Juggernaut by Nancy Springer

Juggernaut
    Nancy Springer
    “Good Lord, why am I doing this?” Marietta whispered, teetering in her strappy high heels, immobilized at the door of the hotel ballroom. On a logical level she knew exactly why she was there: five murdered men, that was why. Despite her red flirty-skirted dress and the “Sunlit Chestnut” temporary dye covering her gray, Marietta Becker was on duty, her badge tucked into her capacious purse. Just doing her job. But on a woman’s gut level…good grief, a singles dance? With a disco ball, of all things, spinning a slow juggernaut from the ceiling and hurling flakes of confusion onto the women sitting at the circular tables, the men standing in the shadows, a few couples looking awkward on the dance floor? Lord, she’d been married almost as long as she’d been a cop; she didn’t venture to places like this. “What am I doing here?” Marietta complained aloud.
    “Honey,” answered a woman about her age crowded next to her in the doorway, “I ask myself that same question every blessed week.”
    Marietta hadn’t expected the other women, who should regard her as competition, to speak with her, but she tried not to show her surprise as she turned. “Really?”
    “Sure. But it beats sitting home alone.” Prim in a business suit, the woman slapped a name tag that said Pat onto her blazer above her left breast. “Your first time?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, come sit with us. Smile,” Pat coached, leading the way into the dark of the dance.
    Following, Marietta felt men’s glances slide over her like soap. With her teeth bared, she peered through the candlelit gloom. Somewhere in this room, most likely, smiled a murderer.
    Five victims had been found so far, all male. One from Harrisburg, two from York, one from Carlisle, one from Sunbury, for God’s sake. All over the map in more ways than one. A young black college professor, a middle-aged Pennsylvania Dutch truck driver, a Greek Cypriot fish sticks salesman, an unemployed Latino suspected of drug trafficking, and a retired Army master sergeant. They were such a disparate collection of stiffs that only the m.o. marked them as the victims of a serial killer. “The Crusher,” the news called him.
    “You want to face the dance floor?” Pat asked Marietta, offering a chair at an angle to the table.
    “Sure.”
    Sitting, Marietta placed her purse on the table and slipped into it the card they had given her when she had paid to get in: HeartSong Singles, Attend Six Dances Get the Seventh Free. The card that had been found in the wallets of two of the five Crusher victims. Names of two others had been found on the mailing list, but that was strictly departmental info, Marietta’s captain had warned. “What about the fifth victim?” she had asked. “Married,” he’d told her with a look that told her to butt out, it was not her case, she was just there to carry the purse. Bill was doing the work, and where the heck was he?
    “So, Mary,” Pat said, glancing at Marietta’s name tag, “what’s the story, morning glory?”
    “Oh, uh, the usual.” Marietta had not thought she would need a cover story.
    Pat nodded. “He dumped you for a younger woman?”
    Marietta had to force herself to nod and smile. She was here as a single, she reminded herself—but no, it couldn’t happen, her husband would never dump her. Sam wasn’t very affectionate, in fact he was grouchy, but that was just because he worked too hard. Sometimes, like the last couple of days, their work schedules were so off whack they didn’t even see each other. She hadn’t gotten to tell him about this assignment—but that was probably just as well. She never knew what was likely to make him hit the ceiling. The idea of her dressing up and dancing with other men might do it, even though it was just her job, and he’d been happy for her when after twenty years of parking meters and traffic detail she’d been promoted to undercover. He hadn’t minded her putting