She heads back out on interstate sixty-four and swings onto Hanley then quickly onto Eager she stops in at Dierberg’s, grabs a salad from the salad bar and something to drink. As she walks up to the check out lane she sees the Sunday paper and one of the headlines catches her eye.
“Four murders on Saturday night.”
Wren picks up the paper and adds it to the conveyor. She heads on down Eager to Brentwood boulevard and the Galleria shopping mall. Once she is situated in a space on the busy lot she pulls out the paper and finds the story that caught her eye.
“Police are baffled as to how four murders could have possibly happened in such a small area of the city. The first three were all done quickly, all being done within the same hour. All outside under the cover of darkness.
The fourth happened early Sunday morning inside the home of the victim’s parents. Apparently the perpetrator broke into the home severing the electrical, and phone connections. A laptop computer and cell phone were also taken during the intrusion. Police said they would consider it a robbery gone bad if the individual did not share some commonality with the other victims. According to a police spokesman they were most likely all committed by the same individual.
“We appear to have a predator from a rival gang on our hands. All the shots where through the head, all the victims had gone to the same high school, where of the same graduating class and all shared the same tattoo on their right ring finger beneath their class ring.”
Upon further investigation I was able to find out the tattoo is the phrase: “Live hard, f—- harder!” Amazingly though a number of the murders happened outside, there where no witnesses to the any of the events. The only witnesses that could tell the police anything involved the first victim. The man in his mid twenties was shot while driving his car down the sixty-seven hundred block of Chippewa. According to the witnesses the victim veered into the left lane narrowly missing a motorcyclist and forcing him onto Watson road then, abruptly pulled right and ran into the storefront. No other witnesses have come forward with anymore information.``
The story continues on giving a brief history of each victim of the “Predator.”
“The Predator. So I have been given a name, I like it.”
Wren puts away the paper then, pulls out Hackers phone and attaches it to his laptop. A quick search of the internet yields the information she needs. Some quick sketches and several shopping lists later and she has a plan.
Her first stop is at the hardware store where she buys three eighteen inch long pieces of three quarter inch steel pipe and three reducers. Next stop a different store where she buys three pipe caps and another set of reducers. Then it is off to Wal-Mart for fertilizer and a hobby store in O’ Fallon for some model rocket igniters. A different hobby store in Illinois yields some radio controlled plane parts. She finishes her shopping at two electronics stores and a truck stop for three magnetic cb antennas.
She takes all of her supplies home and carefully assembles her lethal packages. She knows she has to be very careful because she does not know just how easily they will detonate. When she is done it is late and she has to be at work early the next day for the first of her pole dancing lessons. The job of placing the bombs will just have to wait.
Wren walks into the club at eight in the morning and meets up with the older dancers that are going to teach her. They prove to be rigorous teachers pushing her hard and expecting perfection as much as she does. They let up on her for the lunch crowd though as she has to wait tables. As she heads back into the kitchen with a table full of orders she is surprised to see someone who has a striking resemblance to Norman being led to the back offices by a bouncer. She knows it can’t be Norman though because he would never risk his reputation being caught in here. Still the resemblance is uncanny.
After the lunch rush Wren gets a breather for a while and a chance to slip out of her heels for a bit. She leans back against the wall in the employee lounge in nothing but her apron and drifts off to sleep. It is several hours later when the evening manager comes and wakes her up.
“Hey sleepy head, did the girls work you a little too hard this morning? If you are rested enough and feel up to it I need a dancer for the stage this evening.”
“Give me ten minutes to straighten up and get ready and I can be on.”
“Don’t rush that much, you got about thirty.”
Wren heads back to what the girls all call the undressing room and gets ready. In thirty minutes she is standing in the center of the stage looking at the floor, her hair hanging down around her face so she can’t see the audience. Her choice of music is different and apparent as Rag Doll by Aerosmith starts to play. She struts the length of the catwalk like any high fashion model would, teasing the audience by sliding her jacket back and forth and up and down across her back. When she gets back to her beginning she tosses the jacket off to the side stage. She grabs a pole and slides her hands way up its cool gleaming surface as she lifts her right leg up the pole to her chest. Leaning against the pole she runs her hands down her leg and back up to the zipper on her skirt. When she steps away from the pole she flips the skirt off stage with the jacket. She walks the catwalk again loosening her blouse as she goes. She plays with the blouse like she did the jacket bouncing her hips to the beat of the music until she has it off and lifting her left arm high she twirls it on her finger before tossing it onto the pile with her other clothes. She’s now left in her stockings, bra, thong and heels as she twirls and slides up and down the pole. She manages to climb the entire height of the pole and as she slowly slides down with one hand and unhooks her bra with the other. Soon she’s prancing the stage leaning down and almost touching some of the guys with her chest. She knows the rules and her teachers have taught her just where to stop. When she reaches the end of the catwalk she stands there and dances alone, her hips bobbing and weaving as she slowly hooks the waist of her thong with her thumbs. The mixture of adrenaline and the high of having the audience’s attention have relaxed her more than she expected it ever would. As the song nears its conclusion she removes her thong and with an exaggerated wiggle to her hips struts down the catwalk twirling her thong on her long fingers as she leaves the stage.
By the end of the night she has repeated her performance eight more times and is relieved and exhausted when it is finally closing time. She heads for home knowing two things: one she is now getting the attention she needs for her cover and two she has to start working on another routine so she doesn’t wear this one out. She is thankful that she doesn’t have to go in early the next day because she doesn’t plan to set an alarm.
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