• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The city dickered back and forth between tossing out the low-rent LC’s, chemi-heads, and dealers along with the working poor and mowing down the shaky structures or revitalizing.

While they dickered, the buildings decayed and nothing was done.

Eve expected nothing would be done until the dumps collapsed inward on their residents and the city fathers found themselves in the throes of a class-action suit.

But until that time, it was the sort of place you expected to find a down-on-her-luck whore.

Her room was a hot little box with a stingy bump-out for a kitchen and a thin sliver for a bathroom. Her view was the wall of the identical building to the west.

Through the thin walls Eve could clearly hear the heroic snoring from the apartment next door.

Despite the circumstance, Jacie had kept her place clean, and had made some attempt at style. The furniture was cheap, but it was colorful. She hadn’t been able to afford privacy screens, but there were frilly curtains at the windows. She’d left the bed pulled out of the convertible sofa, but it was made, and the sheets were good cotton. Possibly salvaged from better times, Eve thought.

She had a low-end desk ’link on a table, and a prefab dresser covered with the various tools of her trade: enhancements, scents, wigs, tawdry jewelry, temporary tattoos. The drawer and closet held work clothes primarily, but mixed in with the whore-wear were a couple of more conservative outfits Eve imagined she’d used for off-hours.

She found a supply of over-the-counter meds, including a half bottle of Sober-Up and a full, unopened bottle as backup. Which made sense with the two bottles of vodka and the bottle of home-brew in the kitchen.

She turned up no illegals, which caused her to assume Jacie had switched from chemicals to alcohol.

She opened the desk ’link and replayed the transmissions received and sent over the last three days. One to her counselor to request an upgrade in her license, one received and not answered or yet returned from the landlord regarding overdue rent, another made to an uptown body sculptor requesting rates.

No chats with pals, Eve mused.

She scrolled through, located the financials, and found Jacie’s bookkeeping spare and efficient. Paid attention to her money, Eve mused, did the job, banked the pay, and pumped most of it back into the business. Expenses were high for wardrobe, body treatments, hair and face work.

Used to looking good, Eve decided. Wanted to keep looking good. Self-esteem wrapped around appearance, which was wrapped around sexual appeal, which was wrapped around selling yourself for enough money to maintain appearance.

A strange and sad cycle, in her opinion.

“She made a nice nest for herself in a very ugly tree,” Eve commented. “I’ve got no transmissions or any correspondence from anyone named Jack, or any one guy in particular for that matter. No marriage or cohabitation on record?”

“No, sir.”

“We’ll talk to her counselor, see if there’s anybody she was close to, or had been close to. But I don’t think we’ll find him there.”

“Dallas, it seems to me, what he did to her . . . it seems to me that it was personal.”

“Does, doesn’t it?” She turned around, looked at the room again. Neat, girlie, with a desperate attempt at style. “I think it was very personal, but not specific to the victim. He killed a woman, and a woman who made her living from selling her body. That’s the personal part. You not only kill her, but you hack out the part of her that made that living. It’s not hard to find a street LC in this area any time of the night. You just have to choose your time and place. A sample of his work,” she murmured. “That’s all she was.”

She walked to the window and, narrowing her eyes, visualized the street, the alley, the building just out of view. “He might have known her, or have seen her. Just as possible it was chance. But he was ready if chance presented itself. He had the weapon, he had the note written and sealed, and something—a case, a bag, a satchel,