Then she thought about him heading the case of the poisoned men. It sobered her. Her sweat dried in the chilly air and she shivered. This meant he was now her greatest enemy. Lover. Enemy. Which was he?
He turned to her, wrapping her in his arms. Her face fit into the crook of his neck. She loved his scent. She could drink it in all night. He was her lover. He could never be an enemy to her. She would never let him find out what she had done. And meant to do. Never.
“If I'm down here more often, that means I might be able to see you here, rather than at the club.”
“Ummm.” She snuggled deeper into the crevice of his body. Her breasts pressed flat against his chest. She looped one leg over his hip. “It's been a long time since . . .”
“I thought so,” he said and said no more.
She didn't want to explain. He spoke again finally, telling one of those truths they had kept from one another. “For me too.” She believed him.
“I was engaged a few months ago. It didn't work out,” he said. “She was class. I was a gutter-crawler. She wanted invitations to the wedding printed in gold. I wanted to hand out my business card to friends.”
Though he was trying to make light of it, Shadow understood some of the things he was leaving out. She knew what it meant to be on the outside, out on the edge, not flowing in the mainstream of society. Unless you had been there, you couldn't know how different it was, how alien the rest of the world appeared, how awful those others sometimes treated you.
“Did you love her?”
“I thought I did. But I guess I didn't.”
More truth. She was glad he had not truly loved the other woman. She realized she was jealous of her without knowing anymore than that he had asked her to marry him.
She let her hand rove up and down his back, feeling his muscles there, powerful, strong, the little bumps of his spine, the swell of his buttocks. He was cool to her touch. Dry now, his skin like the marble floors of the mansion, hard and flat.
She felt him growing, excited again. As long as he thought of her and kept his mind away from the murders, she was safe. Safe in his arms, safe to let herself go. He moved a bit and she knew what he wanted to find. If he had to get up to get another condom, she would feel too naked and abandoned.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Wait.” She leaned back in his arms a little, reaching behind her to feel blindly along the bedside table in the dark. Her fingers danced over a little square package. She drew it closer and palmed it. She snuggled again, tearing it open with her teeth. She looked into his shadowed face. Thought he smiled.
“I thought you might want me to leave,” he said softly next to her ear. He nibbled at her earlobe and a delicious thrill went down her body. Her nipples hardened against his chest.
“Not yet,” she said. “Oh no, not yet . . .”
As he fiddled with the condom, getting it on, she turned in his arms, her back to him so they were together like spoons. He slipped into her from behind, his hands seeking and finding her breasts. She bent her head until her eyes were hidden in the bend of his arm. She lifted one leg again, draping it over his hip. She opened to him and let his measured thrusts wash her toward orgasm.
~*~
The fourth floater was identified as Ossie Cherkovania, an escapee from Huntsville Correctional Unit where he had been incarcerated for four years and three months on a guilty charge of murder in the second degree. He had been on the loose for six months. He had a sheet going back to his teens, everything from hotwiring and stealing cars, to assault with a deadly weapon.
Samson sat at his desk chewing the eraser on a pencil. He pulled a yellow notepad over and wrote:
Victims frequented nightclubs in Montrose area.
Victims all have records.
Dod interrupted his thoughts. “ID the guy?”
“Yeah. Escaped TDC six months ago.”
“Good riddance, then. Saved the taxpayers money putting him up.”
Samson moved his gaze from the notepad to Dod. He stared at him, thinking about what he'd said. “What is it? My breath stink?”
“It might. That's not what I was thinking. What you said. About good riddance this guy got offed.”
“Yeah?”
“The others were known perps too. Some on parole.”
“Somebody's cleaning up the city.”
Samson pointed the pencil at Dod. Then he bent to the notepad and added:
3) Killer is vigilante?
“We got us a Charles Fucking Bronson,” Dod said. “But why poison? And how'd he get them to drink the stuff?”
“How do you know they drank it?”
“I can read autopsy reports too. I have a genuine high school diploma.” He grinned to soften the fact he had been snooping in Samson's files.
Samson shrugged. He didn't really care just as long as Dod didn't get in his way. The news stories said the men were poisoned. It never said how. You could just as well overdose someone with a needle full of something as get them to drink it. In the case of Warfarin, getting someone to drink it had to be a really iffy proposition. How did the killer get them to do it?
Samson tore off his note and stuffed it in the new folder on Cherkovania. He bundled the files together and stood, grabbing his jacket.
“Need help?” Dod asked.
“Dod, give it a rest, okay? I need you, I'll send a fucking Marine marching band past your house with a printed invitation.” That reminded him of what he'd told Shadow, about his engagement. And that reminded him of being in bed with the most desirable woman he had made love with in years. Maybe ever. He shook his head as he left the bullpen.
“You don't have to be a bear!” Dod yelled at his back. “I was only trying to help.”
But I do have to be a bear, Samson thought, pushing through the glass doors to the hall. I have to be a big brown roaring-ass grizzly to get your nose out of my cases, you sneaky ladder-climbing dick.
On the street the heat slapped him in the face. After the air-conditioned building, he could hardly draw a good breath. It was like breathing in phlegm. It felt as if his lungs were going in and out and nothing was happening. He hurried to his car, threw the folders on the front seat. When he got in, the enclosed heat made drops of sweat pop out on his face and under his arms. Rivulets set up a stream down his back. The vinyl scorched his legs through the material of his slacks. He got the car started and the air conditioning blowing full blast.
“If I was a polar bear, I'd be on an ice floe in Alaska right now.”
He heard himself and grinned. It was five o'clock in the afternoon and it felt like noon in the Sahara. Houston was experiencing a heat wave that had produced a mini-drought. It had been a month since Samson had seen a drop of rain. Trees in the park drooped sick, wilted limbs. Grass was a shade of green rapidly fading to brown.
It wouldn't be cool enough to tackle the street and ask questions until the sun was down and that wouldn't happen for another two hours.
He thought he'd go to the dark bar section of the Blue Boa and get a Corona. Hell yeah. It was too goddamn hot for any kind of coffee. He'd watch for Big Mac through the window. She'd need another twenty spot by now.
For the next two hours Samson sat on a stool drinking Coronas, although he was on duty, and trying to study the case folders. Most of that time, however, was spent thinking about sex. Sex with a capital S. Sex with Shadow. Sex backwards, forwards, sideways. Kay Mandel. The one the other girls called the Ice Queen.
A nickname he found appropriate only if a person didn't know her intimately. And he hoped no one knew her as intimately as he did. He'd be tempted to take out his six-gun and meet the crud at high noon, blasting away, a regular Rory Calhoun.
At six-thirty, he slipped out a prison photo of Cherkovania he'd had faxed from TDC. He held it out to the barman. “You seen this guy around?”
The slender young man wore a starched white shirt that did not seem to jibe with the scraggly two-day beard he sported. He looked like a man who need
ed a few good home-cooked meals, pasta maybe.
“Nope.”
“You're sure?”
“I said.”
“You said?”
“I said nope. But I don't pay attention to the people come in here. ‘Cept for you. I know you.” He gave the impression of smiling, but who could tell when his eyes were dead?
“You're the night bartender?”
“Six nights a week. I'm off Saturdays.”
“Who subs for you?”
“Day man. That'd be Charlie.”
Samson put the photo back into the folder. “Thanks.”
“You hunting that fella?”
“Already found him. Just wondered if he'd been around.” Samson didn't elaborate. No point in getting the street clamming up if they discovered he was showing about pictures of dead people, murdered people. They admitted they'd seen a murder victim, they knew there would be more questions. Down at the station maybe. No one wanted a hassle.
“Give me another Corona, will you?”
When the barman leaned over in a cooler, Samson saw Mac stroll past the window outside. “I'll be right back.” He snatched the files and hit the door, walking fast. “Mac!”
She turned, “My Hero.”
“Stuff it, Mac. Here, got something for you.” He pulled the twenty out of his shirt pocket and pushed it into a white vinyl pocketbook open in the cart. Where in the hell did she get all these strange old purses? She pretended not to see what he'd done. “How're you feeling?” he asked.
“Half dead.”
He peered closer, concerned.
“Oh, stop it. I feel great. Wonderful. Top of the world, ma!”
“You look feverish.” He reached out to press the back of his hand to her forehead.
“I look nothing of the kind.”
She felt all right. Maybe even too cool to his touch for such a hot evening. “You been taking the prescription? All of it? On time?”
Mac turned her back and started pushing the cart forward. He walked with her. “Well? Have you?”
“I am. I am. Such a nag. You need to apply for motherhood status.”
“That's my Mac. See ya around then. I left a beer warming.”
“Beer, hell,” she muttered, but he heard her as he walked away. “Women,” she said. “He's going back to look at the nekkid women. The pervert.”
Though she said it in a friendly, joking tone, and she knew he'd hear her, the observation bothered him just the same. Was he? A pervert?
But Big Mac was a bag lady who wouldn't take the offer of a free home. What the fuck did she know?
So he smiled, glad to be alive and drinking Coronas and puzzling over floaters found in the bay. Perverts never spent their time doing something useful, did they?
Besides, naked women were God's gift to the men of the Earth. You could dress them up and take them out, but au naturel was absolutely the best way to deal with a woman, say under the age of fifty.
Twenty-Six
The night after Son saw the cop talking to the dance girl, he returned to the Blue Boa, and hung out drinking draft beer. He didn't much like beer, but in a joint like this you had to drink to be able to abide the place. The girls on stage were sluts in G-strings, teasing strangers with their sex. Son watched them with a critical eye. A text of their offenses ran through his thoughts. Working in this kind of business. Drug addicts. Alcoholics. Prostitutes. Lesbians. AIDS carriers.
The girl who had been with the cop didn't dance. It might have been her night off. He signaled one of the waitresses over and asked, “Where's that girl, the dancer with black hair, the pretty one . . .” He hadn't forgotten her name. He just didn't want everyone knowing what he knew.
“Shadow? Oh, the Ice Queen's not coming in tonight. She comes in when she feels like it. If she's coming, she's here by ten or earlier. So she's not coming.”
“Ice Queen? Why do you call her that?”
The waitress turned down her mouth and shrugged. “That's what the other girls call her. Forget I said it, okay?”
“They call her that because . . . ?”
“She don't like screwing around with the customers, you know, that's all.”
“Ah, I see.” He put a couple of bucks on the waitress's tray.
He stayed just a few minutes longer then left for home.
The following night he was back again. He hugged the bar, watching the girls. Shadow danced her first number around ten-thirty. Son left as soon as he recognized her. He drove around for a while, ate a steak at a Luther's restaurant, then drove to the club again. He waited in his parked car, a half-block down the street from the Blue Boa's parking lot behind the building. At one-thirty Shadow appeared. He slouched down in his seat so as not to be seen. When she drove from the lot, he started the car, and followed.
He wondered, all the way across town, where she might be headed. She was the one he'd noticed parked in her Toyota two streets over from the Blue Boa the night a man parked behind her and left his car, getting into her car on the passenger's side. Then that man, the one who had been spotlighted in his headlights as he passed by, turned up as a floater. Cherkovania. An escaped con.
Son wasn't sure Shadow had anything to do with it until he had seen on the news that the man's car was found on the same street, in the same place he'd seen him park it.
His hunt had turned up the killer. Being in the right place at the right time and noticing things made all the difference. He had been rejoicing his good luck and powers of observation for days. Of course, she might not be actually doing it. She might be leading the men somewhere and someone else did the nasty work. But she was involved. She was definitely a part of it.
She lived this far from work? Fifty, sixty miles? Where the hell . . . ?
When she took a side street in the small seaside town of Seabrook, he waited in a convenience store lot until she was far enough ahead of him so she wouldn't know he was behind her. When she turned onto the road close to the water and then drove through massive wrought-iron gates and brick entrance columns, he slowly passed by, killed his lights, and coasted to a stop along the roadway. He got out of the car. Looked around. The few houses along this street were dark. Everyone sleeping. No dogs barking. They weren't going to see him.
He peered down the long drive that circled in front of a looming silhouette of a large house set back on a few empty acres right at water's edge. She lived here? In a place that looked like a boys' reformatory? Would anyone actually live here if he didn't have to? There were bars on the windows and doors of the three-story structure. How did she even afford the upkeep on a place like this? He didn't think strip dancing paid this well. It couldn't possibly. Could she be a rich girl, dancing for kicks? Did she have a sugar daddy? It just didn't compute.
He hiked down the drive, keeping off to the edge and out of the line of view from the front windows of the house. When he reached the steps, he saw lights going out inside. She was going to bed. He crept to the front door, listening for the sound of a guard dog somewhere. He cupped his hands around his face and looked through the grill on the double glass door.
Shadows intermingled and effectively hid everything from his scrutiny, except for the wide winding stairway leading to a landing on the second floor. Moonlight washed over marble floors like pale watery strokes from an artist's brush.
He'd have to come back. The dancer lived near the water, the same water where men had been found dead. She was called the Ice Queen; she didn't like men coming home with her and she didn't go home with them. Some kind of hang-up about sex?
Could she be the one?
Son crept back down the stairs and walked the long walk of the drive to his parked car. He had his hands in his pockets. He didn't smell the ocean breeze or hear the click-rustling of wind in the dry limbs of the tall palms. He didn't hear the crickets chorus or the bullfrogs croak in the roadside ditch or the plaintive call of a night bird. He didn't notice the moon, halved and hung in a clear starry sky.
He
heard, saw, felt, and smelled nothing that interfered with his thoughts as he drove across the city again and home.
He didn't even hear his mother call weakly as he went to his room, down the hall from hers. He did not know, until morning, that she had needed him to help her to the toilet. And even if he had, he might not have gone to her.
He had too many important things to do to be sidetracked.
~*~
Charlene thought the cat helped keep the voices muted so she could think straight. She tried to stay wherever the cat was so she wouldn't go insane.
But she'd lost track of the cat. Couldn't find it. Hadn't seen it for hours.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.” She called for it everywhere. “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.” She looked for it in the usual hiding places. It liked to play with the floor-length curtains on the French doors in the side room facing the front porch. She looked there. Kittykittykittykitty.
She hunted for it in the kitchen, put out fresh Nine Lives food for it, but it didn't come. She went down into the forbidden (forbidden because she forbade herself to go into it) maze opposite the pool and walked in circles calling kitty, kitty, kitty.
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