Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,4
likely working girl waved at him or gave him “the look.” They would agree upon a sex act and an amount, normally around twenty for oral sex and thirty or more for a half-and-half, sex that began with oral sex and ended with intercourse. She’d jump in the car and direct him to an isolated spot for a car date or to a cheap motel for more involved acts. Two other undercover cars would follow him. Once he’d driven out of the area, he’d say a code word that the hidden microphone would transmit to the undercover officers in the follow cars, and they’d direct the arrest team to swoop in and arrest the prostitute. Sinclair would then drive to a different spot and troll through fresh waters. On a good night, he could land fifteen or twenty keepers.
The night he met Dawn, Sinclair had just arrested a working girl who offered him a half-and-half for fifty dollars at her motel room. He was heading to West MacArthur when he spotted a tall, pretty white girl a block west of where the veteran street hookers normally operated. It was a warm evening, and she was wearing a tight miniskirt that barely covered her butt cheeks and a hot-pink halter-top. She smiled at him as he cruised slowly by, so he pulled to the curb. She leaned in the passenger window, displaying deep cleavage and a smile with perfect teeth, and swung her waist-length blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Are you dating?” she asked.
“Are you working?”
“Girl’s gotta pay the rent. You’re not a cop, are you?”
Sinclair laughed. “Do I look like a cop?” He’d only left uniform a month earlier, so his dark-brown hair was just beyond regulation, but he had grown a thick beard to blend in better on the streets.
“You’re too cute to be a cop.” Her eyes were the color of deep water. “What’re you looking for?”
“Whatever you’re offering.”
“I can give you head in the car for fifty or plenty more if you have the time and money.”
“The plenty more sounds good.”
She got in and told him to make a right on Market Street. “How much money do you have?”
Sinclair pulled a money clip from his pocket and showed her the hundred dollars his sergeant had given him earlier that night. “About eighty.”
She counted it. “You’ve got a hundred there. Can you hit an ATM?”
“Not until payday.”
She was silent for a moment. “Have you ever been to the hot tubs?”
“What are the hot tubs?”
“A place in Berkeley where you rent a hot tub for fifty an hour.”
“That’s a lot of money to sit around in a hot tub with a bunch of strangers.”
“No, silly. You get your own hot tub in a private room. People go there to fuck.”
“This is all the money I got.”
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “No problem.”
“That would only leave you fifty. You can make that much with a five-minute blowjob.”
“Like I said, I think you’re cute. Do you wanna go or not?”
Flashing red-and-blue lights filled his rearview mirror. Sinclair pulled to the side of the road. One officer came to Sinclair’s door and asked for his license and registration—all part of the ruse—while another officer ordered Dawn from the car, handcuffed her, and put her in the backseat of their marked unit. That officer returned Sinclair’s money clip with the hundred dollars and said, “Sarge told us to make the arrest even though you didn’t give the signal yet. I think he was afraid you were falling in love and forgot you were working.”
He never saw Dawn again—until she called him three years ago.
*
“How do you know her?” asked Braddock, crouching down to get a better look at the bullet hole.
“I arrested her for six-forty-seven-B when I was working vice. Seventeen-year-old kid who ran away from somewhere in the Midwest to find fame and fortune in San Francisco. That would make her around twenty-seven now.” The same age he was when he’d arrested her on that warm summer night.
“You’ve got a great memory for names, Sarge,” Dawson remarked.
“It’s hard to tell looking at her right now,” said Braddock, “but I’ll bet she was a darn pretty girl.”
Sinclair watched as the coroner investigators wrapped her in the sheet and lifted her into the body bag laid out on the gurney. Sinclair walked through the wet grass alongside the path as the others made their way to the parking lot. He spotted a pair of black leggings at the base of a tree. Behind