They’d finally gotten a break, though. And, amazingly, old dickhead Deets was the one who’d found it.
A weapon. With prints.
Bloody prints.
He tossed his cigarette onto the asphalt past the road-“j block and walked back over to the black-and-white. The; weapon was still on the hood where he’d left it, bagged,3 tagged, and ready for the lab: a Daneam wine bottle.
He picked up the bag, thought of the bottle still sitting!] back on his kitchen table, and shivered.
“Lieutenant!”
Horton jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly? dropped the bag. He feigned calmness, looked back to-i| ward the evidence officer. “Yeah,”
he said.
“You through with that?”
Horton looked down at the bag in his hand and nodded| slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m through with it. It’s all yours.”;!
April awoke feeling hungover and horny.
She rolled over and squinted at the clock on the dresser but could not tell if it was eight-thirty or nine-thirty. Reaching down, she felt around on the floor next to the bed until her fingers found the wine bottle. It was not quite empty, there were still a few drops left, and she held the open neck of the bottle above her mouth and let the drops fall onto her lips and tongue.
God, it tasted good.
Her left hand slid under the sheet, between her legs. Lazily, she began rubbing herself. She was already wet, and there was a tingling within her vagina that she recognized as the need to be filled.
She’d give anything to have a hard cock inside her right now.
From the front of the house, from the kitchen, she heard the sound of the sink running, heard the rattle of silverware on pots and pans. She stopped fingering herself and let the bottle fall to the floor again.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, then sat up, leaning against the headboard. She thought about last night, about what Margaret and Margeaux and the others had told her.
Dion?
It didn’t seem possible.
She didn’t want it to be possible.
That was the truth. That was the reason she’d gotten so drunk last night. She’d told herself even as she downed the first bottle that she was tired of being good, that she simply wanted to cut loose after being straitjacketed for 80 long, but the fact was that she was drinking not to feel good but to forget, trying to numb her brain and block out what they’d told her about her son.
Because she knew it was true.
That was the bottom line. She knew it was true. She’d always known, perhaps, on some subliminal level. She’d been surprised, but she hadn’t been shocked or disbelieving when the others had sat her down and explained it all to her, and she’d believed it instantly. All of it.
“Mom?” Dion knocked on the door of her bedroom.
She didn’t answer.
“Mom? It’s almost ten. Are you getting up?”
Ten? She squinted at the clock. It hadn’t said nine thirty. It had said nine-fifty.
“Mom?”
She felt again that tingling, that maddening need between her legs, and she kicked off the covers and stood naked facing the door, not saying anything, half hoping that Dion would open the door and walk in and see her, but when he called “Mom?” again and started to turn the knob, she quickly said, “I’m up!
Don’t come in! I’m not dressed!”
“Okay.” She heard him move away, down the hall, and she felt ashamed that she would even consider exposing herself to her son. What could possibly make her act this way? What was the matter with her?
But she knew exactly why she had acted that way, she knew exactly what was the matter with her, and as she stood there, staring at the closed door, her fingers slid down her body, through her pubic hair, and into the soft, spongy moisture between her legs.
It was hard picking up a guy on a Sunday morning.
Not impossible. But hard.
She’d left Dion at home, with a list of chores and things to do, and she’d gone cruising. She hadn’t done that for a while, and it felt good.
Pickings had been mighty slim at the first two taverns she’d hit:
barflies, winos, old men. But the third time had been the charm, and at the Happy Hour, she’d found a handsome, athletic young man gone only slightly to seed, an obviously once hot stud now beginning to fray around the edges but still substantially intact.
She sat next to him, drank with him, talked to him, touched him, and when he offered to drive her back to his place, she’d readily agreed.
Now he was naked and whimpering on the bed, the sheets covered with sperm and blood and urine, and she looked down at him, feeling sore and satisfied, and gently ran a finger through his hair. He flinched at her touch, and she felt a warm satisfaction at the response.
She’d been about to get dressed and return home, but she was suddenly in the mood for more, and she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. She still had time. Dion wasn’t expecting her home until six.
She knelt before him, reached between his legs, grabbed his bloody, swollen penis.
“No,” he cried. “No more.”
She slapped his face, smiled. “Yes,” she said.
She took him in her mouth, tasted the saltiness of the sperm and the blood and the urine.
She began to suck.
On the way home she stopped at Taco Bell and picked up some tacos for their dinner. She was home in time to see 60 Minutes.
On Monday afternoon, Dion was suspended for fighting.
He had never been in a fight before in his life. He’d been threatened by bullies a couple of times in grammar school and junior high, but he’d always managed to avoid getting beat up: running away or not showing up at the prearranged meeting place or somehow using his brains to escape the brawn.
But this time he was the one who started the fight.
Afterward, he wasn’t even sure exactly what had happened or how it had escalated so fast. One minute he was sitting on top of a lunch table with Kevin and Paul and Rick, and the next minute he and Paul were rolling on the cement ground, clutch punching. Paul had made some joke about Penelope being a lesbian, and he had defended I her, responding in kind. Insults had flown back and forth.’ And then they were fighting.
He could not remember having made a conscious decision to try to physically hurt Paul, but all of a sudden he was lunging at the other boy, fists flying, and by the time Kevin and Rick pulled them apart, he had already drawn blood.
A crowd had gathered, and though he heard the cheers I only peripherally, was aware of the crowd only as back’ ground to the fight itself, he knew that the crowd was on his side, rooting for him, and with each punch he landed, he heard the exclamations of approval, sensed the satis- > faction of the watchers.
And then they were pulled apart.
The gathered students were staring at him silently, almost worshipfully, and he was trembling, pumped with adrenaline, as Mr. Barton, the counselor, led him to the ]
office. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had inflicted much more damage on Paul than Paul had on him. He would not have thought that possible even a few days before, but it did not surprise him now, and he was pleased with himself as Mr. Barton closed the office door, sat him down in the chair opposite the desk, and told him that he was to be suspended from school for three days.
Dion nodded numbly.
The counselor smiled at him. “I’m only doing this because I have to, you know. If it were up to me, I would’ve let you kill him.”
Dion blinked. “What?”
Mr. Barton opened his bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorking it. “You know how it is. We all have to play these little games.”
Dion realized belatedly that the counselor was drunk. Mr. Barton took a swig of wine, and Dion recognized the sweet, heady fragrance from his dinner at Penelope’s. It smelled good, and he wanted some, but when the counselor offered him a drink, he shook his head.
“Come on,” Mr. Barton said.
He could practically taste it in his mouth, and he felt a familiar stirring between his legs, but he forced himself to say, “No.”
The counselor took another long drink from the bottle. “I understand,”
he said. “Saving it for later.” He waved a hand toward the door. “You’re free,” he said, winking. “You’re suspended. Get out of here.”
Dion stood, left. It was not until he was off school property and walking home that he began to think back on what had happened and to wonder what had come over him and made him behave so completely out of character.
Beating someone up? Hurting someone?
Liking it?
And that weird encounter with the counselor … There were things going on here that he sensed were related, interconnected, but that he just could not seem to Piece together. He was frustrated. It was like working on a math problem that he almost understood but could not quite get a handle on.
It had something to do with his dreams, though. And Penelope’s mothers. And his mom. And Wine. By the time he arrived home, he was again trembling.| This time it was not adrenaline, though. It was fear.
Penelope stopped by after school. He hadn’t seen her.; that morning in class, hadn’t seen her at lunch, and he’d assumed that she’d been sick and stayed home, but when he’d tried to call her earlier in the afternoon, after he’d first arrived home, he’d gotten an answering machine and had hung up without leaving a message.
Now she and Vella walked into the house, Vella nervously, Penelope looking around with curiosity. She had never been inside before, and Dion wished he’d had time to clean up a bit. Breakfast dishes were still piled in the sink, visible through the kitchen doorway, and the living room floor was littered with Coke cans and the newspapers he’d been trying to read all afternoon. Not a good first impression.
She smiled at him. “So this is what you call home.”
He reddened. “It’s usually cleaner,” he said, apologizing. “If you’d called and told me you were coming, I could’ve at least straightened up a bit.”
Penelope laughed. “I wanted to catch you in your natural habitat.”
Vella looked uncomfortably toward the window. “We heard what happened,”
she said. “We heard you got suspended.” His face felt hot, flushed. He wanted to explain but he didn’t know how, wanted to apologize, but he didn’t know what for. Instead he stood there stupidly, nodding, looking at Vella, not wanting to meet Penelope’s eyes.
“No one likes Paul much anyway,” Vella said. “You’re a big hero.” But he could tell from her tone of voice that she didn’t think he was a hero.
“It just happened,” he said. He looked over at Penelope. “He called you a lez.”
She blushed.
“Hey,” he said, changing the subject. “You guys want something to drink?
Coke? 7-Up? Dr. Pepper?”
Vella shook her head. “No, We’ve gotta go. I’m supposed to just drive straight to school and straight back. I’m going to be late already. My mom‘11 go ballistic if I’m any later.”
“I thought you might want to come over,” Penelope said quickly. “Vella could drop us off and I could drive. you home.”
“But we have to hurry,” Vella said.
Dion nodded, grinned at Penelope. “Let me write my mom a note.”
Ten minutes later, Vella was dropping them off in front of the winery gates. They said goodbye, Penelope thanked her friend, and then Vella drove off and Penelope opened the black security box with her key and punched in the access code. She frowned as she did so, and Dion lightly touched her shoulder, not making the gesture too intimate, aware of the security camera trained on them from the top of the fence. “Something wrong?” he asked.
Penelope started to shake her head, then nodded.
The gate swung open, and they stepped onto the driveway.
“What is it?” Dion asked.
She turned to face him. “My mothers.”
He was not surprised by her words, found, in fact, that he’d been expecting them. His heart was pounding. “What about them?”
She shook her head. “That’s just it. I don’t know. Not exactly.” They began walking slowly up the drive. She told him what had happened Saturday night after she’d gotten home, described the way in which Mother Mar geaux had sneaked into the house after midnight, her blouse torn and covered with blood. “I love my mothers,” she said. “But I don’t know them.” She took a deep breath. “I’m—I’m afraid of them.”
“Do you think—”
“I think they might’ve killed my father.”
They stopped walking, stared at each other. From the vineyard, carried on the slight breeze, came the low, musical hum of a conversation in Spanish. Somewhere near the buildings ahead, a car engine started.
“I have no proof,” she continued quickly. “Nothing to go on, really.
It’s just a feeling, but …” She trailed offjf Her voice when she spoke was lower, and she glanced to the left and right as if making sure that no one was listeni ing in. “I pretended I was sick yesterday. I stayed in myl| room. The reason I wanted you to come over today was! not because … you know. It’s because I was scared to,| come home alone.”
She took a deep breath, and there were tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You should’ve called me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Is that why you weren’t at school today?”
“I came after lunch. I—I spent the morning in the library.”
Dion licked his lips. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know.”
He reached for her, hugged her, held her, and she began crying. He could feel her shaking, sobbing against his shirt, and though he wanted to be sympathetic and understanding, he could not help becoming aroused, and a powerful erection pressed outward against his jeans. She had to notice, but she didn’t seem to mind, and he held her tighter, closer.
He thought of the man his mom had brought home, the man who’d been murdered, and the parallels were just too close for comfort. He thought of telling Penelope, but didn’t want to worry her any further. He himself had dealt with the situation by ignoring it, not thinking about it, but Penelope was reacting in exactly the opposite way, and he tried to imagine what it must be like for her, living with people she suspected were murderers. He looked over her shoulder at the Greek-styled buildings at the top of the drive and shivered.
Too much was happening, there was too much going on. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to react. This wasn’t a simple situation where there was a problem and a solution, where there was someone he could talk to, someone he could turn to who would set things right. He couldn’t just go to the police and say that he was having weird dreams and there seemed to be something creepy about Napa and, oh, by the way, Penelope thinks her mothers are murderers. He couldn’t talk to his mom because … well, because he had the feeling that she might be involved somehow. He could probably tell Kevin, but Kevin wasn’t in any better position to do something about it than he was.
Do something about what?
That was the main problem. That was the most frustrating aspect of this whole business. Nothing had happened. Nothing concrete, at least. There were hints and feelings and hunches, but there was no one specific thing he could point to that would convince a rational outsider that his fears were justified.
Penelope was afraid too, though.
That counted for something.
She pulled away from him, dried her eyes, tried to smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I think I got mascara on your shirt.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
They were silent for a moment.
“So what do you want to do?” Dion asked.
“I want to look in the lab. I want to walk into the woods. I want you to go with me.”
“What do
you think you’ll find?”
“Nothing probably. But I want to know why I’ve been kept away from them all these years. I thought about it yesterday, and I feel like I’m some type of Skinner experiment, like I’ve been conditioned and trained to act and feel certain ways. I mean, I’ve never even been curious about the lab. I’ve just accepted that I can’t go in there. I’ve been curious about the woods, but I’m afraid of them, and I feel like those are the responses I’ve been conditioned to have.” She looked into his eyes. “I
want to break my conditioning.” He nodded slowly. “What if we do find something?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure that out when we come to it.”
Mother Felice was in the kitchen, baking bread, and Mother Sheila was out in the vineyard somewhere, but the rest of them had all gone into San Francisco for a meeting with their distributor.
“Perfect,” Penelope said to Dion over glasses of grapej juice. t “What?” her mother asked.
“Nothing.”
They had some fresh bread with the juice, then went upstairs for a moment, ostensibly to Penelope’s room. She stationed Dion on guard at the top of the stairs and quickly ducked into Mother Sheila’s bedroom, emerging a moment later, holding a key which she quickly pocketed.
They walked downstairs and outside, walking clockwise around the house from the front, coming at the main winery building from the side not visible from the kitchen window. Inside it was dark, only the security lights on, and Penelope did not turn on the rest of the lights as they went in. They walked past the pressing room in the dim halflight, and stopped in front of what looked like a small closet door. “Wait here,”
Penelope said, opening the door and walking in.
“What is it?”
“Security. I’m going to turn off the cameras.” There was a click, a hum, and a beep, and Penelope walked back out, closing the door behind her.
“Come on.”
He didn’t remember exactly where the lab was. He thought it was somewhere far ahead, at the opposite end of the building, and he was surprised when Penelope stopped at the next door down.
She looked at him, tried to smile. “This is it,” she said. She was scared. He could hear it in her voice, and he put a reassuring hand on her arm as she inserted the key in the lock.
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