Steamy Dorm

by Kristine Robinson

  The cop who brought him in was Mike Daniels, a twenty-year veteran I looked up to a lot. I quickly brought him up to speed about Darryl being a possible serial killer and the murders having to do with the drug trade. He was very interested.

  “That’s good news,” Mike said. “I actually was getting ready to go check out their house. Diggs said several of the top players are holed up in some house on Shadowbrook Rd. That is the place where they seem to sell the stuff. They also have parties there, pickups and drop offs, and he said they were setting up a meth lab in the basement too.”

  “Mind if I tag along?” I asked.

  Twenty minutes later we arrived at the house on Shadowbrook. I was expecting some shanty that looked abandoned, but surprisingly the house was a nice place in an upscale neighborhood. It was the type of house you would expect a dentist or lawyer to have.

  We had a warrant but no one answered the door when we knocked so we took it upon ourselves to spot probable cause and enter the house anyway. There was a definite odor that smelled like meth being cooked. It wasn’t really apparent until you stood right in the doorway.

  When we entered the house after breaking in we instantly smelled chemicals in the air, but we also smelled a lot of bleach. Despite looking nice on the outside, the place looked like the pit of hell inside. It looked as if someone had done a real cursory job of trying to clean it up after murdering a few people. Red stained the walls, the floors, the couches even. There was a reason to believe that the stains may have been blood.

  After checking the house we did not find anything or anyone, except the smells and the stains on the floor. Mike called for forensics. We were keeping our fingers crossed.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Well, that is fascinating,” Mrs. Thomas said as she refilled my glass of iced tea.

  I took a sip of the cold refreshing beverage and leaned back in the chair letting the food settle. I was surprised when Lydia had invited me over for dinner with her parents instead of us going out to dinner like we had originally planned. But I guess I couldn’t blame her; after what happened last time and with everything else she was probably feeling a bit insecure about everything.

  I was a bit skeptical and nervous about having dinner with her parents, but so far it had been going well. Her mother made a great meal of chicken breast and mashed potatoes, which was one of my favorite meals. The conversation so far had been pretty light and I could actually see that Lydia’s parent’s attitudes about me had changed for the most part in recent years. Most notably because I was a police officer and they figured if their daughter was not safe with a cop then who was she safe with? I hated to think that my job was the only reason they were giving me a second chance here, but I was willing to take what I could get.

  “So, are you any closer to locking that monster away? I hope he never sees the light of day again,” Katherine, Lydia’s mother said.

  “We are getting close. I can’t go into too much detail yet, but we have some leads that tie Darryl in with some criminal syndicates that are heavily involved in the drug trade.”

  Katherine appeared shocked.

  “Animals. All of them are just animals,” Lydia’s father Henry said. He had been fairly quiet most of the night and I got the feeling he was really just trying to feel me out.

  “Lydia’s been having crazy night terrors since it happened,” Katherine said.

  “Mom!” Lydia grunted.

  “What? It’s perfectly normal after such a traumatic event,” Katherine added.

  Lydia hung her head angry and embarrassed. I reached over and lightly touched her hand. “It’s ok, I don’t think you are a total wimp,” I teased.

  She smiled and looked up at me with that sweet face. I’m sure her parents noticed the moment we were sharing.

  “I just don’t understand how people like that are just walking the streets here. This used to be a good, quiet, safe town. You could even leave your doors unlocked when I was a kid. Now you send your child down the street to their friend’s house and you wonder if they will make it back without something horrible happening to them. I just don’t get it,” Katherine said.

  “I know,” I replied. “A lot of it is the drugs and a lot of it is expansion. The city population has doubled in the past twenty years. A lot of people are moving out of crowded urban centers and branching out to smaller towns, but when so many people do that suddenly your small town isn’t so small anymore.”

  “It’s still hard to accept,” Katherine said. “Would you care for some pie?”

  “I’d love some. Thanks.”

  After dinner, Lydia and I decided to get some alone time on the porch. The evening was cool and peaceful. Her parents had a great backyard that gave way to the woods in the back. She told me sometimes in the morning there would be several deer out in her yard just hanging out and they wouldn't even be bothered if she sat there and drank her coffee for several minutes. It was tough to see until it was really light, but often the sun would rise right there and sweet rays of sunshine would shine right on the deer.

  “That’s pretty amazing,” I replied. “I’ll have to check it out one morning when I decide to stay after dinner for breakfast.”

  Lydia let that sink in for a moment and hit my arm playfully as she laughed. Yes, I can get a bit naughty at times.

  “So, how soon until you put Darryl away? Will I have to testify?”

  “It might be a little while. Our justice system works well, but it isn’t fast by any means. Besides if we get the evidence we are after with this case then it will just be a matter of time. His lawyer might even talk him into accepting a deal and we can move on with it swiftly.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll feel truly safe again until he is locked up,” Lydia said.

  “But he is locked up. He is off the streets where he can’t hurt you or anyone else. There is no way in hell he is getting out. At the very least he is going to get twenty years for attacking you.”

  “I wish I could just relax,” Lydia said. “I just feel so on edge all the time.”

  “It’s ok,” I replied. “I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I leaned in and kissed her softly. I’d been thinking about this moment and missing it for years. The second our lips touched all of the memories of us and what it felt like to be us together came flooding back.

  “I’ve missed this,” Lydia said leaning into my arms.

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The look on Darryl’s face was priceless. I wish I would have taken a picture. The bastard actually looked like he was going to puke.

  “So, how are you feeling?” I asked just trying to mess with him.

  He wouldn’t even look at me.

  I’d just told Darryl the good news that the DNA evidence we found at the crack house belonged to the other two women who had been found dead. And his DNA was found there as well. These women must have put up a fight. And to top it all off we were able to get a warrant to search Darryl’s room in his parent’s house and we were able to collect samples of DNA there that also matched those two women. We had him.

  “Wow, I guess you aren’t very talkative,” I said. I leaned forward getting angry. “We’ve got you bitch. Now we can send you to Walla Wall, which is the toughest prison in the country, or if you cooperate then we can pull some strings and have you sent to Coyote Ridge. It’s still prison, but you might have less chance of being killed or raped there.”

  “I don’t feel good about what happened. It was just one of those things. There wasn’t anything I could do about it after,” Darryl said.

  “So you are saying that you acted alone? I don’t buy that. We know that you are tied in with Anton Wilkes and Tony Masters, the head of the eight six five drug cartel. Now if you cooperate and give us some info on where to find these guys and help us dig up some dirt so it will stick then I’ll see what I can do about having you kept out of Walla Walla. What do you say?”


  “Take me back to my cell,” Darryl said. He refused to cooperate which did not surprise me.

  I motioned for the corrections officer to take him back to his holding cell. We would begin processing him for trial.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Outskirts was a dive bar just outside of town on 550. It was loud, it was crude, and it was full of the worst underbelly of the area that I would ever hope to see all in one place. It was basically a jail full of inmates who hadn’t been arrested recently.

  I was there to find Anton Wilkes. He was the registered tenant of the house on Shadowbrook that we had searched. The evidence was all right there to put him away for a while. The only problem was that Anton was a bit of a ghost. He did not live at the house. He only occasionally stopped there to check on his operation and he sent other people there to pick up drop offs and to make transactions. And of course, his lab geeks he'd rounded up to cook his meth he was starting to get into now.

  But after checking with our new informant we were led to believe that Anton was coming to this bar to meet some new associates. These guys were part of a crime family in Seattle and they had ties to some stuff going on in Tokyo too. It would be a big boost if he could build his fledgling empire with these contacts.

  I was just hoping that I could monitor the transaction and maybe take them all down. I decided to bring Mike with me for back up, but we arrived separately in street clothes to avoid suspicion. I ordered a beer and sat at the bar.

  I tried to mind my own business while simultaneously scanning the bar for any sign of Anton. I did not have to wait long. He arrived about ten minutes after I did. He was a big man covered in tattoos and a shaved tattooed head. He looked like the quintessential big, bad biker guy. It was almost comical. It was all I could do to not arrest him right there, but we had to hang back and catch him doing this.

  After waiting about twenty minutes and seeing no sign of anyone else I was getting restless and it appeared that Anton was too. His big time contacts did not appear to be showing up anytime soon.

  He started to leave when a drunk guy bumped into him. The two men stared at each other, sizing each other up. They began to argue and get in each other’s faces. I could not hear what was being said, but I knew that Anton had a quick temper and did not like to be cornered by anyone.

  The other man was bigger than Anton and possibly just as crazy. He suddenly pushed Anton back and the fight broke out. Anton quickly began to get the better of the other man and had him on the ground kicking him in the head.

  I tackled Anton and knocked him to the ground. I reached for my badge. The second he saw it he became enraged and threw me off of him. He lunged at me and hit me hard in the jaw with a vicious right hand.

  I was wondering where Mike was, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see him somehow embroiled in a fist fight with some other biker I did not know. How the hell did that happen I wondered?

  I had to fight back quickly. As Anton came towards me I quickly kicked his legs out from under him sending his colossal six foot five frame to the ground. Then I hopped on top and wailed a few hard punches to his face.

  I took a few steps back then to catch my breath and see if Mike needed any help but that was when I caught the flash of the steel. Anton had a knife in his hand and he was leaping to his feet about to lunge at me with the blade.

  I quickly gave him a side kick to the bridge of the nose sending him flying to the floor. I pulled my gun out of my back pocket and fired two shots into the ceiling.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing.

  “Freeze!” I shouted holding my gun in one hand and my badge in the other. “Do not move a muscle or you are all going to jail tonight.”

  Mike and I grabbed Anton, cuffed him, and headed him out of the place.

  I wondered if the department would be pissed about paying to fix the bar’s ceiling.

  CHAPTER 9

  “The bitches owed me money,” Anton said.

  We had been in the interrogation room for almost three hours, minus the half hour or so when I left him alone so he could confer with his attorney. His lawyer must have talked some sense into him to cop a deal because when I came back he was suddenly ready to speak.

  “That’s why you killed them?” I asked.

  “It’s a matter of principle. If word gets around that I was going soft then everybody would start stiffing me for money. I told these girls to come over to the house to score some premium stuff I wanted to test out. Darryl was there just hanging and smoking crack. When they got there pounced on both of them and told them they were out of time. I hit one with a pipe in the back of the head a few times and then I beat the other one with a hammer that was lying about when she tried to run. She almost got past Darryl but he held her down. Then we took them out and buried them. That was it.”

  I couldn’t believe the nonchalant manner in which he was speaking about these acts. It was the sickest thing I’d ever heard in my life. But here it was. We had our case. Both Darryl and Anton were going to jail for a long time. I was going to make sure of that.

  I left the conference room feeling like I suddenly needed a damn nap.

  CHAPTER 10

  “I can’t believe it’s over,” Lydia said.

  We were taking a leisurely walk into the woods behind her house along the path that was there. It was a popular jogging path and we saw a few joggers out and about, but mostly it was just us. I loved it that way.

  I had just told her the whole story and that the prosecution would be moving forward with the trial. She would most likely have to be there and testify, but I knew she could do it. She agreed she would. If it meant putting those pigs behind bars then she would do what it took. That was the strong Lydia I knew.

  The entire world seemed less dim now that this shadow of fear and pain was no longer with us. I realized that I had been terrified this entire time too. When I searched myself I felt that I was terrified of what might happen to Lydia. I never told her this, but I was worried that Darryl might have had a friend or a crony that he might have persuaded to hurt her to keep her quiet.

  “So, now we can just get back to normal life,” I said.

  “Yea,” Lydia replied breathing a long sigh of relief.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I could tell that something was still bothering her.

  “Well, I’m just not sure how to feel about it all,” Lydia answered.

  We stopped walking and I turned to face her.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. It just feels weird. I feel like I should be worried, like I should still be scared. I guess that will go away eventually, but it is so hard.”

  I rubbed her shoulders gently. “It’s ok. And there is nothing wrong with feeling that way. You will be a little shaky for a while. It’s natural considering what you’ve been through. But you are a much stronger person than you realize. I want you to never forget that.”

  Lydia smiled. “You always know exactly what to say.”

  I smiled. After a moment I looked her in the eye. “So, with this all behind us that means we can actually start dating and be a real couple.”

  Lydia hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure…”

  “Why? Don’t you feel the same way?” I said holding my breath for the answer.

  “I do, but are you sure I’m what you want? I haven’t dated much. I’m blind and now I’m an emotional wreck too. I’m just not sure you really want this.”

  “I’ve loved you for years. I know exactly who you are and what I’m getting myself into. I’ve dreamt of holding you in my arms again for so long. I want to be with you and only you. I don’t want to let you go again, Lydia. I can’t.”

  She seemed almost on the verge of tears as she laid her head against my chest. I held her close for a moment.

  She pulled back a little and looked up at me.

  I leaned forward and kissed her sweetly.

  I guess sometimes dreams really
do come true.

  Summer Crush

  ~Bonus Story~

  A New Adult Contemporary Erotic Romance

  Linda Robb has just come back to her hometown of Athens, Pennsylvania for summer break before her last year of college. She is excited to be back to small town living after the busy setting of Washington D. C. She is looking forward to some great times, great old friends, and a little bit of self-reflection.

  She has had a great year at school. Her grades are great, she has made some great friends, and she has joined some great clubs. The only thing that has not gone great is her love life.

  But all that is about to change.

  Linda is just getting used to being back home again and hanging out at Katie’s, the bakery that her father owns and named after her mother who died of cancer ten years earlier.

  She is having a good time reuniting with the crew and spending time with her dad when she meets Kent Travers. He is the newest addition to the bakery staff. At first Linda is enticed by his soap opera good looks and his quiet demeanor. He keeps to himself and seems to have put up a barrier between himself and the world around her. Linda can’t help but be attracted to the mystery man.

  One night Kent saves Linda from being attacked by a drunk at the local bar and thus begins a whirlwind romance that Linda has only read about in books and seen in Hollywood movies.

  But what happens when her ideal summer of romance ends and she has to head back to school? Will Kent wait for her?

  Will she find out the secret skeletons that Kent has hidden in his past?

  Or will true love find a way?

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE