Bag in hand, he took a seat in one of the mismatched stuffed chairs congregated at the end of the room. He held the flashlight between his teeth, opened the bag, and began pawing through the garments.

T-shirts, a pair of khaki shorts, a pair of jeans, white tennis clothes. At the bottom he found what he wanted: several pair of pastel silk bikini underpants. Jackpot.

Roland turned the flashlight off and put it back in his jacket pocket. He took one of the panties and held it to his face, breathing deep the scent of a girl. He rubbed the silk against his face, found the crotch of the panties and pressed it to his nose and mouth. With his free hand he unzipped his jeans, took out his erection, and began to stroke it with the other pair of underwear.

This scent was heaven and hell, pleasure and torment. Intoxicating. He filled his head with it. He licked the fabric and tasted it. He took it into his wet mouth and sucked on it, all the while rubbing his cock with the other pair. After a while his body went rigid and he moaned as he ejaculated into the handful of silk.

He allowed himself a moment to relax back into the chair and enjoy the sensations. He could smell his own sweat and semen. He felt wonderfully weak and euphoric.

After a few moments of bliss he wiped himself off on the panties and put them back into Renee Paquin’s laundry bag, stuffing them down in the bottom with a tangle of bras and panties. The other pair he stuffed down in the crotch of his jeans, under his balls.

Satisfied, he let himself out of the garage, walked back down the alley, got in his van, and drove home. He had work to do.

Chapter 10

10

“If the guy is here, we should know about it,” Mendez said.

He sat in the office of his boss, Sheriff Cal Dixon. Pushing sixty, Dixon still cut a sharp figure in his starched and pressed uniform. He trained like a Marine six days a week—running, lifting weights, swimming. The guy was a freaking iron man.

Dixon had recruited him to the SO and had been the catalyst that sent him to the FBI National Academy course. Mendez had enormous respect for the man, and felt lucky to be able to call him a mentor and a friend as well as a boss.

With a stellar career as a detective in the LA County Sheriff’s Office under his belt, Dixon had taken the opportunity to move to Oak Knoll to run his own outfit. He was an excellent sheriff, well respected both by his cops and by citizens. Still a detective at heart, he had set up his office such that his second in command saw to a lot of the administrative duties so Dixon himself could oversee the detective division.