Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

He got down on his hands and knees to peer beneath her bed. A wink of sunlight off of something otherwise hidden among the pairs of discarded shoes and dusty boxes caught his eye and he reached for it, a torn foil packet, empty now, one of Lucy’s ribbed-for-her-pleasure condoms.

  Ruth hadn’t said anything about Lucy having a boyfriend, and none of the photographs he’d seen in the apartment depicted anyone except Lucy and friends of the undeniably female persuasion.

  So who was she sleeping with? he wondered, a single name coming up suspect in his mind: Boyd Wilder.

  He returned to her computer and found the emails had finished downloading. He went through them idly, skimming past those of an obviously unrelated or spam nature. He found more than a dozen correspondences from Ruth, cordial at first, chatty even, then growing more and more concerned with every lack of reply.

  Is everything OK? one of the more recent read. I haven’t heard from you and am worried now. (You know how I am.) Call me, OK? Even it’s 3 AM or you get the machine, just leave me a message. Let me know you’re still breathing.

  The subject line of one another sender’s email caught his eye, a response to something Lucy had apparently sent: RE: Inquiry – do you believe?

  The sender was listed as DrMike.

  I found your website online tonight and need to know if you REALLY believe? Lucy had written. I’m looking for someone to help me and who won’t think I’m crazy.

  The dialogue cemented in John’s mind what he’d come to strongly suspect. Lucy had fallen into the downward spiral of drug addiction.

  It all started with this scratching sound, she’d written. I thought at first it was coming from outside my window. I’d hear it at night when I was trying to sleep. I thought it was someone trying to get in.

  In another, she’d written, Had a bad night again. I tried to stay up, drank a bunch of coffee, watched TV for awhile, but must’ve dozed off, because I woke up on the couch sometime after midnight. Dogs barking, outside and from the apt. downstairs. This a.m. I’m very pale, feel weak, don’t want to eat. Am very thirsty, very cold. Hurts to breathe.

  In another, delusional and chilling: Light hurts my eyes, even with sunglasses on. Broke all the light bulbs, covered windows, shoved blanket under front door. Still the light burns.

  He didn’t read all of the emails, never mind the numerous attachments sent between Lucy and whoever DrMike really was. He’d eventually started signing off with the name “Michael Gough,” then, in the end, “Mike.”

  Please call me, his last email said, one Lucy hadn’t responded to, and eerily similar to Ruth’s plea. Email me, something, anything. Let me know you’re OK and it’s not too late.

  And with that, Michael Gough had just usurped Boyd Wilder’s place as John’s number one fuck-buddy suspect.

  Let me know you’re OK and it’s not too late. Those weren’t the words of a casual acquaintance. Those were boyfriend words. Or at least, the sentiments of a guy on the verge of losing a piece of ass, desperate to keep it.

  John rifled through Lucy’s desk drawers, finding loose change, old lipsticks, unused matchbooks, outdated receipts. He also found the Sister Islands white pages and a phone book of her own personal use, with a flowery hardback cover and My Contacts inscribed atop in gold cursive script.

  No Michael Gough in either of them.

  He heard a low, momentary scratching from the closet, and whirled, half-leaping, half-falling out of the chair, snatching his tire iron in hand. His eyes flown wide, his heart racing, his breath hitching all at once beneath his chest, he stood motionless in the middle of the bedroom, staring at the open maw of the closet threshold.

  It all started with this scratching sound, Lucy had written to Michael “DrMike” Gough, the man John suspected had been her lover.

  He waited for the sound to recur. When there was nothing but silence, he stole hesitantly forward, then peeked into the closet. Nothing.

  Returning to the computer, John began quickly forwarding the emails between Lucy and Michael Gough to his own account. He still wore his sunglasses even now, convinced the panes in the apartment had been polarized or something to magnify the sunlight’s intensity. Between the glare from the windows, the peculiar scratching that he thought he’d heard, and the fact that he swore he could still smell the pungent stink of that garlic powder over every other odor in the apartment, he decided it was high time to high tail it.

  ***

  He made his next stop the Show Me! bar. John felt there was something unnatural about seeing a strip club after hours, the way seeing the actual studio in which a favorite television show is filmed, or the backstage area of a Broadway production must be. When open for business, a strip club lay draped in cool darkness, with most of the lights coming from the stage, where disco strobes and the illuminated catwalk drew the eye toward the dancers. Thus the day before, when he’d visited the Show Me!, it had felt decidedly surreal to him. This time, when he arrived, it was after five o’clock in the afternoon. The club was open. Happy hour was well underway, and the world was as it should be at least as far as the nudie bar was concerned.

  He walked into comforting shadows. The walls had been painted a deep shade of plum that turned black in the dim glow of overhead recessed lights. The carpeting was black, threaded through with a tangled pattern of neon-colored lines that appeared luminescent from black-light bulbs. The café-style tables and chairs were black lacquer and vinyl upholstered with silver chrome, nestled close enough together to allow for maximum occupancy of floor space, yet far enough apart to lend the illusion of intimate privacy for patrons. The bar’s sound system sent shock-waves of music thrumming through the floorboards and walls, shuddering in the air like something electrified and alive. The pounding backbeat of an unfamiliar rap song reverberated through John’s skull even before he’d passed through the club’s glass front doors. By the time he’d made his way back to the bar where he’d found Britney Wilson the day before, the headache he’d managed to tamp down earlier with a handful of ibuprofen had stoked again behind his eyes in earnest.

  “Hey,” he called out to the bartender, a big, strapping bear of a guy with an out-dated Bruce Jenner fly-back hairstyle. The club hadn’t been open for the day long, but the showroom boasted a pretty good happy-hour turnout to John’s perfunctory glance. He’d made out at least a dozen silhouetted figures seated at tables around the stage, and a half-dozen or so more either in the adjacent private dance area or making their way in that direction.

  The bartender, in the process of twisting caps off a phalanx of Bud Lights, called back in greeting. “Be with you in a second, man.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Britney Wilson,” John said, loud enough to constitute yelling had he been standing anywhere else in the world.

  The guy cupped his hand to his ear, and John shouted the name again. At this, the barkeep’s brows raised in an a-ha! sort of way and he nodded. “Britney. Yeah. Sorry, man, she’s not here.”

  John watched him collect at least seven beer bottles by the necks in his hands, transferring them with a practiced ease from the bar to a waitress’s tray. As she sashayed off, somehow miraculously balancing the unwieldy platter on one hand, the bartender wiped his hands on a dish towel and turned in full to John. From this new vantage, he looked to John to be approximately the same breadth and girth as a Mac truck.

  “What can I get you?” he called.

  Normally John might have cadged a beer. He wasn’t a cop anymore, and drinking on duty wasn’t prohibited for entrepreneurial private investigators. But, as food had all day, the idea of liquor sounded as unappealing as if he’d been offered a steaming mug full of dog piss, enough to make his stomach warble queasily at the suggestion.

  “Just some water, thanks,” John said, because this, too, had remained a new and peculiar daily constant. He was thirsty. While the bartender fixed him the drink, John asked, “When will she be back?”

  “Britney? Not until tomorrow. It’s her day off. Here, man.
” The guy set a glass of ice water in front of him, then pushed a lemon wedge onto the rim. Catching sight of the bandages beneath the collar of John’s shirt, he cocked his head. “What happened to you?”

  “Barracuda,” John said idly. “Got me while I was scuba-diving.”

  The bartender shook his head sympathetically. “Man, that bites.”

  “Tell me about it,” John replied. “Look, I stopped by yesterday and talked with Britney awhile. She told me to come back, said maybe I could have a word with some of the waitresses.”

  The bartender raised his brow, growing immediately suspicious. His posture stiffened, which meant the tree trunk of his neck seemed to grow instantly thicker as the tendons went rigid and taut. He folded his arms across the Freightliner grill-plate of his chest. “You a cop?” he asked.

  “Nope. Private investigator.”

  This seemed to relax the big guy somewhat. “Oh,” he said, uncrossing his arms. One large hand thrust out at John. “Jame Covey. I’m the general manager here.”

  “James?” John asked, because it was hard to hear over the yowling lyrics of whatever screech-metal song had taken the place of the rap ditty.

  “Jame,” the bartender replied, with loud enough emphasis to clarify the distinction. “No S, man.”

  “John Harker.” John accepted the shake, trying not to wince as Jame Covey clamped his fingers together hard enough to hurt. “No S, either.”

  Covey laughed. “That’s funny,” he said, tapping one large fingertip in the air in the general direction of John’s nose. “I like you, man.”

  That was a relief, considering what John suspected a guy Jame’s size could do to a fellow he didn’t like.

  “I’m looking for a girl.” John slipped the headshot of Lucy Weston he’d been carrying in his breast pocket out, handing it to Covey. “Her mother told me she was working here, serving cocktails, although Britney didn’t seem to know her.”

  Covey looked at the photo for a long moment, then glanced at John. “That’s Lucy. I hired her about a month ago. Only she’s not a waitress. She’s one of the dancers.”

  “What?” John blinked in surprise, then wondered how long it would take Ruth Weston to hit the floor when she found out her daughter had been headlining at Boyd Wilder’s so-called “whore house.” He tried to factor in the woman’s height and weight approximations into his calculations, along with the estimated distance to the floor and the effects of the earth’s gravitational pull in her overall velocity.

  Covey nodded. “Yeah. She hasn’t shown up for work for the past week or so.”

  “Any idea where she is?” John asked, and Covey shook his head, laughing.

  “Hey, I’m their boss, not their father. They don’t show up for work, they don’t have a job. Makes no difference to me.”

  “How about a guy named Michael Gough? Mike, maybe? That name ring a bell?”

  Covey looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “Sorry, man. Nobody who works here. I do all the hiring. I’d know.”

  “How about a customer, then?”

  Again, Covey shook his head. “Not ringing a bell. But we run a lot of credit cards on a day-to-day basis. I could go back through the till slips.” Despite the generosity of the offer, he looked reluctant at the prospect, then relieved when John shook his head.

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said. Lucy had met Michael Gough on the internet. He could have lived on the east end of the moon for all John knew. “You know anything about Lucy doing drugs?”

  Covey blinked as if surprised. “Lucy? No way. All our girls have to have a clean background to get hired and believe me, we check. They’ve got to stay clean while they’re working here, too. Mr. Wilder keeps a strict zero-tolerance company policy. Every dancer has to check in for a monthly piss test. If she flunks it, she’s out.”

  He said something else John couldn’t make out over the music, then Covey leaned across the bar and shouted more loudly. “I said you need anything else? I’ve got to get back to work and it’s sort of hard to talk in here.”

  “It’s not the talking that’s the bitch. It’s the listening,” John yelled back. “And no.” He held his hands up, feigning surrender. “I’m good. Thanks for your time.”

  “No problem, man.” Covey mimed a pistol with his forefinger and thumb, taking momentary, pointed aim at John’s chest. “Be seeing you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time John made it home to the Coconut Grove Marina, night had fallen, sweet, blissful darkness. At last, the headache that had been throbbing behind his eyes for most of the day began to loosen its merciless stranglehold, without the incessant glare of sunlight to aggravate and exacerbate it. As he followed the long gangplank past the shadow-draped silhouettes of vacant, sleeping boats toward the Quagmire, he felt good enough to actually whistle.

  That is, until he drew close enough to Cookie’s Cutter for his neighbor, Ethel Merriwether’s Yorkshire terrier, Nutsy, to get wind of him and start barking.

  Stupid dog, he thought, and against the dim backdrop of glow from below deck on Ethel’s boat, as she’d left the companionway open, he could see the dog standing at the stern near the swim deck.

  “Nutsy,” Ethel snapped, coming topside, and Nutsy fell abruptly silent, save for the startled scrabbling of its claws on the deck as he scrambled away from the pushpit. “You stop that racket right this instance.”

  Her voice faded as she caught sight of John out on the gangplank. “Who is that?” she called, her voice suddenly sharp and suspicious.

  “It’s me, Ethel,” he called back.

  “Oh, John.” He heard her utter a warbling little relief. “You scared me half to death.” Nutsy had leaped back up at pushpit again, hooking his front paws over the bottom railing, and had proceeded to bark in renewed, relentless earnest. “Nutsy, I said be quiet.”

  “Sorry, Ethel.” John climbed aboard the Quagmire and quickly ducked below. Though the sound of Nutsy’s barking grew muffled as he shut the hatch behind him, the dog continued yapping, apparently unfazed by Ethel’s rebuke.

  Damn dog, John thought, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth and grimacing as he turned on the lights in the bathroom, momentarily blinding himself. He ducked his head, squinting, and waited for his eyes to adjust. And waited. And waited.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, fishing his sunglasses out of his pocket and shoving them on. What’s wrong with me today?

  Standing in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, he shrugged his way out of his shirt, then carefully peeled back the tape holding the square gauze pad in place along his neck. When he lifted the bandage, he winced again.

  That doesn’t look good.

  The skin around the ragged twin puncture wounds was bright red and swollen, puckered around the holes, which were now crusting over with thin, purplish scabs. The outermost edges of each of the marks were a deeper shade of violet, nearly black, and from these slim prosceniums, tiny threads had snaked out in an interlocking spider web, following the capillary system beneath the surface of his skin.

  John opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Leaning at an awkward angle to position his shoulder over the sink basin, he upturned the bottle, letting the medicine spill down the side of his neck.

  He gritted his teeth, feeling the peroxide bubbling and frothing in the parallel wounds, as painful as hydrochloric acid eating into his flesh.

  Once the pain had subsided, he taped another square of gauze in place over the wound, then repeated the process to redress his arm. He pulled a faded T-shirt over his head when he was through. His hand felt funny, his fingers tingling, momentarily numb, and he rubbed his palm against his pant leg to get the blood flowing right as he went into the kitchen.

  He hadn’t eaten all day. He should have been ravenous, but wasn’t. He filled, then drained, a plastic tumbler with water, then washed this down with another. After a third cup, he drew the side of his hand against his chin and botto
m lip to wipe away dribbles, and noticed that his fingers still felt weirdly numb.

  “Huh.” He wiggled his fingertips, then shook his hand a couple of times, making his way forward to the sleeping berth compartment. He meant to open his laptop once settled into his bed and try to work some on the Weston case, to piece together some of the clues he’d been able to come up with in his investigation. A night owl by nature, John had every good intention of burning the ol’ proverbial midnight oil, even though he could still hear the din of Nutsy barking aboard the Cookie’s Cutter.

  But instead, he stretched out, computer in his lap, his head and shoulders propped up with pillows, and dozed off. At the soft creaking of floorboards from the deck above, his eyes flew wide and he sucked in a startled gasp.

  What the…? He winced as he sat up, at the stiff pain in his neck and shoulders, where a crick had settled while he’d slept. He felt the computer on his lap shift, falling toward the floor, and he pawed clumsily at it, missing. It smacked the ground with a loud thud and he grimaced. Terrific.

  Nutsy was barking from outside, definitely in rare form for the night. Sometimes, like that particular moment, John missed carrying a gun, or at least, being able to carry a gun without suffering severe post-traumatic anxiety, because he longed to pop a nine-millimeter cap squarely in the Yorkie’s mangy little ass.

  Another creak came from the aft end of the berth, and he glanced toward the darkened doorway, the galley area beyond.

  Someone’s here.

  He’d lived on the Quagmire for little more than a year, since his divorce had been finalized and Bevi had laid claim and sole occupancy to the two-bedroom bungalow they’d once shared. He knew every inch of his boat as intimately as any lover. And, as with a lover, he knew the sounds she made, the movements she was prone to, the way she’d roll on her keel, the way she would murmur and moan against the waves. He knew the faint, slight creaks of her mast, the fluttering of her lacing lines, the groaning of her furled sails as the halyards would shift, the light tug of a breeze against her mooring lines and brails.