A man stood in the doorway. He was probably in his late sixties, trim, with neat gray hair, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back over his forearms, dress pants, and leather slippers. Well put together, the way wealthy men often are; plenty of time playing tennis or golf helping keep them in shape. I couldn’t tell if his tan had come from the sun or a spray, but it was rich and even. I had checked the dispatch report as I made my way down the driveway, and the homeowner’s name was Terrance Paulson.
“Are you Mr. Paulson?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“I’ll need to see some ID, please. We had a prowler report for this residence.”
“I look like a prowler to you?”
“No sir. But I need to make sure. If you’re really Mr. Paulson, you wouldn’t want me to take any shortcuts, would you?”
“No, that’s true.” He fished around in his pocket and came up with a slim leather wallet. I had never understood why the richest people didn’t have the fattest wallets, but his looked like the addition of even a single dollar bill would stretch it out of shape. He slid a driver’s license from it and handed it over. The picture matched the face, and the name matched what I’d been given. “I’m Terry Paulson, as you can see.”
“Very good, sir.” I handed back the license.
“And you are … ?”
“Mike Rogers,” I said. “The police have been alerted and they’re on the way. Do you know if the prowler is still on the property, Mr. Paulson?”
“Call me Terry, Mike. I don’t know if it was really a prowler, in retrospect. My wife heard a noise. She thought it was a prowler. I didn’t see anything but thought it was safest to trigger the alarm.”
“That’s the best thing to do. Let us take a look for you. Where did she hear it?”
“She can tell you best herself.” He stepped back through the door, into a foyer that appeared to be floored with fine marble. A staircase curled up from there. “Sharon!” he called.
She came out of a side door, wearing a shy look and not a lot else. When I saw her I forgot why I was there, forgot everything for a few seconds. I had never seen a woman like her, except on a movie screen, or a computer one. She had plump lips, a slightly olive complexion, and smoky gray eyes. Long dark hair framed her face in ringlets and then curled off the tops of breasts that were high and round and barely contained by a low-cut, silky blue nightgown that more than hinted at the rest of her impressive curves. A ring glinted off the little toe of her left foot. She could have bracketed my thirty-one years by five in either direction.
“Hello,” she said, and her voice was low and frank and warm and not at all shy. “I’m sorry I got you out here. It’s probably nothing.”
“Don’t worry about that, it’s what I’m here for,” I replied. “If it’s okay, I’ll look around just the same. Where did you think you heard something?”
She flashed a smile, showing me a couple of front teeth that should have seen braces but hadn’t. Somehow the imperfection made her all the more stunning. “In the back,” she said. Barefoot, she stepped outside, onto the cobblestones. “That’s nice. Cool. Come, I’ll show you.”
She padded softly past me. I glanced at Terry Paulson, who indicated with a nod of his head that I should follow his wife. I did, happily, trying not to stare at the round ass swishing back and forth under the thin layer of silk.
She showed me the area where she thought she’d heard something, between the pool house and the tennis court. I stayed for a few minutes, waved the flashlight around. When the cops arrived, they took over, but they didn’t see anything either.
Finally, I had to get back to my patrol. The company had installed GPS units in all the cars, which had not only cut back on unauthorized excursions to Tijuana and Ocean Beach, but also allowed them to enforce a time constraint. If we spent more than fifteen minutes at any given address we had to account for it in writing. Before I left, I tried to find Terry Paulson, but he was in back with the cops. Instead, I found Sharon, or she found me as I was heading for the car.
“Mike,” she said.
“Oh good, there you are.” I had a business card in my hand already, and I held it out to her. “This is my card. I put my cell number on the back. Sometimes it’s quicker to just call me directly, rather than go through dispatch, because I’m on duty in the area most nights.”
“Thank you, Mike. Thanks for coming over, too. I feel so much better.”
“Like you said, it was probably nothing, maybe an animal passing through. But you don’t want to take chances. If you hear or see anything unusual, just call.”
She took the card, letting her hand linger on my fingers for a long moment. She held my gaze with hers for a few seconds, showed me those two crooked teeth again, then turned and walked back into the house. Once again, memory fled. It wasn’t until the huge front door closed that I remembered I was leaving.
I heard from her two nights later. My cell phone rang and when I answered it there was a voice on the other end, barely audible, as if calling from somewhere in outer space.
“Mike?”
“Yeah?” It took a few seconds to place her. “Mrs. Paulson, is that you? Is everything okay?”
“No. Yes. I mean … Mike, can you meet me?”
The car’s digital clock blasted 11:18 at me. “I can be there in five minutes. Should I call the police?”
“No,” she said, more firmly this time. “Not here, Mike. You know the cross?”
“On the hill?”
“That’s right.”
“Sure.”
“Meet me there,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes,” I echoed, but she was already gone.
The cross was at the top of the mountain. Parking surrounded it, and walking paths, mostly used by tourists and lovers who looked out at the nearly 360-degree view and made out in the dark. Everyone who had been there more than once knew to dim their lights when they pulled into the little circle. People fought about the cross all the time, since it’s on public land. One side considered it an inappropriate display of religion, the other insisted that its value is historical, not specifically religious, and it should be left alone. A few years earlier someone had decided to get around the controversy by converting it into a war memorial honoring anyone whose family ponied up the money to buy a plaque. When I was up there, I barely saw the cross, because it was in the center of the circle and the view was on the outside.
I made it there in ten minutes. She was five minutes late. That left me plenty of time to wonder about what she wanted, why she hadn’t wanted me to come to the house. Time to wonder, and fantasize.
When she emerged from a black Lexus IS F10, I didn’t wonder anymore. I didn’t do anything but stare.
She was fully dressed this time, in a blue tank top and faded jeans that clung to her thighs like a sheen of perspiration. Her hair was loose, like before, and if anything she looked even sexier. More relaxed.
I was glad one of us was relaxed, because I was buzzing. On fire.
“Hello, Mike,” she said.
“What … what can I do for you, Mrs. Paulson?”
“Please, Mike. Sharon.”
“Okay, Sharon. What did you need to see me for?”
She shot me a you’re kidding look. “What do you see when you look at me, Mike? Be honest.”
I couldn’t be completely honest. “A very beautiful woman. Wealthy, happily married—”
She stopped me with an arched eyebrow and a waggled finger. “Don’t. Mike, don’t patronize me, please.”
“What?”
“Tell me what you see.”
“I see probably the most amazing woman I’ve ever encountered. Are you really real?”
“I don’t come from money, if that’s what you mean. Everything I’ve got is what I was born with. You like it?”
“It’s impressive. You’re impressive. Your husband is a lucky guy.”
“He gets what he
wants, I get what I want. It’s a trade-off, but it works for us.”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t know why I felt so stupid around her, but apparently it wasn’t going away.
She came closer, enveloping me in a musky scent that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was feral and rich at the same time, and I didn’t want to exhale and let it go. She took my hand and walked me away from the cars, toward one of the overlooks.
The air was alive with a brittle clarity. I could see the lights of Del Mar and beyond, up the coast. Looking back the other way, while waiting for Sharon, I had seen SeaWorld and downtown San Diego and Mexico past that. Closer in was the working-class community of Clairemont, and below us La Jolla glittered, then dropped off to black at the coastline.
“Like I said, I don’t come from money. I need it, though, and do what I need to do to get it. My mom’s not well, and my little brother … he’s got MS, we don’t know how long he’ll live but while he does he needs special care, special equipment. Terry’s generous. But he doesn’t give me everything I need.”
“Like what?”
“What do you think? I’m a young woman, Mike. I have needs. Terry is kind, he’s gentle, but …” She let the sentence trail off. By now even I had figured out where she was going, but I wasn’t going to let her not lead the way. I stayed quiet, and she picked up where she’d left off. “Viagra’s great, but at a certain point, the world’s finest chef could prepare his finest meal, and a man who’d just eaten a three-pound steak wouldn’t touch it. Availability and appetite are two different things. I’m lucky if he wants it once a week.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was stupid, but I was at a loss for words. “I’m sure you could get—”
“There are plenty of guys I could get. The question is, which one do I want?”
She pushed me down on a bench and stood in front of me, hands on my shoulders, leaning in, letting her breasts brush my face. “See, I have a much bigger appetite than Terry does. I’m just about always hungry.” She ran her hands down my chest, lowering herself to her knees in front of me, and clawed at my zipper. I sat on the bench, hands pressed against the cool stone, feeling her heat on me and my response to it, and at the same time feeling like a trout that had just bit into a nightcrawler only to find a barbed hook hidden inside.
Hooked, I was. That meeting by the cross was only the first. I had never known a woman anything like Sharon. Her appetite, as she’d said, was enormous, and it wasn’t surprising that she was too much for Terry to handle. As she’d said, he didn’t seem to mind. After a couple more meetings on top of the mountain, in the dark, she started inviting me to the house. Every now and then we saw Terry, usually as she led me by the hand toward a spare bedroom. He’d give us a knowing smile and a nod, and now and then a few friendly words. I wasn’t sure how a man with such a fiery animal of a wife could be so utterly nonpossessive, but I wasn’t about to question it. Sometimes we’d hear him moving around, and once I saw someone at the window as I was driving away, watching from behind a sheer curtain—someone who didn’t look like him in that instant’s glance, but who must have been.
Sharon exhausted me. When I was away from her I couldn’t think of anything but her. When I was with her I didn’t think at all. I just was. There was no intellectual engagement; we barely spoke, beyond the necessary words: Faster, slower, here, like that, there, don’t stop. I tried to keep our meetings outside working hours, but when she called, I came. Sometimes I left the company car someplace and drove my own over to the house, then made up a story about why I had been parked for so long.
I started to think I was in over my head when I got my third reprimand at work. My supervisor wasn’t buying my stories anymore, and I was on the verge of being fired. I shouldn’t have cared—private security was a game for kids, anyway, or ex-cops trying to stretch their pensions, and unlike most of my coworkers I wasn’t in it for the power that a badge and a steel-clad flashlight offered. I liked the solitude, the freedom to chart my own course through the night, to drive the quiet streets and watch the houses, the ocean down below, the stars wheeling overhead.
But I was only fooling myself if I thought I didn’t need the job. Sharon had her financial demands, and I had my own—an apartment two blocks from the water in Mission Beach, alimony from an early, stupid marriage, car payments, a TV that was too big for the apartment and had cost more than I could afford. People needed money to get by, and I was no exception.
In high school I had been a jock, an outfielder who could snag a ball that had wings on it, then sail it to first base or third or home without breaking a sweat. I had been so good that it took awhile to understand that I just wasn’t quite good enough to win any scholarships, and without that I couldn’t afford college. Since then, I’d been a guy that things happened to. My wife had proposed to me, and I’d gone along with it. She had decided the marriage was over, and I’d accepted that too. I fell into low-paying jobs, like the one at Gold Shield. I had pretty much given up thinking I would ever have anything like real money, or real love, or any real excitement.
Sharon was something else that happened to me, not anything I had set out to claim, to conquer. And as much as I hated to consider it, I knew I’d have to stop seeing her before I lost my paycheck. One more time, I told myself, and then one more time, and one more time after that.
When I was away from her I was resolute. Then when she called, I was putty.
On a mid-October night, with the first hint of autumn crispness in the air, she called again. “Mike,” she said, “I need you to come over. Right now.” Her voice was different, her words terse, clipped.
“On the way,” I answered. The night had been quiet so far, one alarm that had gone off without any evident cause, homeowners not there. I’d had it shut off and decided to make regular swings past the place throughout the evening, just in case.
But I could be gone for the hour or so it would take to see Sharon. Anyway, she didn’t sound amorous, she sounded upset.
When I got there, the house was dark. I buzzed myself in—I had long since been given the gate code—and parked in my usual spot beside the fountain. I got out of the car, listened to a breeze rustling through the leaves of a banana tree, then ducked back in for the flashlight. I started to wish I’d been assigned a gun. Something wasn’t right; the place was never this quiet.
I tapped on the big door with the end of the flashlight. “Sharon?” No answer, so I leaned on the handle, pushed the door open a few inches. They never set the alarm these days, not with me coming around so often. “Terry? Sharon?”
No sound came from inside. I clicked on the flashlight and went in. The house looked like it always did, but there was a sense of emptiness to it that was new. Usually I was with at least one of them, and the other was close by.
I scanned the downstairs quickly. Nothing seemed out of place, so I went up. I hadn’t turned on any lights, even though it made me feel vaguely criminal—I told myself I didn’t want to advertise to the neighbors that anyone was in the house, even though I knew the nearest neighbors could barely see a corner of the top floor. The flashlight was plenty bright, and using it I picked my way down the hall to the bedroom we always used. Empty. I turned the other way down the wide corridor, to the room she’d told me she shared with Terry. That door had always been closed during my visits, one aspect of their life together off limits to me.
It was open now.
Even before I reached it, the stink hit me. Blood and shit, unmistakable, mixed with other odors I couldn’t identify. Her name fell from my lips. My left hand went to my nose and mouth, covering them, and sucking in shallow gasps, I went in.
She was on the bed, her head dangling off the near side, her arms splayed out, legs flung toward the far edge. A spray of blood flecked with gray painted the ceiling, and more of it streamed down the bed covering, puddling thick and black on the lush carpet under my feet. My stomach gave a quick flip and I swallowed hard, afrai
d I was going to lose the fish tacos I had bought for dinner down in Pacific Beach.
“Sharon?” I said, sobbing the word.
But it wasn’t her, and I knew it almost at once. This woman had a hole in the middle of her forehead, just between the eyebrows. But she also had gray streaks in auburn hair and wide green eyes staring at me, and she was at least fifteen years older than Sharon. Attractive, or she had been before the bullet, and relatively fit, but thicker and less voluptuous.
I stared at her, uncomprehending, just as stupid as I had been while in Sharon’s bed, in her arms, clutched between her thighs. I was still standing there, unable to move, my gullet spasming, when the door creaked behind me.
“I see you’ve met Sharon,” Terry Paulson said.
I spun around, shined the light at him. She stood behind him, glorious as ever. “But … if that’s Sharon …”
“It is,” Terry said. “Meet Lacie.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That, my friend, is self-evident. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and talk this over, shall we?”
I let them lead me back downstairs. Lights were on now and the house felt more like it usually did, except there was a dead woman upstairs and I was utterly lost.
We sat at their big rustic wooden dining table, and Terry filled me in. Sharon—no, Lacie—sat close to him, occasionally stroking his arm, smoothing his hair. She made no effort to touch me, and I was too afraid to try reaching out to her.
“Here’s the deal,” Terry said. “I have this big house, this terrific life, right? Or I did, until I lost a bundle in the meltdown. Since then, things have been getting tight. We were in serious debt—another month or two or five, and we would have lost all this. Sharon wouldn’t have wanted that. She has never been particularly healthy, and worse these last couple of years, sick all the time. We had major insurance policies on each other, of course, and I kept thinking I’d be able to collect on hers in time to save everything. But although she was close to dying, she wouldn’t actually die. She was in pain, absolutely miserable, really, but she kept hanging on. Lacie and I, well … we couldn’t wait.”
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