Witness

by Denise Gwen

  He plunged his cock inside her pussy and he pumped her, hard, as she cried out with cries of lamentation and joy. He pumped her and he pumped her and he pumped her, and then, when his crisis came, he fell across her back and lay there for a long moment.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice coming out muffled. “Now you gotta eat me, because I didn’t get to come.”

  “Come here, pussycat,” he said, “and let me lap up your cream.”

  She obligingly scrambled out from beneath him and spread her legs wide and he burrowed between her wide-open legs and got to work. Her pussy smelled of lilacs, she must’ve douched before he got there, what a gal, she really knew what he liked and how he liked it.

  Such a difference from Miranda, but really, there was no comparison. This one, well, this one was gonna be a keeper.

  He dove his tongue deep inside her pussy, his meaty hands on either side of her thighs, and he thrilled to her moans and writhing. When at last she came, he licked up her cum and swallowed it.

  “Look at me,” he said, proud. “I swallow my girlfriend’s spunk.”

  “Spunk?”

  “You know, your cum.”

  “Spunk is what you call a man’s cum,” she said. “I don’t know about a girl.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s call it . . . spank.”

  “Spank,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, I like it. Spank.”

  “Yep,” he said. “Spank. Suits me.”

  “Suits me too,” she said.

  “Suits me right to a T.”

  “Come on over here, sugar, and spoon with me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  He laid down beside her on the plush bed, put his head on the pillow next to hers, and fell instantly asleep.

  She closed her eyes, feigning sleep.

  And neither one of them noticed the person taking photos through the bedroom window.

  34

  Wednesday, March 13, 9:01 a.m.

  Is this the place?” Brittany asked, looking up at the white clapboard house, her brow furrowed, as her dad parked the car in front of the Gallatin Brothers Funeral Home and Crematorium.

  “It is, honey,” Dad said. “Ready to go in?”

  “Will Mommy be there?”

  “No, sweetheart. Her body’s still at the—at the medical examiner’s office, and we can’t hold the funeral until the Coroner releases her body, but I thought we’d go ahead and make the funeral arrangements, does that sound okay to you?”

  “Will I see any dead bodies in there?” she asked.

  “No, my sweet.”

  “Okay, then,” she said.

  They got out of the car and walked inside and as she walked into the foyer, with its enormous Ming vase in the middle of the foyer, filled with fresh-cut flowers, her stomach started doing flip-flops and she thought she might barf. But then Daddy laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder and she relaxed.

  A handsomely dressed man approached them. He looked like a normal person, which kind of surprised her, because she thought people who worked at funeral homes were creepy-looking freaks.

  Then again, what did she know?

  She’d only attended one other funeral in her life, and that had been for a girl who’d committed suicide when Brittany was in the fourth grade.

  “Good morning,” the man said, holding out his right hand, and he and Daddy shook hands. “I’m Bill Gallatin, and I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Same here,” Daddy said. “I’m Frederick Delacourt, and this is my daughter, Brittany.”

  “I’m very sorry we have to meet under such unpleasant circumstances,” Mr. Gallatin said to Brittany, speaking to her as if she were an adult, “but I’m very glad to make your acquaintance.”

  “Um, thanks,” she said, looking at the carpeting.

  Powder blue.

  Powder blue carpeting, just like the carpeting in the dining room at her mother’s house . . .

  “Let’s go into my office,” Mr. Gallatin said, “so we can discuss the arrangements in private.”

  “Come along, honey,” Daddy said, and Brittany fought back the urge to throw up and followed her dad and Mr. Gallatin to his office.

  A few moments later

  Once seated, and after offering refreshment, coffee for daddy, orange juice for Brittany, Mr. Gallatin told them something surprising.

  “Mr. Randalls contacted my office earlier this morning,” Mr. Gallatin said, and steepled his fingers in front of his face, “and he’s planning to pay for the entire funeral, and he also said that Brittany is free to choose the casket of her choice.”

  “Oh, isn’t that wonderful, Brittany?” Daddy asked.

  Brittany just sat there, feeling dumb and mute. With Daddy reacting as if this were a wonderful thing, she sensed she needed to react favorably as well, but until two days ago, on the Monday morning when Brittany went off to school and said goodbye to her mother for the last time in her life—not knowing it at the time, of course, couldn’t even remember what she’d said—if someone had asked her at school that day, ‘What’s the most surprising and awful thing that could happen to you?’, Brittany would’ve racked her brain to think of something, anything, and she still wouldn’t have come up with the horror she saw when she got home from school that afternoon.

  Because, up until Monday afternoon, Brittany believed her mother was going to stay alive, and she hadn’t counted on finding her mother dead, in the dining room, hanging from a God-damned chandelier, her head purple and blotchy, and with blood all over the place—

  “Brittany?”

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  Daddy gazed at her, hard. “Honey, are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” She ran a hand across her forehead. “Actually, I think I’m starting to get a headache. Can we get on with this?”

  “Of course, we can,” Mr. Gallatin said, rising from behind his desk. “Let me escort you to our casket showroom.”

  “Sounds good,” Daddy said, casting a worried glance at her.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him, only, really, she wasn’t fine.

  She wasn’t fine at all.

  Thirty minutes later.

  “Daddy,” Brittany said, “How much longer do we have to stay here?”

  Her dad glanced at her from over the top of his menu, his lips pursed. “Oh, I don’t know, really . . . I was thinking we’d stay through to the end of the week.”

  They’d just left the funeral home; her mother’s body hadn’t yet been released by the Coroner, but they’d gone ahead and made the funeral preparations for whenever her body was released.

  She’d picked out a powder blue casket with a creamy blue silk lining. She liked that one; periwinkle blue was her mother’s favorite color, and the funeral director didn’t utter a single word of protest when Brittany gave him the outfit she wanted to see her mother buried in, a powder-blue Talbots pantsuit, even though Daddy said nobody would be able to see her mother in the casket, for all the blue, but that’s what Brittany wanted, and Mr. Gallatin said it was fine, the two shades of blue contrasted one another nicely and nobody would notice and besides all that, what did Daddy care what she chose to bury her mother in, for Christ’s sake? Why would Daddy care at all?

  After all, he’d thrown her mother away when he divorced her.

  Where are all these angry thoughts coming from?

  She pushed back a flare of resentment and plastered a smile across her face to assure her dad.

  They sat at a booth in a Shoney’s restaurant, just minutes off the main thoroughfare leading into Shelbyville off I-74, and at first, when Dad started heading for the expressway, her heart leaped at the idea of leaving this dreadful town behind, but no, Daddy took the last left-hand turn before the expressway and pulled into the Shoney’s parking lot.

  “Let’s get a bite to eat, sweetheart, before we head back to the hotel, hm?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  But her disappointment was so great, her heart sank and she thought s
he’d burst into tears again. She’d been crying a lot.

  Their waitress arrived, took a drink order, returned with their drinks, took their food order, then took their menus away with her and left them with their drinks.

  Dad sipped his ice water with lemon and gazed at her with considering eyes. “We’re still waiting for the Coroner to publish his report before he releases your mother’s body.”

  “But that could take weeks,” she said, thinking of all the detective shows she watched on TV, where on TV, the body got buried, like, the very next day, it seemed, and the Coroner rendered his findings minutes after starting the autopsy. What was so hard, she wondered? But Mr. Gallatin had said it might be two weeks before the Coroner was ready to release Mommy’s body, and she didn’t think she could bear to stay in the town that killed her precious mother.

  Although it wasn’t the town that killed her mother. It was her step-father.

  This thought arose, unbidden in her mind, and it was so shocking and so terrifying to contemplate, she worried she’d committed a crime, and she gazed at her father, stricken, worried he might’ve discerned her thoughts, but he continued to gaze at her with a look of adoration.

  Everything was okay.

  She was still a good girl.

  “My love,” Daddy said patiently, “it is already Wednesday, and the weekend is before us. Nothing will happen over the weekend, certainly, and it may be next Thursday before the Coroner releases his findings.”

  “So, we really don’t have to stay here?” she asked, trying not to reveal how hopeful this made her feel.

  “Don’t you want to go back to your school? Say goodbye to your friends?”

  “No, not really. Daddy, if they won’t release my mommy’s body till next Thursday, why don’t we go home . . . to Chicago?”

  “Well, I suppose we could,” he said, gazing dismally around the Midwestern restaurant. “Heaven only knows there’s plenty of work waiting for me back at the office.” He looked at her with his bright blue eyes, the eyes her mother said she’d inherited from him. She loved his bright blue eyes.

  “Why don’t we go ahead and check out of the hotel,” she said, “right after lunch, and head back to Chicago?”

  “Hm, that really is a consideration.”

  “Papa, I don’t want to be here anymore. I hate this town.”

  “I understand, my sweet, but don’t you need to go to your old school and collect your things and say goodbye to your teachers?”

  “I can do that when we come back here for the funeral,” she said, suddenly inspired and seeing an escape from this dreadful town. “It’s only Wednesday, and you could take me home with you tonight, get me enrolled in my new school and all started on Monday. And then, when we come back here for the funeral, I can come back then and get my things from school and say goodbye to my teachers.”

  “You’ve thought this through, ma Cherie.”

  “Yes, I have,” she said firmly. “Get me out of here, Daddy.”

  “Very well, my sweet, but let’s eat our lunch, first.”

  “Oh, all right,” she said, as the waitress returned with their meals. “I guess I can force myself to eat my last patty melt and fries.”

  Dad picked up a fork and knife and cut his sandwich in half. “Now that you mention it, sweetheart, there really is no need for us to stay here.”

  “No, Papa, there isn’t.”

  He set his fork and knife down. “I spoke to your step-father, the other night.”

  “What did he want?” she asked.

  “He told me that you are more than welcome to take whatever you want from the house, so I was thinking we might hire a U-Haul truck, and—”

  “Oh, that was mighty swell of him.”

  Dad stopped and studied her. “What invective, my child?”

  “I hate him. He’s an asshole.”

  “Lower your voice, child.”

  “He killed her, Daddy. I know he did.”

  Dad pushed his sandwich away and studied her. “What makes you think that? Your mother was found hanging from a light fixture in the dining room.”

  “He killed her, Daddy. I just know it, in my heart.”

  Dad gazed at her for another long moment, then reached his hand across the table and squeezed hers. “Sweetheart, there are things about your mother I’ve not shared with you, because you were too young to understand, but you are twelve now, and you’ve just experienced one of the worst moments of your life, finding your mother, dead.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Sweetheart, your mother struggled with depression all her life, and it was because she refused to take her medications at one point—she didn’t like the weight gain—but when she went off her medications, she did return to her slender form, but her temper was terrifying, and it is for that reason we finally broke up.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Depression is an insidious disease, my love, and I just want you to know, I understand what you’re going through, but your dear mother was a depressive, and it’s entirely possible, my love, that your mother decided she simply had to end it all.”

  “Daddy, she was happy.”

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered the Friday night after Randy beat Mommy and left the house, knowing full well he wouldn’t be welcome back anytime soon, and the photos she’d taken of her mother’s face on Sunday evening. Mommy went on Saturday to get a civil protection order, and it’d still been in place on Monday morning when she left for school, and Mommy had seemed fine, then, but still.

  She’d been bruised, but fine. Broken, but fine.

  Hah.

  Her mother had not been fine.

  Dad squeezed her hand again.

  “Please don’t brood. I hate to see you so unhappy. Please don’t brood.”

  “Take me out of here,” she said brokenly. “Take me away from this town.”

  “I shall, my love.” He smiled at her with tears in his eyes. “We’ll check out after lunch and head home.”

  “That sounds good,” she said, and it was.

  35

  Wednesday, March 13, 6:29 a.m.

  Ginny’s tranquil slumber was interrupted at six-thirty on Wednesday morning as Mommy walked into her bedroom and switched on the light. “Time to get up and do your paper route, sweetheart. Your grandpa’s been doing it for the past four days now, and it’s time you got back to your job.”

  Ginny rolled over onto her side and looked up at Mom. “Mommy, I want to quit my paper route.”

  Mom thrust her hands on her hips. “Genevieve Marie Wittenberg, don’t you dare pull that stunt on me.”

  “Oh, Mommy, I don’t feel good.”

  “You don’t feel well, young lady. Let’s not forget our grammar. And I’m not putting up with your nonsense. Get yourself up, right now.”

  Grandpa appeared in the doorway and put a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay, honey. I’ll take Ginny’s route for her this morning.”

  “Honest to God, I don’t understand you, Dad,” Mom flung at him. “First, you’re nagging me and nagging me and hammering at me to get the girls to take responsibility for things and hold down little jobs, and now you’re letting her off the hook the minute she gets a sniffle. You’ve been doing her route all week long, it’s time she got back on the bike and did her own job.”

  “It’s okay, honey,” Grandpa said. “I’ll take care of it.” He glanced over Mom’s shoulder at Ginny and winked. “Let’s leave this young lady alone to enjoy her beauty rest. Go on back to bed, honey.”

  “Honestly, Dad,” Mom said, flicking the light off and closing the door to Ginny’s bedroom and following her dad down the hallway. “I swear, you spoil these girls worse than Mom ever did, and all you ever used to do was complain about how spoiled they were, how Mom gave them everything they wanted, and now here you are, turning around and treating my daughters like little fairy princesses. They’ve gone from, ‘Oh, I’ve got a sniffle, I don’t wanna deliver my paper rou
te today,’ to ‘Oh, I just don’t feel like working today,’ to—”

  “Now, now, Melanie,” Grandpa said. “It’s not that bad.”

  “I swear, Dad—”

  As their voices disappeared down the hallway, Ginny sank down even lower into her bed and fell asleep a few blissful seconds later.

  A few minutes later.

  “I found the name of the kid you’ve been looking for,” Rob said.

  He stood in Sheriff’s office—they never did their confidential conversations over the phone—and hooked his fingers in his belt loops.

  “I found the kid too,” Sheriff said. “A little girl.”

  “What’re we gonna do about her?” Rob asked.

  “I need to think on that,” Sheriff said.

  “Okay, Boss.”

  A few minutes later

  Kathryn sat at her desk, staring at her laptop, and doing nothing. She felt uneasy. She felt that strangely familiar sensation, that taste in her mouth, of pending dread. It’d been coming on her for months before her first visit to the sanatorium, and she’d worked so hard to identify her triggers and to know when to take a step back, take stock of the situation, and perhaps resolve the problem before it became too late to do anything else.

  She may as well have been invisible, over at the crime scene at 2354 Wells Falls Lane, for all the good it’d done her. Everyone there had treated her like a foolish child, yes, that was it, a dumb kid who’d wandered in off the street and was saying stupid stuff, things that nobody wanted to hear.

  Nobody, especially anyone in the Sheriff’s Office, took anything she said with any degree of respect or seriousness.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  It reminded her of something her therapist had said; she’d hinted around it, without coming right out and telling her, but Kathryn had understood clearly; perhaps her job as a deputy officer at the Rowan County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t a good fit for her because it’d contributed to her last breakdown.