by Ken Lindsey
I dug it back out, doing my best not to swerve from my lane, "Gavin English."
"What are you up to tonight?" David asked, sounding like he was in a good mood.
"I'm cruising Fourth Street right now, why?"
"Dirty pervert," he laughed. "Pay your hooker and come get a drink with me."
"The Rail?"
"Yeah, I'll be there in fifteen. Don't make me wait for-fucking-ever this time."
I put the phone down after he hung up and braved a quick sniff under my pits. Not bad, half deodorant, half manly musk. No need to head home and change. I may not have been dressed up, but at least I wasn't wearing sweats this time.
With it being a weeknight, I didn't have to pay to get in to the strip club, but the bouncer gave me the hairy eyeball as I walked by for good measure. He's probably dating one of the strippers we took home the other night. Oh well, not the first time, won't be the last.
David sat at the bar with two full tumblers of something dark in front of him, and a girl pressing her cleavage as close to his face as she could without letting him motorboat her. Her voice came out sultry and sweet and she kept touching his arm and mussing his hair until he told her that he wasn't interested in a private dance. She took off quickstyle, and forgot that he existed.
"Keeping up your winning streak with the ladies I see," I said as I dropped down on the stool next to him.
"Yeah yeah, go to hell." He turned and looked me up and down, "Jesus, you might as well be wearing sweats. You look like hot garbage."
"I wish you'd stop calling me Jesus. And back off; I've been working, what's your excuse?"
He laughed and emptied his glass in one shot. "Speaking of work, we had a big day today."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, taking my first swig from my glass. The liquid tasted spicy and smooth, better than our usual. Delicious even. "Woah, what's with the Blue Label?"
"I told you, big day at work! We got an ID on that girl from the other day, the one who was all cut up."
"Okay, well that's good news, but why the hell are you so happy?"
"That douchebag, Rodriguez, got hammered by the press all day, and the Captain made him step down."
It didn't make any sense. Why would the Lieutenant get in trouble for getting an ID on a murder victim? "You're gonna have to give me more if you want me to play along," I said before finishing off my tasty drink.
"Rodriguez handled the missing persons case last year—filed this girl as a runaway and shoved the whole thing down the line so he could move on to bigger and better. Almost no investigation, and no follow-up at all."
The Blue Label started fighting bells in the back of my head, something about the girl. I didn't want to think too hard. When choosing sides, I always went with the booze. There was something there though.
"We're celebrating because Rodriguez is getting taken down a peg? I can get behind that," I joked as I shook my empty glass at him.
"No! We're celebrating because I'm getting the bump to Lieutenant! Jackass."
I smiled and raised my empty glass, "That's amazing. Congrats, David. You deserve it. So, this Jane Doe is gonna be your first case as L.T.?"
"Damn right, but she's not a Jane Doe. First thing tomorrow, I gotta find out everything I can about Denise Beckham. Tonight, though, I'm getting drunk as a skunk so I can spend all the extra cash I'm making."
That damn bell started niggling at the back of my consciousness again. This time, the Blue Label lost out. "Did you say her name was Denise?"
The bartender set two more glasses in front of David, and he took his down in one swallow. After a booze shiver, he answered, "Yeah, Denise Beckham. A local girl who went missing about a year ago. Why?"
"Shit." It could be a coincidence, most likely the situations were unrelated, but the girls knew each other. "I think I just had a conversation about her with one of the kids on the list my client gave me."
"About Denise? You talked to someone that knew her?" David got a pen from his breast pocket and reached for the napkin under his empty glass. "Give me the name and number."
I needed to call Rachel. This could mean the P.D. would take both cases, and work them together. Or it could mean nothing. My brain fluttered with new information and Johnnie Walker Blue.
"Her name was Lucy, but all the rest is back at my place. My girl and your girl were close, them and Lucy."
"How long has your girl been missing?"
"A week or so."
"It's worth looking into..." David belched and stared into his empty glass for several seconds. "You know what? I'm not working tonight. Let's have fun right now, and we can put our heads together tomorrow. I'll see if I can bring you on, advisory capacity or something."
He wanted to be nice, but we both knew there was no way in Hell the P.D. would let me in on the investigation. In any capacity. When I quit, the Captain and I did not part ways gracefully. Shit.
"Thanks, Dave, but I better take off. You have a great time tonight, get a couple lap dances for me."
"Seriously? Come on, how often am I in a good enough mood to invite you out, and pay for drinks?"
"Sorry. I'll call you tomorrow with Lucy's number."
One of the newer girls found her way onto David's lap and he waved me off. She was cute, too young to feel good about taking home, but cute. I had a spasm of jealousy as the bartender refilled David's glass again and made a hasty exit before I could change my mind.
The temperature outside had dropped a few degrees and the evening air helped clear my mind with each breath. I stretched and let the chill do its work on my head. I had to look at those papers again. And in the morning, I needed to get to David before his hangover cleared up. Maybe he would let me check out the files on the cut up girl, if I could get to it before his better sense kicked in.
I lit up a fresh cigarette and stared at my Jeep. She looked lonely, but I knew the drinks still had me foggy and slow. Across the parking lot I spotted a cab just waiting for some horny drunk guy to need a ride home. The sign on top might as well have read, "Gavin, get your ass in here, drunky, and give us your money."
Chapter 8: Breakfast Time
I couldn't sleep. I drank enough to have a wicked headache before the sun got a chance to rise, but not enough to help me get to dreamland. My head just wouldn't turn off. Could the girls' situations be related? Did that mean that Jennifer was getting filleted at that moment? And in the more selfish region of my mind, I worried that this would mean that the case, and my fare, would be handed to the P.D.
To hell with that.
I sat up and grabbed my phone, scrolling to Rachel’s number in my contact list and hitting the green call button. I doubted she would be awake so early, but this needed to be done.
To my horror, I realized that I already knew most of the words to the terrible song that replaced her ringer. Before it could cut to voicemail, she answered with incoherent mumbling.
"Rachel, it's Gavin."
I heard a bed creak and a few other sounds that you should only hear from a person when you know them intimately. For a long time. "What is it, Gavin? Did you find something?" I could tell she was trying to clear her head and not to be annoyed at the same time.
"Maybe not. But I have to talk to you. Can you meet me for breakfast in half an hour?"
"I don't... What is...? Yeah. That's fine."
"Alright, I'll meet you at the Denny's off Plumb."
"Are they even open at 2am?"
"They're always open."
I arrived before Rachel and ordered all the coffee they had available. The waitress laughed and brought me a glass of ice water and the tiniest white porcelain tea cup I had ever seen, half full of coffee.
"I'm gonna need at least eight of those. Or bring one of your pots to the table."
She forced a smile, still not sure if I was kidding, "Umm, seriously?"
"Yes. Please." To make my point I slammed the entire cup in one shot. It burned. Everything from my gums to my guts were on fire and I cou
ldn’t be sure if I would ever use my tongue again. The waitress's eyes went wide and I gave her the biggest smile I could, doing my best to hide the agony I had forced on myself.
She walked away stiffly and came back with one of those old-fashioned glass pots that had the big, black plastic handle. "Can I get you anything else?"
Not daring to speak with my tongue still boiling in my mouth, I shook my head. Once she turned away I reached into the ice water, grabbed as many cubes as I could, and shoved them into my mouth. They melted almost immediately, and I had to fight to swallow.
This is why I shouldn't be allowed to make decisions, or interact with the general public, before I have coffee.
After a few minutes, the burning subsided and I could drink at a normal speed. Other than a scratchy, sore tongue, I would make a full recovery. The pain, mixed with copious amounts of caffeine, cleared the remaining Blue Label from my head by the time Rachel arrived.
She sat in the bench seat across from me, looking great, despite being woken up so early. Her hair rested high and tight in a ponytail, and she wasn't wearing any makeup. Even the jeans and sweatshirt she had thrown on accentuated her body perfectly. Goddamn.
"What's with the giant pot of coffee?"
"I don't know, the waitress dropped it off when I got here. I think she's lazy."
"Figures. What did you want to talk about?"
All I wanted to talk about was the possibility of us getting some naked snuggle time in before the sun came up. Maybe I could bring it up after.
"Are you hungry? Want some coffee?"
"No. I want to get this over with so that I can go back to bed and get a little more sleep before I go to work at 6am."
"Right." No reason not to dive right in then, I guess. "How well did you and your daughter know Denise Beckham?"
Her face changed—sad, thoughtful. "She was great. We were both heart broken when she went off with her dad. It may have been for the best though, her mom... well, she had issues at home. Jennifer didn't go to Denise, did she?"
I know how to break bad news to people and had done it many times in the past. As a cop, or as a private investigator, bad news came as part of the job. That didn't mean I liked it, or that I had any level of skill when it came to softening the blow. I took a thin, slow sip from my cup to bide time before answering, "Denise's case has been reopened. She may not have run away from home after all."
Rachel knew what I was building up to. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. When she opened them back up, she did her best not to look at me. "What happened?"
"I'm sorry, Rachel. Denise's body turned up a couple of days ago, here in town."
Tears. I never know how to deal with people crying. I can't look at them because I don't want them to feel embarrassed, but I can't look away without seeming like a heartless dick. I did my best to look solemn and find that space between giving her room to grieve and being there for comfort. Pretty sure I failed. At all of it.
"I can't believe she's gone," she said with a handful of wadded up napkins over her mouth. "When Jennifer finds out..." I watched as the realization hit her. It was quick. From mourning to scared shitless in zero-point-four seconds.
"We're not sure it means anything yet, Rachel," I did my best to stop her from exploding in a frightened-mother-angry-beast-sad-ball of lava. "It's been quite a while since Denise went missing, and her case and your daughter's are not likely to be connected."
Her eyes turned dull as she accepted something I will never know about, and she wiped the tears from her face. "But they could be. Right?"
If I were still in uniform there would be a protocol for this. Give non-answers, keep it vague until everything is set in stone. But I didn’t wear a uniform anymore, and I wasn't going to lie to a missing girl's mother.
"Yes. They could be connected. My friend on the force asked me to share the list of names and numbers that you gave me. I expect you'll be contacted before the end of the day." The smells of the restaurant suddenly hit me. Bacon and eggs and ham and burnt toast and a hundred other things that made my stomach lurch. "Want to go outside for some fresh air?"
She nodded and stood up. I threw a fiver on the table and followed as she made her way out. Outside, the sun remained elusive, but the black sky had turned navy blue, and the chill faded from the air.
"I'm going to do everything I can to help out, but I'm sure the police are going to take over before long."
"Why? They didn't want to do anything before. What's different now?"
"The information has changed, Rachel. They have good people who will look into this, find out where she is."
"What about you?"
"Like I said, I'll do everything I can until they take over. Maybe, I can find something that will point them in the right direction."***
Jennifer woke up with no idea how long she had slept. Her stomach clenched and writhed in her abdomen, waiting to burst. When she had last been awake, she ate the dinner her old English teacher had prepared for her. Every bit of it. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and found him there, wearing that awful smile and sitting across the table from her.
He insisted that she call him "lover," and made her promise to eat all her food before he would unstrap her from the bed. After she agreed, he bandaged her leg, packing it with something that smelled rancid but felt cool against her inflamed flesh.
Then he helped her to a small bathroom hidden behind a metal closet in the room, and nursed her through a shower. Although he wasn't shy about touching her, he didn't seem to get any pleasure out of it. That didn't stop Jennifer from cringing whenever their skin made contact.
Afterward, he dressed her in oversized nurse's scrubs and led her upstairs, to a well-lit dining room. After days without food, the smells that greeted her made her salivate and her knees nearly gave out from the hunger. Mr. Williamson sat her at the lavish wooden dining table, and strapped her upper thighs and waist to the chair.
"Now we can enjoy a proper meal together," he said as he slid a plate full of food in front of her. "You'll see there is no need to be rude or selfish here, lover."
She ate the potatoes, and some soft pastries that tasted like cheese. Her body soaked the food in and she didn't think she would ever get full. He allowed her to refill her plate several times before he began to stare at the portion she kept skipping over.
"You'll have to finish it all if you don't want to go several more days without eating."
"I don't know if I can." She remembered the fear, the disgust as she looked down at the seared meat on her plate. It smelled divine, but that made it worse. She decided that perhaps an offering would help, something that showed she wasn't angry, that she wouldn't be obstinate anymore. "I wouldn't mind if you had my bit... lover."
"No!" He stood up and slammed his fist down on the table, knocking over her glass of water and making her jump hard enough that it might have torn the bandage from the wound on her leg. "I cooked that piece for you, Jennifer. I expect you to be grateful. I expect you to do as you promised. Now."
With her lips trembling and tears welling up in her eyes, her entire body convulsing, she stabbed the leg meat with her fork and began cutting it. Each time she moved the knife, she remembered how helpless and weak she had felt, tied to the bed as he sliced into her calf without pause. She sobbed and gagged over and over until the meat was spread out in tiny pieces across her plate.
"Good," he stated, his voice full of sugar, "now eat it." Her mouth watered and her stomach trundled up and down, threatening to send everything back where it came from. With one last look into his soulless eyes, she jammed the first bite into her mouth. She fought to swallow it whole, couldn't imagine having to chew, but her body refused to participate in what was happening. She vomited in her mouth and only just kept it from spewing out onto the table. She breathed through her nose and did her best to imagine that she was eating anything else in the entire world. Jennifer forced herself to swallow back each gag until her mouth came away empty
and dry.
That had been the first of eighteen pieces she had to force down. Each bite, just as difficult as the first, and she had several close calls which surely would have ended badly for her. She didn't want to imagine how angry he would get if she threw up even the smallest amount.
Now, hours later, or days, she didn’t know which, her body betrayed her again. She pressed the buzzer switch, which he had taped to her hand, three times, and then waited.
After several minutes, the door to the staircase opened and Mr. Williamson walked in.
"What do you need, love? I'm about to head off to work."
She wanted to scream and rail and fight and curse, but the only words she could manage were, "I'm hungry... lover."
"Oh good, I have a fruit plate prepared for you, and enough time for us to enjoy breakfast before I leave for work."
A fruit plate? It was too good to be true, yet she smiled as he undid the straps from her head, chest, wrists, waist, and knees. "That sounds delicious."
Chapter 9: Lies and Omissions
It was almost noon and I still hadn't heard from David about bringing him Lucy's info. Maybe I got lucky and he forgot. That would buy me extra time, but then I wouldn't have any shot at seeing the files on Denise. What a clusterfuck.
I'd spent the morning memorizing every line, every picture, and every name in the papers that Rachel had given me. So far, I had come up with nothing new. After a pack and a half of smokes, and three pots of coffee, I decided that I might do more good by leaving the house.
After a shower and a shave, I called Jennifer and Denise's school. A woman, who must have been a smoker since the Old Testament answered the office phone, "Principal's office."
"Hi there, I was hoping to make an appointment to speak with someone about Denise Beckham." By now the faculty had to know that the police were reopening the case. Hopefully, someone from the department hadn't already called. If I could be the first one in, I could slide right through without anyone questioning me.