Shannon’s visage could best be described as animalistic. Detective Jones moved forward and put a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly, Inspector Reynolds went very pale and her countenance reverted to the shy woman that Sandra had been speaking to earlier.
“Listen, I think Dr. Griego might still be here. Did you want to go ahead and talk to him now?”
Shannon nodded her head, looking very pale. She glanced at Sandra, again looking as if she wanted to say something. But she closed her mouth and vanished down another corridor. Sandra could do nothing but stare after her as she retreated. Then she looked back to the unconscious man on the ground. Sandra found herself . . . aroused. ‘That woman kicks ass!’ she thought. Then she blushed a bit. ‘What am I, some addle-brained high school girl that gets turned on by displays of random aggression?’ She looked down at the man again, then down the corridor where Shannon had disappeared. ‘Maybe I am.’
“Where did she go?” she asked Bobby.
“She had to go talk to one of our on-staff psychiatrists. Shannon has . . . well, anger-management issues.”
“But she was completely justified . . .”
“I know that. You know that. But it takes someone with a Ph. D. to convince HER of that. Here, let me walk you to your car. We can work out the rest of the paperwork another time.”
—————– ———–
The next morning . . .
—————– ———–
It was nine o’clock in the morning when Shannon finally drug her weary carcass into her one-bedroom apartment just a few blocks from the police station. She placed the large pile of files she had to look over neatly on one corner of the card table that also served as her study area and dining area. There was a single folding chair next to the table. She never had company, so there was no need for two chairs. She went and grabbed a low-fat yogurt cup out of her refrigerator and sat down on the carpet in front of her sensible, seventeen inch television sat down to watch the morning news. She had a crush on Sharon Tey, one of the anchors for KTLA’s morning show.
‘One of these days,’ Shannon thought, ‘I’m going to have to get off the graveyard shift.’ She groaned inwardly. She thought that she might have sprained something when she kicked that guy in the head the second time. She just hoped she wasn’t going to be charged with anything, and she was glad she hadn’t actually killed the guy.
The news went on about soaring gas prices, fluctuations in the President’s popularity level and the ongoing transit strike going on in several California cities. There was brief blurb about the arrest that had been made in the murder investigation that Shannon was working on. It had been a relatively simple situation in Shannon’s eyes. The security guard had been inside the house when he was shot, but he had never radioed in to his headquarters that he was investigating something, which was standard procedure for the company for when their guards left their vehicles to do anything but use the bathroom. If he had been investigating a possible intruder, why didn’t he call it in, and why had he never drawn his weapon? He had been shot at close range in a place where it would have been difficult for someone to “pop out of nowhere,” so why hadn’t he been alarmed. The reason was that the security guard knew the perpetrator. Shannon had hypothesized that he had actually been working with the thief. It would explain why the guard had apparently been in the backyard; he had been carrying stolen goods to the back wall, tossing them over next to the other perpetrator’s vehicle. She had checked the guy’s work file, and he apparently had reported “scaring people off” of other clients’ property a large number of times. If they were working in tandem, he would have had to call in the disturbance. If he didn’t, then the security company would look incompetent. But by calling it in after a “minimal” amount of theft, he looked like a hero. And since the amount stolen had never been excessive, this particular cat burglar had never shown up as a priority on police radar. Then the two probably split the money.
‘Did his partner just get greedy?’ she asked herself. ‘Or stupid? For an extra couple thousand dollars, he’s now facing the gas chamber.’ Once she had deduced the scheme, she figured out the “how” of the matter. She had already realized that the primary intruder had parked on a small access road around the back of the house. She had fingerprinted a large section of wrought iron fence-work and had lifted several usable prints. These had matched up in the database with a man who had done time many years earlier for armed robbery. The detectives and beat-cops had taken over from there.
That left her thinking about Ms. Sandra Lopez. She sighed gently. ‘That is one beautiful woman,’ she thought to herself. ‘She even asked if I wanted a drink, and all I could do was babble.’ She finished off her yogurt and placed the plastic cup in the appropriate recycle bin. She got up and went to take a shower. She undressed in the dark like she always did. Before climbing into the small shower stall, she did turn on a nightlight that provided just enough illumination for her to find things like her Pert-Plus shampoo & conditioner bottle, but that was it. Shannon hated her body. She didn’t like looking at it at all.
As her hair began absorbing the water, her thoughts went back to Sandra. She had often felt that a Hispanic woman who kept her figure was one of the most beautiful creatures alive, and Sandra had DEFINITELY kept her figure. Shannon’s hand found their way to her neatly trimmed nether region. She slipped one finger inside and diddled herself while the water poured over her face. ‘Why do I do this to myself?’ she wondered, but that didn’t stop her. She stopped fingering long enough to rub her mound with her three longest fingers, rubbing in quick, short circles. Her fleshy mound and swollen lips were already warm to the touch and aching for a bit of the bad touch. She brought her free hand up to cup one of her breasts. They weren’t particularly large, though they were noticeable. At least they would be if she ever wore something besides sweatshirts. But her nipples were sensitive, and she started rolling the nub between her thumb and forefinger.
Shannon thought about Sandra’s hourglass shape, about her generous cleavage and wonderful hips. Shannon stuck a couple of fingers back into her box and curved the tips upward. She let her palm come to rest lightly on her clitoral hood, massaging it as her fingers probed her own body. She also kept pulling on and tweaking her own nipples, one after the other. She would pull one out until she couldn’t stand it anymore, then release it and move back to the other breast. She was humping her own hand, wishing that she had a little more space in the shower to maneuver. She pressed her palm a little harder against the clit, giving her a burst of pleasure. She withdrew her fingers again and started rubbing up and down the slit with her fingertips, then sunk them back into her pussy. She wondered how it would feel to do this to Sandra. She found herself blushing. ‘Why do I even bother thinking about . . .’
Her self-depreciating streak ended when she felt her orgasm building. She gripped one of her nipples hard and she drove her fingers deep into her box while her thumb stimulated the clit. She felt her abdominal muscles clench, setting of chain-reactions in other muscle groups. She felt her pussy convulse and she felt some warm fluid running onto her inner thighs. She gasped, and some shower water actually got into her mouth, and she promptly spit it out. Her body relaxed and she withdrew her fingers from their nest.
She finally got around to actually cleaning off. She toweled off and threw her comfortable, sensible flannel pajamas on and crawled into bed. Before going to sleep, she opened up the drawer in her nightstand and pulled out a business card that was inside. It was the number for an escort service she had used. She was so tempted to dial that number, even though she knew how much trouble she would get into. She had discovered the place investigating an assault charge. She had no real desire to investigate the service itself. She thought the idea of regulating sexual activity was a huge waste of taxpayer money and police resources. But there had been a few times in the last couple of years where the loneliness had become almost overwhelming.
Shannon sighed and put the card back in the nightstand before turning off the light. ‘No,’ she thought. ‘I can’t keep pretending. Every time I call that number, I just pretend that it’s a real relationship. I can’t do that anymore. Because in the morning, whoever she is always leaves. I don’t need to go paying someone to leave me.’
It was on that sour note that Shannon was finally overcome by sleep.
—————— —————-
A few days later . . .
—————— —————-
Sandra was sitting around a trendy downtown cafe having a pleasant lunch with Jasmine. It turned out that having that woman as a friend had been a wonderful turn of events. Sandra bore no delusions that this was a precursor to a more romantic affair; she understood the rules that Jasmine had laid down. But having an actual friend, rather than a butt-kissing lackey or potential client, had its advantages.
“So, your trip to the police station was eventful then?” Jasmine inquired.
“Yep. I looked over some recovered items, tried apologizing to Inspector Reynolds, managed to offend her somehow . . . at least I think that’s what happened. And then I witnessed a woman who is only about five and a half feet tall kick the living hell out of a man almost three times her body mass, then run off to talk to a psychiatrist.” Sandra narrowed her eyes. “But you probably knew that she was all . . . well, kung-fu. Didn’t you?”
“You just keep digging, don’t you?” Jasmine said with a wry smile. Sandra had been trying to pry information from about Investigator Reynolds for a couple of days, but to no avail. Even if Jasmine had been willing to talk, she didn’t know much more than Sandra did. She had only serviced Ms. Reynolds a couple of times, and the woman had been very introverted.
“Yes, and you keep dodging. I guess that’s the game we’re destined to play,” said Sandra grumpily. She sucked sexily on her straw, causing a skateboarder to lose track of where he was going and crash into a fire hydrant. “Score one more for me,” she said.