by Sara Reinke
M.K. turned to her and smiled, slowing her gait until they walked abreast of each other. She slipped her arm around Bethany’s shoulders and grinned. “Nathan’s already here,” she said. “Stick close to me when we get inside, okay? He’s got a booth for us in the back, but it’s going to be packed. I don’t want you getting lost in the crowd.”
Bethany nodded, shying closer to her sister at the horrifying prospect. She didn’t know what she would do if she got separated in the bar. She didn’t know how she’d get home if she lost track of M.K. and Jeremy.
“Jesus, you’re as tense as a board!” M.K. laughed, offering her a friendly shake. “Stop worrying. Nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to have a blast!”
Because she wanted to believe her sister almost as much as please her, Bethany managed a smile and nodded at M.K. Nothing’s going to happen, she told herself as they approached the entrance. The stink of cigarette smoke, spilled beer and sweat was already thick and heady in the air, even from the sidewalk and she could see flashes of neon-colored lights through the doors leading inside. She reached for her purse, pulling out the fake drivers license. Nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to have a blast.
* * *
“Thanks for coming,” Brenda said to Paul, standing aside and holding the front door open so he could enter her home, a small, two story house facing Noble Park, no more than twenty minutes from his apartment. She was dressed in loose-fitting grey sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. She was barefooted, and she’d long since washed any hint of make-up from her face. Her hair hung loose in a long, pale sheaf, draped over one shoulder, and he realized it was the first time he’d ever seen her without a ponytail. Christ, she’s beautiful, Paul thought.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. She closed the door behind him, but he made no move to step further into the living room. All the way there, he’d been gripped with anxiety; her revelations about the discovery of another body, Aimee Chesshire’s body, had left him nearly panic-stricken. Now that he had arrived, now that they were alone, he stared, transfixed by the luminous glow of her hair, bathed in soft, warm lamp light, and found himself momentarily befuddled and immobilized.
He kept thinking of their kiss, of the softness and warmth of her mouth against his, the way her breath and tongue had tasted and felt, the soft whimpering sound that had fluttered from her throat. All at once, he seemed incapable of thinking of anything else, and that memory hung between them, thick and nearly palpable in the small room.
“Would you like a beer?” she asked, walking past him, brushing her shoulder against his.
“Yeah,” he said, even though his stomach was still knotted and grumbling from his early bout of vomitting, and beer was probably the last thing he needed to be dumping on it. “Please. That’d be great.”
She crossed through the adjoining dining room and into her kitchen and again, Paul found himself mesmerized by the spill of her long, blond hair. He shook his head, snapping himself from his reverie, and forced himself to look around. The living room was long and large, with a bay window filling up nearly all of the westward facing wall, awarding a floor-to-ceiling view of the park beyond. That view was obscured at the moment by heavy draperies Brenda had drawn. To Paul’s immediate right, just inside the doorway, a flight of wooden steps led to the second floor. Like most older homes in the city, those build during the early days of urban-sprawl’s infancy following the second world war, the woodwork in Brenda’s house was dark, almost chocolate-covered. By contrast, she’d painted all of the walls a pale, eggshell white and covered the floors in light beige carpeting. Her furniture was modest and unpresuming, and the focal points of the living room’s décor seemed to be the enormous barrister-style bookshelves she had lining nearly every inch of available wall space. Each was crammed to capacity with books, and an overflow of volumes rested, stacked against the tops.
“I like your house,” Paul called to her. There was something charming and comforting about the space; it had a “lived-in” ambience that could never be duplicated in an apartment. It more than looked like someone called it home; it felt that way, too.
“Thanks,” she replied, returning from the kitchen with two beer bottles in her hands. Beyond her, he caught a glimpse of a gas range and a white porcelain sink, with metal cabinetry with chrome fixtures lining the walls, probably original to the house. “Did you have any trouble finding it?”
“No. Your directions were spot-on.”
“I hope Sam Adams is okay,” she said, offering him a bottle.
“Sam Adams is fine,” he said, slipping it from her hand. His fingertips brushed against hers and she drew back immediately. They stood there, blinking at one another for a long, awkward moment, and he realized she was thinking about their kiss, too.
“Come on upstairs to my office,” she said, on the move again, walking briskly past him toward the stairs. “Let me show you that file.”
The top of the stairs opened onto a single, long room. The walls cut in at sloping angles to match the pitch of the roof. At one end of the room, he saw Brenda’s desk, as covered in papers and books as the one at her downtown office. A laptop computer also rested atop, plugged into the wall and a nearby cable internet access. On the other end of the room, he saw a queen-sized bed, neatly made, with the walls around it still adorned with various rock-band and girl-in-bikini posters. Low-lying bookshelves were lined with sports trophies and toy action figures, miniature Lego cars and model airplanes.
“This is my son’s room,” Brenda said, sounding somewhat sheepish. “He moved with his dad to California, but I still keep it for him, for when he comes to visit. I…I like to come up here and work. It makes me feel closer to him.”
Her eyes filled with sorrow, and she looked away. “Here,” she said, going to the desk and lifting a file folder in hand. She nodded to an old, lopsided recliner behind Paul. “Make yourself comfortable, if you’d like.”
Paul sat, placing his beer on the floor beside him. He opened the folder, mentally steeling himself for the brutal photographs he knew he’d find inside. Aimee Chesshire looked up at him, her face and form battered and bloodied, obliterating momentarily any dreams or memories he might have had of her from the nightclub. He felt his stomach wrench again, and he closed his eyes, drawing in long, deep breaths for a long, uncertain moment, willing himself not to vomit.
I didn’t do this, he thought. I couldn’t have done this. Oh, Christ, I couldn’t have
“You still don’t think this is a hate crime?” she asked.
He breathed again, slowly, deliberately. “No,” he whispered, opening his eyes, turning quickly past the photos of Aimee’s face.
Brenda leaned back against the corner of her desk, folding her arms across her chest. “Why, then?” she asked. “Why is he doing this?”
Paul flipped past more autopsy photos, these detailing the puncture wounds left by the more than one hundred needles that had been shoved deeply into Aimee’s skin, at all different points on her body―her arms and legs, her breasts, her genitals, her face and ears. I didn’t do this. Please God, I didn’t do this.
“Then again, who says it’s a ‘he?’” Brenda mused. He glanced up in surprise and found Brenda looking at him, her brow raised. “They were lesbians, Melanie Geary and Aimee Chesshire. Maybe another lesbian killed them.”
Paul shook his head. “Doesn’t fit any profile I’ve ever heard of,” he said quietly, his voice hoarse. “No, this is a guy who’s angry. Maybe at lesbians or maybe in general, and their sexual orientation has just been shitty luck of the draw. But I don’t think this guy hates lesbians. I think he hates women.”
He stood up from the recliner and began pacing, holding the case file. “These crimes aren’t about sex. The victims haven’t been raped. If you’re going after lesbians in particular, you’d rape them―if you hated them for their sexual orientation, you’d force yours on them. You’d rape them.”
He looked down at the folder in his hand
. “No, our guy is angry at women. Maybe he’s been hurt in the past, a lover or something.”
Maybe his wife left him, yanked his entire life out from underneath him like some goddamn rug trick.
“Maybe he’s been dumped for another woman, and that’s why he targets lesbians,” Brenda suggested. “There’s no way to know. We’ve never seen anything like this guy before. I ran it through the violent crime database today to see if it got any hits from outside the city, if anyone else has anything like it, but no.”
Paul nodded. “He’s a newbie, our guy.”
“And he’s really, really bold for a newbie,” Brenda said. “That’s what worries me the most. Most serial killers build up to a signature modus operandi. It can take months, years―decades, even. You identified the pattern for Charles Toomis, the Watcher; you traced it to before he even got brave enough to start killing―back to when he was a stalker, a rapist. But there’s nothing here, nothing for our guy or his M.O. I looked up the wire garrotte, the needle points, the severed fingers, all as possible signatures, but nothing.”
“You didn’t find a pattern because there isn’t one,” Paul said. “He didn’t progress from rape to murder. It’s not sex or power that’s giving him any satisfaction here. It’s the pain. And I think it’s because he’s angry. Something has happened recently to piss him off, to set him off. I think it has something to do with a woman specifically, and he’s taking it out against women in general.”
But it’s not me, he thought, his throat constricted, his stomach coiled. I’m not like that. Yeah, I’ve been strung out since the divorce, since Jay resurrected me, and yeah, I may not like my job, or my life, or the way anything and everything just seems to be shitting on me lately, but don’t blame Vicki for that. I don’t hate her for it. I don’t hate women for it.
Christ, do I?
“You see,” Brenda said, taking a long swig of her beer. “This is why I love you, Paul. You and I―we can talk about things. We can bounce ideas, share things with one another. With Dan it’s just…” She brought the blade of her fingers against her thumb, then opened and closed her hand, mimicking a mouth in motion. “Yap-yap-yap. In one ear and out the other. His ideas on things, his way, or the highway.”
Paul blinked at her, snapped instantly from his thoughts. Did she just say she loved me?
This same realization apparently smacked Brenda, too, because her voice faltered to a halt, and her eyes widened, color stoking in her cheeks.
She did say that. She said she loved me.
“I…I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” she said. “The first part, I mean. The…the part where I said…” Her voice faded again, and she blinked down at the floor.
Paul walked toward her, moving on impulse, not stopping himself, or thinking about what he was doing, what he meant to do. The part where she said she loved me.
He dropped the case file and caught her face between his hands. He heard the contents of the folder scatter against the pine floor, felt photographs flutter against the cuffs of his jeans. He drew Brenda toward him, lifting her chin, and without giving her a moment to protest, he kissed her, pressing his lips against hers, opening his mouth and letting his tongue delve against hers.
She stiffened against him reflexively for less than a second, and then relaxed, the momentary tension in her draining. She seemed to melt against him, stepping into the kiss, molding her body against his, lifting her face to meet him even more fully. Paul felt her breasts press into his chest, soft and supple even through the fabric of her T-shirt; he felt the curves of her legs brush in complement against his own. He tangled his hands in her wondrous tumble of golden hair, and Christ Almighty, how often had he longed to do that? How many times―even before his divorce―had he imagined what Brenda would like like with her hair unbound, spilled about her head against bed linens and pillows.
He led her in tow, walking back toward the bed. He turned her around so that the back of her knees met the mattress first, and when she sank back, sitting slowly and then reclining, he eased himself down along with her, lowering himself atop her. She spread her thighs, enveloping his hips, and she rocked against him, her lips still sealed to his, her hands tugging the tails of his shirt loose from his jeans.
He kissed her throat, his lips and tongue drawing against her flushed, warm flesh, nestling at a spot where her pulse raced in a sticcato rhythm, and the sweet fragrance of her perfume was dizzying and acute. He reached beneath her T-shirt, pulling it up toward her shoulders and out of his way. His hand fell against her breast, cradling, kneading, his fingers toying lightly with her nipple, coaxing it to a hardened point.
Brenda whimpered when his lips settled against her other breast. He worked her nipple gently, insistently with the tip of his tongue, and she undulated beneath him, soft, breathless sounds of pleasure stealing from her throat as she clutched at him, moving her hips against him in mute implore.
He let his hand follow the soft, flat plain of her stomach, sliding beneath the waistband of her sweatpants, and she raised her hips to allow him access. When his fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her panties, delving between the warm, moist folds nestled beneath a thatch of soft curls, she moaned his name, spreading her fingers in his hair, holding him against her. He moved his hand, his fingertips finding someplace sweetly sensitive tucked at her apex and circling there, slowly at first and then increasing in tempo, and Brenda moaned again, moving against his hand, her breath fluttering.
He brought her to the brink of climax, until her entire body was rigid and trembling with anticipation and need, and then he drew his hand away, leaving her shuddering beneath him, clutching at him desperately. He ducked his head, yanking his shirt off and tossing it aside. Her hands were busy with the button on his jean fly; she sat up and jerked them and his boxers down, away from his hips. He kicked his feet, dancing clumsily out of them, as she wriggled her way out of her sweatpants and panties.
They had one fleeting moment when they might have stopped, when they could have taken it all back. He stood before her naked, and she looked up at him, her long hair dishevled, aglow as if draped in moonlight. They met each other’s gazes, both of the flushed and breathless, and they could have stopped. They could have reconsidered.
He leaned toward her, cupping his hands against her cheeks, and kissed her. He lay her back against the mattress and the moment was gone. She opened her thighs to him in invitation, and he settled his weight against her, sliding the hardened length of his arousal deeply into her. The sensation of that, her shocking warmth and wetness, forced a groan from him. It had been so long, too long, and for a moment, he couldn’t move. He hovered above her, the tip of his nose brushing hers, his breath tremulously bated as he struggled to control himself, to not shoot off immediately, like some pimply-faced adolescent getting laid for the first time.
And then she moved beneath him, drawing him in further, slowly, gently, as if she understood his dilemma, and he groaned again, her name escaping him through gritted teeth. Her hand found his, and their fingers twined together, and she moved once more, drawing him in and then releasing him, again and again, setting a rhythm for him―something long and slow and sweet and deep. Something he could match. Something he could maintain without losing himself, losing control.
It was like no other lovemaking he’d ever experienced. It was absolutely the most perfect, exquisite experience he’d ever known, both of them moving together in a steadily strengthening, quickening, pounding rhythm. She clutched at him as she neared climax, her nails digging into him, her breath hitching urgently. When her body tightened against him, beneath him, around him, as her fingers hooked into the muscles bridging his shoulders and she arched her back with pleasure, she drew him into her depths in one last, fervent plunge, and he cried out hoarsely in release.
He crumpled against her, hanging his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. He felt her hands light against his back, running delicately along the length of his spine, cares
sing him. Her lips brushed his cheek, his ear, and she whispered his name.
He lifted his head wearily, still out of breath, and looked down at her. She smiled, stroking her hand against his face. “My God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured, making her smile widen. In that moment, there was nothing else in the entire world―not his job, his kids, his alimony, his life, not even the dreams that had plagued him, nightmares in which he had tortured and murdered two women. There was nothing but Brenda, and in that moment, Paul felt like himself again for the first time in ages.
He felt as though he’d come home.
CHAPTER NINE
“So where’d M.K. go?” Nathan Darcy asked. He and Bethany sat alone together on opposite ends of a crescent-shaped booth in the far corner of the crowded, noisy nightclub. As he shouted out over the crashing, thunderous din of music, he scooted around the curve of padded black vinyl, easing over beside her.
Bethany blushed brightly at his sudden proximity, hunching her shoulders shyly. “To the bathroom, I think,” she called back, taking a sip of her drink―a tequila sunrise she’d been nursing for the better part of the last two hours. By now, it was little more than melted ice, orange juice and grenadine syrup, but she didn’t mind. She hadn’t enjoyed the dizzying, drowsy effects of the alcohol she’d had earlier, and was glad they’d worn off. “She and Danielle headed in that direction a little while ago!”
Nathan nodded, smiling and taking a swig from his own drink, the latest in a seemingly endless line of beers. It was hot in the bar, and his suntanned skin was kissed with a light gloss of sweat, his dark hair somewhat dampened and finger-swept back from his brow. God, he’s cute, Bethany thought, pressing her lips together to stifle an anxious giggle. And he smells good, too.
