by Gail Dayton
"You son of a bitch." Marilyn lit into the detective as she rummaged in her purse, bringing out a tissue for Eli. "You sick son of a bitch. You did that on purpose, didn't you? Just to see what would happen."
"I'm sorry." Jackson looked down at his shoes and the cuffs of his ruined pants and made a face. "Believe me, I'm sorry. But when we find a murdered woman with a phone number on her that's the same number as the one given to report a woman in danger--"
"Do you honestly think we're stupid enough to give the police that number if we had anything to do with her death?" Marilyn moved in on him.
Eli threw away the tissue and caught Marilyn's arm. "Let's take this into the hall. I want some water."
Jackson made another face at his shoes. "I got shoes in my car but no pants. Damn it, I'll have to go home and change."
"Serves you right." Marilyn led the way into the hall.
"Is it Teresa?" Jackson asked.
Eli rinsed his mouth at the water fountain down the hall by the bathrooms and took a drink. "Couldn't tell. I'll have to get a closer look."
"Oh, Eli, no."
"I'm okay with it," he told her. "It was just the shock, the first time."
"Her prints are in the system," Jackson said. "It'll take time, but we can ID her that way."
"Then why did you call us down here?" Marilyn demanded.
Jackson just looked at her, like the answer was obvious.
Eli touched her elbow. "Relax, Marilyn. He's just doing his job, okay? I want him covering all the bases."
"Why? We know who did it. We told them who did it before it even happened."
"But proving it is something else." He gave her arm a light squeeze, then let go. He turned to the detective who was wiping his shoes and slacks with wet paper towels collected for him by a kind-hearted tech on her way in to work.
"Jackson," Eli said. "I want to go in, see her."
"You don't have to." Jackson straightened.
"Yeah, I do. I need to know now. She's got a tattoo--"
"There wasn't one mentioned in her arrest reports." Jackson thumbed through the file folder.
"It's fairly new. If she wasn't arrested in the last six months, it wouldn't show in any report."
"Her last arrest was in May."
"For what?"
"Possession. Solicitation. Maybe she cleaned up her act after that."
Eli made a face. "Maybe. If she did, it didn't last."
"Describe the tattoo. I'll take a look. Let you know if it's there."
He shook his head. "I want to go in. I have to."
Marilyn touched his shoulder, whether in support or protest, he didn't know.
Jackson spoke, frowning. "I don't want you yakking on my shoes again."
"Nothin' left to blow. Dry heaves at worst. And now I know what I'll see, I'll be okay." Eli leaned his weight on the crutch, letting it hold some of his exhaustion. "I'm not leaving till I see her." He had to. Had to be sure it was Teresa. Had to tell her he was sorry.
Jackson studied him a long moment, then shrugged. "Okay. But I'm standing across the room when they lift the sheet."
"Are you sure?" Marilyn asked, hand warm on his arm.
"Yeah." He met her gaze, found a half-smile to reassure her. "Wait here, okay?"
She stared back into his eyes and finally nodded. "Okay."
True to his word, Jackson stayed by the door while Eli crossed the stainless-steel-trimmed room to the rolling table where the body lay covered by a sheet. The attendant lifted it, eyeing Eli warily.
She was thin like Teresa, her ribs starting to show. In contrast to the devastation of her face, her body was virtually unmarked, save for--Eli closed his eyes, but he couldn't avoid the burnt smell. Involuntarily, his hand lifted to touch scars on his own body the identical size and shape of the wounds on hers that he didn't want to see. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
"I need to see her hip," he told the attendant. Eli pointed at his hip, high on the left over the bone. "About here."
"Sure." The attendant moved the sheet lower and turned the stiff body.
The tattoo was there. Chinese characters a couple of inches high. Teresa had told him they meant "luck" and "fortune" when she showed it to him on his visit last summer, when it had been new. She hadn't had much of either in her life.
Eli nodded and the attendant laid her back down. He started to pull the sheet back over her face but Eli stopped him. "Give me a minute?"
The attendant hesitated, but at an apparent signal from the detective behind Eli, crossed the room and put his hands behind his back to wait.
Eli folded the sheet as carefully as he could at Teresa's neck, trying to figure out just what he felt. Numb mostly, now he was past the shock of seeing her, of knowing she was dead and how it had happened. But beneath that, he could feel rage whirling like a black cloud, coloring everything it touched, feeding off the sorrow and guilt. He hadn't been able to save her. Hadn't tried very hard. Certainly not hard enough, or she wouldn't be lying on this table.
Pete would miss her. She hadn't been much of a mother, but she was the only mother he had. Eli mourned for that reason. He mourned a life that should have been better but wasn't, and he mourned the ending of that life. Teresa had pretty much been a failure as a person, but as weak and pathetic as she was, she still didn't deserve to die. Not like this.
Steeling himself, Eli lifted his eyes and looked at her face, memorizing every bruise, every cut, every shattered bone. He owed it to her to remember her death. And he read the message written there. Flash considered this payback.
The rage roared, wanting out, and for a minute, Eli was tempted to let it. To find Flash and pulverize him into this same kind of bloody mess. But he'd learned a few things over the past twelve years.
Revenge spread like some vicious disease, destroying everything it touched without easing one bit of the pain, and the people it hurt most had nothing to do with the original offense. He didn't want it reaching out to hurt Pete. Or Marilyn.
He heard someone moving behind him, sensed Jackson's presence just over his left shoulder. "When did she die?" Eli asked. "Do you know?"
"Early estimate is between five and six yesterday evening."
So she'd already been dead when he tried to buy Flash off. No wonder he hadn't wanted to deal.
"Why do you ask?" Jackson asked.
"The Flashman gave me till midnight to get him what he wanted." Eli turned around, leaning heavily on his crutch, too tired to move any further. But he couldn't look at her any more.
"What was that?"
"Her kid. A little boy just turned nine."
"You know where he is?"
Eli met Jackson's gaze. "He's safe. His dad took him away someplace safe. Out of Pittsburgh."
Jackson nodded, accepting the fact that Eli wouldn't tell him anymore. "So Dwayne killed her before the deadline was up."
"If the estimate is right."
The cop's eyes narrowed as he looked at Eli. "You're not thinking about anything stupid like payback on our friend Dwayne, are you?"
"No. He's not smart enough to keep from getting caught. Prison time for a guy like Flash is better payback than anything I could do. Besides, something happens to him now, I know who you'd look at first. And I got people still alive to look after."
"The lady out there?" Jackson tipped his head toward the door.
"She's one."
Curiosity evident in every line of his face, Jackson didn't say anything else.
"We done here?" Eli straightened, took his weight back on his good leg getting ready to move.
"Yeah, unless you want to tell me what truck hit you."
"Two baseball bats and a tire iron ran me over." Eli shrugged. "Flash, probably, warning me away. But you can't prove it by me. It was three guys I didn't know."
"We'll need you to make a statement. Maybe we'll find something that will give us a way to Flash."
Eli started toward the door. He needed to get out of here, back to M
arilyn. "Later, maybe. I'm tired. We've been up all night."
"So have I." Jackson opened the door for him.
"Yeah, but we're civilians."
"I'll call. We'll want statements from both of you."
"I don't know anything," Marilyn said. "I was only the driver."
"Whatever you know, Mrs. Ballard. It could be more help than you realize." Jackson pulled a crisp white business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. "Call me if either of you remembers anything else." He looked hard at Eli while he spoke, like he suspected Eli hadn't told everything he knew.
Which he hadn't, but Jackson didn't need to know that Eli was Pete's dad. Nobody did. Including Pete.
They got to leave the building by the front door, which saved at least half a block of walking. Eli's aching legs were grateful, as was his good arm which kept getting new bruises from the crutch. He'd get rid of the thing, except his broken leg would probably ache worse if he did. And Marilyn would pitch a fit.
The drive back to Marilyn's was punctuated only by yawns. Eli couldn't banish the sight of Teresa's ruined face or her pale, wasted body from his mind. He hadn't killed her. Flash had done that. Teresa's stupidly foolish behavior had made it possible for Flash to get his hands on her. But Eli hadn't done much to stop it.
Eli followed Marilyn silently up to her apartment, aching all over with exhaustion, weighed down even more with regret and sadness. It wasn't quite grief, this weight on him. Given Teresa's lifestyle, early death had been almost inevitable. But not a death like this.
Inside the apartment, Marilyn opened out the sofa bed. "I know I got more sleep than you did, but I'm still exhausted. I vote we pretend it's night and go to bed now."
"Whatever you want." No matter how tired he was, Eli doubted he would sleep. "I'm sorry you saw that."
"So am I." Marilyn paused in the middle of getting pillows from the closet. "And yet, I'm not. I--I think I needed to see her. To understand just how evil this Dwayne Flashman person is."
A smile twitched at Eli's mouth. "I haven't thought of him as Dwayne in years. When we were kids, anybody calling him Dwayne instead of Flash would get a beatin' thrown down on him. And since he was bigger than me most of the time back then, I usually got the shit beat out of me. Pissed him off when I finally started growing."
"You knew each other on the streets?"
"Yeah. He hasn't changed. He was a mean, sick sonofabitch then, and he's meaner and sicker now. But you don't have to worry about him." Eli's leg ached in its cast, but if he sat down, he'd just have to get up again.
Marilyn left the bed and approached him. "Let me help you off with that T-shirt."
"Thanks." Eli raised his good arm and curled his body down so she could reach.
"You think Flash will give up on getting Teresa's son?" she asked, as she expertly whipped the shirt over his head and left arm, leaving him to work it down off the cast.
Did he? "Probably. There's plenty of other kids out there, easier to get hold of."
But then he was sure Flash had killed Teresa the way he did because Fat Fred had died that same way. Flash apparently thought Eli had something to do with the old man's death. Flash hated Fat Fred almost as much as Eli had. But Dwayne "Flash" Gardner was Fat Fred Gardner's son. Father-son things were complicated, and got even more complicated in the circles where the Gardners ran.
"It makes me sick, thinking about that man on the loose," Marilyn said. "Do you think the police can catch him?"
"Yeah, I do." Of course he had his doubts about how quickly they'd manage to do it and whether, once caught, they could keep him in jail. Eli hobbled into the bathroom, peeled out of his jeans, and took care of business.
When he came out, Marilyn was in her long white cotton gown with the lace at the neck, unplugging the phone in the kitchen. "If they want to talk to us that bad, they can call back."
Eli kept moving past her toward the bed. Seeing her in that gown at night with the room nothing but shadows was a lot different from seeing her wear it in bright morning light. The gown wasn't so thin he could see through it, exactly. But he could see the shape of her body, the way her breasts swayed when she moved.
He wanted her. That was nothing new. The wanting never seemed to stop. But right now it wasn't his body screaming the loudest. Yes, his arms whimpered with the need to hold her. His lips cried, needing to kiss her, but they were nothing compared to his heart. He thought it was his heart, given the ache in the center of his chest. Whatever it was, it needed... He didn't know what the hell it needed, other than Marilyn.
He'd never hurt like this before, soul-deep and empty, not even when his dad died or when his mom let Stan kick him out. He'd hurt bad then, but different. Eli sat on the edge of the bed, unable to summon up the energy to haul the damn leg cast up onto the bed so he could lie down. He wished Marilyn would come over and fix what ailed him without him having to figure out what it was he needed.
She went to the windows and dropped the pulled-back curtains over the blinds. They didn't darken much.
He didn't turn to watch her moving around in the room on her side of the bed. Just hearing her was bad enough. In a minute, when she was safely under the covers, maybe then he'd have enough energy to pick up his weighty leg and lie down. Though "safe" was a relative term, given Marilyn's presence in the bed beside him.
"Eli?"
He twitched in surprise when Marilyn set her hand on his shoulder. Then she sat beside him and slid her hand down his good arm until she clasped his hand. "Are you okay?"
He shrugged a shoulder. As okay as could be expected, given everything. He didn't want to talk about it. Not now. Not with Marilyn.
She freed her hand from his clinging fingers and put her arm around him. Then she put her other arm around him, turning toward him, and pulled his head down on her shoulder.
How did she know he'd been dying inside for lack of this? Wanting it and not daring to ask. Eli put his arms around her and held on tight, as tight as he could with a cast on one arm.
They sat like that a long time. An eternity and not nearly long enough. Nobody cried. Nobody spoke. They just sat on the edge of the bed and held each other, Eli's head on Marilyn's shoulder.
Tears kept welling up in Marilyn's eyes and then fading away again. Her heart ached, thinking of all Eli had endured, not just today, but in his life. It was a miracle he'd not only survived, but come through it to be the kind of man he was. He wouldn't want her tears. She was grateful he'd take her comfort. She needed his comfort so badly after seeing that poor woman's--
She shuddered as the horrific vision slid back into her mind. Eli tightened his arms around her. Marilyn stroked a hand down the satin skin of his back, feeling vaguely guilty and yet ferociously glad that she could enjoy such a physical sensation. She'd heard about this reaction to death but had never herself experienced it before.
Eli nuzzled into her neck, his lips brushing her collarbone in what could have been accident. Was it? Did she want it to be?
While Marilyn was trying to make up her mind, her hand took its own action, making a return trip up Eli's back. It moved slowly, shaping itself to the contours of lean muscle and spine, exploring what her eyes had seen every day for a month. It had barely reached his shoulder blade when Eli pulled away. He sat up straight and looked at Marilyn, his eyes somehow bluer than she had ever seen them.
She stared back, unable to speak. But he didn't seem to want words. He studied her face. Marilyn licked her lips, swallowed, wondering what he saw.
Twelve
***
Eli's gaze lowered slowly. She resisted the urge to hide herself. There was nowhere to hide, and she'd look stupid if she tried.
Eventually, Eli looked at her hand, the self-directed one that had gone exploring on its own. It now lay oh-so-innocently in her lap. He moved his broken arm toward it, then switched and pulled his other from behind her back to pick it up.
His eyes flicked back to hers and watched her as he lifted
her hand and set it on his chest, fingertips brushing his collarbone. He pressed gently until it lay flat against his skin. Then he took her face in both hands and moving slowly, as if to give her a chance to object, he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.
She should object. But she flat couldn't make herself. Maybe if he'd been brash or in any way aggressive, she could have done it. But this-- This sweet, tender, yearning kiss...
Eli opened his mouth over hers and the kiss, no less sweet and tender, blazed with heat. He moved his hand to cup her head as his tongue slid seductively into her mouth. When had she opened it?
The fingertips emerging from his cast brushed lightly over her cheek and stroked down her neck as they kissed. She'd been kissed a lot of times in a lot of ways in her life, but never like this, as if he wanted to melt her down and mix the results with his own meltdown until there was no separation between what was Eli and what was Marilyn.
They kissed and kissed. Her impertinent hand, the one he'd set near his shoulder, decided to go exploring again, sliding down until she felt the mad race of his heartbeat. Eli traced the neckline of her gown, fingers ruffling the eyelet lace dipping from one shoulder to the other, over and over again.
He slid his mouth across her cheek to her ear and teased the lobe with his tongue, his breath harsh and rapid in her ear. "Lie down with me," he murmured, words coming sporadically between breaths. "I want you so much. Please, God, say you want me too."
"I--You do?" She shouldn't be so surprised. He'd been kissing her like--like a man who wanted the woman he was kissing. He'd been telling her so for a week or more. But she hadn't really believed it. The idea was so impossible. Even now, in the middle of his sweet, seductive kisses, she had her doubts.
"God, Marilyn, what does it take to convince you?" With his cast, he shoved her hand down his chest into his lap and lower, using his fingertips to urge hers to wrap themselves around his hot, hard erection.
"There," he said, pausing to gasp as those independent-minded fingers of hers traced the rigid shape inside his shorts. "Is that enough? Do you believe me now? I want you."
She tried to pull her hand away, but it refused to obey her. It wanted to touch, feel how he filled her hand, explore his dimensions, measure his heat.