Dispatch received the call at 3:18 AM.
"City-451 to Dispatch."
"Dispatch. Go ahead 451."
"I've got a hysterical woman outside *Tallywackers* flagging me down. I'm going to pull in and check it out."
"Advise status."
"I'm in front of the club about to be out of my car."
"Understood, 451."

There were four minutes of silence from City-451.
"Dispatch, we're going to need Homicide at *Tallywackers Gentlemen's Club*."
"Understood 451. 10-4."

*

Lieutenant Nickolas Caldwell was awakened at 3:27 AM by the phone ringing. He answered it with a half-coherent 'hello', repeated the address the dispatcher gave him, and hung up the phone. He got dressed, checked his gun, and kissed Daniel on the top of the head. He left his apartment at 3:33 AM.

*

Patrick Martin was awakened at 3:29 AM. He couldn't remember what he'd done with his wallet and had trouble finding his scarf and left glove. He grabbed three bottles of juice from his fridge and nearly fell over the dog getting to the door. He was driving to the scene at 3:36 AM.

*

Emilie Barker was awakened at 3:31 AM. She wrote down the address and made one demand to the dispatcher. "Call Layton."

"He's not on call, Detective."

"So what? He wants to be in Homicide, he has to keep the hours. Get him out there." She hung up the phone, dressed in yesterday's clothes, and pulled her hair back. She started her car at 3:37 AM.

*

Kendall Layton was awakened at 3:34 AM.

"I'm not on call tonight."

"Detective Barker requested you be there."

"Figures. Fuckin' loon." He hung up the phone nad stumbled through an abbreviated morning routine, brushing his teeth and hair but deciding not to shave. He locked his apartment door at 3:40 AM.

*

They were all on the scene by four. Lieutenat Caldwell had a cup of coffee from an all-night diner on the corner. It tasted like shit. Patrick had handed a bottle of juice to Emilie, one to Kendall, and started in on his own. They all stood over the body for a few minutes.

The body, even dead, was a nice one and nearly nude. She was woman wthi long brown hair and a tight, well-exercised figure. She wore a rhinestnoe g-string and there was a dildo in her dead hands. She was laid out on her back, arms bent so the dildo rested between her bare breasts. There was a pool of blood around her head.

Patrick was the first to bend down, gloves securely on, and start inspecting the body. He made sure the scene technician had gotten all her pictures before he reached for the dildo. He didn't dislodge it, but he examined it closely. "It's filled with money."

Emilie raised her eyebrows. "Money?"

"Yeah." Patrick shifted the bills around a little. "Lots of singles, some fives, a ten, nothing bigger than that."

"Maybe it was her version of a tip jar." Kendall circled the body and hunkered down by the feet.

"Classy tip jar." Emilie crouched outside the pool of blood.

"She works in a club calld *Tallywackers*. I doubt there's a lot of class here."

"Do you think Mr. Bananaman tallies it here?"

Emilie and Kendall both gave Patrick a look. Emilie's was one of minor amusement. Kendall's was slightly confused. He was still new to Patrick's massively out-of-line sense of humor.

"If he does, he probably won't anymore." Emilie stood up. "Come on, Doll. Let's see if you can ask the right questions." She didn't see Kendal roll his eyes at the nickname as he stood and followed her.

Patrick watched them walk, some small part of his brain that was always people watching making mental notes on how different they looked standing side-by-side. They were both in slightly wrinkled clothes and moved with a half-tired shuffle of people forced to be up midway through a good night's sleep, but Emilie was walking a little straighter, her body proving it was used to odd hours and being abrutly awakened. Kendall was leaning a little when he stood still, and his eyes were still slightly glassy. Patrick briefly wondered if he should warn Emilie of an impending collapse, but he saw her grip Kendall's elbow and stayed quiet.

The ME got Patrick's atention with three words. "She's been bludgeoned."

He looked back down at the body. "With what?'

"I don't know, but she's got a clean, four-inch gash at the base of her skull, so you're probably looking for something about that size. Could be a square object." The ME gave Patrick a warped smile. "Maybe someone got her with a candlestick."

"A candlestick in the back of a strip club?"

"Maybe Miss Scarlett didn't want the competition."

Patrick gave a small smile to the ME and stood up, walking over the where Nickloas was still watching things from the edge of the scene. "Blunt-force trauma to the base of the skull. She's got a four-inch cut from whatever hit her."

Nickolas nodded. "Layton's talking to the club owner, and I lost track fo Emilie a few seconds ago."

"She's..." Patrick did a slow circle, lifting up on his toes halfway around. He spotted a long red ponytail. "Over by the door, talking to a uniform."

"Probably the first cop on the scene. He stopped when one of the dancers flagged him down. She had to be taken to the hospital to calm down."

Twelve feet away, The uniformed officer, J. Nelson his nametag read, was giving the same information to Emilie.

"I saw her on the side of the street waving her arms like she was trying to get a helicoptor to land. When she saw me she started yelling. I called dispatch and pulled in."

"What'd she say to you?"

"She just kept saying Esmerelda. 'Esmerelda. Esmerelda. Esmerelda.' I couldn't get her to calm down, and she pulled me into the club."

"Where'd you come in at?"

"Front door. She led me back here and started freaking out worse. I saw the chick dead on the floor and called dispatch to call you guys, then I asked them to call an ambulance when the girl next to me wouldn't calm down."

Emilie made a notation on her notepad to double-check the radio traffic for the call. "Did you touch anything?"

"I checked her for a pulse."

"Did you touch anything else? Take any money?"

"What money?" His expression matched his tone of voice. He didn't know the dildo was filled with money.

"Never mind."

Eight feet from Emilie, Kendall was asking the club owner about the dildo.

"It was part of her act. She'd do some lewd stuff with it, gestures, you know, and the guys could put their money in it. It was a big hit."

Kendall shared a knowing grin with the other man, silently congratulating himself on guessing what it was right off.. "Lot of fun to watch, huh?"

"Oh, yeah."

"How long have you owned the club, Mr. Zucker?"

"Eighteen years. It's my baby." Mr. Zucker puffed his chest out, obviously proud of his piece of the world.

"Finally old enough to watch the girls, then?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Any other girls ever get killed here, Mr. Zucker?"

"Of course not. This is a fluke."

~Always is.~ Kendall made a note on his pad. "Can you think of anyone who might want her dead?"

Unlike most people, Mr. Zucker actaully considered the question for a few seconds. "No one comes to mind. We've thrown out a couple fo customers for getting to friendly, but we do that with all the girls. We've got a strict no groping policy."

~And I'm sure it's strictly enforced.~ "Were you here at closing?"

"I've closed this place every night we've been open."

Kendall wondered if Mr. Zucker's chest could expand any furher. "So that's a yes?"

The great expanding chest deflated slightly. "Yes."

"Was Esmerelda gone when you closed?"

"She and Stacy were still getting changed. I told them to make sure they locked the door when they left."

"Stacy?"

"Little blonde thing they took to the hospital."

"Okay. Did they both have keys?"

"Stacy has one. She's assistant manager when she's not dancing."

"All right." Kendall added that to the list of information in his notebook. "I'm going to need an address and phone number, Mr. Zucker."

Mr. Zucker pulled out a business card with a flourish. It was a novelty job, cut to resmeble a curvacous woman in a half-reclined position. Mr. Zucker wrote his home information on the back and gave it to Kendall. Kendall walked over to Nickolas and Patick, waving the card with a grin on his face.

Patrick chuckled lowly. "Classy."

"Not my type." Nickolas's tone was bland.

Kendall stuck the card in his notebook and slid the notebook into his pocket. "He's owned the place for eighteen years, says no one else has ever died here. The girl at the hospital has a key, and he left her and Esmerelda here when he closed."

"You think he did anything?" Nickolas was turned so he could see Mr. Zucker by the door.

"He's not broken up, but he's not particularly edgy Seems like your usual to-busy-to-care employer."

"Sounds like the city." Emilie had walked up midway through Kndall's informative bit on Mr. Zucker and situated herself between he and Patrick.

"I'm sure the taxpayers would love the analogy." Nickolas truned back to face them and had to hold back a grin at the bookend effect Kendall and Patrick had on Emilie. They were both easily a foot taller than her with blonde hair and fair complexions, but Kendall's had a little wave to it while Patrick's was to short to be anything but bristly. Emilie stood between them looking like some red-headed stepchild trying to keep up with her big brothers. And if she ever found out Nickolas had had that thought, she'd probably disembowl him. Especially considering Kendall was younger than her. "Patrick, Emilie, go through Esmerelda's personal affects that are here. Find an address or something we can call. Kendall, get over to the hospital and see if what's-her-name-"

"Stacy," Kendall supplied.

"Stacy is calm enough to talk. If she's not, wait around." Nickolas glanced out the front door of the club and saw the first few reporters salivating. "I'm going to go throw myself to the wolves."

"Protect your groin." Emilie patted Nickolas on the arm as she and Patrick walked around him to go to the dressing rooms. Kendall just nodded once and ducked out the side door, out of view of the press.

The six most eager members of the city press were waiting, eyes glazed from bloodlust, behind the yellow crime scene tape. Nickolas sucked in a breath, curled his hands in his coat pockets, and walked over to them. "I'm Lieutenant Nickolas Caldwell. My people are handling this investigation. As of now, we have no information to release to the press." Nickolas took a small bit of enjoyment out of watching his torturers look a little down at his lack of news. "I'm afraid you're freezing your asses off for no reason." He made eye contact with each person and found the third reporter from the left giving him a calculating lok. Nickolas knew the question before it was asked.

"Aren't you the homosexual Lieutenant?"

~I owe Emilie five bucks.~ "I am. And I still have no information to give you. Have a nice morning. Enjoy the sunrise." Nickolas turned and walked back into the club, relishing the disappointed mutterings behind him. He walked to the small, curtained area where the community dressing room was and found Patrick and Emilie carefully inspecting the mirror cloest to the doorframe. He handed Emilie a five-dollar bill. "I'm calling this bet off. I keep losing."

Partick looked up from examing the contents of a small side drawer. "They asked if you were gay?"

"Asked if I was the 'homosexual Lieutenant' to be exact." Nickolas pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Maybe I should just stamp 'Rampant Queer' right here and give up making them guess."

"Don't do that. It'd never fit." Emilie handed Nickolas a brown leatherette wallet. "This was in her purse. Her last name's Lowenstein."

"Lowenstein?"

"Yeah."

"Her parents named her Esmerelda Lowenstein?"

"Esmerelda Tabitha Lowenstein."

"Hope she was a good speller." Nickolas looked over the wallet. There were eighteen dollars in the cash pocket, a driver's liscense, a few pictures in plastic sleeves, and a student ID. "What was she a student of?"

"Law. Her books are under the table." Emilie reached for them. "Two are basic law books and two concentrate on children and how law affects them."

"She studied children's law during the day and got naked for money at night? That's an interesting combination."

"She was probably paying for law school." Patrick pulled a check stub from out of the drawer he was searching. "She was making ten an hour plus tips. A half-decent stripper in this city can make two hundred a night in tips."

"There wasn't nearly that much in the dildo." Emilie made a face at her own sentence. "That's a set of words I'd never thought I'd say."

Patrick shrugged. "She probably emptied it between performances. Let's a new audience start with an empty dildo."

"And that's a sentence I never thought I'd hear."

"I don't want to know why you're thinking about maybe hearing that sentence." Nickolas reached for the purse that hung on the back of the chair. It was green with small, abstract patterns sewn on the sides. He pulled out a checkbook, a cheap ballpoint pen, a change purse, a comb, a few reciepts, and from the very bottom, a rolled-up stack of bills held together wtih a rubber band. He pulled the rubber band off and counted under his breath. "Two hundred and eighteen dollars. Guess she was slightly more than half-decent." He put the money into the evidence bag Emilie held out and watched her label it. "Five bucks says there's semen on at least six of those bills."

Emilie sealed the bag. "Ten or more."

"Half the stack." Patrick shrugged again when they both looked at him curiously. He usually didn't get in on their bets. "I stand a good chance winning this one. You guys never went to strip clubs."

*

Kendall sat on an obscenly orange plastic chair in Stacy Carter's hospital room and waited for her to wake up. She'd had to be sedated when they brought her in bcause she'd been hysterical. Kendall wa fairly certaint that it wasn't just hysteria from seeing a dead body. Most people freaked but could be calmed down if you got them away from the body in question, and even if the hysteria was a little worse, Kendall had never known anyone who'd had to be sedated for it.

Except himself.

He pushed that thought down and concentrated again on Stacy Carter. She was an obviously bleached blonde with wispy bangs and a small, oval face. She wasn't more than 110 pounds. Kendall wondered briefly if the doctors had fixed the sedative dosage to match her size. He didn't bother checking the chart, just stayed in his chair and watched Stacy Carter. He composed a list of questions in his head.

How long did you know Esmerelda?
Were you friends?
Why were you the last ones out tonight?
What time did you find her?
What did you do when you found her?
Was she dead when you found her?
Did you call the police?
Did you call an ambulance?
Do you know if she had any enemies?

Kendall knew the questions would have to be revised as Stacy answered them; he was just trying to make sure he didn't forget anything up front. He didn't want to look bad. Didn't want to get back to the station to hear Emilie list a question he'd forgotten but should have asked. ~Damnit, Layton, three months in and you're still yanking yourself around to prove to her you earned your spot. You're sad.~

Kendall rubbed his face and tilted his head back and wondered if catching a quick nap would be absolutely upprofessional and stupid. He had an image of waking up to find Stacy Carter dead and covered in blood, and he sat up staright again, rolling his shoulders until his back popped. He needed to talk to Stacy Carter as soon as she woke up. He couldn't do that if he slept longer than her.

He jumped up and went on a quick search for the diseal fuel the hospital called coffee.