Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  “Don’t tease Rocky! He’s unpredictable when he’s hungry.”

  Gunnar raised an eyebrow and looked at the animal’s woefully sad face. With a white head of fur, except for a pair of large brown patches around both eyes, the St. Bernard did look something like a battered boxer. The bloodshot, sagging eyes even resembled a state of punch-drunkenness.

  “Yo! Rock!” Gunnar joked.

  Erika removed her shoes, then patted the dog’s head again. “Let’s go,” she said and turned for the kitchen. “Let me ask you a question about something else now.”

  Erika’s voice snapped Gunnar out of his mesmerized stare. But now Rocky wandered away from his mistress’s side and investigated Gunnar’s legs and hands with its huge, sniffing nose.

  “Yo! Rocky, you’re gonna be my inside man when I wanna come surprise the boss lady, ain’t ya?” he spoke to the dog while Erika hoisted a stout sack of dog food from beside the refrigerator. She poured a large salad bowl on the floor full of enough food to feed three golden retrievers.

  The animal sounded off with a bellowing bark that surprised Gunnar.

  “You and me, Rocko!” He patted the St. Bernard’s head.

  “Listen to me,” Erika said and glanced at Gunnar. “Here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar-question. You think Laura Preston might have a major role in Holt’s death, but why? And how?”

  “If she’s not being completely frank with me,” Gunnar said, “there’s got to be a good reason for it. I don’t like the way she’s trying to deflect attention from the contest and onto these alleged criminal connections of Brad’s.”

  “Maybe the reason is that she’s innocent, and she’s frightened by your insinuations. This guy did business with some underworld types, and you’re harassing her about movie deals that might or might not have even been real.”

  “I think there was a movie deal, and for some reason, she’s not being honest about it. She’s going out of her way to deny it, to erase any evidence of it.”

  “So?”

  “So? Just think about it. This woman is the president of operations of the World BodyBuilding Federation. She controls policy. She calls the shots day to day. She has more say so in what gets done than even Robert Holbrook. Plus, she’s an arch feminist with a social agenda. She’s championing the women bodybuilders, the positive images of women athletes and all that. She despises everything Holt’s Girls in the Buff videos stand for.”

  “You’re certain of her feelings being this strong,” Erika interjected. “Business deals fall apart all the time, and there are all kinds of reasons the parties involved want to keep it quiet.”

  “She told me. When I brought this up the first time we met, she just about snapped at me.”

  “Hmm,” Erika said and took the sack back to the refrigerator after Rocky descended on his dinner. She then reached inside the refrigerator and removed a pair of plastic-wrap-sealed bowls. One of them was filled with a Cobb salad, and the other with an abundant count of small, dark green peppers.

  “Look,” Gunnar said, “she left no doubts when she talked to me. As long as she was at the WBBF and had any say in matters, WBBF Fitness Beauties in the Buff was not going to happen.”

  By now, Erika had claimed a fork from a drawer and was taking bites out of the salad. Each one, however, she chewed for a long time for proper nutritional breakdown—Gunnar remembered one of the main commandments of eating for bodybuilding.

  “But you believe the movie was going to happen after all?” Erika asked.

  “Yeah. It was going to happen for sure. I’m certain of it. So what does that tell you?”

  “Brad could force her to make it?”

  “What if he could?”

  “He had the power somehow?”

  “I think he did.”

  “Blackmail?”

  Gunnar picked up one of the dark little peppers and toyed with it. “He had to have something to be able to force her into the deal.”

  Erika took a pepper as well and bit off half of it. “So he has something on Laura, and he’s going to blackmail her into making a tacky skin movie?” Her tone was somewhat incredulous.

  “Maybe that was just the start.”

  “He wanted a lot more from her, and she killed him?”

  Gunnar replied with a slight nod before biting into the pepper and receiving a very bad surprise. The malignant little vegetable made every recess of his mouth flame up in excruciating agony. “Holy…!” he gasped in terror. “Oh! Oh! That hurts!” Having seen where the trash can was—also beside the refrigerator—he lunged over to it, stomped on the pedal that threw the lid open, and spat the pepper out. “My mouth!”

  Noticing a plastic bag of bread on a shelf, he grabbed for it and tore a piece off, then stuffed it in his mouth.

  “What? Are they all that hot?” he asked after swallowing the bread. The previous shocking sting had subsided to a throbbing burn.

  “They should be,” Erika said with a calm deadpan.

  “How can you eat that stuff?” Gunnar tore off some more bread.

  “It’s addictive. You should try sticking to it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just train my mouth first. Maybe with some acid.”

  “I’d think someone with as many injuries as you would develop a tolerance for pain.” Erika provoked with more of the same deadpan and took a pepper herself. Without reacting, she bit off a piece and chewed it with unflinching tolerance.

  Gunnar felt his eyes tearing from the violent sting and wiped them unabashedly.

  “It’s really addictive,” Erika tried to convince him. “Makes your body release endorphins to counter the sting. A natural high. Just like exercise.”

  Gunnar thought about that and realized it made sense. He even threw a glance toward the pepper bowl but thought better of it.

  “So other than drug dealing and the fact that you never liked him, you believe Holt was blackmailing or threatening Laura Preston.” Erika got back on track.

  “I think it’s a very strong possibility. Probably the strongest one.”

  “And that’s why you’d like to back away from this case. That’s why you don’t want to be Holt’s avenger.”

  “Would you want to be?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Back in the living room, Gunnar recounted the details of the Holt investigation, day by day, as they took seats on the two sofas. In the meantime, Erika helped ease away the stress of the past day by accessing a Mozart on her streaming audio player and letting it run quietly. As she did so, Gunnar took note of a plane geometry text on one end-table, a calculus on another, and the bookshelf above the TV stand holding volumes one and two of advanced college algebra. They were like weight-lifting, Erika explained. Every part of the body atrophied if it wasn’t exercised, and that included the mind. She wanted to keep her faculties sharp by training them with something that always used to be a difficult subject for her in school. The Mozart, she let on, was part of the program too. Some had claimed at one point that the complex melodies of the genius composer stimulated the mind into functioning more rapidly. Whether or not that was true, Erika said, at least the music was soothing after a rough day.

  As Erika sat curled up on the sofa, Rocky laid with his head next to her leg, half his body on the recliner and half of it hanging off in the manner of a big, soft, sedentary tree sloth. She kept stroking the animal’s head as she followed Gunnar’s recollections.

  Lucky dog, Gunnar thought.

  “But the case is not what I want to think about anymore,” he said a moment after the case synopsis was over.

  “I think it might be the least complicated thing to think about,” Erika replied.

  Since she had invited him into her house, Gunnar hoped she didn’t mean that literally. “No, it’s not,” he said.

  Erika’s eyebrows knitted together for a moment. “You don
’t think so?”

  “No. I’ve wanted you back every day since you left. I want you now.”

  “It is complicated, though.”

  “Not complicated at all—”

  Erika cut him off with a bit more force. “You already said twice that we broke up when I left.”

  Yes, he had said that Gunnar realized. But he said so because it was the truth. He wasn’t sure what problems Erika had with the way he framed the events of the past, but essentially they broke up when Erika decided she needed to take yet another step in reinventing herself. When she decided she could only do college and med school at Stanford, right as he was attempting to establish his new business, their relationship had essentially died on the spot. Long distance relationships never worked. They had both decided privately. They had both had them, and they never worked.

  “Well….” Gunnar attempted to grapple for the words to defend his recollections of the past.

  But Erika said, “Can we go on if I feel like this blame is placed on me?”

  “I blame myself for not going after you,” Gunnar said. He thought it sounded good, but he believed it, too. He wished he hadn’t measured his relationship with Erika against other relationships, failed relationships. He had made a mistake that he still regretted.

  “But I can’t be sure that’s how you really feel.”

  “You think I’m placating you?” Gunnar asked. He knew Erika hated it when someone cynically tried to tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully and looked away for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “How can that—?”

  “That I want you so much I’d do anything to have you.”

  “I always felt you didn’t want to try to make the relationship go on because I wasn’t what you had envisioned I should be anymore.”

  “Like what?”

  “The future Ms. Empire contender. Like someone who looks like your superhero girlfriend to go with your larger-than-life, superhero private eye job.”

  “And I’m not a Mr. Empire contender now either.”

  “You know, my mother once told me that I would never get a man if I continued bodybuilding. Then you dumped me because I stopped.”

  “That’s not true. You know that.”

  Erika shook her head, still apparently incredulous. “When suddenly I didn’t hear from you, I imagined you hating me.”

  “Hating you?” Gunnar asked. He thought at the time he might have resented her.

  “How else could we go from such a strong relationship to nothing overnight?”

  “I didn’t hate you,” Gunnar said. “But when the time started to pass, I hated myself for not going after you immediately.”

  There was stillness in the room now. Gunnar tried to read it, tried to interpret it. He wondered what was about to happen. Were they at a turning point for the better or the worse?

  “So what about you?” he asked, at last, unable to stand the silence between them.

  “Me?”

  “Still single and available.”

  Erika smiled at last and rolled her eyes. It looked comical, and Gunnar was happy for that. “Being a total package is too much for most men,” she said, her tone obviously in jest.

  “I know,” Gunnar said and smiled back at her. “It’s exactly what I want.”

  “Those who can handle the bodybuilder can’t handle the doctor. Those who can deal with a successful, well-off doctor can’t handle the bodybuilder.”

  “We’re two of a kind.”

  “Like my ex, Troy,” Erika said, hints of anger etching her face. “He told me he could handle both. He was an administrator at the hospital I worked at in San Francisco. He said my bodybuilding past was quirky.”

  “Quirky?”

  “Quirky. Yeah. He said it was cute and quirky. I think it made him feel enlightened. But what I should always have listened to was the way he emphasized the bodybuilding past. The past was quirky. Then when I suggested I would like to try and compete again, just for fun….”

  “He didn’t think it was quirky anymore? What an asshole.”

  “At first, he said I was trying to pull some sort of stunt. He actually got angry. Then he had affairs with two nurses at the hospital.”

  “Forget about him,” Gunnar said.

  Erika got up from the couch and picked up her shoes. She padded over to a closet by the side of the front door to put them away and watching her do it recalled more of Gunnar’s fond memories. He used to enjoy lying in bed in the mornings and letting her get up first, just savoring the sight of every move she made. The silky white blouse she wore as part of her professional work attire, very thin no doubt, so it would be comfortable enough under her hospital lab coat, couldn’t come close to concealing the hard, flexing blocks of muscles in her arms, shoulders, and back as she moved.

  “If the old group back at the muscle pit could see you in that business suit,” Gunnar said, getting up and approaching Erika.

  “Does it tone down the hard edges?” she asked.

  “A little too much,” Gunnar said, standing within inches of Erika now. “I like the hard edges.”

  “I think even my current employers might have a problem with the hard edges.”

  “It’s none of their business.”

  “How about,” Erika said and raised her index and middle fingers on both hands, indicating quotation marks, “‘a concern with the overall implications of sports controversies dealing with performance-enhancing drugs?’”

  “Let ‘em go to hell.”

  “Anyway, I think it’s a nice suit,” Erika said, looking straight into Gunnar’s eyes.

  “Take it off,” he whispered.

  Instead, Erika draped her arms over Gunnar’s shoulders and invited his lips on top of hers. They tasted, savored each other slowly, both of them hungry for the other.

  Gunnar felt her hard, powerful back through her shirt, but his hands quested downward. He went for the waistline of her skirt, pulling the shirt out. He needed to go underneath, needed to feel her skin. The vigor of Erika’s kisses increased as he did this. She thrust her tongue deep inside his mouth.

  By now, Gunnar was getting so hard it started to ache. His pants were impossibly small now. As he pressed himself against Erika, though, her kisses got hungrier. In turn, his arousal throbbed harder. Erika tore at his hair, licked, sucked, bit at his mouth wildly.

  After feeling along Erika’s back, Gunnar was driven to explore as much of her body as he could get his hands on. He swept lower, wedging his hands inside her skirt, grabbing and caressing her hard buttocks. He desperately searched for the seams of her panties.

  Thankfully, Erika, too, went looking for Gunnar’s waistline. She quickly opened his belt and pulled his zipper down. The release of some of that pressure at once eased his discomfort yet fed his arousal.

  With Erika’s hands inside his pants, Gunnar had to open her shirt. Pure reflex drove him now. He nearly tore her buttons off as he rushed to uncover more of her body. He kissed her lips again, then down her chin, her throat, and felt, licked the thick, veiny cords of muscle along her neck. As he got to the upper reaches of her large, hard pectorals, he grabbed her shirt and yanked it off her fiercely. He had to get to her bra and unfasten it as quickly as he could, tear it off if need be.

  No material had to be torn as Erika let her shirt peel away from her, then helped her bra off. She wrapped her arms around Gunnar’s neck and captured his head against her chest. He took in, he explored, he got lost along the rippling landscape of her incredible torso. Along the lower edges of her large pectoral muscles, he licked and teased her tiny mounds of breasts.

  “Upstairs.” Erika could barely pant out the words.

  Gunnar wasn’t sure if they could make it. He needed her r
ight now. He needed her out of her clothes right now. He needed to be all over her, on top of her, inside her this instant. But somehow, they did manage to make it into the bedroom, where Gunnar virtually tackled her onto the bed.

  His clothes were gone by then, and Erika was only in her tiny pink lace panties. He went down and kissed her hot, liquid core as he removed the panties. As the material was fastened around her thighs and his hands, one part of him commanded Gunnar to finish the job, yet another was unable to stop kissing her.

  He moved to free her of that last stitch of clothing and followed her panties down with his lips. He kissed along Erika’s inner thighs, down her calves, her feet, her toes.

  After tossing the panties across the room, Gunnar continued back the same way he had come. He struggled to command himself, to discipline himself to go slow. Her delicious flavor, her addictive aroma made it unbearable to slow down. Erika’s panting, building to gasps, then cries of pleasure as he teased her, reassured him that she was enjoying every protracted moment.

  CHAPTER 36

  Gunnar brought his car to a stop by a red light and tried readjusting the angle of the air-conditioning vent.

  He was still euphoric, still wired from his night with Erika. It was nearly impossible to think of anything other than her. But he had to get back to work, and he had to devote time to Kelly now. He had followed Charlie Crewson’s hoods to Rolling Hills Estates, where Copeland Whitlock lived, but Kelly wouldn’t know about it for a time to come. He had forgotten his cell phone at Erika’s anyway, and he had his own priority cases to keep him from searching for a way to speak to the lawyer when nothing unusual happened. He interpreted the morning’s ride to the Whitlock residence as a scouting mission for the trigger-men, conducted to see what road their mark took to work. But it looked like they missed him by a good twenty-five minutes. It was at times like those, and when the alarm of his wristwatch urged him out of Erika’s arms, that Gunnar felt like blowing away Copeland Whitlock himself.

  When the light changed, he closed the last mile of distance to the Foundry. There he turned into the parking lot and headed for his reserved spot underneath the back stairs to his office. The lot was nearly empty this time of day, and Gunnar wanted to laugh at the surreal company greeting him as he arrived. There was something so peculiar today about the lusty gaze Cassandra Hill, American Centerfold, cast onto the lot and in his direction. For some reason, her smoldering glance wasn’t merely perturbed right now, but downright angry, judgmental maybe.