When I got to the morgue, Jonathan was already there. It was a little before ten.

“Did you get some sleep?” I asked.

“I tried, mainly I just tossed and turned. I couldn’t shut my mind off, so I decided to come on in and get started.”

“What time did you get here?”

“A little after eight. The splinters we tweezed out appear to be from the same kind of wood. I’ve got Steve and Lilly working on that now. They have an odd texture to them, so maybe we’ll catch a break with that.”

“Have you got the times of death?”

“The second body we found was killed first, about twelve hours before the other one.”

“Do we know yet what the cause of death was?”

“I need to work on that some more. Since they were beaten so badly, it could be from damage to their internal organs, but I have a feeling it’s going to be something else.”

“Like what?”

“Well when I examined the contents of the stomachs, I found something really odd.”

“What?”

“For one thing, there wasn’t much there at all. Neither man had eaten within the twenty-four hours before his death. But the weird thing is, what was there.”

“What was it?”

“Lactation milk. There was a lot of it all the way through to the pyloric.”

“That is weird. Considering the way their mouths were sliced, that might be the best thing to focus on. Did you get the DNA?”

“Well it was so mixed with the acid in their stomach cavity, I don’t know if we got a sample pure enough to return anything dependable.”

“Something else white. I do think the killer is using color as a theme. White duct tape, which is not that common, the peroxide, the flower, and now this, mother’s milk.”

Lilly walked in with a notepad.

“Hi Dr. Gray. We were able to track down what kind of wood the splinters came from, they’re from a tree indigenous to Asia called agarwood.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Jonathan.

“The more common name is white wood tree,” said Lilly,

Jonathan and I looked at each other knowing we had found too many references to “white” for it to be a coincidence. The killer or killers were definitely sending a message.

When I got to my office I had a ton of messages. The Mayor was setting up an emergency task force and he asked me to take care of it. He told me to use whatever resources needed to put it together as quickly as I could. I didn’t have time to do a lengthy sit down so I called everyone on the telephone. We had a few common denominators, which was an excellent start. I told the detectives to check out the florists to see if anyone had shown special interests lately in white dahlias. That was a long shot. The killer wouldn’t be so stupid to leave such an obvious trail, but you never knew. I called Trudy and asked her to find out about breast pumps, any kind of lactation devices.

“What’s up with that Willa?”

“We found lactation milk in both the victims’ stomachs.”

“Oh, weird, okay. I heard you and Charlie O’Rourke had words.”

“We did. How did he ever make Captain? It must drive you nuts to work with him.”

“He’ll be out of here by the end of the month,” she said.

“Let me know what you find out about the breast pumps – oh, and while you’re at it check out some of the lingerie stores that sell breast feeding bras.”

All that breast talk made me think of Katrina. Visions of her were dancing in my head. She always told me when I became involved in an intense case, my attraction for her exploded. It was as if I was trying to balance out ugliness with beauty. I was daydreaming of being with her, feeling her pussy on my breast and on my mouth. I was so in love. I looked at my watch. She would be on her way to the hospital right now. Jonathan came in and looked at me excitedly.

“It was cyanide. The milk had traces of cyanide. That’s what killed both of them. But they were alive when they were tortured. You can tell from the scarring and bruising. They were moving, reacting to the blows from the whip and the board, or whatever it was.”

Jonathan and I decided it was time to head back to Rawhide to talk to the bartender and some of the members. The owner had called me four times and was obviously distressed. Publicity like that could easily ruin a nightclub and Rawhide was one of the longest running nightclubs in the city. When we walked in, the first thing I noticed were the white dahlias in black vases on the bar. Jonathan saw them too.

“We used to use roses, you know because of the thorns. We just recently switched,” said Bobby McPhee. He had been the owner for ten years and he was the one who had called me.

“Who supplies them,” I asked.

“Petal Power on Trade Street.”

“We haven’t used them for very long, but they catered a recent party for us and they did such a good job we decided to switch to them for all our catering and decorating.”

Riley called me on my radio.

“As a matter of fact,” said McPhee. “They were the ones who suggested the dahlias. Why do you care so much about the flowers?”

We had managed to keep this little detail away from the press, but they would not be held off too much longer.

“Go ahead Riley,” I said.

“Dr. Gray, I’ve been helping Trudy with some of her research and we came upon something really weird.”

“What?”

“There’s a secret group – we were actually really lucky to stumble across it. We found a small entry on a blog and Trudy had a hunch so we followed it through.”

“What is it Riley? Just tell me what you found,” I said irritably.

“Well there’s a group – it’s a national group, but there is a local one here too. They call themselves Fem Dom Moms.”

My heart stopped.

“We just thought, all things considered, it could be really important,” he continued.

“It is. Get me everything you can on it.”

On the way back from the club, we stopped by Petal Power. Marie Osbourne, a petite woman in her sixties was the manager and the owner. I asked about her agreement with Rawhide.

“Well, they’re just really nice boys and you know how the gays are. I felt we were very aligned aesthetically. They liked what we did for their Heartbreak Ball, so we decided to be their decorator/caterer. But of course, we contract out for the catering. All we do here is flowers.”

Jonathan asked her why she decided to use dahlias on the bar instead of roses.

“Oh, that wasn’t me. Our delivery girl Denise suggested that. She thought the white would show up really well in the black vases. That place is very dark.”

“Has Denise worked here long?” I asked.

“Not that long. She moved here last month from Denver. She just works part time because she just had a baby.”

Jonathan and I could barely contain our fervor. Could it be this easy?

“Where can we find her?” Jonathan asked.

“She out right now, making a run to the Quarter.”

“Is she in one of your vans?” I asked.

“Yes. You can’t miss it. It’s got big hydrangea blooms all over it. Is she in some kind of trouble? She seems to be such a nice young woman?”

“We’re just checking out everything ma’am,” I said.

I radioed Riley and told them to get a tail on the flower van and to dig up as much information as he could about Denise Singletary.

“Call the police in Denver and see if they have any record of her,” I said.

We headed back toward the French Quarter. It didn’t take us long to spot the van, but the tail was already there so we held back a little.

Riley radioed again.

“She has a long record. Apparently she shot a social worker in Denver in 1999 when county services took her baby away. Killed him.”

“Why isn’t she still in prison?” I asked.

“It was a mental thing. She served some time in a ward, a few years, and then a halfway house and then they let her out. She moved to New Orleans last month.”

“That means she was out and about in Denver for a while. Did the police say if they’d had any cases similar to this one?”

“They did have a couple of cases that were similar with the cut faces. No flowers or any of that stuff.”

“Thanks Riley. We’re watching her now. She just went into Bayou Savings and Loan.”

“Oh, Dr. Gray? The social worker she killed. He was gay and as it turned out, a gay couple in Denver adopted her son. From what I understand that was her main grievance.”

“Fuck, she’s got to be the one. I’ll call you back in a little bit. Someone’s getting in the florist van now.”

She was a very tall woman with long black hair. She appeared to be muscular and lean. She certainly did not look like a woman who had just given birth, except that even from a distance, it was easy to see that she had very large breasts.

I told the watch car to ease up.

“Let’s just see where she goes guys.”

She rounded the turnabout at the Lutheran Temple and headed toward Bullock Street. We were close to the garden district now, where we had found the second body. The van entered an alley behind a row of cottages and came to a halt.

“Okay guys, just chill. Let’s wait and watch. I don’t think she knows we’re here.”

It took her a long time to get out. She went into the house and came back with a huge cardboard box on a hand truck. She opened the back of the van and climbed in, pulling the box behind her. I wondered what in the hell she was doing in there. She climbed out and shimmied the box out of the van and pulled it inside. She did this three times. Other cars and trucks were pulling up to her house. It was almost dark. All the women seemed to know each other but they were not overly friendly. They just kind of nodded as they streamed into the back door.

I called Riley and told him to get some back up to 2890 Willomere.

“Tell them to be subtle. No sirens or anything. I want to find out if this is a cult or just one person or what.”

Five or six detectives cautiously approached the back door. Jonathan and I stayed in the car watching. We heard a loud scream, almost like a bark and a lot of commotion. We didn’t hear any shots. We got out and headed toward the house. What we found was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in my sixteen years of working in crime and law enforcement. All the women were dressed in black bras and panties, stiletto heels, and they were all holding planks of argarwood. One of them had removed her nipple patch and her swollen breast was leaking milk. In all, there were five women including Denise Singletary who was ranting as the cops handcuffed her and took her away.

“You fuckers. You cocksucking motherfuckers!”

Against the wall was what looked like some kind of altar. Three men were hogtied and hanging from the ceiling. Their feet barely touched the floor. Each of them had a leather open mouth gag inserted in his mouth and dried milk all over his face. They were frightened, but they were okay. The house was like a torture museum: whips, chains, knives, restraints. I heard Jonathan call my name. He was in the kitchen. We found a dozen mason jars in the fridge filled with lactation milk. Under the sink, was a plastic bag with a manila envelope that had dozens of articles on the Black Dahlia.

“Here’s the cyanide,” he said, “and the peroxide. Those guys are lucky. I’m sure they would have been next.”

“No doubt,” I said. “They’ve got all the women down at the 101st. Trudy said Singletary did the butchering after all the other women had gone. I don’t know how she
managed to drop the bodies off by herself. She must have a lot of brute strength.”

“I think insanity can do that, give you a lot of physical power. Surely, the other women must have heard about the murders. It’s been on the news 24/7.”

“They said they didn’t know anything about them. Several of them have been Fem Dom Moms for years. They thought the men were willing participants. Apparently, there are guys out there who like to breastfeed and get punished for it.”

“What a weird fucking world we live in Willa.”

I shook my head. It had been an exhausting few days. It was almost midnight when we pulled away from Willomere. I dropped Jonathan at his house. I started to call Katrina, but I needed to rest. I would see her tomorrow. I couldn’t wait to surrender to her, to feel her heart beat upon my breast, to walk away from ugliness and loss into another dimension of beauty and grace.