Killing Roses

4__Victim No.1

Thursday

21/08/2019

12:35 am

“You don’t even understand how freaking embarrassed I am!” Valerie groaned. She leaned weakly against the wall.

Valentina leaned back in her office chair with a grin and a shrug. “He saw your naughty porno stash, so what?”

Valerie shot upright. “It is not a naughty… porno stash!” she hissed, mortified.

Tina laughed. “What is it then?”

“It’s…” Valerie searched for the words and finally closed her eyes on a sigh. “s**t. He saw my naughty stash.”

When her co-worker threw her head back and laughed, Valerie decided she’d had enough.

“Okay, up, up,” she said, waving Tina out of her chair. “Leave, I’m working.”

Tina rolled her eyes as she slowly stood. “It’s lunchtime, chica. Plus, it’s been a whole day since. He’s probably forgotten about it.”

Valerie looked hopeful. “You think?” She bit her lip. “Yeah. I mean, he’s a cop. A Detective! They have better things to think about, right?”

Tina raised an eyebrow. “Maybe not better things, seeing as murder and drug cases really aren’t as exciting as a naughty little b**m social worker.”

Valerie gasped. “Oh, my God, get out, get out, leave!”

She shoved a laughing Valentina all the way out the door before collapsing in her seat with a huff.

Crap. First, Detective Parker saw her as the dumbest girl in New York, now, he probably thought of her as the dumbest, freakiest girl in New York.

Valerie leaned back and groaned just as her phone rang. Without checking the caller ID, she put it to her ear.

“Hello?!” she snarled into the phone.

“That’s how you talk to your mother?”

Valerie went weak, melting into the chair. As if the day couldn’t get worse.

“What does my mother want?” she grumbled.

Tamara Quinn didn’t call often, but when she did, Valerie knew it was to boss her around about her life.

Val didn’t get it. Didn’t disowning a child mean that you no longer had anything to do with them?! That they were as good as invisible to you?! Her parents clearly didn’t understand the concept of “disowning”, seeing as they still thought they could pull Valerie around by the nose. Or the hair, because it was that painful.

“Your father’s hosting a charity event this weekend. Attend it.”

Val sat up, putting the pencil she was holding behind her ear.

“What do you mean ‘Attend it’? Why do I have to?”

“Because important people will be attending and you know how important being a perfect family is to your father.”

“No, I goddamn don’t cause we’re not a perfect family! Again I ask you why I should do him any favors when he kicked me out just because I wouldn’t study his stinking Economics?!”

“Valerie!”

“What?!”

Her mother sighed a long and heavy sigh. Valerie could just see her rubbing her temples.

“Just attend it.”

Valerie leaned back and put her feet up on the table. “Why?” she asked. “What’s in it for me?”

“Oh, my f*****g…”

Val’s mouth dropped open. She’d made her mother curse. She almost laughed out loud.

Tamara cleared her throat. “We’ll discuss that after the event. Alright? I’ll send you the details.”

Before Valerie could answer, her mother hung up.

She stared at the phone with a scowl. “Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am,” she murmured.

Suddenly the door flew open. Val bolted out of her chair as Valentina burst in, her eyes wide.

“Tina—”

“Val, they found Jenny!”

Valerie frowned. Jenny was their co-worker who missed work yesterday with no prior notice, sending Janice on the f*****g rampage.

“What do you mean—?”

“Val…” Tina put her hands together like she was about to do a prayer and looked Valerie in the eye. “They found Jenny’s body. She was murdered.”

“What?!” Val’s hands rose to cover her mouth. She quickly rounded her desk to where Valentina had begun to shed tears. “No way, Tina, no f*****g way!”

Her co-worker nodded urgently. “Dead-ass, Val, I swear! They found her this morning in her apartment. Sh-she wasn’t picking calls yesterday, remember? Her sister went over and found her. I c-can’t believe…”

Val gathered Tina into her arms as her friend began to cry. She herself was in shock, but her immediate reaction was to help the ones around her first. She stared at the wall with a frown as Valentina cried on her shoulder.

How the hell had this happened so suddenly?

Tina pulled back as she dabbed at her reddening eyes. “Janice c-called a meeting. The cops are on their way...”

Val shook her head. “I can’t believe this. Do they know who did it?”

Tina shrugged and shook her head. “No. What kind of f****d up motherfucker would kill someone like Jenny anyway?! She’s so kind and quiet and just f*****g harmless!”

Valerie grasped Tina’s hands and squeezed them. “I know right! This is just so shocking.”

Tina shook her head and wiped at her overflowing tears again. “We gotta go… for Janice’s meeting.”

Nodding, Val grabbed her stuff and they left the office.

************

03:05 pm

Valerie put Tina in a cab and returned to the boardroom where the police had been questioning every employee at the Department for the past few hours. Janice had spoken to the employees, letting them know that they were free to go home for the rest of the day once they’d had their turn with the cops.

The old dragon hadn’t shed a tear, but Valerie did catch her chin wobbling. She caught a lot of people’s chin’s wobbling. Sighing, she sat down outside the boardroom. If it hadn’t been for the current situation, she’d be overjoyed to go home early for a change. But a co-worker was dead, so Val locked that joy away.

The door opened and Maurice came out. He was one of the security guards out front. He nodded respectfully at Valerie as she stood to go inside.

Her eyes landed on the table pulled out to the center and Valerie nearly turned tail and ran. Her legs stopped moving as she stood before Detective Parker like she was a fly pinned to the wall by his sharp gaze. Goddamn, where there no other cops in this city?!

“Miss Quinn,” His voice rumbled out. “Please come in. Sit.”

Letting her eyes move over to the weary-looking man beside Detective Parker, Valerie drew strength from his gentle smile and walked over to the table. So what if he nosily went through her phone and saw the books she reads? So what if he thought she’s a kinky little thing? Valerie didn’t care. She refused to care! With a determined huff, she sat.

The chair was hard beneath her butt and she sat stiffly, clutching her bag.                

“Miss Quinn, please relax,” said the older man. “I’m Detective Cooper and this is Detective Parker. We’ll just ask you some questions regarding the murder of Miss Jennifer Crawford.”

Fighting the bizarre urge to shout out “I know nothing! I didn’t do it!, Valerie nodded at the cops. Detective Parker’s gaze was fixed firmly on her face, but she stared only at Detective Cooper.

“What is your relationship with Miss Crawford outside of work?” she heard the nosy, phone searching detective ask.

“We didn’t have one,” Valerie told Detective Cooper, finding herself unable to look Parker in the eye to answer his question. “We were only co-workers.”

“Not even a drink after work?” Parker asked and Valerie shook her head at Detective Cooper.

“Nope. I’m fairly new, I’ve only been here for a month after my training at a different department.”

Parker was silent for a few seconds. “Miss Quinn, do you have a problem with looking at me? Does my face scare you?”

Startled by his direct approach, Valerie quickly shook her head at him. “What? No!”

He was frowning at her in a mildly puzzled manner. He nodded. “Then I’d appreciate it if you could look at me when I speak to you. Thank you.”

Valerie bit the inside of her cheek, dangerously eyeing him as he looked down at his papers. If he hadn’t been a cop, she’d have taken a bat and whacked the s**t out of his—

“Now then, in the past month, what can you tell us of the character you experienced Jennifer Crawford to have?”

Valerie swallowed her anger. “She was great. If someone was yelling, it would never have been her. Jenny was the kind of person to resolve things quietly and kindly without ever making a fuss or letting things get out of hand. Besides Valentina, she helped me out the most when I was getting settled in.”

“Did she ever act out of character in the past month? Did you never think she maybe looked frightened for some reason?”

Val shook her head, looking Detective Parker right in his gorgeous grey eyes. “No. Last week was our other co-worker’s birthday and Jenny brought cupcakes to work for everyone. She had a smile on and was cheerful. She was just as nice as she’s always been.”

The Detectives wrote some stuff down and Valerie again found herself wanting to shout ‘I didn’t do it!’. She bit her lip. She was going to stop every single Crime series that she was watching that very day! They were filling her head with annoying little criminal quotes.

“So…” Parker looked up and slowly raised a dark brow. Valerie squirmed, clenching her thigh muscles together. “Can you tell us about the last day you set eyes on Miss Jennifer Crawford? Was there anything at all out of the ordinary about her, both in appearance and behavior?”

Val’s eyes darted over to Detective Cooper before they returned to Parker’s. She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. She was perfectly fine on Tuesday, besides being tired, but we’re all tired because some of us worked over-time on that night.”

Parker lifted a hand and Valerie stopped talking. “You’re talking about the night I returned your cell phone, correct?”

“Yes.” Valerie wondered why Parker and his partner didn’t have eye contact communication or eyebrow sign language like the officers in her crime series, but quickly ignored it. Who cared anyway?

“I have here that Miss Crawford left work after you that night.”

Valerie frowned. “Oh, did she? It’s unlike her to work that late. I thought Tina and I were the last ones.”

“The guards thought so too. Now can you tell us if you saw anything at all out of the ordinary around this property when you were leaving on the night Miss Crawford was killed?”

Valerie pursed her lips thinking back. She shook her head. “No… I remember that I was quite tired, I had had a more difficult day cause my phone was missing. I walked out to the parking lot, the guards were where they always are at the front of the building. Jenny’s car was also in the underground parking lot…”

Valerie trailed off. She gasped. No way.

“What is it? Miss Quinn?” said Detective Cooper.

Val looked up at the men, unsure. She was so tired that night, she could have been seeing things.

“Well… I’m not sure of this, but…”

Parker nodded firmly. “Go on. Any detail, no matter how small.”

She breathed in and squared her shoulders. Roman noticed that all it did was push her breasts out at him.

“When I was walking towards my car… I unlocked it from afar and… when the lights blinked on and off I saw…”

She frowned in concentration. It had only been for a split second.

“Yes?”

“I saw… a man.”

Parker leaned forward. “Go on.”

Val looked up at him. “That’s it. I just saw a man.”

Roman tilted his head. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He realized she had no idea how to elaborate in detail.

“Tell us in perfect detail, Miss Quinn. What was this man doing? His race? Estimated height? Did you see his face? Did he speak to you?” he asked firmly.

“Oh. Uhm, well he was just standing there. I didn’t see his face, he was in complete shadow, but the light from my car was enough to show me that he was there for a second. He stood very still in the corner behind my car. He could have been about 6’2’’?”

She looked uncertainly from Parker to Cooper and back. They were both taking in her words and writing things down.

“What?” she asked Roman. “Do you think it’s him? That person in the dark?”

Roman stood up, jaw clenched.

That’s why she’d looked so frightened when he’d walked up to her. f**k. If that was their man, Roman could’ve caught the bastard with his own hands and he missed him.

Cooper stood as well. “Don’t worry, Miss Quinn. Would you please just show us where you’d parked your car on Tuesday night?”

Nodding, Valerie got up and led the way to the underground parking lot. She couldn’t help but continuously glance up at Detective Parker. He was so tall, he made her feel peanut-sized. When he’d opened the door, he’d put his hand on her back, guiding her out. Valerie had nearly purred from the delight she felt, but she obviously cut off such a stupid urge.

After answering a few more questions and showing them where Jenny had parked her car, Val was being led back to her own car by Detective Parker.

He walked with a frown, hands in his pockets as he looked right ahead.

“Don’t ever park your car down there again,” he said darkly. “I’ll make sure they install lights down there by tomorrow.”

Val looked up at the storminess that had entered his grey eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

When they reached her car, he faced her and she stared up at him, wishing he’d take her all the way home. He made her feel so safe.

Suddenly, his hand shot out and he gently brushed fine dust of the collar of her jacket.

“You okay?” he asked quietly

Valerie couldn’t breathe so she stared at him quietly.

“I wasn’t too impatient during the questioning, was I?” he asked.

A smile curved her mouth. Aw, he was being considerate of her! Valerie wanted to sing and dance a happy little jig around the car. Obviously she stopped that stupid urge too.

“Uhm, no… no, you weren’t.”

Parker nodded and when she unlocked her car, he pulled the door open.

Val got in, but Detective Parker didn’t close the door. Putting his arm against it, he leaned onto her car and Val pushed back into her seat.

How come he was suddenly so close? All she could smell was him and another stupid urge she had to stop was to lean forward and get a big whiff of him.

He held his hand out. “Hand me your phone.”

Without a word, Valerie put it in his palm. She blinked. Did she just give him her phone so easily? Had he hypnotized her?!

He punched a number with a frown. Val wondered if he was always frowning. “This is my number.” His eyes rose and settled on hers. Valerie could see how serious he was. “You are the only person to have set eyes on a possible killer. If you’re in a situation that’s getting scary or you’re feeling uneasy, you call me fast. Understand?”

Valerie swallowed, feeling the beginning of fear slip into her heart. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll do that.”

“Good. Also, I’m serious about that parking lot, alright? Park up here from now on” he said looking in at her. “And… don’t work too late.” Valerie was about to blush to death when he pulled back. “I told all the employees that it would be better if everyone tried to go home on time for now. And to avoid that lot.”

“Oh.” He told all the employees. She wasn’t at all special. Valerie tried not to feel offended. She nodded. “Alright then, Detective. Goodbye.”

Nodding, he closed her door and Valerie started her car as Roman walked away.

She lived only about twenty-five minutes away and her grip didn’t ease on the wheel all the way home.

“First he acts all sweet and caring…” she muttered as she drove. “Put his hand on my back! He opened the door, acting like a sweet Romeo… huh! He spoke to all the employees like that?” Valerie knew she was being weird, but she didn’t care.

She made a turn onto her road with a screech of tires and an annoyed huff. “Well, color me not-giving-a-f**k. Bloody… freaking… dung it!”

“Dang it. Dung is poop.”

Valerie glanced behind her as the person sat up in her back seat. She screamed.