SK01 - Waist Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. You really think Yvette would hold up that long under a little police questioning? You think she really hasn’t already told this delicious little secret to some of her girlfriends?”

  LeMond tried to appear unmoved, but I saw uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Your little affair is a house of cards,” I told him. “One good gust of air and it will all tumble down. A little looking and the cops will find out about Kris. And all the others.”

  I watched him for a reaction. He didn’t react to Kris’s name or my accusation about the other girls. In the law enforcement arena, his lack of denial was considered a tacit admission of guilt. It was a signal to blaze forward, because a confession was in the works. Of course, that was all cat-and-mouse interrogation science. You’d never get to say in court, “Well, I accused him and he didn’t deny it.”

  But I didn’t need a court of law. Standing in his backyard, next to his hot tub, I had Gary LeMond pegged for the scumbag that he was. I made up my mind right then that he was going to answer for it, one way or another.

  Not tonight, though. He might not call the cops because of what I had on him, but I wasn’t going to call for them, either, because of what he had on me. He might only think it was a puny trespass charge, but I knew better.

  “Tell me about Kris,” I said, “and I’ll go.”

  LeMond stared at me in appraisal. “You’ll go?”

  I nodded.

  “And you’ll tell no one about this?”

  I thought about that. “How old is Yvette?” I asked. I knew she was at least sixteen because she drove, but—

  “Seventeen,” LeMond said. “Eighteen in May.”

  I thought about how college professors routinely slept with their students all across the country. Guys in their forties or fifties bedding down eighteen and nineteen-year-old nymphs just glad to be out from under mom and dad’s tyrannical rule, even if that escape was funded on those same tyrants’ dime. I’m sure LeMond would say that what he was doing with Yvette wasn’t a whole lot different than that. Just one shade of grey away, really.

  When I didn’t reply, LeMond sputtered, “Jesus, you saw her. She’s a woman. She knows what she’s doing.”

  I had a mental flash of Yvette’s bare form. Suddenly, I was sick to my stomach with shame and disgust. I thought for a moment I might throw up right into LeMond’s hot tub. Instead, I blamed it on the remnants of my hangover and a greasy hamburger, but I knew the source was right in front of me.

  “Fine,” I said. “I won’t say anything to anyone about Yvette. But you will tell me everything you know about Kris Sinderling.”

  LeMond ran his hand nervously across his mouth, then nodded.

  “Do you know where she is?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. I have no idea.”

  “Why did she run away?”

  LeMond shrugged. “I don’t know that, either. I told you everything I knew when you came to the school.”

  “Not everything. How long were you sleeping with her?”

  LeMond paled slightly. “That was a mistake, okay?”

  “How long?”

  He sighed. “A few months. And only a few times.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Drama,” he said. “I cast her in a play I’d written. It was a single part, so there was a lot of coaching necessary. We worked together after school in the theatre. One day…things were kind of intense and it just happened.”

  “Sixteen,” I said coldly. “She’s sixteen.”

  “I know that,” he snapped. “But Kris was special. She had an ageless quality to her and—”

  “Spare me the line,” I interrupted. “I’m not interested in what lets you sleep at night. I want to know why she ran away. Did she find out about Yvette?”

  He shook his head. “No. Everything was fine. With us, anyway.”

  My stomach clenched again when he said that word. Us. I fought down the nauseous feeling. “She didn’t run away for no reason at all,” I said.

  “No,” LeMond answered.

  I glared at him, my nausea and anger brewing together into a growing fury. I breathed deeply through my nose to quell the emotion, but it did little to stem the tide.

  After a few moments, LeMond squirmed slightly. “She was a little upset about the play being cancelled,” he said.

  I nodded, remembering our conversation at the school. The principal had wanted a play with more acting roles.

  “How upset?”

  He shrugged. “Not so much that I ever thought she’d hurt herself. Or run away like she did.”

  I didn’t answer, considering the possibility. She was sixteen years old and wanted to be a star. Her big chance comes along and she works hard at it, only to see the opportunity jerked away. How big of an event would that be in her life? How devastating?

  It made some sense. It might be why she ran way. It didn’t explain the jump to flirting with prostitution, but it explained the runaway.

  “I care deeply for her,” LeMond was saying. “I really do. It wasn’t just sex for me. And I tried to console her. I held her while she cried and—”

  My hand shot out and caught him behind the head. I grabbed a fist full of his wet hair and twisted his head to the side.

  LeMond yelped and I punched him hard in the face.

  Once.

  Any more than that and I wouldn’t have been able to stop.

  I leaned in close to his face. I hoped he could smell the onions and coffee on my breath from lunch. A trickle of blood rolled out of his nostril and across his upper lip like a thin, red mustache.

  “Your days of screwing your students are through,” I told him, my voice barely containing my fury. “I catch even a whiff of it after tonight and I go to the police. You get me?”

  LeMond nodded, but there was not enough fear in his eyes for my taste. I snapped another punch into his delicate face. I left him there, in his hot tub and bleeding from his nose, and stalked back to my car. On my way, my stomach clenched again. This time, I let loose its contents, spewing puke all over the hood of LeMond’s Porsche.

  42

  The next morning, Cassie was back.

  “Good morning,” she said, smiling her mysterious smile with that slightly crooked tooth just on the edge of it. “Usual?”

  “A double,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows lightly. “Tough night?”

  I nodded and grunted at the same time and she started to fix my Americano.

  Peering over the side of LeMond’s fence had been tough. So was admitting that I liked the sight of Yvette’s body and then hating myself for it.

  Listening to LeMond’s ‘bullshit’ speech had been tough, too. Same thing with talking to the son of a bitch and then punching him only twice and not raining a hundred blows down on his smug, artistic face. Very tough.

  Of course, realizing that I hadn’t gained much from my little adventure at Chéz LeMond hadn’t been easy, either.

  But stopping at the liquor store and buying a nice bottle of smooth, Tennessee whiskey? Pouring glass after glass in my apartment?

  Not tough at all. Easy, in fact.

  A shower and a few aspirin put me back into the land of the living, just barely. The coffee that Cassie slid across the counter to me would help me on that journey.

  “A plain bagel, too, please,” I told her.

  “Cream cheese?”

  My stomach wavered.

  “No, thanks. Just plain.”

  She nodded and grabbed one for me. I paid her, tipping her a dollar. She eyed the bill, a strange look on her face.

  “I got some work,” I explained, stammering a little.

  She nodded, but didn’t smile. “Thanks. Anything else I can get for you?”

  I thought about asking her about that trip for ice cream we were supposed to make, but I knew that the time wasn’t right. It was a coincidence, really, me having enough cash to give a decent tip coming at the s
ame time we’d made our first tentative moves towards a real date. But now the simple gesture had queered things up a little bit. Best to let it ride itself out.

  “No, that’s it. Thanks.”

  She nodded and gave me a smile sans the mystery to it and returned to work.

  I grabbed a paper someone had left behind and read through the pages without really absorbing anything. It was all the same, anyway. The mayor and the city budget crisis. The Flyers actually tied Trail 3-3 the previous night, I was glad to see. Then I read a little further and discovered that they gave up two third period goals. That made it a bad tie, in hockey parlance. I flipped to the comics.

  By the time Adam arrived, I’d finished half of the crossword.

  I pushed the paper aside as he sat down excitedly. Cassie took his order and he fidgeted in his seat while she made the latté.

  “Good news?” I asked.

  He nodded and slid a manila folder across the table to me. I opened it up, holding it close to my body so Cassie couldn’t see the contents when she brought Adam his drink. There were three pieces of paper inside. The first one was the glamour photo of Kris I’d given Adam. The second was a printed Internet page. The logo across the top read, “Barely Legal Beaver!” A naked woman was featured, lounging on a pillow, her back arched and her legs open. Large red stars covered her nipples and pubic region.

  It was Kris.

  I glanced up at Adam and he nodded for me to keep reading.

  At the bottom of the page, there was an invitation to come inside for just $3.95 a week and watch all sorts of sexual escapades by these barely legal girls. My eyes flitted over the descriptions of every sex act imaginable to the end of the tag line, where the viewer was invited to “Cum see Star in her debut film! See a virgin becum a slut right before your eyes!”

  I closed the folder and took a deep breath.

  Jesus.

  She was sixteen. Sixteen! I closed my eyes and forced the images from inside the folder from my mind. I tried to see Kris dressed in a nice yellow dress, playing croquet on the lawn with her father.

  Adam leaned in. “I have to report this. I’ll turn it in this afternoon. It’ll probably sit overnight. I doubt Lieutenant Crawford will read any reports that come in at the end of the day. If he doesn’t read it until tomorrow and then decides to do something, you’ll have a one-day head start.”

  I nodded.

  “If he spots the report and goes off on a tangent, then they’ll hit the place as soon as possible.” He shrugged. “Best that I can do.”

  “Thanks,” I managed.

  His face lit up. “You should have seen it, Stef. I don’t know what they’re hooked up to, but my search speed tripled, maybe quadrupled. And their decryption software broke through firewalls like tissue paper. It was incredible.”

  I nodded and opened the folder again. I turned to the third and final page. There was a name, a photocopy of a driver’s license and a single entry for a traffic ticket in the local computer all cut and pasted onto the same page.

  “This him?” I asked Adam.

  “Yeah. That’s who the ISP comes back to. I don’t know if he’s the one making the movies, but he’s the one putting them on the ‘net.” Adam shook his head. “I’ll never say impossible again. If I do, slap me.” He took a satisfied drink of his latté.

  I ignored him and read the address on the driver’s license and looked up at the face.

  “Make sure you shred that when you’re through with it,” Adam said.

  I nodded absently and read the name slowly to myself.

  Roger. Roger Jackson.

  43

  I stopped at my apartment and went inside. It smelled stuffy, so I threw open the window and let the cold February air flood in.

  The bottle of whisky stood on the counter, still one-third full. I reached for it, and for one wavering moment, I almost poured three fingers into last night’s glass. Hair of the dog.

  Instead, I unscrewed the cap and poured the brown poison down the drain. I threw the bottle into the garbage pail. Then I closed the window.

  From under my bed, I drew out the most expensive thing I owned. It was the last holdover from when I was on the job. A Smith and Wesson .45 caliber Model 457 with a barrel just shy of four inches long for easier concealment. Seven rounds plus one in the pipe.

  I slipped the gun out of the soft leather holster and pulled the slide partway open. There was a gleam of gold in the chamber. I let the slide snap forward. Then I clipped the holster to my belt, covered it with my windbreaker and left the apartment.

  44

  Roger Jackson lived on the north side of town on a quiet street named Midland. His house was on a corner lot and didn’t look any different than the other ranchers and split-entries on the block. A new Camaro was parked in the driveway. A four foot chain link fence surrounded the front lawn, which was currently a short, wintry yellow.

  I sat behind the wheel of the Celica and considered my next move. Did Jackson have a regular job? If so, he’d probably be working right now. The Camaro in the driveway argued otherwise, though.

  Was he married? If I knocked, would it be Mrs. Jackson who answered the door? I looked for a garage and didn’t see one. Maybe the little woman was at work.

  If there was a wife, how much did she know? For that matter, how much was there to know? Maybe Jackson just had a deal with someone else to manage a website.

  I pushed down all these questions and focused on what was important. Jackson was my only link to Kris. And sometime tomorrow, he would probably be in police custody. If I was going to get anything out of him, it had to be now.

  My decision made, I got out of the car and walked directly to the front door.

  I gave the screen door a friendly knock and waited patiently. When there was no reply, I opened the screen and knocked again, this time on the front door.

  Still no answer.

  I paused. Was he home and not answering? Or gone?

  A moment later, I decided I didn’t care. I drove my hip and shoulder into the door and crashed it inward.

  45

  I stepped inside and shut the door quickly. My heart was pounding in my ears. I dropped low onto my right knee, wincing slightly as I bent the left, and listened. If anyone was home, they’d be on me in second or two. I wrapped my hand around my gun and waited.

  All I could hear was the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the tick of a clock on the wall in the living room. Even so, I waited several minutes before moving. I listened for creaks in the floor and I listened for sirens in the distance. I thought vaguely about the fact that I wasn’t licensed to carry a firearm. That led me to the fact that by bringing a gun along, I’d bumped this little caper up to a first degree burglary.

  Stupid.

  A trickle of sweat slid down my temple and I wiped it away.

  No one was home, I finally decided, and stood up.

  I inspected the door first and saw that the damage was light. Jackson’s deadbolt was a stubby half-inch and the mechanism was flimsy. The doorjamb itself was barely damaged. The door rattled a little when I jiggled it, but if Jackson wasn’t looking for it, he might not notice.

  Once I finished with the door, I slowly walked through the house. It was a typical rancher-style house, just a box with rooms. I wandered through them, my hand still on the butt of my pistol, my heart racing. I had visions of all the homes and buildings I’d searched when I was a cop. I tried to recall old tactics as I moved through the rooms.

  It was definitely a bachelor’s house. There were no signs of a woman’s touch anywhere. But it was neat and clean and surprisingly sparse. The furniture was nice but comfortably middle class. There was no oak. The television was thirty inches and he had a DVD player and bookshelf stereo, but nothing fancy.

  I walked into the bedroom. His bed looked like a queen and it was made. I half expected to see a pair of slippers sitting beside the night stand, but there was only a telephone and a digital alarm clock.
Roger Jackson was definitely a very orderly man.

  The kitchen and bathroom were more of the same. I completed my circuit of the small house in less than five minutes and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The place was a little on the sterile side, all tidy and without pictures of family on any of the walls. A framed movie poster for Miller’s Crossing hung in the hallway.

  I wondered if I had the wrong house. Maybe Adam was wrong about Jackson entirely and his Internet investigation had been a bust.

  A car drove by the house slowly. The windows were tinted black and the sound of bass thumped obscenely, rattling the front windows of Roger Jackson’s house. I watched from behind the curtain. The car turned onto Assembly and headed south.

  A magazine rack stood next to one of the chairs in the living room and I flipped through the selections. Time and Playboy were the most prominent, but neither one had any copies with an address label. Then I came across a Videomaker magazine and saw a label on it.

  Roger Jackson.

  This was the right house.

  I started checking doors, finding several closets. One was full of towels, another was bare except for three coats hanging from the rack. Then, off the kitchen, I found a door that I had taken for a pantry. I opened it and saw a set of stairs that led sharply downward.

  To the basement.

  I flicked on the light, drew my gun and went down the stairs.

  46

  The narrow stairs creaked as I went down them. At the foot of the stairs, I saw that the basement was small. A tiny laundry area was off to my left. I poked my head in and swept my eyes across the room. Just a washer and dryer and another closet.

  I moved to the other side of the small basement and found a finished room that had been turned into a simple office. A desk with a computer was pushed into the corner. A printer on a small table sat next to the computer desk and another box-shaped component sat underneath the table. The printer was off, but a red light glowed on the box beneath the table. The desk chair was a match for the upstairs dining table chairs. Behind that, on the opposite wall, was a bookshelf with a few mainstream paperback novels and some back issues of Videomaker magazine.