by Nancy Bush
Brenda’s next, he reminded himself.
Well, yes, she was next. He felt angry with the restrictions he’d put on himself. He’d gotten away with Rayne and Bibi, hadn’t he? What harm was there in following up on this woman while he waited for Brenda to return from wherever she’d gone? He set his teeth. Brenda was going to pay for making him wait.
He headed inside, taking a quick look around. It was the afternoon and the place was mostly empty. Seeing the “cowboy” at the bar, he sauntered over.
The man gave him a hard look. “I’m waiting for someone,” he warned, making it clear he didn’t want Thad to sit down.
“I’m not tryin’ to take your seat, man,” Thad drawled. The voice was an affectation, a distraction.
“Sure looked like it.”
“You waitin’ for that woman in here a few weeks ago?” asked Thad.
He frowned. “You been here before?”
“She looked like your woman. Pretty.”
He’d thrown the “your woman” thing in to make the man feel more comfortable, though it had been clear to Thad that she’d been keeping her distance.
The guy relaxed a bit. “Yeah, well. She busted me a few times, but she’s hot, y’know? Whad’re ya gonna do.”
Busted me? A cold snake of fear coiled in his stomach. She was a cop? He had a moment of panic, though there was no reason for it. The woman didn’t even know his name. All he’d done was hit on her, nicely. Still, he hadn’t expected her to be part of law enforcement. “She a cop?”
“Ex.”
“River Glen PD?”
“Yep.” He gave Thad a sharp look. “You’re not trying to poach, are ya?”
“Just admiring.”
Thad moved a few stools away and got the bartender’s attention, ordering a beer. He hated beer, but when playing the part of a shitkicker you needed shitkicker booze.
Could he push it further? An ex-cop. He would be wise to steer clear of her. But his dick said differently. Even now it was responding to the challenge. He took a place on the opposite end of the bar from the cowboy and sipped on his beer until he’d cooled off. Seemed like he couldn’t think about any of his women without getting hot. He moved his thoughts to Brenda, but imagining what he would do to her gave him a twitch as well. He just had to keep his cool.
Clearly the cowboy did not have anyone coming to take the seat beside him as nothing happened over the next hour. Thad nursed his beer, figured the man had just been hopeful. The cowboy was drinking vodka and he wasn’t drinking responsibly. He was starting to get louder and the female bartender was doing her best to ignore him. She was older, but not half bad-looking, so maybe the cowboy was working his moves.
Thad got up and wandered back over his way. The man was going to need a ride home if things continued this way and it sure looked like they were. He debated on his next move. He should just up and go, but he wanted more information. In the end, he decided to leave the bar and wait outside for the man to stagger out.
Thad mentally kicked himself for not memorizing the woman’s license plate number. It would have been so easy. He’d just been blinded by thoughts of being inside her and she’d driven away while he’d fantasized. It hadn’t seemed so important at the time.
It took another hour for the cowboy to leave the bar. Thad had been about to give up. He’d seesawed back and forth, arguing with himself about all the many and good reasons to give up on the ex-cop. He’d just about convinced himself it was too dangerous, when the guy lurched outside, looking at his phone and damn near tripping down the one step outside the door in the process. Maybe he was calling for a ride.
“Hey,” Thad called, climbing from his truck. “I was just comin’ back. You leavin’?”
“Yeah . . .”
“You’re not drivin’, are ya?”
“No . . . no more do-ees. But at least she won’t pull me over no more.” He held up a finger and pointed it at Thad, swaying a bit.
“That ex-cop?”
“Yeah. Her.”
“You live near here? Could give ya a ride, maybe. If it’s not too far . . .” He let reluctance color his voice.
“Not that far.”
Thad was testing him. The man was wasted, but if Thad seemed too eager, maybe the guy would remember being hustled. You never knew with drunks.
But a Good Samaritan who was rethinking his offer was a safe bet.
“How far?” Thad frowned. He pretended to try to circumvent the man and go into the bar.
“Just . . . just over there.” He waved toward the west.
“River Glen or . . . ?”
“Yeah . . . yeah, well, Laurelton, but just across the line, you know?”
“That might be too far for me.”
“Oh . . . shit, okay . . .”
“What’s your name?” asked Thad.
“Gillis.” He was working his phone again, pitching a bit, catching himself each time before he toppled over.
“Don Gillis.”
“You sure it’s just across the line?”
“Fuckin’ phone. Fuckin’ Uber . . . fuckin’ List . . . Lyft . . .”
“I’ll take you.”
Gillis looked up. “Hey, man, really?”
“I was comin’ back for another drink, but I’d better not,” said Thad, throwing a longing look toward the bar. “The wife doesn’t like me circlin’ back, ya’know?”
Gillis said something Thad couldn’t quite make out, but when Thad encouraged him to climb into his truck, he complied, practically falling into the passenger seat. “Thanks, man,” he said on a burp as he struggled with the seat belt.
Thad hoped he wouldn’t puke in his cab. It would be a lot to put up with just for some information.
“Give me some directions,” Thad told Gillis, who’d closed his eyes for a second.
“Bitch of a day,” he said.
“You got an address?”
Gillis coughed up the street name and Thad headed toward Laurelton, saying, “Point out where to turn as we get closer.”
“Sure thing, man. Thanks.”
From that point on it was a fairly quiet ride except for Gillis’s heavy breathing, which bordered on snoring even though the man was awake. Thad began to feel repelled. At one point he jostled Gillis’s shoulder a bit and said, “You there?”
He lifted his head and seemed to try to rouse himself from his stupor. “Yeah . . . sure . . .”
“Your woman didn’t show up tonight?”
“Woman? Who?”
“The ex-cop . . . ?”
“Oh. Laughlin. Sure.”
Laughlin. Thad smiled. Good. He had a name.
But then Gillis slid him an assessing look from beneath the brim of his hat, making Thad wonder if he wasn’t as drunk as he appeared. “She’s not my woman yet, but I’m working on it. Okay, pal?”
“Message received.”
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Chas.” As soon as he said it, he was sorry. If ever Gillis should mention his alias . . . he should have come up with something completely different.
They crossed into Laurelton and Gillis directed him to a narrow street far away from the nicer parts of the city to a tired-looking house down a weed-choked lane. By Thad’s reckoning they might actually be outside the city limits of Laurelton as well, maybe in a patch of area owned by the county. There was something scruffy and untended about the roads that made him think so.
“Thanks, Chas,” Gillis said as he climbed out.
That chilled him as he watched the man work hard to walk steadily to his front door. He didn’t like him repeating his name.
Gillis entered and turned on a light and Thad slowly wheeled his truck around, easing away, watching through his rearview.
Would Gillis remember him? Would it matter? Only if he got near to Laughlin, the ex-cop, and only if she . . . disappeared . . . and Gillis remembered . . .
But he would remember and make a stink. It would all come out.
Leave her alone. You have Rayne and you’ll have the others. You don’t need her.
“There are other fish in the sea.” One of dear old dead Dad’s trite lines. The man who would screw anything that moved, according to Lorena. Thad himself was a helluva lot more selective. But he wanted what he wanted. And he wanted her.
“Laughlin. Officer Laughlin, previously of the River Glen PD.”
He thought of her in his lair. Chained to the wall. Naked. That dark hair lying against white skin. He could have her any time he wanted.
He shuddered with anticipation. He was going to have to do some research on her. He knew he couldn’t bring her to the lair. Too dangerous. Too, too dangerous. Lorena was topside, and maybe Gram, too. There was no way he could bring a woman home and keep her a secret from them.
Unless . . . they were gone. Then no one would ever bother him. He could get the money back he’d lost and his inheritance. He could live there forever.
He drove home, hurried down to his lair, and looked around. He stripped down to his pants and worked out on the rings until he was soaked in sweat. His eyes were trained on the whiteboard where beside Rayne’s name he’d written Bibi’s in green Sharpie and Brenda’s in yellow, which might be premature but she was next on his list.
He walked up to the board, breathing hard. Picked up the blue Sharpie. He didn’t know the ex-cop’s first name yet. For now he just wrote in her last one: Laughlin.
* * *
Mackenzie followed Troi Bevins into the city limits of Laurelton. When he pulled into the parking lot of Nona Sofia’s, an Italian restaurant that had been a part of the Laurelton landscape since the nineties, she followed him in but parked her vehicle on the opposite corner from his, tucked behind a Suburban.
Troi didn’t notice her as he headed inside.
Mac debated. Maybe this was where she could talk to him. Maybe he was hitting a happy hour.
Mac had eaten at Nona Sofia’s twice before, both times with her ex, Pete Fetzler. Both times had been memorable for different reasons. The first time had been her birthday; he was in a good mood and they’d had a nice evening. The second time all they’d done was fight. It was their last date before their breakup. Mac had called off the relationship. Pete had fooled her into thinking he was a different person when they’d first started dating, but she’d learned he was a guy who needed constant ego stroking. She’d been suckered by him, she could admit now. She’d fallen for his good looks.
As she’d realized his true character she’d stopped feeding his need for affirmation and that had not gone well. He’d tried to bully her, and prove he was right about whatever issue came up, even when he was dead wrong, especially when he was dead wrong. His good behavior deteriorated and disappeared entirely. He’d been white-faced and shocked when she’d broken up with him, then he’d harassed her mercilessly, phoning at all hours, name-calling, even following her. She’d just gotten her job with the RGPD and she let him know if he didn’t back off, she would get a restraining order and find a way to have him arrested. She was serious as a heart attack and he’d believed her. He’d backed off but told everyone they knew that he’d been the one to “kick her to the curb.” She’d tried to be above it, but it had royally pissed her off. Still, making a stink was exactly what he was looking for. A reason to keep fighting, to keep her engaged. She’d swallowed back her anger and shut him out of her life. Most people who knew them also knew the truth.
Mac had just decided to follow Troi inside, strike up a conversation again, pretend they were just two people who seemed destined to run into each other, when he came back out carrying a white take-out bag. Mac stayed in her car and waited as he backed out of the lot. She eased out after him but he was only on the road about four blocks before he turned into a strip mall. She slowly pulled into the lot, worrying that he would notice her, but Troi had already parked and was aiming toward Inky-Dink, a tattoo parlor wedged between a coffee shop and an independent appliance repair store. Inky-Dink’s walls and front windows were adorned with an elaborate griffin-like creature that spread toward the other businesses. As Troi entered the shop, Mac saw that there was a smaller version of the griffin on the OPEN sign swinging from the inside of the door.
Mac didn’t know this particular establishment, but when she was a cop she’d become acquainted with three brothers who ran a tattoo shop in River Glen. Two of the brothers believed the middle brother was trying to rip them off. A fight had ensued amongst them that had resulted in broken furniture and equipment, and damage to the shop’s walls. The middle brother ended up in the hospital with a broken jaw, pointing the finger at his other two brothers. He got even by turning over company records full of flagrant tax evasion tactics. All of them ended up in court and faced huge fines.
It’s amazing what you can get killed for if you try to carve out your own niche within the family hierarchy. Taft’s words. Maybe he had something there.
She stayed in her car, wondering again if this was a good locale for a stop-and-chat, when Troi came back out, this time accompanied by a young woman whose tattoos ran down her arms beneath her short-sleeved shirt. As Mac watched, they climbed in Troi’s Audi and shared what looked like a calzone that Troi had picked up at Nona Sofia’s. When they were finished, they leaned into each other and kissed. Then they both got out of the car and were saying goodbye when the girl threw herself into Troi’s arms and they hugged and kissed some more, bodies pressed together, grinding a little against each other in a way that most people would find embarrassing in public. After a few minutes of this, the girl skipped back inside the parlor and Troi, once again, climbed into his Audi.
Mac was beginning to think Troi would never land somewhere, when he turned into a shitkicker bar called Cal’s nearer to Portland. It appeared to be on par with the Waystation. Mac left her baseball cap on as this time she got out of the RAV and followed Troi inside.
Cal’s was a few rungs up from the Waystation. The walls were paneled in V-groove fir that looked recently stained and the wooden barstools shone as if they’d been oiled. The bottles behind the bar didn’t actually gleam, but neither did they look as if the dust had settled for too long like at the Waystation.
Troi strode straight to the dartboard. He swept off his cap, ran his hands through his blondish locks, then stuffed the cap back on and picked up the darts. Mackenzie seated herself at the end of the bar where she could keep an eye on him. He hadn’t seen her yet, which was just fine.
He played a couple of games by himself. Did a pretty good job. Then he left the last darts in the board and moseyed over to the bar. Only then did he recognize Mackenzie and give a start. “Hey,” he said, frowning.
“Hey, yourself.” There was an expanse of bar between them, so Mac moved to a stool closer to him. “Looked like you didn’t do too badly.” She inclined her head toward the dartboard.
“What are you doing here?”
“I followed you here,” she admitted.
Something flared in his eyes. Fear? He then blinked a couple of times. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head from side to side.
“Well, then . . . why?” Her words seemed to finally reach the back of his brain. She could almost see the moment when he realized she might have seen him with the girl with the sleeve tattoos. “From when?”
“Since work.”
“Why are you following me?” he demanded, more aggressively.
“I wanted to ask you about Rayne.”
“Rayne!” He gave her a hard look. “I told you what I know about Rayne. Elise and I are back together, so don’t be talking anymore about Rayne.”
“I was just interested in the timing. I’m following up on what happened to Rayne. After her death you went back to Elise, right?”
He recoiled as if she’d struck him. “No. Elise and me were together before Rayne selfied-out.”
“Yeah, but Rayne said you two hooked up once more after you went back to Elise,” Mac lied.
“Well, that . . . that’s not true! Don’t you be telling Elise that! That’s a fucking lie!”
“You never got back with Rayne?”
“NO. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but if she told you that, she was lying! Rayne was a liar! She made things up all the time. I made a mistake with her. If you say something to Elise . . .” There was something vaguely threatening in his tone that might have worried her, except he looked like he was about to cry.
“I’m not going to say anything to Elise.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” He tried to pull himself together.
Mac believed he was telling the truth about the timing, even if he was cheating on Elise with the girl from Inky-Dink. “I’ll be honest with you. I’ve got a bad feeling about what happened to Rayne. I don’t know if it’s true. I’m just trying to figure it out.”
“Huh.” Troi ordered a beer from the bartender and he sucked it down pretty fast. Mac asked for vodka on the rocks, which she could tell impressed him. It was interesting how much cred she got from ordering hard liquor even if she only sipped her drink.
“Tell me about Rayne,” she encouraged.
“Nothing to tell,” he said, taking the stool next to her. His barriers were coming down a bit, as if her drinking had somehow warmed up their relationship, such as it was. She wasn’t a cop any longer, and she wanted him to talk to her like a compatriot. People talked more if they saw you as an equal.
“Rayne and I were just . . . it was a mistake. I told you that before. It wasn’t serious.”
“You met her through Elise.”
“Yeah . . .”
“How did you meet Elise?” asked Mac.
He picked up his glass and kind of jiggled the half inch of beer in the bottom. “I used to go to this bar at this restaurant, Mexicali Rose.”
“I know it.”
“Elise was working there and we met and hooked up. That’s when I was still with Laidlaw Construction.” Mac felt herself respond to the name of Nolan’s company, but Troi didn’t seem to notice. “We were really just kinda casually dating. One time I saw Rayne. She was with Elise, well, not really, they were fighting. Rayne had dropped Elise off and there was something about her being late . . . I don’t know. But that’s how I met Rayne.”