Gypsy's Lady

by MariaLisa deMora

  Doug dropped the pillow and gripped the wrist of the hand holding the knife, the muscles of his arm bunched and contracted as he yanked the blade sideways and jerked it upwards. The knife punched through the soft triangle of flesh below the man’s jaw, slicing along his throat as it moved upwards. Doug struggled to preserve his clasp on the man’s now-slippery wrist, tightening his grip again to yank the man towards him and then shove away, trying to regain a few inches of space between them for the fight.

  Thick heat splattered his arm and chest, then the man fell, collapsing like a ragdoll and Doug released him. Only seconds had passed since he’d engaged the intruder in hand-to-hand combat, but his chest was rising and falling as if he’d run a marathon. Doug stepped backwards and reached blindly to where the nightstand should be, shocked to find the lamp still upright, undisturbed by the struggle only feet away. Fingers fumbling with the switch, he stared in shock at what he saw illuminated on his bedroom floor.

  Gasping for breath, he quickly scanned the body and took in the dark clothing and mask, the quivering knife jutting from the man’s undulating throat, and the widening pool of dark, red blood. There was a high-pitched whistle followed by a gargled sound like a clogged pipe, and Doug watched as the man on the floor thrashed side to side, hands lifting to his throat, one coming away coated in red. He heard a quick rattle of a cough, another wet hack as the man dug his heels and pushed, shoving his body a few inches along the floor. One hand on his throat, the man clawed at the handle of the knife and then gave a final choked cough before stilling. His chest rose and fell a few more times, each slow movement accompanied by the same wet sputtering sounds, until he lay still.

  Doug looked around the room in shock and was stunned when he caught sight of himself in the mirror affixed to the inner surface of his opened closet door. From his lower jaw down, he was drenched in blood. Now that he was aware of it, he could feel the warm, sticky coating on every inch of his skin. Jesus Christ.

  The man’s mask had twisted around his face, hemmed holes for mouth and eyes now misaligned, they showed the bristle of a beard in one place, and the shell of an ear in another. Careful to not step in the seeping pool of blood, Doug moved closer and reached down to place two fingers where the carotid should be, if the man’s neck weren’t so mangled. The double-bladed knife’s passage had done a number on the structures, severing both the interior and exterior jugular, and nearly cutting his esophagus in two. The white cartilage of the structure was visible, the interior clotted with blood, spatter from the last desperate breaths the man had attempted still covered the fabric of the mask in a mist of red.

  Suppressing his instinct to call in the attack and get officers on scene, Doug straightened, fists to his hips and stared down, thinking fast.

  No coincidence here, he thought.

  Three days ago, he’d approached IA about what looked like an unusual number of motorcycle accidents. After hearing the dickbag Schwartz spouting his bullshit, Doug had investigated his activities and found so much to question. Accidents occurring only on the detective’s days off. Wrecks occurring on roads the man was known to frequent. Doug had pulled surveillance video from several ATMs on the east side of town and gained shots of the detective’s car only moments before accidents happened. In his mind the guilt was clear, and while no one had been killed yet, Doug knew it was only a matter of time. That was why he’d gone to IA.

  But they hadn’t wanted to talk to him about his report. Not at all. What they wanted to discuss were the failed search and busts he’d been involved in, a topic he’d thought had been long closed. When he got back to the bullpen, it had only been a matter of minutes before the captain called him in for a private conversation. The threats so straightforward, Doug knew the captain had been on the horn with IA and gotten the entire scoop.

  Bending at the waist, he reached down and hooked a finger under the bottom edge of the mask, hesitating only a moment before he tugged it up and off, letting it fall to the side as he stared down into the face of a man he’d been partnered with for more than a year. Dom Vogel. Jesus. Not the blowhard Schwartz, which was who he’d expected to be revealed, but someone he’d known well and liked, trusted…respected.

  Fuck. He looked around the room, gaze skittering from the open door to the dark closet, over to the windows with tightly closed drapes, and back to the unmoving body on his bedroom floor.

  He came here to kill me.

  Doug’s stomach made a slow flip in his belly, uneasily settling back into place.

  I killed him.

  It had been a desperate battle, near silent except for grunts of pain on the side of the man now dead on the floor. Quiet and controlled, there’d be no neighbor complaints about noise. Doug had a cut on his wrist, but the bleeding from the shallow wound had already stopped. So he had a dead man on the floor, killed with a weapon Vogel must have brought with him, since Doug didn’t recognize the hilt still jutting obscenely from the underside of the man’s jaw.

  Doug lifted his hands and stared at them, surprised how rock-steady they were. No trembling, not yet, but he knew the adrenaline would ebb and he might not be so steady. He glanced around the room again, and with this visual sweep, he found blood spray was everywhere, more than just on his torso. Bedclothes, side of the mattress, even as far as the legs of the nightstand.

  He reached for the phone still undisturbed on the surface of the nightstand but then paused, fingers hovering a bare inch above the device. Logic would dictate the attack, and the subsequent result be called in, and he knew if he dialed emergency services, his apartment would be filled within minutes as officers raced to his side. It’s what they did, the brotherhood of blue. That was what he’d wanted for so long, what he’d hoped for when he signed up. But…he held there, not yet committed to making the call.

  Would they all have his best interests at heart? Would they be responding hoping to find him safe and well, or dead by an unknown attacker in his bedroom? Can I trust them? Any of them?

  He stared down at the unfocused eyes in Vogel’s face, mind racing as he ran through scenario after scenario, all of them coming up short from where he stood. Either he’d be framed, or he’d be targeted again. No way would whoever set this up just let this go, not if they’d expended an asset like an eighteen-year veteran. I don’t have a choice, though, do I?

  His eyes flicked around the room again and his gaze settled on the open closet door. Just inside the threshold sat his boots, black leather dulled from exposure to the elements on his many long rides. Days and nights spent surrounded by men he could trust.

  Oh, yeah. I do have a choice.

  ***

  The phone in his hand buzzed and Doug jumped, eyes going from the glowing display to the front door of the apartment. The message was from an unfamiliar number, and said simply, “Here.”

  In the hours since he’d woken to fight for his life, he’d made a call, and then as directed by the person on the other end of the phone, made a second one. Then he’d gone about using his knowledge of crime scenes to attempt to make it so this one would be undetectable without the right tools. Tools that wouldn’t ever be deployed in this apartment because Doug’s reasoning was there’d never be cause for anyone to think something had happened.

  Plastic wrap, double-thick garbage bags, heavy-duty tape, resealable bags, threadbare mismatched towels, vinegar, bleach—this was the arsenal with which he’d armed himself. With the blade tugged free from the body, he’d dropped the knife into a bag and splashed bleach in on top, setting it aside. Vogel’s ID, including his badge, was bagged and laid to one side as well. Doug carefully wrapped and taped Vogel’s neck to prevent more blood spillage, then sliced the bloody clothing off the body and placed it all inside a garbage bag. Another bag held the mask, Vogel’s shoes, and the towels Doug had used to sop up a portion of the blood.

  Two more garbage bags secured Vogel’s body, and once it was covered, he’d used a long towel to sled the corpse away from the saturated area. />
  Once that was taken care of, he’d cleaned the surfaces where Vogel’s blood had sprayed during the first moments of his injury. Bleach-soaked rags were thrown one-by-one into another garbage bag, and by the time he’d climbed into the shower, his sinuses were complaining about the fumes.

  He glanced around the apartment, staring for a moment at the closed door that led to his bedroom and the body. Then he turned towards the outside door. Taking a deep breath, he peered through the peephole, drawing back in surprise at who he saw.

  Swinging the door wide, he stared at the angry lines bracketing either side of Mason’s mouth. Standing beside him was Tugboat, an older member Winger had introduced Doug to not long ago. “Hey,” he offered, shuffling back to let the two men into his apartment.

  Mason gripped the edge of the door and tugged it out of Doug’s grip, seating it firmly in the frame. “Talk to me.” Doug shook his head, not certain what Mason wanted. Him appearing was so out of the blue, Doug still hadn’t caught up to the realization that the Rebel’s national president had come to answer his distress call. “Tatum,” Doug noted Mason didn’t call him Lawman, and was glad since he’d never felt less like an officer of the law than in this moment. “You gotta talk to me.”

  Tugboat pushed past Doug, moving through the living area and towards the only closed door in sight. “Hey.” Doug stopped because he didn’t know what he could say. Tugboat angled a glance back over his shoulder and then opened the door, releasing a wave of bleach smell Doug knew would forever remind him of this night.

  “In here, Mason.” At Tugboat’s words, Mason stepped around Doug, the heat from a quick clasp on his bicep the only connection between the two of them. “Step lightly.”

  Mason paused in the doorway, his shoulders blocking out whatever Tugboat was doing inside the room. Doug took a step in their direction, but the moment he moved, Mason clipped out a clear order, “Stay there.” Quiet murmuring followed by the sound of a plastic bag sliding across the floor, then Mason and Tugboat were standing back in his living room, door closed behind them. “Let’s sit a spell, Tatum. We’ve got some decisions to make.”

  Tugboat sidled past, careful to not touch him this time and Doug wondered what that meant, his overworked brain reading all kinds of things into the movement, then the old man was in the kitchen opening the refrigerator and rattling in the cabinets. “Mason—”

  Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by Tugboat, “Sit, son. I’m getting us something to drink.” Mason gestured at the couch and chairs with a nod. Okay. Apparently, I’m going to have a drink while there’s a dead body in my bedroom. He choked back a laugh, the sound escaping him strangled and harsh. Mason winced, and Doug pulled in a deep breath before he carefully walked the ten feet to the chair, turning to sit, staring at Tugboat as he approached with mugs in hand.

  “Okay, son.” Tugboat handed off the whiskey to Doug and Mason before claiming the other chair. “There’s no way to ease into this, and I know you were friends. Winger and his daughter Lockee were in a wreck tonight…last night. They didn’t make it.”

  Doug’s head rocked back as if with a physical hit. He stared at Tugboat mutely, waiting for something else to be said, but the old man seemed to know what he was asking with his gaze and met him with a simple shake of his head. Dead. Doug swallowed hard, throat catching on what had to have been a bucket-sized ball of tar wedged between his mouth and lungs. Winger’s dead. A burning spread down, sweeping across his chest, and he twisted to set the mug on a nearby table. Linking his fingers, he cradled his forehead in his hands, elbows to knees as he struggled to recover from the blow. His pretty daughter Lockee, too. The raw expressions on both men’s faces made sense now. They’d known Winger for far longer and would be hurting. The fact they’d made time to come by and tell him, come when he called…Doug didn’t know what to make of that. He hoped he knew, but as with so much in his head right now, nothing quite made sense.

  A tight grip on his shoulder warned him, but he didn’t straighten, just held his position watching as tear after tear slipped from his face to fall between his wide-spread feet. A second hand clasped his other shoulder, and he saw Tugboat going down on one knee beside him. Mason shifted to sit on the coffee table and completed the circle, his arm across Tugboat’s back as the three men sat with bowed heads, mourning together for a man’s life cut far too short.

  ***

  Standing along the edge of an abandoned gravel quarry in the middle of Michigan, Doug stared down at his hand curled around a cold can of beer. He knew if he lifted his gaze, he’d see two men he never expected to stand beside him. He shivered, and the beer made a liquid sloshing sound, echoing the faint noises that had rolled up from the surface of the water a few minutes ago. Flooded more than a decade ago, the quarry was on private land, but the familiar way Mason had navigated the overgrown road in from the county highway said abandoned didn’t mean unused.

  He swallowed, feeling his Adam’s apple slide up and then down his neck as he struggled to keep his composure. He knew Tugboat had seen when an elbow bumped his arm, followed by the old man’s gruff voice telling him the same thing Doug had been thinking. “Was you or him, man. He had to know going in it could come out this way. I’m a hundred percent glad it’s you still standing.”

  Meeting Tugboat’s eyes through the barely-there morning light, Doug nodded. “Still gonna eat at me.”

  “Wouldn’t expect anything else, Tatum.” Mason’s voice came from the side, and Doug glanced over to find Mason staring at him.

  He was irrationally glad neither of them had called him Lawman since they’d left the apartment, body and bags of material handled between the three of them. Lawman was Winger’s legacy, at least in Doug’s head, and he didn’t want to give ownership to anyone else. Something between him and his friend, and not for casual use.

  In the first flush of pain and anger, he’d questioned as hard as he could manage, hoping Winger’s accident was just that, and not something brought on him by his association with Doug. It seemed to be the case, as Schwartz’s name didn’t come up at all, not even in the aftermath.

  “So, what’s next?” Mason’s question rolled out slow and quiet, barely disturbing the air, but nothing about him said this was a casual inquiry. What he was asking went well beyond this small circle of two club members who stood alongside him. They were overlooking a body of water which for sure hid at least one body. These men were all in with him, and had been since he made the call because the body had been carried there in an RWMC vehicle, muscled out of the apartment by respected members of the biker community. These men who didn’t owe him a damn thing, but had still paid in sweat and a shared guilty association. Mason wasn’t asking to find out what was for breakfast, or what Doug thought about the state of the world. His question had weight and heft, and would alter the course of all their lives in one way or another.

  He remembered Claudia suddenly, could see her in the apartment they’d shared, her leaning one hip against the counter as she cradled a mug of tea in one hand. She’d reminded him of her epiphany, a rule of life she’d tried to impress on him in the short time they’d been friends. “Taking charge of your own life isn’t running. It’s not taking the coward’s way out.” She’d been talking about the little girl who’d died, explaining how she’d walked away from the medical field without looking back, trying to make a life out of what she held in her hands.

  There’s a clear line in the sand now, he thought. A cop tried to kill me. A cop, not an outlaw, not a criminal…a cop. Someone I thought I could trust. “Life as I knew it ended tonight.” Mason’s chin angled up, and Tugboat’s head lifted from where he’d been studying the ground. “It’s in me to find myself men I can truly count on.” Doug raised his empty hand, palm up as he slashed through the air. “I’ve been uneasy for a while. Unsettled, because of shit in the force. Some of it you know—” He studied Mason’s face closely, then continued, knowing he’d eventually be fielding questions about his
next words. “—some of it you don’t.” In his head, he heard the rolling slap of the weighted mass hitting the flat surface of the water, sloshing waves against the nearby rocks settling quickly, the body gone in moments. Peace restored so fast it was as if the water had never been disturbed. I want a life I can be proud of. Resolved, Doug lifted his head high, shoved his shoulders back and waited for a beat. I do. He asked Mason, “I’d asked Winger—” He sucked in a breath. “—and been working towards it, but I need to know if I continue my path…if I come to you with my back naked, no badge in my hand, will the Rebels take me in?”

  Prospecting

  Doug hit the floor of the bar and rolled instinctively, knowing this for the right move when the toe of the man’s boot barely grazed his ribs instead of connecting.

  “Fuckin’ prospect, get a goddamned move on your ass. Run, don’t walk, because you don’t drink with members when there’re bikes to watch. Ass to the lot, scrub.”

  The shouted words followed as his movement ended with him on one knee, back against the leg of a pool table. He stared at the Rebel Wayfarers member towering over him. Not a man he knew, but based on the sneer plastered across his face, this member clearly had heard about Doug. Chewing on the inside of his lip, opening already raw wounds from his efforts to keep his mouth shut, Doug nodded and surged to his feet, careful to keep a respectful distance between him and the man.