by Jan Graham
“Why are you so late? All the grills have been shut down, and now all we can have for lunch is salad or sandwiches.” Meg did not seem pleased when Rhia and Angel arrived at the café an hour past their estimated arrival time.
“Who needs that healthy stuff? Let’s have cake to celebrate me getting the job.”
The three women screamed so loudly Barry came running from the kitchen carrying a knife. He was happy for her when she told him about the new job, but the three of them still got a scolding for scaring a man half to death, as Barry phrased it.
The huge pieces of chocolate torte, with fresh cream and ice-cream, arrived at the private booth in the back of the café. Hot on their heels were three iced coffees covered in more cream and chocolate sprinkles. What a delicious celebration.
Rhia listened as Angel talked about Steve. He’d visited her on his way to work and hadn’t been himself. Angel didn’t know what, but she knew something was wrong and she had clearly been worrying about him, as she should be. Steve must have been more upset about his disclosure to Rhia than he’d let on.
“It’s my fault. I visited him this morning. It was me. I upset him.”
Angel and Meg both stopped eating and went silent.
“I was confused about something, and I thought he could help me sort it out. He did. I know exactly what was wrong with me now. It was just a silly thing really. Anyway, he told me about the sex thing, and I think it upset him more than he realized.” Rhia went back to eating her cake, glad that Angel could now talk to Steve with a thorough understanding of what had occurred.
“The sex thing?” Angel looked puzzled.
“Steve has a sex thing? Oh my God, did he try to spank you, or use one of those other things…oh, not the cane.” Meg paled as she spoke and directed the second half of her question to Angel. “He wouldn’t try and cane her, would he? Or get her to play any of his kinky games? Doesn’t he have someone he does that with?”
“No, he wouldn’t, and yes, he does. In that order, I think.” Angel patted Meg on the hand and looked back at Rhia. “Sweetie, what happened when you went and saw Steve? I’m a bit confused, and Meg is obviously letting her imagination run to places it shouldn’t go.”
“It’s all right, he didn’t do anything. Well, he kissed me…I mean we kissed each other. But then he stopped and explained, you now…” Rhia didn’t want to say it in front of Meg, but it appeared Angel wasn’t giving her a choice. “You know…”
“I don’t know, Rhia. That’s why I’m asking you.” Angel was shaking her head and staring anxiously at her.
Rhia lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “He’s impotent.”
Both women screamed so loudly and laughed so hard Rhia expected Barry to come running in any minute. How could they be so callous? Especially Angel. She knew Steve was upset.
Barry finally emerged, this time without the knife. As Meg and Angel continued to fall about the booth in hysterics, Rhia explain to Barry what was going on. He looked at Rhia with concern and compassion filling his face.
“Will you two shut up?” He snapped the words at the two hyenas still cackling across the table. “Rhia, darling, explain to me what impotent is.”
“It’s when a man can’t have sex, of course.” Rhia glanced at Meg and Angel, both of whom had tears rolling down their cheeks. When she looked back at Barry, even he was smiling. “Why do you all think this is funny?”
“Steve Jax told you he was impotent?” Barry seemed quite pleased when Rhia nodded. “Good, as long as he stays that way around you.”
Rhia was surprised when he bent down and kissed her on the head before walking away. Barry was always doing that, treating her like she was a little girl.
“Rhia, I don’t know what Steve said, but he isn’t impotent. He has sex all the time, with lots of women.” Angel dried her eyes with a serviette.
“He does?” Rhia’s heart sank. If Angel was right, and if Steve did have sex all the time, then this morning, he was telling her something completely different than what she’d heard. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have sex. He didn’t want to have sex…with her.
Well, wasn’t that a kick in the guts? She’d finally met someone she was attracted to, seen the glimmer of hope that maybe a relationship could be an option for her, and now that possibility lay shattered at her feet. Apart from hurting like hell, it also posed another problem. The only man to ever excite her sexually didn’t feel the same way about her. How was she going to turn off her feelings and stop the arousal that clawed at her every time she thought of him?
“Rhia, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Rhia looked at the blurry image of her sister. Darn it. She swiped her face, brushing away the moisture from her eyes and renegade tears from her face.
“Start at the beginning and tell us everything that happened.” Angel handed her a paper serviette. It took a while to explain the full story. A few times Rhia had to be prompted for more information, and more than once Meg and Angel appeared shocked by what she said.
“If he had an erection, then why did you think he meant he was impotent?” Angel stared at her intently.
“He told me he couldn’t have sex. I didn’t know that impotent meant you couldn’t get an erection. I’ve never needed to find out the technicalities of it. I assumed that he liked me when it was up, just that he couldn’t finish whatever it was that we didn’t do.” It appeared that, for the second time today, Rhia had made a complete idiot of herself. Being a nun had been much easier than living in the real world. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t like me sexually, and doesn’t want to have sex with me, so…end of story.”
“He likes you well enough. He got hard. I don’t understand the growl, but from what you said, he was just as turned on as you.” Meg folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair.
“Exactly, just because a man says he can’t have sex with you doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.” Angel frowned and drummed her nails across the tabletop. “What I don’t understand is why he said he wouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, he said couldn’t.” Rhia clarified the wording for her friend.
“No, Rhia, he could have and he can if he decides to. This morning he decided he would not have sex. There’s a huge difference.” Angel smiled wickedly. “I think I might know why he told you to go home, but I need to check. Meg, can you take Rhia home? I need to visit my brother.”
Angel wiggled out of the booth and ran off, ignoring Rhia’s pleas to not say anything to Steve.
* * * *
Steve didn’t want to be at this meeting today. He wanted to be back between Rhia McCabe’s legs. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to go there again. He wasn’t usually a masochist. If he went back, it would be torture because he knew he couldn’t fuck her. He wasn’t capable of giving her what she’d expect from the man who took her virginity. A relationship, monogamy, and love were three things that weren’t within his emotional reach, even if he wanted them to be.
Sure, he could give Rhia casual sex, a regular booty call when she was horny, but that wasn’t a relationship. He couldn’t promise she would be the only one he slept with. After all, he’d need to be involved with someone else to cater to his kinky needs. Even if he only went to Miss M’s Club to see one of her subs, Rhia would class that as being unfaithful.
Regular sex might be good, but he needed to satisfy more than a physical urge to fuck. He needed to dominate, to participate in the acts of bondage and discipline that turned him on, and fulfilled his darker desires.
As for love, he couldn’t love without a heart.
“You’re too quiet today, and you look like hell, what’s going on?” Christian eased back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest.
Steve eyed his friend suspiciously. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told your wife this morning, I’m fine.”
“You saw Angel this morning?”
“Yeah, and when you go home and she tells you there’s something wrong, and says
you need to talk to me to find out what it is, tell her I’m fine.” The conversation with Christian ended abruptly, not because Christian was satisfied with the answer but because three more meeting invitees arrived. Trevor, Cal and Carlie entered the room and took up position around the table. Steve ran his fingers through his hair and tried to make polite conversation. Polite was the last thing he felt like being.
He’d contemplated rescheduling this intense little get together, but with everyone on such tight schedules, he knew better. As it was, it had been too long since the fire and subsequent discovery of the meth lab. Time waited for no man, especially where the drug industry was concerned. Wasting time was not an option. It could mean the difference between stopping the dealers and manufacturers in their tracks or facing an all-out epidemic within the community he’d grown to love. Steve did not want an epidemic.
He looked around the conference table. Christian Shore and Trevor Duncan from police headquarters chatted quietly to each other. Christian was the head of major crime, his involvement in this investigation stemmed from the three bodies sitting in the morgue. The cause of the three deaths was stupidity, not murder, which Christian’s teams normally dealt with. The fact that restricted chemicals played a part in the incident meant he warranted an invite.
Drugs crossed over into the major crime portfolio on occasions, but from a policing perspective, the drug trade warranted their own specialized team of investigators, hence Trevor Duncan’s presence at the table. Trevor headed the drug squad, and if there was a move toward setting up meth labs outside the city limits, then Trevor would be the one to investigate.
Steve knew both men well. Trevor had been his boss when Steve was a drug squad detective, and he’d been instrumental in Steve moving into his new role as LAC superintendent. Christian was one of his best friends and Dom as well as de-facto husband to Angel.
Carlie James, his lead detective on the case, sat sorting through her files for the meeting. It was an obvious attempt to avoid the attentions of Cal Webster, who, Steve knew, had been trying to get into the pretty detective’s pants since she first appeared at the command centre. Cal was the chief fire investigator for the state, and his input into this case had been invaluable. What Cal didn’t know about fires wasn’t worth knowing. He also had a crack team of forensic specialists at his disposal that analyzed evidence found amongst the charred remains. It was Cal’s report on the farmhouse fire that prompted this meeting.
“Sorry I’m late.” Daniel Shore strode into the room, wearing a set of medical scrubs. As he took a seat at the conference table he glanced at Steve and frowned. “Hey Steve, are you all right, man? You look like hell on earth.”
“He’s fine.” Steve raised an eyebrow and glared at Daniel’s brother, Christian, who had decided to answer the question for him. “Or so he says.”
“Well he doesn’t look fine.” Cal directed his comment to Christian then turned to Daniel. “I just didn’t want to ask him what was wrong in front of a room full of people.”
Daniel shrugged and exchanged glances with both Cal and Christine. The next thing he knew, all three men were staring at him with concerned expressions.
“Now that you mention it, I have seen you looking better.” Trevor joined the conversation.
“It’s not just how he looks. He’s been like a bear with a sore head all day. He nearly killed the vending machine at work this morning when it ate his money and didn’t give him what he wanted.” Great now Carlie was in on the act and they’d started talking about him like he wasn’t in the room. Steve rested his head in his hands and waited for the conversation to end. When he finally raised his gaze and stared around the table, five sets of inquiring eyes greeted him.
“What?”
They all sat in silence, presumably waiting for him to spill his guts about what was wrong.
“Oh right…I didn’t sleep well, and I’m having a problem with one of my neighbors.” Steve paused to see if there were any responses to his statement. “Okay, now that the intervention into my bad mood has concluded, can we get started with the meeting about the meth lab?”
Cal took up the challenge and began to fill everyone in on his findings.
“I’ll give you all the bare bones of my report and be as brief as I can. We found three male bodies at the house, the fire initially started by an explosion of gasses in a confined space, it spread through the house as a result of movement by flaming debris and the burning victims. It was fuelled further by highly flammable and prohibited chemicals stored in the home. Delay in reports that the home was ablaze and the isolated location meant the fire almost completely destroyed any useful evidence.” Cal distributed some photos of charred items retrieved from the crime scene. “A burnt handbag with wallet enclosed didn’t offer much evidence. The leather bag couldn’t be identified but some of the contents provided hints to its assumed female owner. The bag contained a perfume bottle that forensics identified as Chanel No. 5, there was a roll of partially burned money approximated to be at least twenty thousand dollars, and the wallet was engraved with the initials H.E.H. So…you’re looking for a female, with expensive taste in perfume, who has access to lots of cash, and who could have received injuries from a fire.” Cal closed the bound report he’d been reading from and eased himself back in his chair.
“And who possibly drives a BMW,” Carlie added.
“How do we know that?” Steve asked her.
“Tire marks found at the scene. Although we don’t know how old they are, but forensics believed they were fresh at the time of the fire. And before you ask, it doesn’t appear they belong to the car driven by the owner of the farmhouse, who is…” Carlie rummaged through her file of papers. “She is Harper Roderick, new principle of the high school, well new as in twelve months ago. She drives a Toyota Prius. It’s the only car registered in her name. The farmhouse was bought about six months ago. Apparently the house was empty because she couldn’t find appropriate contractors to renovate it so she could move in. When I asked her if she knew any of the victims found in the house, she recognized two of the names as previous students of the school.”
“Did she have any apparent signs of burns or injuries that you could see?” The detective shook her head.
“And she has never been treated at the hospital. We have no record of her for any local treatments, and it appears she hasn’t been treated at any of the affiliate hospitals either. I checked when Carlie came to see me the other day.” Daniel opened the folder in front of him. “We haven’t had any burn injuries at a local level that coincide with the date of the fire. A request is pending for information about burn injuries from the city and surrounding hospitals, and that will be issued to Carlie when it’s available. We have, however, had an increase in meth-related admissions over the last six months. Previous drug admissions have mainly been for overdoses of heroin, cocaine, that sort of thing.”
“When you say an increase, what are we talking about?” Steve asked.
“Six in the last three months, which doesn’t sound a lot, but it’s an increase from eight in the twelve months prior to that. And all six of those recent admissions have been serious to critical condition. The toxicity of the drug is extreme. In some cases we only have information that the patient had taken meth from whoever brought them to the hospital. The blood results often don’t fit the general chemical makeup of the drug. We’ve had one death that was investigated by the coroner, and I know that information would have gone to Trevor.”
“Yeah, it did.” Trevor cleared his throat. “We put it down to a backyard attempt at cooking that went horribly wrong. The girlfriend didn’t know where he got the drug, and the parents were no help because they hadn’t seen him since he’d left home two years prior.”
“Why didn’t I hear about a local drug death?” Steve asked. Protocol dictated the drug squad should liaise with him regarding a drug death in the area.
“It wasn’t local. He came from the inner city, and happened to die a
t your local hospital. The girlfriend maintained they’d been visiting friends in the area when he became sick.”
Trevor continued to speak. Much of the information Steve already knew. The large labs were located in industrial areas whether in the city or up the coast. There were no reports of labs within the local area. The closure of two larger manufacturers had occurred recently, and there was the possibility that unknown entities involved in the manufacture and distribution might be looking for a new location to set up. That didn’t impress Steve. He didn’t want the manufacture of meth to take place on his patch.
The one good thing he heard from the discussion came from Christian. His team was investigating the theft of a large quantity of pseudoephedrine from a pharmaceutical manufacturer, as well as thefts of other prohibited chemicals used in the manufacture of meth. Some of the stolen items had been located at the two labs Trevor’s team recently shut down. However, there had been a discrepancy in the quantities recovered. Christian confirmed the approximate amounts of the chemicals listed in Cal’s report would be equal to the missing stolen stock. That made Steve breathe easier.
If you didn’t have the base component of pseudoephedrine then there was no drug.
If nothing else, it gave him breathing space. The focus of the investigation would become finding the anonymous woman who’d left the scene of the fire. Find her and possibly find out who was behind an attempt to make his community a manufacturing site for a lethal drug. Trevor would continue to investigate the closed labs and those behind their set up. Christian’s team was still actively working on those behind the theft of the prohibited ingredients. Daniel agreed to provide any information regarding drug-related admissions if they continued to occur. At least they had a plan. Having a plan of attack meant Steve could rest easier, while getting on with the job.
Carlie left the meeting with Trevor. He’d agreed to assist her with some background information about the drug trade and conducting the investigation. Steve knew Trevor would be impressed with the young detective’s skills, and once Carlie was ready to move back into the city, he hoped this liaison with Trevor would give her a mentor and ally back at head office. As Steve packed up his files and notes from the meeting, he could feel three remaining sets of eyes watching him. He decided to go on the offensive.
