Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  Kay turned around backwards in her seat, the seat belt holding her at a weird angle. “It’s a drone,” she said.

  “Hang on, Twinkles!” I turned a sharp right between two high-rises. The noise lessened. “Whew, I thought it was chasing us.”

  Kay swiveled around in her seat and adjusted her belt. “So did—”

  The noise buzzed at my back window again.

  “It’s back.” Kay turned to get a better look.

  “Do you think it’s the pervert chasing Jessica?” Twinkles was barking his head off at the drone, and I had to scream over him to be heard.

  “I don’t know. Could be some jerk messing with you.”

  “Some jerk?”

  “Okay, some hulking low-life creep is messing with you. Better?”

  “Shut up,” I said, taking a left so tight I thought I was going to come up on two tires. It would be great if I could get the person to pilot the damned thing into the side of a building. Left. Right. Right. Left. I was getting dizzy. Ah! Up ahead I saw a parking garage. It wouldn’t follow me in there. Surely that would be too difficult to navigate, what with the low ceilings and hairpin turns.

  It followed me in anyway.

  “Do something!” I screamed at Kay. I worked at following the curving path up to the top of the garage and back down again. My little Mini Cooper, which I bought because I wanted to call it my mini-copper, was shrieking right along with me.

  Kay had braced herself with both hands on the door handle and her foot up on the glove compartment. “What the heck am I supposed to do?” She hollered over the tire sounds and buzz of the drone.

  “Call someone! Call Dick. Call Peter.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “We’re being attacked!” I was on the ground level, and the attendant was leaning out of the booth, watching. I was almost there. I pressed the automatic window and as soon as there was a crack visible, I yelled, “Open the gate! Help! Open the gate!” As the window lowered more, I waved my arm out of the opening. I was not going to slow down. I was willing to break right through. I desperately hoped my Mini Cooper had the power to break right through. I watched as the attendant scrambled back into her booth to press a button that lifted the automatic arm.

  “Why am I scared of this thing?” I asked Kay as I popped over the lip of cement and powered back out onto the road. “What could that little hunk of plastic possibly do to us?”

  Kay pulled her phone out. “Googling,” she said as I let the thing chase me down Main Street, heading toward the police department, where I planned to blare my horn and circle the parking lot until someone came out to help us.

  “Well, in this YouTube video, the guy retrofitted his drone with automatic rifles, and he can shoot them remotely.”

  Fear washed over me. I reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Are you shitting me?”

  “And this one says they can carry explosives that they drop, and those too can explode remotely. And this one here says—”

  “Stop. Stop. I can’t go to the police station and put the officers in danger. We need a plan B. Turn and look—can you see rifles tied on that thing?”

  “I am not turning and looking. Do you think I want to get shot in the face by the drone from hell? No.”

  My phone rang. “Get it, Kay! It might be Dick. He might have an idea.”

  She opened my phone. “Thank God, Connor!” she yelled into the speaker phone.

  “What are you doing? Are you with Bobbi Jax?” Connor asked.

  “We’re being chase by a drone. What do we do?”

  “What?” Connor asked. “Are you playing video games?”

  “We’re driving down damned Main Street with a damned drone on our ass. Stop asking stupid questions and tell me what the heck to do.”

  I gave her a quick glance. “The hospital has an underground parking garage. I can never get a cell phone signal down there. I’m heading to St. Esmerelda’s.”

  “Is that Bobbi Jax? You aren’t kidding me? A drone is chasing you?” Connor sounded his usual befuddled self when Kay and I got ourselves into predicaments he could never have imagined.

  Kay and I screamed “YES!” at the same time as I took a hard left. Another hard left, then we slid into the parking garage.

  “Why in the… how in the...”

  “Connor?” Kay yelled. “Connor, are you there?” Kay looked at me. “No signal.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror. “And no more drone.” We high fived. I took a second to fluff my clothes and push my damp hair out of my face. I was sweating like I’d just run a mile on a hot summer’s day.

  Twinkles had his tongue hanging out and smile on his face. I’d swear he was laughing at us.

  “Do you think we need to wait here long?” Kay looked around anxiously. “I don’t like that I can’t use the phone. I mean, if the perv showed up, we can’t get any help.”

  “We have Twinkles.”

  “Fat lot of good he’ll do if the perv has a gun.”

  “Let’s go out the south exit and see if we lost him. If we haven’t, we’ll call Connor for backup and head underground again.”

  The ride back to the bar was anticlimactic, which was good, since I badly needed to pee. I wasn’t sure my bladder could handle another shot of drone-induced fear.

  “I can’t believe we got chased by a drone. Have you ever heard of that happening?” Kay asked.

  “I don’t even know anyone who owns a drone. Who plays with drones? Pimple faced teens who got them for Christmas is my guess. Maybe it was just some bored high schoolers trying to see up Jessica’s dress as the wind made it flap around. She isn’t wearing any panties, after all.”

  Kay snickered as she helped me untie Jessica from the roof. We were parked in Hooch’s back alley while Twinkles stood guard. Jessica was heavier than she looked. She probably weighed less than I did, but this was dead weight. When I thought the word “dead,” a shiver wracked my body. Kay sent me a questioning look.

  “I don’t know, something about Jessica is giving me the creeps,” I said.

  “Probably that it’s so life-like, and you gave it a name. Maybe we should just dump it in the trash bin and call it a done deal. This is starting to feel like bad juju to me.”

  “Could you dump Jessica in the bin?” I asked.

  Kay took a moment to stare the mannequin in her glass eyes. “No, you’re right. There’s something kind of odd about this whole scene. And besides, I do think you’re onto something in making her the bar’s mascot.” One block over, an engine revved. “When are you expecting Dick?”

  “He said as soon as he can get himself freed up. Who knows what that means?”

  “I’m taking off when he gets here. I have work tomorrow, and you probably want some privacy.”

  “Dick’s a detective now. He wears a suit instead of a uniform.”

  “He still has a badge,” Kay offered.

  “Meh,” I said.

  She laughed as she grabbed hold of Jessica’s legs and helped me heft her into the back room. “Dick’s going to be sad to hear he’s not on your playlist any more. Did you tell him that before he offered to come and dust for prints?”

  5

  I locked my car and closed the back door to the bar. I leaned against it to catch my breath and brush the wet strands of my long blond hair from my face. “Whew! That storm is really kicking up. I’m glad we got her in before the deluge,” I said, shaking myself off and holding up a plastic shopping bag. “Ta da!”

  “What’s in there?” Kay took it from my hand and opened it up. “A dress, a pair of sandals and some panties?”

  “She’s bare assed, which I think is a health violation. And the ball gown is a little over the top for Hooch’s. I was going to grab a pair of jeans and a cute little top, only Jessica’s butt is smaller than mine. I opted for a sundress for her.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “That goes without saying.” I glanced through the doorway as a set of headlights swep
t across the front. “That must be Dick.” I hustled to let him in. He jogged to the door without an umbrella, and I handed him the bar towel I’d snagged on the way over.

  “Hey, cutie.” He bent down and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

  “Hey yourself. It was nice of you to come over. I kind of feel like Daphne on Scooby Doo. A meddling kid sticking my nose in somebody’s business.” I laughed.

  “Wait a minute,” Kay yelled. “That would make me Velma, and I am not Velma.”

  “Who does that make me?” Dick rubbed the towel over his tightly cropped hair. “I’m hoping for Scooby, so I can get a snack later.” He wriggled his brows suggestively.

  “I think you’re going to have to be the walk-on in this scene. Did you bring your fingerprint kit?”

  He held it up.

  “You know,” Kay said with her arm around the mannequin, holding her up. “Once you change the dress on this thing, it’s not going to look like Jessica Rabbit anymore. I’m thinking she looks more like a Daphne. The name Daphne has a sisterly quality to it, don’t you think? A mannequin you could spill your guts to and trust that it would stay a secret?”

  “I get what you’re saying.” I studied the mannequin and tried out the name in in my head. “Yeah, I think I like that. Okay, Daphne it is.”

  Dick squinted at the mannequin. “Is this what you want fingerprinted? Are you serious?”

  “Yup.” I held up my hands. “We’ve had gloves on the whole time. I don’t think we messed anything up. I hope not, anyway.”

  Dick moved closer. “Hey, dollface,” he said with a wink, then turned back to me. “She’s kind of cute. I could see why someone might take this thing on a picnic in the park for a little nookie. No problems with pregnancy. No problems with too much chatter. No problems with having your skills compared to the last guy who took a ride.”

  “I hear your skills are incomparable,” Kay said with a blinking, innocent-eyed gaze. “No issues for you there.”

  I swatted her with a towel.

  Dick turned pink and ducked his head to hide his grin.

  “And on that happy note,” Kay said, “it looks like the rain is taking a break. I need to head home.” She kissed me on the cheek, then turned to give a wave. “Bye, Dick.”

  “Richard,” he enunciated slowly as she opened the door.

  “To be honest,” I said, catching hold of Twinkles’s collar, “I really like Dick.” I watched the pink in his cheeks deepen to red. He got that confused glassy look in his eyes that told me all his blood had suddenly rushed south, leaving him a little dizzy. His blood needed to do a U-turn. He was just here for some fingerprints. I followed Kay to the front door with Twinkles by my side. Twinkles and I stood under the dripping awning, making sure Kay was safe until she motored out of view.

  When I came back in and locked the door, Dick said, “Okay, BJ, tell me what we’ve got going on here.”

  “I don’t know. A bad feeling in the pit of my stomach? A weird little tingle in my spine. Look at this thing. It looks like it could animate at any moment. I’ve never seen a mannequin this life-like. And someone left it in the bushes.”

  “And just what were you doing in the bushes to find it?”

  I smiled by way of response. “As it turns out, not much of anything. I did bring the doll to Peter Harris’s attention, though.”

  “He happened to be nearby?”

  “He was in the neighborhood,” I said vaguely. “He wrote an incident report and took the damp panties, but he said he didn’t know how to dust for fingerprints, and so I thought of you.”

  “Nice that that’s why you thought to give me a call.” He leaned an elbow onto the bar. “It’s been a while, BJ. I thought we were special friends.”

  “We are friends. The special kind of stopped when you started wearing a suit.” I gave him a little pout.

  “I kept my uniform,” he said with a smile. “I have it at my apartment. I wouldn’t mind keeping it in the trunk of my car, you know, if you ever needed me to change my clothes.”

  I ran a hand down his arm. “That feels a little like cosplay, doesn’t it? I like the real deal. I’m so proud of you for moving up to detective. I bet there’s a bevy of girls who will find that sexy as hell.”

  Dick let out a sad sigh. “Okay, I get it. I’m here for the fingerprints. I guess I’m glad to give you a hand in your little adventure. But let’s get the show on the road, so I can move on to actual crimes.”

  I watched Dick do his thing. He kneeled on a towel while he brushed the surface of the mannequin with his powder, lifted the prints with the tape, made cards. Took photographs. He had taken off his suit jacket and was in a pressed white shirt with his tie held in place with a clip. He was focused and very professional. I had to admit, it was getting my blood humming a little bit. Maybe I needed to widen my spectrum of potential dates to include detectives. I’d think about it, anyway. Right now, I was watching a little scowl form between his brows.

  “Are you willing to share that thought?”

  “It’s interesting,” he said, and rocked back on his heels. “There are only two sets of fingerprints on this doll. I thought I’d be finding so many that it wouldn’t make any sense to try to collect them. I thought I’d be dusting this thing and telling you there was a stew of evidence, and we wouldn’t get a good result. But as far as I can tell, there are only two sets.”

  “That means only two people have had contact with this mannequin?”

  “Not necessarily. It could mean that it was washed down, and since that point, only two people have touched it.” He pulled out another card and picked up his tape. “It’s also interesting that one set seems to cover the whole body and the other set only seems to be on the arms, like the person was carrying it and on the legs where he—I’m saying ‘he’ because you said you saw ejaculate—would position it if the legs were bent.”

  “That’s how we—I… that’s how I found it in the bushes, and I went to investigate, and there she was, up against a tree with her knees bent to her chest to make her nether regions accessible.”

  “Are her nether regions accessible?” Dick asked and bent the doll’s knee so he could look between her legs. “No, this isn’t anatomically correct. Which is meaningful.”

  “It’s meaningful because this thing wasn’t made for sexual adventuring?”

  “Exactly. Whoever designed this—despite the fact that I wouldn’t be all that shocked if this thing suddenly came to life and smacked me for looking between her legs without permission—was doing it to make it look lifelike. It’s like one of those Madame Toussaud’s wax figures. But it wasn’t so he could have a screw buddy.” He flicked the mannequin’s thigh. “And it’s hard. You’d think if he wanted it for a personal relationship, he’d make it out of a different kind of material.” Dick started to close up his kit.

  “Whoever it belongs to, I think they might want her back.”

  “How would you know that?” Dick asked.

  “Well I wouldn’t. I might be conflating two very different weirdnesses.”

  Dick squinted at me. “You had two ‘weirdnesses’ today?”

  “Well, tonight was the second.” I went on to tell him about being chased by the drone.

  “You’ve got me there, BJ. I’ve never heard of anyone being chased around the city with a drone before, with or without a mannequin strapped to the roof of their car.”

  “Why do you think that someone left it in the woods?”

  “My guess is that you and Peter surprised the hell out of someone. They saw the cop car, and they took off running. They planned to go back for it, probably after dark, but you beat them to it.”

  Okay, so he knew I was playing in the bushes with Peter. That kind of connecting-the-dots thinking was why he got promoted to detective.

  “Just tell me that I’m not the only one hurting tonight because you’re playing with dolls.”

  “You are not the only one who might be feeling a little frustrated.
But I sure do appreciate your doing this for me.” I kissed him on the cheek with the sisterly kind of peck that seemed to send the right message, because he offered up a sigh with his frown. Poor boy.

  6

  I dragged my butt out of bed because Twinkles was whining at the door. I yanked a pair of yoga pants on under the t-shirt I slept in and grabbed Twinkles’s lead. I felt creaky and worn out. I was getting too old to stay up all night and still function the next day. I scraped my hair back into a ponytail, thinking what a sad, sad thought that was. I needed to get Twinkles on a different sleep schedule. I grabbed my phone and headed to the dog park.

  Sitting on the picnic table, I leaned my head back to soak up some sun. I wasn’t a tanning kind of girl—I got bored lying out there on a towel, trying to spit-roast myself into a golden goddess. But a little vitamin D never hurt. And to be honest, with my English lineage, golden goddess divine was never going to happen. The best I could ever hope for was a healthy-looking pink glow. Timing was everything, a couple of minutes too long under the sun and I could be mistaken for a boiled lobster.

  As I relaxed back on my elbows and lifted my face to the warmth, my mind was back on Dick and what he said about the mannequin. It didn’t really add up. I had done a Google search last night and I didn’t find anything like this quality of mannequin online. Dick had helped me look for a manufacturer’s mark, but we found none. It seemed Daphne was a one-of-a-kind mannequin. Dick said it wasn’t intended as a sex toy—and I’m assuming he’d know, since he’d worked in Vice before.

  Why would someone take a non-sex doll to the park for sex? That seemed like something you’d do in the privacy of your own home. Though, yeah, there was something kind of dangerous and exciting about doing it in a public space with the chance of getting caught.

  Before those thoughts went any further, my phone buzzed.

  “Hey there,” I said to Kay. “Are you at work?”

  “Yeppers. I had to drink an entire pot of coffee this morning and spike my system into a doughnut-ingested sugar high. But I’m here.”