knowing if he ever had to get collaborating witnesses, there'd be lots of bartenders who could read back most of his life just as the tape recorder sitting on his desk was now doing for Monica. "Drinking's no crime," he commented with absolutely no emotion in his voice.

"Rape is," Monica countered. "And last winter my father raped me eight different times. Eight times! That mean anything to you?"

"Rape's a crime, for sure...and incest, too," Matt added for good measure.

"Eight times," Monica insisted. "Does it mean anything to you my own father porked me once...porked me again and again...porked me like I was the one in heat. And he did it eight times?"

When Monica first sped that past the Captain, incest itself was the problem, but if you do it once, twice...a hundred times, it's still the same thing. That's why, more than likely, he didn't pay much attention to her insistence on a number. But then—

"The john the other night was the eighth," he finally blurted, feeling sweat beading on his forehead right at the hairline.

"That's why I'm here," Monica answered in a monotone, exhaling aloud while slumping back as much as possible in the wooden chair. "I did all the right things in high school: I went to Concordia; I got a good job as a bond broker with J.B. Hanouer here in San Francisco, but then the recession came. And when I looked up again, a pink slip was there with my name on it..."

"You wanna shut up right now and call a lawyer," Matt advised and was about to launch into the Miranda Rights. But there was no stopping her confession.

Matt really didn't, intuiting that something was about to go wrong in this almost perfect presentation of incriminating evidence, but Monica continued anyhow.

"I never do a john with his clothes on," she emphasized. "I learned that right at the beginning. The first one was such a fat slob I couldn't even roll him over and leave my calling card." She paused a moment, keeping contact with the captain’s eyes. "He was the exception, though."

Matt was now perspiring all over, and it was nighttime in October, but all of a sudden he had goose bumps, like taking a shower and having the hot water run out without warning. "What's that?" he finally asked, and there was something about the way she was leering at him that said he really didn't want to know; something that almost wanted him to reach out and physically put a gag on her mouth. But he knew, too, how even the semblance of physical violence would come down at her trial, so he just sat there squirming in his seat.

"My signature," Monica continued, and her voice got gravely like something wet and heavy pouring out of a cement mixer. "My signature is I always carve my initials on their asses," Monica continued matter-of-factly, just like somebody saying something so inconsequential as stating a preference for either dogs or cats. "There's an 'M' on both cheeks, my initials if you recall, but you gotta do a little spreading to find my 'O' dedication to Mom."

Not a one of the first seven victims had any such M. O. and the same was true of this one; the eighth. It just wasn't true.

Monica settled in her straight chair and a second time Matt could see the insides of both of her legs; white and inviting, and he knew right then what her attraction had been for all of her johns; the contrast between her black hair and eyes and the milky whiteness of her thighs.

                       *********

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