MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  The photo thumbnails popped onto the screen and I hit print all. Logan said, “He’ll get his chance and so will you.”

  The print machine spit photos into the tray, rolling and churning, then it choked and sputtered.

  “Damn it! Hold on,” I said to Logan. One of the photos wedged between the rollers. Growling, I popped open the front and wrenched at the corner of the photo. I tugged again and it ripped as I pulled. My breath caught.

  I held the torn photo, staring down at the girl’s burned body or what was left of her. She had piercings and tattoos similar to Faith’s.

  I looked again at her charred body and wondered what she’d looked like before the fire. It occurred to me that every body is beautiful when it’s healthy.

  Staring at the photo, my mind flashed back to Daddy at the kitchen table, leaning on his hands, reeking of burned flesh and the cold, fragile edge of life.

  My throat felt tight and tears gathered hot behind my eyes. It was suddenly very clear what I had to do next. I took in some air.

  “Logan?” “Yeah, kid?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “You okay?”

  I let my breath out slowly, staring at the torn photo and the broken life it captured.

  “Logan?” I said. “I miss you.” It came out as a whisper. I hadn’t meant to say it, and I immediately wished I could take it back.

  There was a long, soft silence, and then Logan said, “I miss you, too.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “You’re going to be okay, kid.”

  He disconnected, and I looked down at the dog, thinking of where we were going next, and sighed. “I wish I could be so sure.”

  Cantu had taken the bull by the balls and called out Team Six despite the fact that we were in Dawes County jurisdiction. Despite Hollis’s participation in SAR training, he wasn’t part of Team Six and seemed more interested in the SAR grant money and notoriety than in actually finding Faith. And he certainly wasn’t interested in his own dog.

  The window of time was closing. I was ready to take drastic measures.

  With a very bad taste in my mouth, I called Information on my cell, got the address and number of Boners, and headed south on 183 toward the phallic-shaped neon light that jutted into the night sky, promising those that ventured in a “gentlemen’s paradise.”

  I pulled off 183 at the Travis County line to the tiny, dying cotton town of Bates. My nerves went on red alert. The economic boom that boosted much of Central Texas had missed this area, and it was like a hurricane-struck island left to its own devices. The streets were darker here and covered in a kind of grit that blanketed the streets and windows and drifted like a silent menace in the hot, still air.

  An absence of light passed over me, and I shivered despite the summer sun’s heat stored in the asphalt.

  Nearly half the streetlights were broken or burned out, and slippery shadows of hollow-eyed people lurked in the darkness like ghosts of discontent. The houses grew shabbier as I turned down the off-street, rolling by small clapboard affairs built in the early thirties and the late forties before and after the great Dust Bowl. The white siding on most of the homes crumbled, and houses were patched together with plywood and waffled corrugated steel. Frayed sheets and duct-taped cardboard lined dirty windows. Iron bars kept family in and strangers out. The ragged remains of white picket fences lined front yards choked with waist-high weeds and the skeletons of long-discarded, rusting cars.

  Inside my topless, doorless Jeep, I wished I’d taken the Colonel’s advice and bought one of those police auction Impalas. Beside me, Marlowe stiffened.

  The club was located on the county line, inside Travis County and about four inches away from Dawes, because Dawes was dry no alcohol sold or served, which is not to say that people didn’t drink. It’s the same reason why the churches in Dawes don’t allow sex standing up it’s too much like dancing.

  Right-turning into the alleyway, I stared at the squat, windowless, dirty stucco building that was Boners. Large, rotting patches of mold ate through the thin layer of pink paint like it was decaying from the inside out.

  I looked up at the red neon light that blinked “Boners: A Gentlemen’s Paradise,” with most of the vowels burned out.

  Paradise, I supposed, was relative. Then again, so were gentlemen. Cantu had once told me there were “tiers” of strip clubs. Apparently, there are expensive clubs employing beautiful young women with enough implants to float a foreign armada, there are mid-level clubs where aging strippers get put out to pasture, and then there are places like Boners, where you could have piercings, tattoos, and probably gangrene, and nobody would notice so long as you were alive, in proximity, and, of course, naked.

  I rolled into the parking lot, surprised that my Jeep was the only car in front of the building. And then I saw that around the corner an array of pickups, SUVs, and minivans were practically parked on top of each other in the back lot, safe from prying eyes of wives, mothers, employers, coworkers, and roving revival ministers. And wayward obituary writers.

  The building had a dismal look to it, like a three-legged dog with mange. Two bent, phallic-looking palm trees flanked the front door, undulating in a sharp burst of hot wind.

  I hoped that wasn’t an omen.

  My heart thumped. “If Mama finds out we were here, she’s going to knock us both into next Sunday,” I told Marlowe, whose pointy white nose tipped toward the sky, hot on the trail of a fajita buffet somewhere inside the disreputable-looking building. Thinking about it, there was a whole list of people who’d be pissed as hell: Cantu, Logan, Tanner, my Methodist minister…

  I wasn’t sure what the dress code was for a strip club. I must have missed that session in Miss Mona’s School for Fine Young Ladies.

  I just wanted to talk to a few girls, ask some questions, flash the pictures I’d taken of the crowd, see if I could stumble over a clue. What harm could come of that?

  I did a quick check in the rearview mirror and immediately wished I hadn’t. The whole search and rescue thing doesn’t do a whole lot for your appearance. But really, who was I trying to impress?

  “Come on, Marlowe,” I said, my nerves on edge. I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the movies, Bogey rarely went into strip joints, so my experience was limited.

  Aside from the whole naked woman thing, there was something about a bunch of men sitting around with halfmast hard-ons, paying to see naked women, that seemed sad on both ends of the spectrum.

  And thinking about it, I’d been in more than my fair share of competitions that depend on the way you look, thanks to my mother and sister. There’s nothing like lining up and letting strangers judge your body against standards set by gay stylists with too much time on their hands.

  Even so, I felt the old competitive edge creeping out of my bygone, baton-twirling, piano-playing, pageant-prancing past. I fluffed up my hair, adjusted my bra, and headed into Boners, ready to find Faith, kick some ass, and prove I still had it, even if I wasn’t prepared to use it.

  To be honest, I was prepared to use it. At least some of it, anyway.

  And my first chance to use it came in the form of a very large, very dark man approximately the size of Fort Worth.

  He lounged by the door, the neon light glinting red off his smooth, dark head. He wore black jeans and a black tee shirt that showed a lot of his biceps, which were the size of tree trunks. His arms were crossed in front of his enormous chest like interlocked branches. He wore a small gold cross on a thin gold chain the same kind that Mia got when she went through confirmation.

  The man stood in the doorway scanning the parking lot like a dark intentioned search light.

  I could see he was watching me, and as I approached, I noticed his skin was so dark I could see my reflection in his cheeks. He rolled a toothpick along his bottom lip. He was handsome in the way that alpha males are nice to watch at the gym, but sex with a man like that would probably be like Jet Skiing in a force five hurricane.
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br />   A sane person would have turned tail and run. But sanity is not a trait that runs deep in the MacKinnon family gene pool.

  I’d said I was willing to take desperate measures. This guy, I supposed, was my desperate measure.

  The man’s black eyes were large and seemed world-wise and world-weary. He didn’t move, but I could tell he was watching me the same way a wolf watches a rabbit.

  Smiling my top-shelf smile, the one with both dimples flashing, I extended my hand and said, “Cauley MacKinnon. I’d like to see some naked women.”

  He stood staring at me with those dark eyes like he could see all the way to the end of the earth. His gaze shifted to Marlowe, who was eyeing him back.

  My spine stiffened when his gaze slid back to me.

  Fight or flight…I tightened Marlowe’s leash, ready to make a mad dash back to the Jeep.

  And then he smiled. A brilliant flash of white, and the grin went all the way up to his eyes. “All right, blondie. You got an escort?”

  “Besides the dog?”

  “Yeah.” Amusement sparked in his eyes, and he looked me up and down. “Club rules. Can’t get in without a male escort.”

  “Well, shit,” I said, and to my surprise, I blushed.

  He grinned. It was the kind of grin like he’d heard a private joke, and it reminded me a little bit of Logan.

  And as for male escorts…

  I did a quick Rolodex in my head. The idea of calling Logan or Cantu didn’t appeal to me, as I knew neither would approve of me being in that part of town in the middle of the night.

  I could call Beckett and Jenks, who would come and probably make this little adventure more fun than a basket of kittens, but it took the two of them longer to get ready than it took God to create the earth. I could call Ethan, but that was just begging for a migraine. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to mop up drool, and I was fresh out of smelling salts.

  “No other way? I just need to ask a few questions,” I said, and he looked me up and down.

  “Questions ‘bout what?’ he said. His arms were still crossed but humor still twinkled in his eyes. Apparently, I wasn’t something he saw every day.

  I took a deep breath and fished a card out of my purse. “Cauley MacKinnon. I’m with the Sentinel.”

  He took the card and looked at it and then nodded.

  “The Obituary Babe,” he said, a chuckle tickling his deep voice. I stared at him. My card didn’t say anything about obituaries.

  He tilted his enormous head, sizing me up. “Could put you on the schedule for an audition.”

  A sudden mental picture of me bumping and grinding and rolling around on a dirty floor made me laugh out loud.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. What you really want, blondie?”

  Ah, the truth. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I get so caught up with Logan’s clandestine ways that I forget that sometimes the best way to get information is to just ask for it.

  “You know Faith Puckett?”

  He stared at me some more. It wasn’t that cop-eyed stare, but an assessment. I bet those dark eyes could do an automatic credit check.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know her. Why do you want to know?”

  “I can’t find her, and I’m worried.”

  I fished the stack of photos from my purse, thumbed through and found the photo of the girl who’d been in the fire. I handed it to him. “A girl who looks like Faith got burned pretty bad tonight in Faith’s trailer.”

  He stood staring at the photo and shook his head and closed his eyes. For a moment, I thought he might have been praying.

  I waited.

  “Name’s Tiffany Parker,” he said, his voice sounding gruff. “She alive?”

  “Barely. The EMTs flew her to Brooke’s burn unit.”

  He nodded, and I pressed on. “How long’s Faith worked here?”

  “Bout three months.”

  “You know she just turned eighteen?”

  He closed his eyes. “I don’t hire the girls. Just look after ‘em.’

  I nodded. “Has anyone else been here looking for her?”

  A subtle change came over his face, something cold and hard. “Come on. Let’s see what we find.

  I noticed he hadn’t answered the question.

  He handed me back the photo and patted Marlowe behind the ear, and then he looked at me hard. “One thing. Don’t show the girls the picture. Tell “em what you want, but these girls got a hard life, and they don’t need to see that kinda shit. This kinda thing happen to more of “em than you think.”

  And then he held out his large hand. It was warm and strong, and he shook mine gently. “Deke,” he said and smiled.

  He swung open the door and said, “Welcome to the gentlemen’s paradise. Watch your step.”

  *

  I blinked in the darkness and stepped inside. I would have tripped over the step if Marlowe hadn’t been in front of me. Deke waved us by a pretty, scantily clad redhead stationed at a small checkin point that reminded me of the admission gate at a dirty Disneyland. Definitely a different kind of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

  We descended a small flight of stairs through a dark hall that opened onto an equally dark room that flashed and strobed. It was dark, but my eyes began to adjust. I wished they hadn’t. Music raged through ragged speakers and drums beat in a bass so hard I could feel it in the soles of my feet.

  Topless young girls lounged next to men twice their age, making nice, laughing and flirting. The large room was dark and loud and throbbing with negative energy, like a beer commercial trying to convince you that you were having a good time.

  The air was thick with smoke, desperation, and the kind of aloneness that seemed bottomless. Marlowe stood beside me, ears pricked, neck bristling.

  Three stages were lit by soft-gelled lights, and three girls flung themselves bonelessly around poles like they were rag dolls, probably thinking deep thoughts like making mental grocery lists and figuring out what to wear to church tomorrow as they bumped, ground, and allowed middle-aged bald guys to leer at them through the amber bottoms of overpriced drinks.

  I stared, trying very hard not to stare. Deke seemed amused. “Everybody’s gotta do somethin’, Ms. MacKinnon. Not ever’body got the same kind of options.”

  “Cauley,” I said, and his eyebrows arched high on his dark head. “My name’s Cauley.”

  He nodded, looking at me, and smiled.

  “All right, Miz Cauley. What in hell are you doing down here by yourself?”

  I shook my head. “What are all these other girls doing down here by themselves?”

  “They ain’t by themselves.” He grinned. “They got me.” He offered me his arm.

  I looked into Deke’s dark eyes for a long moment, and then I looped my arm around his and said, “I’m glad of that.”

  I was surprised to see so many large-screen televisions arranged around the room, flashing every sporting event known to mankind. I wouldn’t have thought men would want to drink beer and watch television while well-endowed, naked women were simulating sex in their faces. It was, I concluded, a tribute to male attention deficit disorder.

  Along one side of the club, a glass bar loomed in the darkness, a young, barely clad girl behind it mixing drinks. Against the opposite wall, a buffet was set up under red heat lamps. It smelled like day-old fajita meat, and even Marlowe lost interest.

  The music changed to some kind of loud, headache-inducing hip hop, and a spotlight hit a black, sparkly curtain at the back. A woman burst from behind the curtain wearing a bandeau and a pair of black leather pants that made her look like she’d just had her butt upholstered. If she sat down, they were so tight they’d split at the seams, but that was probably the point.

  Most of the men sat quietly, looking sad and lonely, trying to pretend they were having a good time. They sat hunched over, sipping their overpriced drinks and watching as women gyrated and undulated, trying to get their attention.

  Hmm, I thought
. Not so much different than an evening at the Pier. Only way creepier. And the fact that men kept slipping money in garters so they could cop a feel of female flesh. I shook my head. These guys probably thought they were putting these girls through college.

  Public service is a good thing.

  Deke led me past the stage, back to a dark door that blended into a black wall and down a hall and through another door, which he opened. And then there was light.

  My eyes adjusted, and then my eyebrows shot up. Six women of varying ages walked around in their altogether, naked as the day God made them. They wore a lot of makeup, and they all looked a lot older than they probably were. The room itself looked like the high school dressing areas where we used to do quick changes for scenes in drama, except it was debauched and sagging.

  The room was heady with scents of baby powder, cheap makeup, and broken dreams.

  It was a small, narrow hall, closed in on each end with thin, hollow-core doors. The left wall was lined with costumes, feathers, and furs. Six large, round mirrors perched atop makeup tables at the right wall. A thirty-something blond and a young brunette sat in metal chairs, naked except for the makeup they were applying. The young brunette had pictures of a little boy taped to her makeup mirror.

  The girls had been chattering warp speed when Deke and I walked in. Their eyes lit up when they saw Deke, but the chatter slammed shut when they saw me.

  Deke said, “Evenin’, girls. This is Cauley MacKinnon. She’s lookin’ for Faith.”

  Nobody said anything to me. They stood there, bare as the day is long, staring at me, their faces hard with some of the best cop-eyed stares I’ve ever seen. These girls could’ve given Junior Hollis a lesson in intimidation.

  I crossed my arms in front of my fully clothed chest, trying to keep my eyes at eye level, which was no easy feat.

  Four of the girls had breasts the size of Mia’s Beetle. Tentatively, Marlowe moved forward, head down, ears flat. The faces of the girls softened as they simultaneously surged toward the dog. Marlowe, it turned out, was a cheap date.